An Olympics more to some men's tastes is brewing this weekend in this small Finnish town. The winner receives his wife's weight in beer. More than 50 couples from countries around Europe are registered for Saturday's 16th annual Wife Carrying World Championships. The rules are simple, even if the contest isn't necessarily easy. The wife-even a borrowed one- is carried by the man-piggyback, on his shoulders, or however he can manage-around a quarter-kilometer (. 15 miles) course made up of sand, asphalt and grass over logs and through three feet of water.

The crew of the HMS Iron Duke, the ship Prince William is training on, seized nearly a ton of cocaine Saturday. The HMS Iron Duke stopped a 50-foot speedboat which the Iron Duke's crew spotted hundreds of miles northeast of Barbados. The sighting raised suspicions because it is unusual to see such a small vessel so far out at sea.

study by a sociologist revealed that more and more women in Italy are opting to lead a hermit's life and turn their backs from the modern world. Sociologist Isacco Turina, a professor at the University of Bologna, said there are over 1,000 hermits currently in the country and many more all over Europe and the United States, a majority of whom are women. But these modern hermits no longer wear long beards and hide away in caves, instead they live in apartments and surf the Internet.

India's lucrative outsourcing sector is not limited to back office jobs. It is now emerging as a major supplier of "back bedroom jobs" as an infant outsourcing hub as well. According to the International Herald Tribune, reproduction is the newest addition to the Asian tiger's outsourcing industry. Couples from the United States and Europe are asking Indian women to serve as surrogate mothers, leading to a boom in the number of clinics offering the procedure.

A four-ton iron bridge on an old rail line between Cheb and Stary Hroznatov in west Bohemia, has been reported missing, police revealed Tuesday. Police spokesman Ladislav Boehm theorized that it took the thief at least two months to cart off with the bridge, adding that these sections of the railway bridge are most likely to turn up in scrap metal shops.