The newly-weds first met 17 years ago when Carmen visited Devon

A Devon man has married an old flame after a love letter he wrote 10 years ago which went astray was discovered behind a fireplace by workmen in Spain.

Steve Smith, of Paignton, met Spaniard Carmen Ruiz-Perez 17 years ago when she was an exchange student in Devon.

The pair had been engaged but their relationship fizzled out after Ms Ruiz-Perez went to live in Paris.

Mr Smith sent her a letter via her mother’s home in Spain but never heard back until she read it a decade later.

Ms Ruiz-Perez, who had never married, rang her former boyfriend and they met in Paris a few days later.

Like a storyline straight from Hollywood, the pair, now both aged 42, fell in love all over again and tied the knot in Brixham on Friday.

Mr Smith, a factory supervisor, said: ”When we met again it was like a film. We ran across the airport into each other’s arms.

I never got married and now I’ve married the man I have always loved Carmen Smith

”We met up and fell in love all over again. Within 30 seconds of setting eyes on each other we were kissing.

“I’m just glad the letter did eventually end up where it was supposed to be.”

However, it seemed that Cupid and fate worked hard to ensure it did as a catalogue of events could so easily have led to them never meeting again.

Mr Smith originally wrote to Ms Ruiz-Perez’s flat in Paris but she had moved and his letter went unanswered.

Still determined to trace his lost love, he wrote her another letter and sent it via her mother’s villa in Spain.

The letter lay hidden for a decade after slipping behind a fireplace

The letter was put on the mantelpiece and forgotten about before it slipped down the back of the fireplace.

It was only when workmen carrying out renovations on the villa removed the fireplace that they discovered the letter and passed it on.

However, it was 10 years old and Mr Smith had moved house - but fortunately he had kept his old phone number.

Ms Ruiz-Perez, who has now become Mrs Smith, described the wedding as the pinnacle of an ”amazing” love story.

“I never got married and now I’ve married the man I have always loved,” she said.

”When I got the letter I didn’t phone Steve right away because I was so nervous. I nearly didn’t phone him at all.

”I kept picking up the phone then putting it down again but I knew I had to make the call.”

Two of the astronauts who took part in the first Moon landing 40 years ago have called for renewed efforts to send a manned mission to Mars.

At a rare public reunion of the Apollo 11 crew, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins said Mars instead of the Moon should be the focus of exploration.

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, said the race to get to the Moon had been the ultimate peaceful contest.

He said it was an “exceptional national investment” for the US and ex-USSR.

The trio spoke at an event at Washington DC’s National Air and Space Museum to mark the 40th anniversary of their mission.

Sometimes I think I flew to the wrong place. Mars was always my favourite as a kid and it still is today Michael Collins Apollo 11 crew

They are due to meet President Obama at the White House on Monday.

Mr Armstrong told the audience: “It was the ultimate peaceful competition: USA vs USSR.

“I’ll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, nevertheless it was a diversion.

“Eventually, it provided a mechanism for engendering co-operation between former adversaries. In that sense, among others, it was an exceptional national investment for both sides.”

Fellow astronaut Mr Aldrin spoke of the inspiration provided by then-President John F Kennedy which led to the “betterment of America, and ultimately the ending of the Cold War”.

“Apollo 11 is a symbol of what a great nation and a great people can do if we work hard, work together and have strong leaders with vision and determination,” he said.

But he also pushed for a mission to Mars: “The best way to honour and remember all those who were part of the Apollo programme is to follow in our footsteps; to boldly go again on a new mission of exploration.”

Mr Collins, who circled the Moon alone while Mr Armstrong and Mr Aldrin walked on it, said Mars was more interesting than the Moon.

“Sometimes I think I flew to the wrong place. Mars was always my favourite as a kid and it still is today.”

He urged further exploration, saying: “I worry that the current emphasis on returning to the Moon will cause us to become ensnared in a technological briar patch needlessly delaying for decades the exploration of Mars - a much more worthwhile destination.”

