Attending the key Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, U. S. President George Bush has confused the name of the meeting with OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). The president made the slip in a speech to a group of business leaders. President Bush was on stage at the Sydney Opera House when he thanked Australian Prime Minister John Howard for his kind introduction and also for being such a good host for the "OPEC" summit.

Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride who escaped her wedding in 2005 by making up a story about being kidnapped and raped, is having her story turned into a rock opera. Wilbanks later admitted she hopped on a bus to Mexico because she got cold feet and pleaded no contest to lying to police. The show, named the "Runaway Bride," has been called an "unauthorized rock opera. " According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, scriptwriter Jaime Heck said that neither Wilbanks' nor her then-fiancee's names are mentioned in the opera and that he has not spoken to either of them.

Following public outrage, an Austrian businessman on Thursday announced that he would remove so called "sexist" urinals from a public toilet near Vienna's national opera. The urinals are shaped like a woman's mouth, featuring lipsticked lips, teeth and a bright red tongue. The politicians and members of several women affairs groups denounced the urinals as "misogynistic and offensive. "

Prisoners in Ireland and Italy will play an intergral part in a full-scale production of the opera "La Boheme. " Opera Ireland plans to use sets and costumes designed and constructed by the inmates in its commercial venture. The high-security Maiano jail in Perugia, Italy has worked in partnership with Dublin's Mountjoy Prison to put the project together.

An opera singer riding his bike to a rehearsal of a new opera last month ended up in a hospital instead of the Helsinki Opera House after a squirrel jumped into his bicycle spokes. Esa Ruuttunen suffered a concussion and a broken nose from the accident. The squirrel did not survive.