■ France
Women prefer cautious men
Young men who think that driving fast or doing a bungee jump will impress the girls would probably do better to talk about making a top-up to their pension scheme. Far from liking men who take pointless risks, girls prefer men who are cautious, according to new research. The findings knock the mainstream theory that, like animals in courting rituals, men who display strength and courage are showing off their genetic fitness to potential mates. That notion fits in nicely with the fact that men in their prime reproductive years, from the late teens to the late twenties, take more risks. However University of Maine researchers, who surveyed 48 young men and 52 young women on their attitude to risky scenarios, found women preferred cautious men.
■ Brazil
Brazil looks to biodiesel
Biodiesel can provide an environmentally safe solution to Brazil's energy needs in the remote Amazon region, a top energy expert said on Wednesday. Dr Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, a former president of the national electric company Eletrobras, said Brazil now spends some 3 billion reals (US$1.2 billion) to distribute diesel fuel in the Amazon, where it is used to run electric generators. But the government could save money, reduce oil imports and boost the Amazon economy by providing the technology and teaching local farmers to refine biodiesel, using oils from the abundant local palm trees. Biodiesel is a fuel derived from the oils from plants such as soybeans, corn or even palm fruits. "It's not difficult to make it. The big difficulty is organizing the agriculture and the collection," Pinguelli Rosa said."
■ Hong Kong
Driver tries to avert suicide
A taxi driver offered to sell his cab and give the money to a suicidal passenger in a vain attempt to stop him jumping from a bridge in Hong Kong, a news report said yesterday. The 53-year-old passenger brushed aside his offer and jumped to his death after telling the taxi driver to phone his wife and tell her how much he loved her. Driver Ng Chi-lung was forced to stop by the suicidal passenger on the Tsing Ma suspension bridge on the way to Hong Kong's airport on Wednesday. "I asked him what I could do to help him," Ng said."I told him I could lend him money or even sell the taxi to help him." The passenger refused, saying he had cancer. As he perched on the edge of the bridge, he threw a note addressed to "my beloved wife" along with her phone number, and asked the cab driver to ring her and tell her he loved her.
■ China
Police bust blood racket
Chinese police have arrested 15 people in connection with illegal blood-buying operations blamed for spreading the AIDS virus, a news report said yesterday. The arrests are linked to 106 cases of unsafe blood collection, illegal plasma sales and "serious malpractice" in the blood market. The report mentioned a scandal in the central province of Henan over unsanitary blood-buying practices that infected 25,000 people with the AIDS virus in the 1990s, but it didn't say whether the arrests were linked to those cases.
■ Bangladesh
125 workers still trapped
Soldiers searched yesterday for 125 people still trapped in the debris of a nine-story garment factory that collapsed after a boiler exploded, killing at least 32 people, but they held out little hope of finding any survivors.
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