Other Nasa astronauts gave a news conference at Nasa headquarters in Washington DC on Monday.

Eugene Cernan, who was the last astronaut to step off the Moon, concurred with the Apollo 11 astronauts urging a new focus on Mars.

My glass has been half empty for three decades at least. Hopefully, we can turn that around because what we did then is do-able again Eugene Cernan, former Nasa astronaut

“We need to go back to the Moon, we need to learn a little bit more about what we think we know already, we need to establish bases, put new telescopes there, get prepared to go to Mars. The ultimate goal, truly, is to go to Mars,” he told journalists.

Mr Cernan said that when he came back from the Moon in 1972, he believed that Nasa would have mounted a return mission to the lunar surface by 1980 and a manned mission to Mars by the turn of the century.

“My glass has been half empty for three decades at least. Hopefully, we can turn that around because what we did then is do-able again,” he said.

“I think the next major goal is not to spend three days, or three weeks or three months on the Moon, but to have you folks, or your kids, or your grand-kids sit here and talk to a group of guys who can tell you what it was like to go to Mars.”

The US space agency’s currently stated aim is to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020. But that vision is under review, along with the space vehicles that would get them there.

Nasa is due to retire its space shuttles next year and replace them with the Orion spacecraft, an Apollo-like capsule that would launch on a new rocket called Ares 1.

Another rocket, Ares V, would have the capability to launch heavy payloads - service and cargo modules - that would be needed to service Moon missions.

At least 66 people have been injured in a mass pile-up involving 259 cars on a motorway in north Germany, police say.

Ten people are said to be fighting for their lives in hospital after the series of crashes on the A2 between Hanover and Peine on Sunday evening.

Police said the pile-up was believed to have been caused by a combination of heavy rain and excessive speed.

Rescue workers were busy throughout the night treating the injured and clearing damaged cars from the motorway.

“I have not seen anything like this before. I have seen many accidents but never a pile-up this size,” said firefighter Klaus Wulfes.

One of the drivers said his car had been hit from behind and pushed into a ditch, from which his family were able to escape unharmed.

“All I did was turn around to check on my little son, our son. That was my only thought,” he told the Reuters news agency.

The reports said more education was needed to combat HIV among gay men

HIV rates among gay men in some African countries are 10 times higher than among the general male population, says research in medical journal the Lancet.

The report said prejudice towards gay people was leading to isolation and harassment, which in turn led to risky sexual practices among gay communities.

But the risks are not limited to gay men, as many of the infected also have female sexual partners.

The report called for greater education and resources in the fight against HIV.

The Oxford University researchers found that the prevalence of HIV/Aids among gay men in sub-Saharan African has been “driven by cultural, religious and political unwillingness to accept [gay men] as equal members of society”.

Lead researcher Adrian Smith told the BBC there was “profound stigma and social hostility at every level of society concerning either same-sex behaviours amongst men, or homosexuality”.

“This has the consequence that this group becomes extremely hard to reach,” he said.

Mr Smith said that gay male sex had always been acknowledged as being particularly dangerous in terms of contracting HIV/Aids.

But gay men were also more likely to be involved in other high-risk behaviours, including sex work, having multiple partners and being in contact with intravenous drug use, he said.

Education crucial

George Kanuma, a gay rights activist in Burundi, told the BBC many men “hide their sexual orientation” to get married and have children, but continue to have sex with men.

“Most of them know that you can contract HIV/Aids or any infection when you are making sex with women, but not when you are having sex with another man,” he said.

Mr Smith said there was “a desperate need for delivering a basic package of prevention for HIV”, including ensuring supplies of condoms.

“There is also a need to sensitise, educate and train those involved in HIV, the interface with men who have sex with men, to educate those involved in care and prevention activities,” he said.

The United Nations Aids agency estimates that 33 million people in the world have HIV, of whom two-thirds live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Daniel Radcliffe (left) is back as Harry in the latest Potter adventure

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth instalment in the boy wizard series, has debuted at the top of the North American box office.

The movie has raked in $159.6m (£96.7m) since it opened on Wednesday, according to early estimates.

