Arms wide open above Rio de Janeiro, Christ the Redeemer marked its 80th anniversary Wednesday as the fifth largest statue of Jesus in the world and a symbol of the 2016 Olympic city.

Hundreds of worshippers are expected to celebrate the anniversary, along with a vigil, concerts and an eight-meter (26-foot) cake, a fitting tribute in Brazil, the biggest Catholic country in the world with 130 million faithful.

Unheard of during the reign of Saddam Hussein and unthinkable during years of violence, an unlikely innovation is slowly being rolled out in Baghdad by Iraqis back from overseas: the one-stop beauty centre.

Three decades of instability -- from wars with Iran, Kuwait and the U.S.-led invasion, to 13 years of sanctions and embargo, and a sectarian war in which thousands died -- all but ruled out leisure activities for women, including trips to a beauty salon.

Bhutan's hugely popular king married a 21-year-old student on Thursday in a colorful ceremony showcasing the rich Buddhist culture of one of the world's most remote and insular countries.

Amid clouds of incense and chanting monks, the 31-year-old King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck crowned his queen at the end of a series of rituals in the 17th-century fortified monastery chosen for the occasion.

The First Lady is also a first-rate escape artist who sometimes flees the confines of the White House for secret shopping forays, Michelle Obama divulged in a TV interview broadcast Wednesday.

"I do that more frequently than people realize, and it's amazing how people don't recognize you," Obama told NBC television's "Today Show."

A bronze buttock from the statue of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein toppled in Baghdad after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 is to be auctioned in Britain, an auction house said Tuesday.

A former soldier from Britain's elite SAS regiment retrieved the two-foot (0.6-meter) wide piece of history and took it back to Britain shortly after U.S. marines dragged the statue down on live television.

An Australian nurse suffered brain damage and kidney failure after drinking a cocktail called jungle juice on the Indonesian holiday island of Lombok, a report said on Wednesday.

Jamie Johnston, 25, was flown to the Royal Darwin Hospital from Bali in a coma after ordering a jug of arak -- a rice wine popular throughout Southeast Asia -- mixed with fruit juice to share with her mother.

A cash-strapped Spanish town has surprised its residents by asking them to pick up a broom and sweep their own streets and pavements.

The official request by the mayor of Esparreguera, a town of 22,000 people in northeastern Spain's Catalonia region, did not go down well with all inhabitants.

When it comes to socks, one is more likely to find a French or Swiss man wearing a smelly pair than a German or a Brit.

A study by Swiss firm Blacksocks found that only 66 percent of Frenchmen changed their socks daily, while just seven in ten Swiss men put on a clean pair every day.

Amber Miller says she felt contractions minutes after crossing the Chicago Marathon finish line.

A few hours after completing the 26.2-mile (42-kilometer) race Sunday, the suburban Chicago woman gave birth to her daughter, June.

A Russian region in Siberia on Monday confidently proclaimed that its mountains are home to yetis after finding "indisputable proof" of the existence of the hairy beasts in an expedition.

The local administration of the Kemerovo region in the south of Siberia said in a statement on its website that footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the yeti were found on the research trip to its remote mountains.