Former Tenerife entertainer crowned ‘Miss World’

One time Tenerife entertainer Chloe Beth Morgan, 22, from Cwmbran, will represent Wales in the Miss World pageant later this year after she was recently bestowed the 2008 Miss Wales title at a sell-out event at Cardiff International Arena.
Just minutes after she was crowned Miss Wales, Chloe Beth said the competition has helped her build her own self-confidence.
“Throughout this competition, my confidence has grown and grown,” Chloe Beth said. “All my family wanted me to enter. They saw something in me that the judges must have seen as well. It’s only now that I’m starting to see it too. It’s a new chapter in my life, starting now.”
Chloe Beth is a newly qualified fitness instructor, who left school at 16. She returned to Wales after living in the Canary Islands, where she worked as an entertainer for holidaymakers for two years, and said the competition had brought her closer to her mother after living abroad.
When she heard her name announced as Miss Wales, the new title-holder said she was in complete shock.
“I was so overwhelmed,” she said. “I felt numb because I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t get to sleep until 6.30am.
“When I woke up, I saw the crown next to my bed. It took a second before I realised it was mine.”
Chloe Beth is now preparing for the Miss World final in the Ukraine on October 4th.

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Tunnel link with Morocco grows closer

As regular readers of The Paper may be aware, a tunnel linking Spain and Morocco is a project that has caused much excitement - and not a little scepticism. Now Spain has announced that the feasibility study is in its final stages.
If the dream becomes a reality, trains carrying passengers and goods are expected to start using the 40-kilometre-long tunnel in 2025. They would be travelling some 300 metres below the Mediterranean Sea.
The construction of such an undersea link would see North Africa and Europe united for the first time since the continents separated over 200 million years ago.
Swiss engineers are finalising the study that will determine whether this underwater connection is technically possible. Angel Aparicio, president of the Spanish government agency co-ordinating the project, says building the tunnel presents difficulties that may be impossible to overcome.
"The material here is not compact enough to allow an initial excavation,” Aparicio said.
“It is clay with rock, and so it is not as compact. As we have a lot of water, we have a very high pressure and we are not sure whether we could go through with the tunnelling," he said. "Those are the difficult questions."
However, it is known that if construction goes ahead, the tunnel will take fifteen years to build and cost at least eight billion euros.
The Spanish and Moroccan governments see the tunnel as part of a new Mediterranean transport hub for passengers and goods, but others are not so sure. The prospect of a physical connection between their country and the poorest continent in the world is, to some Spaniards, alarming.
Others are sceptical about this ambitious scheme ever being completed, since Spain and Morocco have been discussing bridge and tunnel plans for more than twenty years. This time, though, the project has support from the European Union, plus the possibility of funding from the World Bank.
If the feasibility study is positive, work on the tunnel could start next year.

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