February 12, 2008
No red roses for Saudi sweethearts
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love.
The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items colored scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolizing love, newspapers said.
"They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying.
It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it sees as encouraging relations between men and women outside of wedlock, the newspaper said.
Saudi Arabia imposes an austere form of Sunni Islam which prevents unrelated men and women from mixing, bans women from driving and demands that women wear a headscarf and a cloak.
Relations outside marriage are strictly banned and punishable by law.
Posted by ronnie at 07:21 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2008
Woman lived for months with dead partner
VIENNA (Reuters) - A 66-year-old Austrian woman lived for almost a year with the corpse of her 85-year-old partner, APA news agency said Wednesday.
Police found the remains of the man in the couple's small vacation cottage in the eastern village of St Andrae am Zicksee Tuesday, swaddled in blankets with the dwelling reeking of decomposition odors.
The woman had told a local doctor and neighbors who tried to contact the man since last March that he was abroad. APA said police were looking into whether the woman concealed his death in order to collect his pension payments.
The dead man was separated from his wife, who had also tried to contact him, APA said.
Posted by ronnie at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2007
Sex and doctors: ER medics best placed to win hearts
PARIS (AFP) - If romantic fiction is any guide, any doctor looking for love would be advised to be an emergency room surgeon or deliver babies rather than practice colon resection or remove in-grown toenails.
So says Irish physician Brendan Kelly, who -- with a bravura contempt for the effect this endeavour could have on his mind -- has probed at length into the burgeoning literary field of medical romance.
Hospital novels are one of the fastest-growing areas of romantic fiction which, according to the Romance Writers of America, generates 1.2 billion dollars in annual sales and accounts for 39.3 percent of all fiction sold in the United States.
In an offbeat letter published in Saturday's Lancet, Kelly describes the typical plot structure and characterisation in 20 randomly-selected medical romance novels.
Of the male protagonists, six worked in emergency medicine, five in surgery and three in obstetrics, neonatology and paediatrics, he found.
"There was a marked preponderance of brilliant, tall, muscular, male doctors with chiselled features, working in emergency medicine," says Kelly, a University College Dublin psychiatrist.
"They were commonly of Mediterranean origin and had personal tragedies in their pasts."
Of the female protagonists, 11 were doctors -- mostly working in primary care, obstetrics/neonatology, surgery or emergency medicine -- eight were nurses and one was a paramedic, and all were "skilled, beautiful and determined but still compassionate."
As for the storyline, novelists skirted such hazards as malpractice suits for removing the wrong kidney or infection by a hospital superbug.
Instead, they stuck to a tried-and-trusted formula of the doctor as a saviour in a white coat.
"Protagonists of both sexes had frequently neglected their personal lives to care better for their patients, many of whom had life-threatening illnesses from which they nonetheless managed to recover," he notes.
Tongue firmly in cheek, Kelly says ER doctors and nurses clearly run the risk of unleashing "uncontrolled passions" when they wield their stethoscope and need urgent training in how to cope with this peril.
Posted by ronnie at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2007
Women drawn to men with muscles
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Muscular young men are likely to have more sex partners than their less-chiselled peers, researchers at the University of California Los Angeles said on Monday.
Their study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggests muscles in men are akin to elaborate tail feathers in male peacocks: They attract females looking for a virile mate.
"Women are predisposed to prefer muscularity in men," said study author David Frederick of UCLA.
"Most research is focused on what men find physically attractive in women and the career traits women find attractive in men," Frederick said by telephone. "Much less research is devoted to what women find attractive."
He said prior studies concluded a man's desirability was influenced more by his earning potential and commitment. His study found physical characteristics mattered more.
Women were more physically attracted to brawny men, especially for a fling. But when it comes to finding a long-term partner, they tend to pick a regular man over a mate with huge biceps.
"On the one hand, it makes them more sexy to women. On the other hand, it makes women more suspicious about their romantic intentions," Frederick said.
He and colleagues interviewed 99 male undergraduates about their sexual histories. Muscular men were twice as likely to have had more than three sex partners than less-built types.
Frederick and colleagues also asked 141 college women to look at six standardized silhouettes of men ranging from brawny to slender. Most preferred a toned man who was more likely to commit over a muscle-bound man they perceived as more volatile, aggressive and dominant.
Posted by ronnie at 02:38 AM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2007
Blinded by love, HK man stabbed in eye by girlfriend
HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong woman who blinded her boyfriend in one eye in a fight six years ago has been jailed for jabbing a chopstick into his other eye, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Last November, Po Shiu-fong, 58, accused long-time boyfriend Kwok Wai-ming, 49, of having an affair, the South China Morning Post reported.
During the row, Po stabbed a plastic chopstick into his left eye, which she had already blinded six years ago when she poked it with her finger.
"Po became hysterical when she saw the wound and mopped it with a towel. The pair then went to bed," the paper said.
"The next morning they had another argument in which she grabbed a chopstick and stabbed Kwok's right eye," it said.
Two days later, he sought medical treatment and filed a police report against Po, whom he had dated since 1993.
