A British man and his Spanish former sweetheart have finally married 16 years after they drifted apart, reunited by a love letter lost behind a fireplace for over a decade, reports said yesterday.
Steve Smith and Carmen Ruiz-Perez, both now 42, fell in love 17 years ago when she was a foreign exchange student in Brixham, and got engaged after only a year together.
But their relationship ended after she moved to France to run a shop in Paris.
A few years later, in a bid to rekindle their love, Mr Smith sent a letter to her mother's home in Spain. It was placed on the mantelpiece, but slipped down behind the fireplace and was lost for over a decade. The missing missive was only found when builders removed the fireplace during renovation work.
"When I got the letter I didn't phone Steve right away because I was so nervous," Ruiz-Perez told the Herald Express local newspaper. "I nearly didn't phone him at all. I kept picking up the phone then putting it down again. But I knew I had to make the call."
When they were reunited, it was as if time had stood still, said Mr Smith, a factory supervisor. "When we met again it was like a film. We ran across the airport into each other's arms. We met up and fell in love all over again. Within 30 seconds of setting eyes on each other we were kissing.
"I'm just glad the letter did eventually end up where it was supposed to be," he said, after the couple married last Friday.
Pole in Italy spends far more than a penny
A drunken Pole who urinated at a statue in the northern Italian city of Trieste was crying in his beer after being slapped with a €500 fine, police said yesterday.
The 30-year-old was caught urinating in front of a statue of Elisabeth, Empress Consort of Austria, better known as Sissi, near the railway station on Friday, Trieste police said.
Chef hits out at 'fix' claims
Australia's newly crowned MasterChef fought off claims yesterday that the hugely popular reality TV contest had been rigged, after a finale watched by a record 3.7 million people.
Popular mother-of-three Julie Goodwin said "it's simply not true" that judges unfairly favoured her over Adelaide's Poh Ling Yeow in Sunday's series climax.
"The competition wasn't rigged," Ms Goodwin told AAP news agency. "I stood in that room in front of those judges every day for four months and I can tell you it's all about the food that you put down in front of them on any given day."
The show, which involves amateur cooks displaying their culinary skills before a panel of professional chefs, has been a surprise hit in an Australian television market normally dominated by sports.
Police catch underwear thief
German police uncovered over 1,000 pairs of underpants and more than 100 pairs of swimming trunks after catching a thief nabbing another three pairs for his collection.
The 46-year-old man was caught on Sunday pinching three pairs of pants from a sports hall in the western town of Gelnhausen. Police then came across the enormous collection of underwear while searching his flat.
"They were all evidently in use, but had been washed and neatly stacked away," a police spokesman said yesterday. Police are now investigating where all the underwear came from. The suspect claims to have acquired then from car-boot sales and over the internet.
Queen Elizabeth counts her swans
Queen Elizabeth II watched for the first time yesterday as her staff began the annual job of counting her swans.
The Seigneur Of The Swans - as she is known during the historic Swan Upping ceremony - sailed up the River Thames on a steamer to observe cygnets being weighed and measured.
The 83-year-old monarch, on the throne since 1952, owns all unmarked mute swans in open water, but had never watched the traditional custom before.
"Swan Upping" dates from the 12th century when the crown claimed all the unowned mute swans in England to ensure a supply of meat for banquets and feasts.
The royal family no longer eat the birds but the ceremony has continued for conservation purposes.
Queen Elizabeth only exercises her right of ownership along certain stretches of the Thames and its tributaries. Wearing an apricot outfit, the monarch sailed in the steamer Alaska to watch the proceedings.
Tintin got to the moon first, Vatican jokes
A certain Belgian boy reporter named Tintin was the first to reach the moon, the Vatican newspaper joked yesterday as the world marked 40 years since the Apollo 11 lunar landing.
US astronaut Neil Armstrong "was not the first human to tread on the surface of the moon," the Osservatore Romano teased. "It was the famous Tintin, who took off from the secret space base of Sbrodj, in Syldavia," it said.
The intrepid hero of Belgian artist Herge's beloved comic-book series flies to the moon along with the cantankerous Captain Haddock, the eccentric Professor Calculus and Tintin's faithful dog Snowy in Destination Moon. The album, published in 1953, was followed the next year with Explorers on the Moon.
"You see Tintin and you would think you're looking at (Buzz) Aldrin, if it weren't for the attractive orange colour of Herge's hero's spacesuit," the Osservatore Romano said.