World Vignettes

The Iraqi-born Yosef, a former chief rabbi in Egypt and Israel and a leading authority on Jewish law, is spiritual leader of the religious political party Shas, which has ten seats in Israel8217;s Parliament.

No sex, else8230;

PHNOM PENH: A Cambodian woman tried to cut off her newlywed husband8217;s penis with a razor blade because she thought he was over-sexed, a report has said. Nuon Sim, 19, allegedly tried to dismember her husband Kim Run, 22, when he approached her sexually at their home here on January 3, according to the Khmer-language Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper. Kim Run told the newspaper from a hospital bed that his wife had frequently rejected his sexual advances and had only had sex with him five times since they wed nine months ago.

In the incident, she had appeared to acquiesce to his approaches, only to slash him with a razor. Fleeing to his parents8217; house for help, he was rushed to hospital.

Lunar prospects

MOUNTAIN VIEW: The lunar Prospector spacecraft has maneuvered into orbit around the moon, getting set for high-altitude scientific study beginning later in the week. 8220;Everything8217;s working just as it had in our simulations,8221; said Scott Hubbard, mission manager at NASA8217;s Ames Research Center.

Prospector carries instruments that will search from above for evidence of frozen water at the moon8217;s shadowy poles, as well signs of minerals and gases. The 4-foot-long, 650-pound spacecraft was launched January 6 from Florida on an Athena rocket. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration last explored the moon in December 1972 with Apollo 17, which was manned.

Why caesarean?

NUREMBERG: One caesarean section in two is superfluous and can scarcely be justified on medical grounds, say obstetric experts. Every year in Germany, almost 160,000 of the 800,000 or so new babies are delivered through a caesarean section. If doctors are unsure and lacking in support and experience, they often resort to a caesarean to get the birth over with quickly, say professors Axel Feige and Helfried Groebe, who head the Nuremberg South Clinic.

Yet a caesarean is more risky to the mother than a natural birth. Even after a normal pregnancy, it is not unusual for complications to arise during the birth. In an emergency, the baby8217;s delivery must then be quickly concluded, but a caesarean is by no means the only means of solving the problem, says Groebe.

Roman dentistry

LONDON: False teeth are not an achievement of modern science but were invented by the Romans, scientists at the University of Toulouse, France, have found. A team led by Eric Crubezy drew this conclusion after discovery of the skeleton of a man who lived in Roman-occupied Gaul in the late first and early second century AD. They discovered an artificial wrought-iron tooth in place of the second molar in the right upper jaw of his skull.

Closer examination showed that the root of the artificial tooth and the jawbone had grown together perfectly. This led the scientists to conclude that the man, who died between the ages of 30 and 40, had received his tooth replacement at least a year before his death.