The Half-Blood Prince beat the opening figures for The Order of the Phoenix, which was released in 2007 and took $139.7m (£84.6m) in its opening week.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs held steady at number two.

The third film in the animated series took $17.7m (£10.7m) over the weekend.

The Transformers sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, is at number three.

US AND CANADA BOX OFFICE 1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - $79.5m 2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - $17.7m 3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - $13.7m 4. Bruno - $8.41m 5. The Hangover - $8.3m Source: Hollywood.com (formerly Media by Numbers)

Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest film, Bruno, dropped into fourth place following its debut at number one last week, with takings of $8.4m (£5m) over the weekend.

The mock documentary made over $30m (£18m) in its first week.

Romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer - starring Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt - entered the chart at number 12, despite a limited release in just 27 cinemas.

Iceland nationalised its three main banks during the financial crisis

Iceland has announced a 270bn-crown (£1.3bn) plan to get its banking system back on its feet after it was forced to rescue its three main banks last year.

The government will capitalise the three new banks it is creating from the failed ones through a bond issue.

Iceland’s three main commercial banks, Glitnir, Landsbanki and Kaupthing, all collapsed within a week last October, owing $60bn to foreign lenders.

The collapse jeopardised the savings of 300,000 savers in Britain.

Under the plan, the government will also offer controlling stakes in Islandsbanki (formerly Glitnir) and New Kaupthing to the old banks’ existing shareholders.

The government will still retain a stake in the banks.

A similar plan for Landsbanki is still being discussed.

“Not only do today’s announcements provide a firm basis for further progress, they also benefit customers of the new banks and the Icelandic economy in general,” said finance minister Steingrimur Sigfusson.

Measures

The deal is the latest in a series of measures that the country hopes will restore trust in its banking system and stabilise the broader economy.

Last week, the Icelandic parliament voted to start negotiations to join the European Union.

Iceland has also agreed to repay British and Dutch government money paid out to depositors following the collapse of the savings bank Icesave, part of Landsbanki.

The UK loaned Iceland £2.3bn last year to reimburse UK savers with Icesave, after the Icelandic banking system was nationalised.

The incident sparked tensions between London and Reykjavik at the time.

CIT provides funding for small and medium-sized firms

Troubled US bank CIT has approved a $3bn (£1.8bn) loan from shareholders to keep it out of bankruptcy, reports say.

The emergency financing is aimed at giving the firm time to restructure some of its debt payments, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal said.

Its shares almost doubled in value on the reports, though they are only about 20% of the value they were last year.

The US government has said it will not offer a bail-out to CIT - which lends to small and medium-sized businesses.

Last week, shares in CIT plunged as analysts warned investors should brace themselves for the bank’s collapse - though they later rallied on news of the rescue talks.

Business support

Fitch and Moody’s - the credit ratings agencies - downgraded CIT on Thursday, after it said it was unlikely to receive any more government help.

The US Treasury said that the government needed to “keep the threshold high” for exceptional aid to individual companies.

The failure of CIT would remove a key source of credit for thousands of small and middle-sized US firms, which are already struggling in the recession.

If CIT, founded more than a century ago, went bankrupt it would join Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual on the list of large financial services companies to collapse since the acceleration of the credit crisis in September last year.

But analysts say that if it did fail, it would be unlikely to have the same impact.

Would-be buyers of General Motors’ Opel business have until later on Monday to lodge plans for the firm’s future.

Canadian-Austrian car parts maker Magna International is favourite to buy Opel - which includes Vauxhall in the UK.

Magna, backed by Russia’s Sberbank, wants to use Opel to make an aggressive push into the Russian market.

However, Belgium-based investor RHJ International is manoeuvring to try to make a successful bid - with plans to restructure Opel’s operations.

GM was forced to put Opel up for sale as part of its massive restructuring which saw it go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US - before emerging as a leaner company with less debt.

Opel has been placed under the ownership of a trustee in which both GM and the German government have a stake - making the process of deciding a buyer complex.

