■ Turkey
Adultery plan defended
Turkey's devout Muslim leader, Tayyip Erdogan, has defended his government's plans to criminalize adultery, despite protests that have shown the issue is dividing the country. Erdogan, whose AK party has its roots in political Islam, said this weekend that outlawing marital infidelity is a vital step towards preserving the family and "human honor." Although Turkey aspires to join the EU, it did not have to adopt its "imperfect" western morals, he said.
■ Germany
Castles getting cheaper
The financial woes of former East Germany mean that people of relatively modest means can aspire to become castle-owners, with many edifices now costing little more than the land they stand on. In the village of Ribbeck, 30km from Berlin, one castle has been put on the market for just 104,000 euros (US$126,500). Dozens of other chateaux are on offer for similar prices. The collapse of Nazi Germany left much of former Prussia and Saxony, with their hundreds of castles, in the hands of the Communists. Political reforms turned them into schools, clinics and administrative centers, but with high unemployment and a virtually stagnant economy, the villages and towns that inherited them have no funds for maintenance.
■ United Kingdom
Babies favor attractive faces
Babies are born with an eye for beauty. Infants only hours old will choose to stare at an attractive face rather than an unattractive one -- and they also prefer to listen to Vivaldi straight, rather than Vivaldi backwards. According to Alan Slater, a developmental psychologist at the University of Exeter in southwest England, humans may have a biologically-ingrained preference for beauty. He presented a photographic choice to almost 100 newborns, on average only 2.5 days old. His subjects were held upright, looking at photographs or other imagery, while being watched by psychologists. "Attractiveness is not simply in the eye of the beholder, it is in the brain of the newborn infant right from the moment of birth and possibly prior to birth," he said.
■ Germany
Social Democrats trounced
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his Social Democrats suffered a stinging loss in the western state of Saarland on Sunday in the first of several regional elections whose outcome will measure the political price of unpopular cuts in social welfare programs. The conservative Christian Democrats retained power in the state by increasing their share of the vote to 47.5 percent from 45.5 percent , while the Social Democrats' share plummeted from to 30.8 percent from 44.5 percent. It was the Social Democrats' worst performance in Saarland, once a party stronghold, since 1960.
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