CONTESTANTS in this year's controversial Miss World pageant prepared to leave Bangalore, India, yesterday as police expressed relief that militant feminists did not carry out self immolation protests.
Irene Skliva (18), from Greece, was crowned Miss World, Carolina Arango (19), of Colombia, was named first runner up, and Anuska Prado (20), of Brazil, the second runner up.
The Pope set two Austrian priests martyred under Hitler on the road to sainthood at the weekend.
In a beatification ceremony at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II said priests, Jakob Gapp and Otto Neururer, had shown there could be "no compromise between Christianity and the Nazi pagan national socialist ideology".
Demonstrators including Cheers actor Woody Harrelson scaled the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco yesterday to demand that the government protect a 60,000 acre redwood grove.