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.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
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