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Charlene Wittstock

December 29, 2011 by · Comments Off on Charlene Wittstock 

Charlene WittstockCharlene Wittstock, The BBC has named its 2011 Faces of the Year and some of them are downright surprising. The full list is Gabrielle Giffords (January), Adele (February), Eman al-Obeidi (March), Pippa Middleton (April), Nafissatou Diallo (May), Li Na (June), Princess Charlene (July), Michele Bachmann (August), President Dilma Rousseff (September), the Duchess of Alba (October), Corporal Kelsey de Santis (November) and Sweetie the panda (December).

The BBC writes of Princess Charlene, a former Olympic swimmer:

“When Charlene Wittstock married Prince Albert of Monaco it appeared to be the archetypal fairy tale. Here was the daughter of a photocopier salesman from South Africa marrying into one of Europe’s oldest royal families. But the event was clouded by press reports suggesting Ms Wittstock had come close to returning to South Africa after learning information about Prince Albert’s private life. The royal family dismissed the claims, as well as suggestions she had only turned back after royal aides persuaded her to stay.”

And of Pippa Middleton:

“Pippa Middleton was catapulted to global fame as a maid-of-honour at the wedding of her sister Kate to Prince William. Wearing a white, figure-hugging, satin-based crepe dress designed by Sarah Burton, she earned nicknames such as Her Royal Hotness and Perfect Pippa. A flurry of websites sprang up that paid homage to her physical attributes, in particular her shapely rear, and two British newspapers apologised for publishing photographs taken in ‘harassing circumstances’. The 27-year-old party planner is now permanently on the celebrity watchers’ radar and her face is seen on the front of magazines the world over.”

And of Sweetie the panda:

“Sweetie, along with her fellow giant panda Sunshine, was welcomed at Edinburgh airport with cheers and bagpipes after the pair’s 11-hour journey from Chengdu in western China. Their arrival is the culmination of five years of lobbying by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the British government. Even the four pilots wore kilts in the pandas’ honour. The pandas are on loan for a decade at a cost of £600,000 per year. Zoo bosses are hoping that Sweetie will produce cubs during that time.”

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