IVORY COASTAs every Romeo knows, laying on a delicious dinner for two is one of the best seduction ploys.
Male chimpanzees understand the secret too, it seems. Wild female chimps mate more often with males who share meat with
them over long periods of time, scientists have found, after a new study conducted at the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast in West Africa.
The so-called "meat-for-sex" hypothesis may be relevant to relationships between men and women, scientists believe.
Evidence from human hunter-gatherer tribes suggests that the best hunters have more wives and larger numbers of children.
SAUDI ARABIAA Saudi man has divorced his wife by text message.
The man was in Iraq to participate in the 'jihad' against US-led forces when he sent the message informing his wife that she was no longer his spouse. He followed up with a telephone call to two of his relatives.
A court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah finalised the split after summoning the two relatives to check they had received word of the husband's intention, the paper said.
Saudi Arabia practises a strict form of Islamic Sharia law, and clerics preside over Sharia courts as judges. Under the law a man can divorce his wife by saying "I divorce you" three times.
AUSTRIAAn Austrian woman who bombarded her son with phone calls over a two-and-a-half year period was fined by a court for stalking him, Austrian media reported on Thursday.
The 73-year-old woman, who phoned her son up to 49 times a day, was fined ?360 (£320) by the court in the southern city of Klagenfurt.
"I just wanted to talk to him," the woman told the court, according to Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung. "I can't talk to my son, nor my daughter. I've never seen my grandchild – who is already 15 years old," she said. The case was brought by the son. The court did not release the family's names.
POLANDA Polish politician has lambasted his local zoo for acquiring a "gay" elephant named Ninio who prefers male companions and will probably not procreate.
"We didn't pay 37 million zlotys (£7.6m) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there," Michal Grzes, a conservative councillor in the city of Poznan in western Poland, was quoted as saying.
"We were supposed to have a herd, but as Ninio prefers male friends over females how will he produce offspring?" he added.
The head of the Poznan zoo said 10-year-old Ninio may be too young to decide whether he prefers males or females as elephants only reach sexual maturity at 14.
PHILIPPINESA megamouth shark – like the one pictured – one of the most rare fish in the world with only 40 others recorded, has been caught by fishermen in the Philippines – and then eaten.
The World Wildlife Fund said the 1,100-pound, 13-foot megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen's net on March 30 off Burias island in the central Philippines. It was taken to nearby Donsol in Sorsogon province, where it was butchered and eaten, said Gregg Yan, a spokesman for WWF Philippines.
Yan said a WWF Donsol project manager Elson Aca took pictures of the megamouth and tried to dissuade the fishermen from eating it. Shark meat is the main ingredient in a local delicacy.
The first megamouth was discovered in Hawaii in 1976, prompting scientists to create an entirely new family and genus of sharks.
INDIAA leading Indian politician was forced to duck a shoe flung at him during a press conference in New Delhi last week in a virtual repeat of US President George Bush's Iraqi incident. The shoe narrowly missed Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, who asked security officials to remove the journalist who threw it.
Chidambaram was speaking on terror and Congress Party policies at the country's ruling party headquarters when he made a reference to the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 which left thousands dead.
A journalist from a Hindi daily asked him a question about the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) clearing a party veteran accused of inciting and leading mobs against the Sikh community in 1984.
Chidambaram dismissed the claim that the CBI was under pressure from the government.
"To my knowledge, neither the Home Ministry nor any ministry of the government had put any pressure on the CBI," he said.
When veteran journalist Jarnail Singh persisted with questions, Chidambaram said: "No arguments," and Singh took off his shoe and hurled it at the minister.
He was escorted away by security officials and later released. Chidambaram continued taking questions.
OH, REALLYTwo New Jersey men who staged a UFO hoax will have more earthly pursuits, such as picking up rubbish from the side of the road.
A judge fined Chris Russo, of Morris Plains, and Joe Rudy, of Chester Township, $250 (£170) each and ordered them to perform 50 hours of community service for disorderly conduct.
The pair triggered a flurry of phone calls to emergency dispatchers when they lit road flares tied to helium balloons and released them in central New Jersey in January and February. The men said they did it to trick people who believe in unidentified flying objects. They posted details of their exploits on a website on April Fools Day.
