Etc...

With this ring I thee wed

Remember the item in this space yesterday about the couple who were married in a waste-transfer station? Now from Norway comes word of a couple who exchanged their vows in . . . a phone booth. Frode Stroemsoe and Grete Myrslett met through a text-messaging service for singles. Since they lived 200 miles apart, he courted her via daily calls - until their cellular bills became prohibitively high. So they switched to cheaper long-distance land lines during their engagement. Except, that is, for sending the invitations; for those it was back to text messaging. When the time came for the ceremony, the state-owned Telenor utility saw a public relations opportunity, stepped in, and sponsored it.

The effects of this summer's heat wave in France will still be felt five years from now, according to estimates. Why? In addition to the human casualties, a million Christmas tree seedlings that would have been harvested in 2008 perished due to the scorching temperatures and lack of rain.

Despite the summer electricity blackout, the terrorist attacks of two years ago Thursday, and other headline-making problems, New York remains the city most Americans say they'd like to live in (or near), other than their own. That's according to pollster Harris Interactive, which surveyed 2,200 adults nationwide for its latest annual list. Aside from the Big Apple, Western cities dominate the list. Harris's top 10 cities most attractive to nonresidents, and their respective 2002 rankings (in parenthesis):

1. New York (1)
2. San Diego (8)
3. San Francisco (2)
4. Las Vegas (14-tie)
5. Los Angeles (10)
6. Chicago (6-tie)
7. Phoenix (not ranked)
8. Portland, Ore. (14-tie)
9. Seattle (3)
(tie) Denver (6-tie) - PR Newswire