Bizarre: Allergic to water, woman cannot kiss fiancé

UK: A woman in UK suffers from a rare medical condition that makes her allergic to water. In fact, her disorder is so pronounced that even a drop of saliva can make her break out into angry and itchy hives.

This disorder makes it very difficult for her to even receive a kiss from her fiancé, reports Asia One.

Anyone who suffers from Aquagenic urthicaria cannot swim, enjoy long relaxing baths, get caught in the rain, play sports or enjoy cold drinks, said the website.

The 24-year-old Rachel Prince, who suffers from this condition misses the intimacy in her relationship. Whenever she receives a kiss, she has to immediately wipe the saliva off her cheeks so that she does not get an allergic reaction.

Despite her trying condition, Prince feels her fiance is very loving and makes up by buying her gifts. Prince might have to face another hurdle on her wedding day when it is time for the groom to kiss the bride!
 
 

Call for porn education in schools

AUSTRALIA: Going by research conducted on school kids, most of those surveyed had already viewed explicit content online by the age of 11. Therefore, experts say, pornographic education should be 'must' for students in schools, reports Herald Sun.

Debbie Ollis, a sex education expert in Deakin University told the daily, unfortunately exposure to pornography was part of "the reality of social life" for most children in 2012. Students must be given skills to understand what they have viewed online, she told the daily.

Students also need to realise that most of the images they have come across aren't the reality of life, Ollis told the Geelong Advertiser.

Research shows 92 per cent of boys and 61 per cent of girls aged between 13 and 16 have been exposed to pornography online.

For 84 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls that exposure was accidental; the result of web pop-ups, a misspelled word in a search engine or even innocent searches for information about games and animals.

A porn researcher said such X-rated films also send out unhealthy messages to innocent minds about how women should be treated.

Man balances 23 benches with his TEETH

BRITAIN: A man from China broke a world record when he painfully held up 23 benches with the help of his teeth for 11 seconds.

The 30-year-old also held the previous record of holding 14 benches.

Each bench weighed 3kgs, while the total weight was almost equal to his 75kg body weight, reports Mirror.

When Li Hongxiao tried balancing 12 benches for the very first time, he required 18 stitches in his lower lip after the garden seats fell off.
 
 
  
Maid raped and thrown from flat survives ordeal

SINGAPORE: An Indonesian maid was allegedly raped twice by a neighbour, who then cut and strangled her before throwing her out of the window of a second-storey flat, media reports said Tuesday.

The maid, who was 26 at the time of the alleged attack, survived the ordeal despite suffering serious injuries, the High Court heard in proceedings reported by the Straits Times daily.

The identities of the victim and the accused -- a 44-year-old former security guard -- were not published on court orders.

The newspaper said the incident took place in September 2009, when the maid stepped outside the apartment where she worked to reach the circuit box located outside after the electricity tripped.

The accused, who lived in the opposite flat, then pushed her into the empty apartment and forced himself on her before cutting her with a pair of scissors and strangling her with a piece of string, the court heard.

Police found the woman lying at the foot of her housing block, seriously injured but alive.

If convicted of the charges which include attempted murder and aggravated rape, the accused could face life imprisonment and up to 24 strokes of the cane.

More than 200,000 women, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, work as maids in wealthy Singapore.

You've been served... on Facebook... with a legal notice!

UK: Legal authorities say a High Court judge in England has approved the use of Facebook to serve legal claims.

Lawyers in a commercial dispute were last week granted permission to serve a suit against a defendant via the popular social networking site.

Justice Nigel Teare permitted the unconventional method of service during a pretrial hearing into a case which pits two investment managers against a brokerage firm they accuse of overcharging them.

A former trader and an ex-broker, Fabio De Biase and Anjam Ahmad, are also alleged to have been in on the scam.

Jenni Jenkins, who represents Ahmad, said lawyers in the case had been trying to track De Biase in order to serve him with legal documents. She said that a copy of the suit was left at his last known address, but that it wasn't clear whether he was still living there.

The lawyers didn't have his email address, so they applied for permission to send him the claim through Facebook.

Jenkins, an associate with London-based law firm Memery Crystal, said the lawyers were confident that de Biase's account was still active.

"The counsel told the judge that someone from the firm had been monitoring the account and they'd seen that he's recently added two new friends, which made the judge chuckle," she said.

De Biase was given extra time to respond to the claim "to allow for the possibility that he wasn't accessing his account regularly," she added.

Ordinarily, British legal claims are served in hard copy - either in person, by mail, or by fax - although unconventional means are occasionally employed if the people involved are hard to pin down.

In December, a British judge made headlines for filing an injunction against London-based protesters from the Occupy movement via text message.

The Judicial Office for England and Wales confirmed Tuesday that Teare had allowed lawyers to serve their claim through Facebook. A spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorised to give her name, said it was the first time anyone had been served via the site "as far as we're aware."

Facebook declined a request for comment on the issue.
 

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.