HONG KONG
Women can spot infidelity
Women can tell with some accuracy whether an unfamiliar male is faithful simply by looking at his face, but men seem to lack the same ability when checking out women, according to an Australian study published yesterday. In a paper that appeared in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers found that women tended to make that judgement based on how masculine-looking the man was. “Women’s ratings of unfaithfulness showed small-moderate, significant correlations with measures of actual infidelity,” wrote the team, led by Gillian Rhodes of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders at the University of Western Australia. “More masculine-looking men [were] rated as more probable to be unfaithful and having a sexual history of being more unfaithful.” Attractiveness was not a factor in the women making the link. “We provide the first evidence that faithfulness judgements, based solely on facial appearance, have a kernel of truth,” they wrote in the paper. Men, on the other hand, seemed to have no clue. They tended to perceive attractive, feminine women to be unfaithful, when there was no evidence that they were, the scientists said.
AUSTRALIA
Pupil ‘shows’ hand grenade
A school was evacuated yesterday after a child took a hand grenade into the classroom for a “show and tell” lesson, police said. The grenade resembles a World War II “pineapple” model and was believed to be inert, but police said it would not be moved from a teacher’s desk until specialists were satisfied it was safe to do so. “At this time we anticipate an early resolution to this issue, but we will await specialist advice as to the safety of moving the item,” Inspector Gerrard Lawson of Newcastle City Local Area Command said. “I want to warn members of the public that if they have or are aware of military ordnance they should not touch or move it, but contact police immediately.” He added that it was not yet known where the student obtained the grenade.
ITALY
Man who killed son jailed
A man who killed his 16-month-old son by throwing him off a bridge in Rome after a custody row with his partner was sentenced to 30 years in jail on Tuesday, Italian media reported. Patrizio Franceschelli, 26, threw his son Claudio into the freezing waters of the Tiber in February after arguing with the boy’s mother. The toddler’s body was found more than a month later after it washed up on the shore kilometers downstream. Franceschelli had been seen throwing his son into the river by a passing prison officer and had tried to flee, but was quickly caught by police.
FRANCE
French men losing sperm
The sperm count in French men dropped by nearly a third between 1989 and 2005, and the quality of sperm also declined, a study said yesterday. The sperm count fell at a rate of about 1.9 percent a year, said the authors of the report covering more than 26,600 men over the 17-year period and published in the journal Human Reproduction. The percentage of normally shaped sperm fell by 33.4 percent. “To our knowledge, this is the first study concluding a severe and general decrease in sperm concentration and morphology at the scale of a whole country over a substantial period,” wrote one of the report’s authors, epidemiologist Joelle Le Moal. “This constitutes a serious public health warning.” For the average man of 35 the number of sperm dropped from 73.6 million to 49.9 million per milliliter, the study showed.
FRANCE
Dati paternity case unfolds
A court on Tuesday ordered a hotel and casino tycoon to take a paternity test to determine whether he is the father of former justice minister Rachida Dati’s daughter. Dati, 46, a glamorous protege of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, took a case against Dominique Desseigne to try to make him accept paternity in the latest case to cast light on the hitherto taboo sexual antics of France’s political elite. Desseigne, 68, the boss of the Lucien Barriere casino, hotel and restaurant group, has confirmed he had a fling with Dati, but has refused to take a paternity test that would establish if he is the father of three-year-old Zohra. The law stipulates that a court cannot force Desseigne to take the test, but can interpret a refusal as confirming he is the father and thus potentially liable to support the child financially. According to a report last month in Le Monde, the lawyer has argued that his client could not have been the father and to highlight the fact that Dati had seven other lovers around the time of the conception.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Stuntman’ given jail time
A man who climbed naked onto an equestrian statue in London’s government district, ripped off its sword and bit it has been sentenced to 12 weeks in jail. Dan Motrescu brought central London traffic to a standstill when he mounted the bronze statue of the 19th-century Duke of Cambridge on Nov. 23. Police cordoned off Whitehall, a street that is home to several government departments, as Motrescu climbed up and down the statue, at one point balancing himself on the duke’s head. It took several hours for officers to talk him down. Motrescu, a Ukrainian citizen with no fixed address, was convicted on Tuesday of possession of an offensive weapon, criminal damage and a public order offense.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Man chains self to embassy
A man behind a US$180 million lawsuit against the US embassy in the Dominican Republic chained himself to the building’s fence in protest on Tuesday, claiming that a botched DNA test led officials to wrongly deny his daughter US citizenship while also ruining his marriage. Miguel Familia, a naturalized US citizen from the Dominican Republic, alleged that a DNA test ordered by the embassy to prove the girl was his daughter came back negative and she was denied residency in 2005. After he received the test results, Familia divorced his wife and accused her of having an extramarital affair, said his lawyer, Carlos de la Rosa. For years his ex-wife continued to insist the girl was his daughter. That led Familia to seek two separate paternity tests earlier this year and both tested positive, de la Rosa said.
UNITED STATES
Inmates claim sauce abuse
The warden at a prison in the North Carolina where inmates said they were forced to rub hot sauce on their genitals has been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation. Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Pamela Walker on Tuesday said that Sampson Correctional Institution administrator Lafayette Hall has been put on paid leave while the State Bureau of Investigation probes what happened at the Clinton facility. A second employee has also been reassigned. Six inmates allege correctional officers forced them to perform numerous humiliating acts, including gulping hot sauce and slathering it on themselves, resulting in painful blisters. The male inmates also reported being forced to simulate sex acts for the entertainment of guards, as well as to capture and kiss wild snakes while working on a road crew.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the