The paper said he didn't report the attack six years ago, telling the court his silence was "a love sacrifice".
Kwok lost 10 to 20 percent vision in his right eye, the paper said.
Po was jailed for six months on Tuesday.
"If I forgive her, God would not forgive me," the paper quoted Kwok as saying. "No matter what, nothing could compensate for the loss of my eye."
Posted by ronnie at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2007
Woman returns to husband who took her hostage
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A Brazilian woman whose estranged husband held her hostage at gunpoint on a bus for 10 hours along with dozens of passengers last year has decided to reunite with him.
"I forgave him out of love ... I believe it was an irrational act and that we can resume our life in peace," Brazil's Globo news agency quoted Cristina Ribeiro, 35, as saying on Monday, eight months after the nationally televised hostage drama.
The couple, who have three children, have decided to live together again, Globo reported.
The husband, Andre Ribeiro da Silva, 36, was paroled from prison in late April and is awaiting trial.
"I hear people warning me that he will do it again, but we've talked and grown into the idea of getting back together," the woman said.
Armed with a pistol, Ribeiro da Silva took Cristina hostage on November 10 on a suburban bus on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He released dozens of hostages during negotiations with police and then surrendered without a shot being fired.
During the incident, he accused her of having cheated on him and threatened to kill her and then commit suicide. The two had been married for 10 years and separated four months earlier.
Posted by ronnie at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
July 04, 2007
Illinois man files suit over lost love
CHICAGO - Stealing someone's heart can cost you: Just ask German Blinov. A Cook County jury ordered Blinov to shell out $4,802 last week after he was sued by a husband from a Chicago suburb for stealing the affections of the man's wife.
Arthur Friedman used a little-known state law to mount the legal attack against Blinov. The alienation of affection law, one of eight across the country, lets spouses seek damages for the loss of love.
But Natalie Friedman, the woman at the center of it all, claims her husband asked her to have sex with other men and women — including Blinov — to spice up their relationship. She supposedly began having feelings for Blinov, prompting her husband to file the lawsuit.
"This guy ruined my life — he backstabbed me," Arthur Friedman told the Chicago Sun-Times. "What he did was wrong. And I did what I had to do to get my point across."
Blinov doesn't deny having a relationship with Natalie Friedman while she was married, but he was surprised to learn he could be sued for it. His attorney also said Natalie Friedman was unhappy with her marriage before the relationship started.
"German was not a pirate of her affections," attorney Enrico Mirabelli said. "Her affections were already adrift."
Posted by ronnie at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2007
Police fight new menace: cuddling couples
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Police in Indian Kashmir usually accustomed to fighting separatist militants have a new target in their sights -- teenagers canoodling in parks, restaurants and at Internet cafes.
The crackdown aims to curb "immoral activities," a senior police officer said on Friday, adding that dozens of places had been raided across Srinagar, the main city of the region, and at least 10 couples detained over the last three days.
Restaurant and Internet cafe owners had also been asked to get rid of cabins and cubicles as they were being "misused" by teenagers in the Muslim-majority region, he said.
"We received a number of complaints from parents that their children, mostly teenagers, would stray into cyber cafes and restaurants instead of schools and colleges," Parvez Ahmad told Reuters.
"Many boys and girls were seen in objectionable postures ... we informed their parents to take them home," he said.
Srinagar, the centre of a 17-year revolt against Indian rule, has seen women separatists raid restaurants, Internet cafes, liquor shops and suspected brothels in the past to stop what they say are immoral and un-Islamic activities.
But it was the first such drive by police since the insurgency erupted in the Himalayan region in 1989.
More than 42,000 people have since been killed in separatist violence, officials say. Human rights activists put the toll at 60,000 dead or missing.
However, overall violence levels have fallen since India and Pakistan -- both of whom claim Kashmir in full but rule it in parts, launched a peace process in 2004, officials say.
This has also allowed a marginal easing of security restrictions and freer movement of people in Srinagar, leading to youngsters getting bolder in what is a traditional Islamic society, they say.
A police statement said the department would "continue its drive against immoral activities."
Posted by ronnie at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2007
Dreamed up phone number leads man to a bride
LONDON (Reuters) - A British man has met and married a 22-year-old woman after, by his own account, dreaming of her phone number and then sending her a text message.
David Brown, 24, says he woke up one morning after a night out with friends with a telephone number constantly running through his head. He decided to contact it, sending a message saying "Did I meet you last night?."
Random recipient Michelle Kitson was confused and wary at first but decided to reply and the two began exchanging messages. Eventually they met and fell in love.
"It was really weird but I was absolutely hooked," Kitson told the Daily Mail newspaper. "My mum and dad kept saying 'But he could be an axe murderer', but I knew there was something special about it."
After a long courtship, the oddly matched couple, he's six foot seven inches tall and she's five foot four, have just returned from their honeymoon in the Indian resort of Goa.
A love-struck Brown said: "I've no idea how I ended up with her number in my head, it's only a few digits different from mine."
