Free Republic

Actor Alec Baldwin's joke about getting a Filipino mail-order bride provoked a sharp response in the Philippines, with one senator saying Monday that the "30 Rock" star faces violence if he ever visits. Baldwin, 51, who is divorced with a teenage daughter, said in a May 12 interview on "The Late Show" with David Letterman that he would love to have more children. The Emmy-winning actor quipped that he was "thinking about getting a Filipino mail-order bride at this point ... or a Russian one."

PHOENIX (Reuters) - A Los Angeles company is touting a new reality game show called "Who Wants to Marry a U.S. Citizen" that aims to create televised matrimony between legal citizens and immigrants who have temporary visas. The show's backers at Morusa Media hope to make a sort of love match between reality TV and a national obsession with immigration. But the producers make no promise that a marriage will occur or lead to U.S. citizenship. Show creator Adrian Martinez said that Morusa Media has not yet found a network to produce or air the show, but he is currently...

Back on Dec. 4, 2000, a sloe-eyed Nataliya Robertovna Yamayeva arrived in the U.S. wearing a $200 engagement ring from her American fiance. On the surface, "Natasha" Yamayeva was like all other newly minted fiancees, brimming with affection for her future husband. She was also filled with pastel visions of her future life in a Southern town bordering a leafy college campus, where Yamayeva could add to her Russian-earned college degrees in English and French and the couple could raise the child they were expecting.But Yamayeva's new American life would gradually darken. While she blames her husband, their painful misalliance...

BANGKOK (AFP) - "I could not find anybody in the States. There was nothing in America for me. That's why I'm here," says the clean-cut 52-year-old bachelor, who bears a passing resemblance to Hollywood actor Michael Douglas. Sullivan, an emergency nurse from Florida, is one of a growing number of foreign men seeking young and beautiful Thai brides via the Internet. Speaking at the Bangkok office of Sweet Singles, a Thai bride-by-Internet company, Sullivan says he has decided to "go beyond boundaries" in his search for a wife after a futile quest in the United States. "American women in my...

The 24-year-old aerobics instructor from the Ukraine looked forward to immigrating to the United States to marry a man from Sunnyvale she had met through an international matchmaking agency. Months later she was hospitalized, her skull fractured. Police suspected her new husband. When they went to the couple's apartment one early winter morning in 2001 to question him, he drew a gun and was fatally shot by the officers. It's impossible to know how many so-called mail-order brides are victims of domestic violence, but Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-San Jose, is concerned with what she describes as an alarming problem and...

From jilted to jailed: Man snaps after wife leaves Henderson bank standoff ended peacefully By BRIAN HAYNES REVIEW-JOURNAL Doug Edward McDonald waited 44 years to find what he believed was true love. Her name was Svetlana, a 20-something Ukrainian he met through a mail-order bride service. The Henderson man loved her like no other woman, even when she left him just four months after their wedding, his lawyer said. McDonald believed her sudden disappearance had something to do with prostitution, and after months of calling authorities and waiting for answers, McDonald took matters into his own hands, attorney Philip Singer...