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.

Cougar Effect Boosts Lingerie Sales

Sales of sultry lingerie among older women are booming in Britain thanks to the glamorous 40-somethings of “Sex and the City 2″ and “Cougar Town,” retail chain Debenhams reported.

The hit TV show, and forthcoming movie, featuring the bedroom antics of women in their 40s and 50s and their much younger partners, is being credited with a rise in demand for lingerie from women of the same age, Debenhams said.

The department store said a nationwide analysis of the most popular lingerie styles from October 2009 to April 2010, revealed that women over 40 have given the more seductive side of the lingerie industry a big boost.

“Positive female role models in this age group such as the women in the Sex and the City movies and Courteney Cox in TV’s Cougar Town are giving the women confidence to splash out on themselves,” Debenhams head lingerie buyer Annette Warburton said in a statement.

Women over 40 were rediscovering their figures, often after having children or getting divorced.

28 Detained In Gigolo Raid

Police on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali detained 28 people this week in a crackdown on “beach gigolos,” who scout for foreign female tourists, officials said on Tuesday.

The raids began on Monday after the release of a trailer for a documentary on Bali’s ‘Kuta cowboys’, the muscular and tanned Kuta beach surfers who develop short-term romantic relationships with foreign women in return for gifts.

‘Cowboys in Paradise’ follows the trials and tribulations of several beach boys, their families and their female patrons.

The documentary’s Singapore-based director, Amit Virmani, said he found the arrests deplorable.

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.

Ohio Coach Proposes To Rival On Field

An Ohio high school softball coach threw a curve at the rival team’s coach when he dropped to one knee on the diamond and asked for her hand in marriage.

Glen Este High School varsity coach Tim Gregory and Milford High School coach Christy Foster had been dating more than two years before Wednesday’s proposal.

Gregory says “softball is really what brought us together.” Foster, of course, said yes to the proposal and called it perfect.

The ensuing game wasn’t, though. Gregory’s team won 1 to 0.

Texting Then Sexting And Now There’s Chexting

You might like texting, frown upon sexting, but now comes “chexting” — and it can lead to big trouble. Just ask Tiger Woods and Jesse James.

Golf superstar Woods and TV celebrity James, who is married to Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock, have seen their lives unravel amid revelations of cheating on their spouses, in part by arranging liaisons via text messages.

Their affairs have spawned a new word in pop culture, chexting, and raised the question of whether it really is cheating on a spouse. The experts say, you bet it is.

“It’s lipstick on the cellular — digital proof that becomes evidence you’ve been unfaithful,” says Peter Dedman of Predicto Mobile, the largest paid mobile community in America.

In today’s digital age, where cell phones come equipped with their own typing keyboards separate from the number pads, texting has become more popular than e-mailing for some, and sending a text from a small phone can be done almost anywhere.

It is instant gratification and contact, but for those who have a hard time staying faithful, texting has become medium to facilitate their cheating.

Couple Faces Jail Time In Dubai Over Kiss

A British pair caught kissing in public in Dubai face up to a month in jail in the Gulf Arab emirate for indecency after an Emirati mother complained her child had seen their indiscretion.

The pair, a British man living in Dubai and a female friend, were arrested in November on accusations of kissing and touching each other intimately in public and consuming alcohol, their lawyer said. They were ordered jailed for a month.

The case is the third time in under two years in which Britons have hit the headlines by falling foul of decency laws in Dubai, a flashy Muslim emirate popular with sun-seeking Western tourists and expatriates.

Couple Dies While Having Sex In Their Volkswagen

A Russian couple having sex in a car parked in a tiny garage have died from carbon monoxide poisoning, Interfax news agency reported.

“A man and a woman retreated to their Volkswagen to have sex… Most likely the lovers turned on the engine to get warm,” Interfax reported, citing a source in the Moscow police force. During a moment of “intimate closeness,” the pair, in southern Moscow, inhaled the gas and died, the source added.

Many Russians keep their cars in box-like iron garages near their homes, which snugly encase their cars.

One Very Unhappy Romantic

A German woman, fearful that a burglar was trying to break into her second storey apartment, called police after she heard someone climbing up to her balcony shortly after midnight.

Police discovered the “burglar” was a man carrying flowers and a bottle of wine who turned out to be the woman’s boyfriend, but then arrested him on an outstanding warrant.

“He was trying to surprise her with the flowers and a bottle of wine but it all went wrong,” said Korbach police spokesman Volker Koenig. He said the man jumped down from the balcony and tried to escape but was quickly tackled by police.

“He nevertheless gave the police who were taking him to jail the bottle of wine as a gesture of thanks for the friendly treatment after the arrest,” Koenig said.

Marriage School Opens In Japan

In search of Mr. or Mrs. Right, dozens of Japanese are attending a newly launched school in Tokyo that aims to turn them into marriage material.

The Infini school offers various classes for wannabe brides and grooms at a time when many people in Japan are either shunning the institution of marriage or are finding it very difficult to hook up with a partner.

The school, which is open to men and women, teaches students how to talk, walk and present themselves elegantly in a bid to capture the hearts and minds of prospective partners and their parents, who are often a major obstacle to successful unions.

Infini, which opened last month, now has about 30 female students. An almost equal number of males has signed up, but those who actually turn up to class are much fewer than their female counterparts.

“I had never even thought that my boyfriend’s mother could play such a big role in my relationship, but now I’ve realized I need to start thinking seriously about how to impress my future in-laws,” said Kozue Sugawara, 29, who joined the school after her previous marriage plans failed.

With women wielding increased economic clout and changing social attitudes toward marriage, more Japanese in their 20s and 30s are single than ever before.