His deputy may have invented the internet, global warming and worldwide simultaneous benefit rock concerts, but Monica's Main Man has finally joined the bloggerati.

ZIMBABWE: Daughters fetch high prices as brides

HARARE, 17 July 2007 (IRIN) - Daughters have become a high-priced commodity in Zimbabwe, where a dowry has become a means of escaping poverty in a rapidly declining economy. "When people are mired in such hunger as we have been seeing in this country for over seven years, they will do anything to survive," Innocent Makwiramiti, a Harare-based economist, told IRIN.

Monday (July 16) is the centenary of the birth of Ruby Stevens - Barbara Stanwyck to you. This is a list of my top ten Barbara Stanwyck films of all time, in chronological order:

1. The Miracle Woman (1931): An early Frank Capra film with Stanwyck as a fiery female evangelist.
2. The Mad Miss Manton (1938): Not a major film, but a favourite screwball comedy co-starring Henry Fonda.

Craig McDermott was a tireless pace bowler for Queensland and Australia who took 291 Test wickets between 1984 and 1996. Now a member of that noble profession the Property Developer, he borrowed $18 million from property investment group Bridgecorp.

Bridgecorp tanked last week, taking the retirement savings of many small investors with it. McDermott still owes Bridgecorp $18 million.

Iraq Fact Check: Responding to Key Myths

So you thought the US was losing the war in Iraq? How wrong could you be!

This and a dozen other myths are busted by the Fox News Channel's fact verification arm, the White House Press Office.

And just so you are certain about things, "the US is currently in Iraq at the invitation of a sovereign government and the unanimous approval of the United Nations Security Council".

At the invitation of a sovereign government... in March 2003 that would have been Saddam Hussein?

The fact sheet is here

Public service announcement from savedarfur.org.

As Live Earth fades away into oblivion, here are the two remaining Greenpeace ten-second PSA's featuring the claymation climate change epiphanies of Archimedes and Sir Isaac Newton (following on from the Einstein video that I featured yesterday):

This took place during my downtime last month, and I had trouble tracing it back to its source, but John Howard used the D word for the third time on June 15. That's three times in the past six months, but none of them in a constructive light.

It was in an interview with journalists from the Sydney Morning Herald, and it was in response to a query about the foot-in-mouth Defence Minister Brendon Nelson's announcement that Australia would not be joining the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.