Vauxhall commitment

The Magna consortium had looked to certain to win the battle for Opel since May - when the German government’s supported the move.

And last week, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev voiced their support for Magna.

However, Opel’s future has become less clear-cut after RHJ, which is backed by US private equity firm Ripplewood, said last week that its negotiations with GM and Germany were “at an advanced stage”.

Both firms’ plans are thought to involve cutting about 10,000 Opel jobs - and protecting all four German car-making plants.

Magna has now said that “no immediate plant closures are contemplated” at the Vauxhall sites at Luton and Ellesmere Port, which employ about 5,000 people. However, that commitment has only been made to 2013.

RHJ is also expected to support saving both Vauxhall factories - but may ask workers to take pay cuts.

GM is expected to give its preliminary findings on the final bids to the German and other European governments on Wednesday.

Next week GM is expected to have a recommendation ready on which bid to accept. That will be put before its board and the US Treasury, which has a majority stake in GM.

The industry is playing catch up with Apple’s successful App Store

The market for mobile applications, or apps, will become “as big as the internet”, peaking at 10 million apps in 2020, a leading online store says.

However, GetJar say, the developer community will decline drastically as each developer makes less money.

According to the Symbian Foundation, newly in the developer market, apps will become more personal and practical as their numbers grow.

The comments were made at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco.

“Apps will be as big if not bigger than the internet,” according to Ilja Laurs, chief executive of GetJar, a leading independent application store.

“They will peak at around 100,000 by the end of the year. That will be a tipping point and after that there will be a gradual fall in the rate of development.

“The full blossom will come in ten years and mobile apps will become as popular as websites are today with consumers,” Mr Laurs told BBC News.

‘Economics’

While developers rush headlong to create applications for this burgeoning marketplace, Mr Laurs warned that many are simply doomed to fail.

“The reality is that this space is only so big and only able to support so many people. Unfortunately the overhype that goes with [Apple's] App Store is what has driven so many to rush to develop for the market. It is fashionable to do apps and every media outlet tells you apps are cool.

Google believes the days of app stores are numbered

“But the economics are a different story. The ratio of those developers who will fail is about 90%; they will simply not make a return on their investment or make a good enough living at this,” said Mr Laurs.

He said that will result in developers taking their talent elsewhere and also slow down the rate of growth in applications.

GetJar acts as an application intermediary, distributing apps and helping its community of 350,000 developers make money from their work.

‘Hit-driven environment’

To date, Apple runs the most popular application store with over 65,000 applications. Last week it notched up another milestone with 1.5 billion downloads.

Its success was a shock both to Apple and the industry. However, every smartphone company is trying to replicate it, from BlackBerry makers Research in Motion to the world’s biggest mobile phone business, Nokia.

Many at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco felt that the popularity of Apple’s App store is also its Achilles heel because it caters to the “one hit wonder” model.

It is something social gaming company Playfish is well aware of with its iPhone app, “Who Has the Biggest Brain?”.

“It has been played on the web by 15 million people and when it launched on the iPhone it went to the top of the iTunes chart. But it quickly fell away and I think that’s an experience many people are going through, no matter the quality or originality of the content,” Playfish co-founder Sebastien de Halleux told the BBC.

The type of application you will see will help enrich your life…which is really what mobile applications are all about Lee Williams Symbian Foundation

“You are competing for the top slot in a catalogue and you cannot, no matter who you are, hold onto that slot for an indefinite period of time. Many developers are realising that its hard to reach a sustainable business in a catalogue environment because it’s a hit-driven environment.”

Mr de Halleux said heated conversations are going on within the industry to solve this problem. He also said he believed Apple wanted to find a way to help developers make money making apps that consumers want to use and pay for.

Meanwhile Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, said he was not sure the consumer or the industry needed any more application stores.

“The App Store is flawed - right now [it] is just a bucket of apps. You need to get beyond that bucket and give the consumer the opportunity to wander down a really relevant aisle of content and applications that they can get access to.

“When this problem is solved, the type of application you will see will be about more than an iBeer drinking app or a candle that flickers in different colours.