Posted by ronnie at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2007
Leave me be, 98-year-old woman tells young admirer
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A 98-year-old Mexican woman has filed a legal complaint against a suitor 50 years her junior who she said tried to kiss her and threatened to kill her if she didn't let him move in with her.
Maria de Jesus Flores, a widow for the past half century with four grown children in the United States, got to know Manuel Martinez, 48, when he started delivering her groceries.
But he began propositioning her to the point of harassment, Flores told the daily Reforma.
"I've been a widow since 1950," the newspaper quoted the old lady as saying, with a photograph of her at home in the central city of Irapuato wearing a checkered housecoat over a flowery skirt, her gray hair in a bun.
"He said he couldn't live without me, that he loved me, but that's not for me ... I can't have sexual relations any more, I'm 98," she said, adding that she suspected that what Martinez really wanted was for her to support him financially.
When Martinez snapped and threatened to kill her if she turned him down, de Jesus Flores lodged a complaint with the local attorney general's office, Reforma said.
Posted by ronnie at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2006
Money more important than looks in a man
LONDON (Reuters) - Women regard healthy finances as more important than good looks in a man, according to a survey on Friday.
Almost half (45 percent) said a healthy bank balance is more significant than physical attractiveness in a potential partner, according to National Savings & Investments' (NS&I) latest quarterly savings survey.
Just 22 percent of men, however, rate finances above looks in women.
A salary of almost 50,000 pounds a year is demonstrative of male financial success, according to women.
Men need to earn at least 49,247 pounds a year before women consider them successful and wealthy, the study found. And more than one in 10 women would only consider a partner to be successful if they are earning 100,000 pounds or more.
Men were found to have lower expectations, saying they would deem women earning 42,147 pounds to be successful and wealthy.
On the savings front, women expect their men to have an average of 24,281 pounds in savings -- compared to 20,335 pounds in reality -- while men are happy with savings of 15,143 pounds among women, much in line with an actual average of 14,167 pounds.
Dax Harkins, senior savings strategist at NS&I, said: "Finances form a very important part of relationship dynamics and this is reflected in the expectations people have, both in terms of salary and savings levels. Maybe people do believe they can buy happiness after all."
Despite marked differences in expectations, 64 percent of those questioned agree that financial security is important to the success of a relationship.
Kate Maycock, from Relate, said: "Feeling financially insecure will put some strains on a relationship.
"These latest figures bear out that two people are unlikely to exactly agree on what is a healthy nest-egg and what is a financial crisis.
"Accept that you will not change your partner's attitude to money, but that the two of you can come to an agreement on how you will manage your differences and plan your saving."
The research also found that regular savings are on the increase. Average monthly savings were 87.85 pounds in the three months to end-July, up 8 percent on the year.
This savings rate -- equal to 6.8 percent of average income -- is second only to a high of 89.11 pounds recorded in autumn last year.
Around 54 percent of the population put money away each month. They are saving 174.50 pounds a month -- a 10.3 percent increase on this time last year.
Posted by ronnie at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2006
Police say man calls 911 for 'hot chick'
CANDOR, N.Y. - A man who police claim called 911 because he wanted to see a "hot chick" is cooling his heels in the county jail. Authorities said Tyler Engelhard, 21, told a dispatcher his parents 'should be in jail' and that police would 'find out why.'
A sheriff's patrol rushed to Engelhard's Candor home, believing a crime might be imminent.
When deputies arrived, the man claimed he had called as a joke and "wanted to see a hot chick."
The deputies weren't amused. Engelhard was charged with falsely reporting an incident and sent to the Tioga County Jail.
He's been ordered to appear in town court next month.
Posted by ronnie at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)
July 14, 2006
Woman asks 911 to send 'cutie pie' deputy
ALOHA, Ore. - A woman who called 911 to get "the cutest cop I've seen" sent back to her home got a date all right — a court date.
The same sheriff's deputy arrested her on charges of misuse of the emergency dispatch system.
Washington County Sheriff's Sgt. David Thompson told KGW-TV of Portland it all started with a noise complaint called in last month by neighbors of Lorna Jeanne Dudash. The deputy sent to check on the complaint knocked on her door, then left.
Thompson said Dudash then called 911, asking that the "cutie pie" deputy return.
"He's the cutest cop I've seen in a long time. I just want to know his name," Dudash told the dispatcher. "Heck, it doesn't come very often a good man comes to your doorstep."
After listening to some more, followed by a bit of silence, the dispatcher asked again why Dudash needed the deputy to return.
"Honey, I'm just going to be honest with you, OK? I just thought he was cute. I'm 45 years old and I'd just like to meet him again, but I don't know how to go about doing that without calling 911," she said.
"I know this is absolutely not in any way, shape or form an emergency, but if you would give the officer my phone number and ask him to come back, would you mind?"
The deputy returned, verified that there was no emergency and arrested her for misusing the 911 system, an offense punishable by a fine of up to several thousand dollars and a year in jail.
Thompson said Thursday it was the first case he knew of in which someone called the emergency line for such a personal reason.
"That's taking up valuable time from dispatchers who could be taking true emergency calls," he said.
Posted by ronnie at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)