Italy Hosts Its First Divorce Fair

Italy is holding its first divorce fair, offering services such as life coaching and beauty advice to a booming number of separating couples in the Catholic country.

The organizers said the fair, which was held in Milan on May 8-9, aimed to help divorcing people start a new, happier life.

“Smiling is key to this fair, which also offers serious, practical advice for often dramatic situations,” Franco Zanetti, who created the event, told Reuters.

The services include divorce planning, anti-stalking help, and “new look” tips, the organizers said.

Echoing similar initiatives in the United States and elsewhere in Europe, visitors will also be able to subscribe to divorce gift lists at department stores in Milan.

Volvano-Stranded Couple Given Impromptu Wedding

A hotel in Taiwan organised an impromptu wedding for a Slovakian couple who found themselves stranded on the island for six days and unable to get home for their own long-planned ceremony after volcanic ash closed Europe’s skies.

When Juraj Hegyi, 32, and Zuzana Marcekova, 31, were spotted crying in the Orchard Park Hotel near Taiwan’s main airport, the manager offered to set up a wedding on site, inviting clergy from a nearby university and packing the venue with 100 people including other stranded Europeans.

“This is not our normal line of work, but the boss here learned they were crying, that they wanted to go back urgently and had planned the wedding for more than a year,” assistant hotel manager Chou Chia-hui said.

The couple was visiting Taiwan on a tour of Asia that had also taken them to Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand.

Some 47 passenger flights involving Taiwan’s two major airlines have been cancelled since Thursday.

Snowed-In Brits Flock To Adultery Website

Britons snowed in by the wintry weather have been flocking to an extra-marital dating site in the last 24 hours.

IllicitEncounters.com, which provides a platform for married people to conduct affairs, said  it has seen an unexpected increase in visitors over the past 24 hours, and received a record number of new profiles.

The website said most new members are registering from areas worst hit by this week’s extreme weather, including Hampshire, Berkshire, and the West Country, and the site has taken on several temporary staff members to cope with the rush.

“In light of these figures, I’d be interested to see how much work those ‘working from home’ have actually done,” IlicitEncounters.com spokeswoman Sara Hartley said in a statement.

“Perhaps these wives and husbands have just been waiting for a time when they could join, away from the eyes of their work colleagues and, most importantly, their partners…”

The website said it has gained 2,567 new members in the last six days, suggesting that January will be its busiest month ever.

It says it has more than 350,000 members in Britain and that its aim is to create a safe and nonjudgmental environment where married men and women can meet each other.

Interested? Visit the site here: http://www.illicitencounters.com/

Man Opts For Jail Over New Year’s With Relatives

A Sicilian man stole sweets and a packet of chewing gum so he could get arrested and spend New Year’s Eve in a jail cell rather than be with his wife and relatives, Italian media reported.

The 35-year old Sicilian first showed up at a police station asking to be arrested because he preferred spending the night in prison rather than with his family, but was rebuffed because he had not committed a crime, the Agi news agency said.

The man immediately went to a tobacco shop next door, where he threatened the owner with a box cutter as he grabbed a few sweets and a packet of gum. He then waited until police arrived to arrest him for robbery, the news agency said.

50-Year-Old Man Breaks Israeli Divorce Record

A 50-year-old Jerusalem man has broken an Israeli record afer being granted a divorce for the eleventh time, the BBC reported.

“I send out a hook in all directions, and the fish come on their own,” the man explained to a rabbinical court.

“It turns out that the popular divorcee courts his wives in a persuasive and sensitive way,” the court told the BBC.

“Despite his 50 years, he has no grey hair and despite his much experience in marriage, he plans to marry again,” it added.

The court said that the man has filed for a divorce every two years since he first married, and then immediately searched for a new wife.

The man said to the court that he regretted his first divorce as it started him on a endless quest for the next “experience”.

The previous Israeli record for divorces by one person was seven.

Mom Calls 911 Over Son’s Video Game Habit

Police say a frustrated Boston woman called 911 to say she couldn’t get her 14-year-old son to stop playing video games and go to sleep.

Police spokesman Officer Joe Zanoli said Monday the mother called for help around 2:30 a.m. Saturday to say that the teenager also walked around the house and turned on all the lights.

Two officers who responded to the house persuaded the child to obey his mother.

Zanoli says the mother’s 911 call over video game obsession “was a little unusual, but by no means is it surprising — especially in today’s day and age when these kids play video games and computer games.”

The Boston Herald first reported the 911 call, saying the boy was playing the popular “Grand Theft Auto” game.

Rotating House Puts Family In A Spin

An Australian family is turning heads with a rotating house that can guarantee a different view every time they wake up.

The Everinghams have been in a spin since they moved into their dream home in the countryside north of Sydney three years ago. They can turn the house to follow the sun without having to leave the comfort of their armchairs.

“When you wake up you do wonder where you’ll be facing,” said Luke Everingham, a sound-engineer who came up with the idea with his wife, Deb, after chatting with neighbors.

The neighbors wished they had built their home 15 degrees further to the north to capture more sunlight.

The octagonal-shaped house sits on a turntable powered by a small electric motor and controlled by a computer, which allows it move on demand.

The house cost about A$700,000 ($641,000) to build and can complete a full rotation in about 30 minutes, according to the Everinghams’ own Web site.

Mackenzie Phillips Says She Had Sex With Her Dad

Former child star Mackenzie Phillips claims that she had a decade-long sexual relationship with her father, pop superstar John Phillips, who also taught her how to roll joints and injected her with cocaine.

Mackenzie Phillips, 49, writes in her new book, “High on Arrival,” that she had sex with her father on the night before she was to get married in 1979 at age 19.

Phillips wrote in her book: “I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father.” John Phillips, who died in 2001, was the leader of the 1960s group the Mamas and the Papas.

She told “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in an interview that her siblings “definitely have a problem with this.” Winfrey also read a statement from Genevieve Waite, John Phillips’ wife at the time of the alleged abuse and Mackenzie’s stepmother. Waite’s statement said John Phillips was “incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child.”

Phillips, 49, who starred on TV’s “One Day at a Time,” said the sexual relationship with her father lasted a decade and ended when she became pregnant and didn’t know who had fathered the child. She had an abortion, which her father paid for, and “and I never let him touch me again.”

Phillips’ mother is Susan Adams, the first of John Phillips’ four wives. He was also married for eight years to “Mamas and Papas” singer and co-founder Michelle Phillips.

Couple Married For 67 Years Die Hours Apart

Residents of a northeast Kansas town are mourning the deaths just hours apart of an elderly couple who were married 67 years.

Arnita Yingling died in her sleep at the family’s home in Troy.  She was 93.  Six hours later her 95-year-old husband, Lyle, died at a nursing home in the nearby town of Wathena.

At their funeral,  friends and relatives described the two as inseparable.  Some found comfort knowing neither would have to live without the other.

The Yinglings were married in 1941. Both were born on northeast Kansas farms and were active in Troy as members of their church and civic organizations.

Saudi Man Divorces Wife Via Text Message

A Saudi man has divorced his wife by text message, a newspaper has reported.

The man was in Iraq when he sent the SMS informing her she was no longer his spouse.  He followed up with a telephone call to two of his relatives, the daily Arab News reported.

A court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah finalized the split — the first known divorce in Saudi Arabia by text message — after summoning the two relatives to check they had received word of the husband’s intention, the paper said.

Saudi Arabia practices 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.

The Saudi man was in Iraq to participate in “what he described as ‘jihad’,” according to the Arab News. Many Saudis have gone to fight with al Qaeda militants against the Iraqi government and U.S. forces.