“The type of application you will see will help enrich your life in some way. It will let you do your image sharing, your social networking and establish presence with your friends, colleagues and family in completely new ways - which is really what mobile applications are all about,” said Mr Williams.

Fad

At MobileBeat, organised by the blog VentureBeat, the issue of application stores seemed to dominate with conversations and panels on marketing techniques, turning apps into a real business and looking beyond apps.

Playfish titles are played by more than 25 million people every month

But Google’s engineering vice president Vic Gundotra told the conference that the application store trend is just a fad and that the focus will shift to powerful browsers as the main mechanism for delivering services.

“Many, many applications can be delivered through the browser and what that does for our costs is stunning.

“We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly that’s where Google is investing,” Mr Gundotra told the conference.

But referring to technical problems at the conference, MobileBeat organiser Matt Marshall told BBC News that scenario could be some time away.

“You saw at this conference that the web went down once or twice and that shows you that even the main web has problems so what about mobile?

“When you talk about mobile browsers, that is the biggest change in the last year. You have networks like AT&T, Sprint and Verizon all building out to the fourth generation and that’s going to allow much more power in delivering those web browsers pages on your mobile phone. But it’s not here yet,” said Mr Marshall.

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Qasab opened fire on commuters, it is alleged

The leading suspect in last November’s deadly attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) has pleaded guilty.

Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab stood up before the court to say he admitted his role in the killings.

Mr Qasab, who is a Pakistani, faces 86 charges, including waging war on India, murder and possessing explosives.

It is not clear why he changed his plea after pleading not guilty in May to all charges. More than 170 people died in the attacks, nine of them gunmen.

Prosecutors say Mr Qasab is the sole surviving attacker.

He could face the death penalty if his confession is accepted and judges agree to impose the maximum penalty.

‘Shocked’

The BBC’s Prachi Pinglay, who was in the courtroom in Mumbai, said Mr Qasab appeared calm.

AT THE SCENE Prachi Pinglay BBC News, Mumbai Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab appeared very calm in court, smiling a number of times as his confession was being recorded. Now Pakistan has accepted he is a Pakistani national he wanted to confess, he told the court. Mr Qasab spoke lucidly for several hours, giving specific details of names of people he had met, the kind of training he had received and weapons he had used. He talked about his family and named his two brothers and two sisters. The judge will now meet prosecution and defence teams to hear their views about the change of plea. Legal experts say it is still not clear if the trial is over.

He said there had been no pressure on him to confess and it had been his decision to do so.

“I request the court to accept my plea and pronounce the sentence,” he told the judge, smiling.

Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said: “We were not expecting this. We were all shocked when he made a plea of guilt.

“It is for the court to decide whether to accept his plea or not. It was all of a sudden. The court is now recording his plea.”

Shortly afterwards Mr Nikam told the BBC the confession was “a victory for the prosecution”.

During his testimony, the suspect gave details of his journey from Pakistan, the attacks at a historic railway station in Mumbai and the city’s Cama hospital.

Mr Qasab’s lawyer said he had nothing to do with the confession.

It is not fully clear what prompted Mr Qasab to change his plea.

He said he had done so because Pakistan had finally admitted he was a Pakistani citizen, but that was some time ago.

Police say Mr Qasab confessed before a magistrate to the attacks after his arrest, but he retracted that confession at an early hearing.

His lawyers said then that it had been coerced.

Wept in court

Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, 21, was arrested on the first day of the attacks and has been in Indian custody ever since.

In his initial appearances before the court, Mr Qasab appeared relaxed and smiled and grinned.

But more recently, he broke down and wept in court as a witness recounted the violent events which took place over three days in late November.

The attacks led to a worsening of relationship between India and Pakistan.

India accused Pakistan-based fighters from the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of carrying out the attacks.

In the immediate aftermath of the killings, Pakistan denied any responsibility, but later admitted the attacks had been partly planned on its soil.

Islamabad also eventually admitted that Mr Qasab was a Pakistani citizen.