MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican brides and grooms who get cold feet before walking down the aisle will have to pay their significant other for the inconvenience, if a proposal by a local congressman is adopted.

In Mexico, weddings are big social events where large amounts of money are spent before the big day on gowns, tuxedos, catering and music bands and churches are even reserved years in advance.

Weddings of over 500, or even 1,000 guests, are frequently splashed across newspapers’ social pages. According to Mexican tradition, the bride’s family absorbs most of the expenses.

Jose Antonio Zepeda, a city deputy for President Felipe Calderon conservative National Action Party, wants to introduce the idea of compensation for backing out of a wedding as part of changes to the capital’s civil code.

“He or she who refuses to live up to a marriage commitment will pay for the expenses that the other party made in connection with the planned matrimony,” Zepeda’s proposal says.

Zepeda also wants lawmakers to give legal status to prenuptial agreements for those on their way to the altar in hopes it will make divorce settlements easier if the couple splits later on.

“We are looking to avoid emotional distress, cut divorce expenses and shorten the time that courts spend solving them,” Zepeda told Reuters on Friday. The prenuptial agreement will be optional.

Divorce rates are on the rise in Mexico which has a predominantly Catholic population of over 107 million. Currently, three out of 10 couples in Mexico City divorce, compared with just one in 10 in the 1970s, the congressman said.

Zepeda’s proposal is expected to be voted by Mexico City’s congress in March or April. If passed, it will only apply to heterosexual couples in the capital, which legalized gay unions in 2006.

BERLIN (Reuters) - An elderly German who hid a stolen suit under his clothes was caught because he forgot to take it off the hanger, police said Wednesday.

A sales assistant at a men’s outfitter in the western city of Aachen noticed the hanger bulging out when the man told her he had decided against buying anything.

“Only a sign saying ’stop me, I’m a thief!’ would have made the thief look more unprofessional,” police said in a statement.

PLAISTOW, N.H. - Police said the same man tried to rob the same bank, wearing the same clothes and telling employees the same thing on Tuesday as he did two weeks ago. The outcome was not the same.

Two weeks ago, the robber got away with cash from the Sovereign Bank branch. On his second attempt, tellers refused to give him money and he took off empty-handed.

Police and bank employees said it was the same guy. The robber said he had a gun and demanded money both times.

Witnesses told police the man got away in a black Chevrolet Avalanche with New Hampshire license plates that contained the numbers 223.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Singaporean professor who nicked bras and panties has pleaded guilty to stealing women’s underwear from a university dormitory, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.

The 39-year old man — an associate professor in a Chinese university — was charged for taking women’s underwear from a university hostel’s clothes-line last December, the Straits Times reported.

The Singaporean professor, who teaches in China, was in the city-state for his leave when he committed the crime. He was caught by a dormitory security guard who found female undergarments in his haversack.

“I have heard stories before about underwear being stolen, but I never thought it would happen to me,” a victim, who was not named, was quoted as saying.

A lawyer for the professor was reported as saying his client suffers from a psychiatric disorder and has been taking women’s underwear since he was 14.

The lawyer also said that his client was an honorable and kind person who had no intention of causing annoyance to the underwear owners.

SYDNEY, Australia - An armed robber picked the wrong target when he raided an Australian bar where a biker gang was holding a meeting. He ended up hog-tied and in a hospital.

The man and an accomplice, wearing ski masks and waving machetes, stormed into a club in a western Sydney suburb shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday and yelled at patrons to lie down as they tried to rob the cash register, police said Thursday.

About 50 members of the Southern Cross Cruiser Club had just started a club meeting in another room, and the bikers jumped up to intervene.

One robber escaped by leaping over a balcony, while the other tried to flee through a service entrance, the club’s president, who identified himself only as “Jester,” told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“We caught him at the fence and crash-tackled him and hog-tied him to the ground and waited for the police to get there,” Jester said.

Police confirmed that club patrons had subdued one of the robbers, who was taken to a hospital with minor injuries, but did not give further details. Police captured the other suspect nearby.

Jester said the robbers had walked past the bikers as they entered the bar but apparently failed to notice them, perhaps because the ski masks obscured their vision.

“I don’t think he did his homework very well,” Jester said of the ringleader. “He picked the wrong night.”

PARIS (AFP) - Advice on how to score with the ladies would probably never include the strategy that works best for at least one species of male spider: playing dead.

Not all male nursery web spiders looking for a little arachnid sex adopt this technique, but those that do more than double their chances of hitting the jackpot, according to new study in Behavioral Ecology, reported Wednesday in the British magazine New Scientist.

In experiments designed by Trine Bilde of the University of Aaarhus in Denmark, researchers set up date-and-mate opportunities for Pisaura mirabilis, a species native to Europe.

All the males sought to attract partners by offering a gift of food, held in the mouth.

But the ones that lay flat and motionless — even if meant getting dragged about by a female that had latched onto the victuals — wound up in a much better position, as it were, to engage in sexual activity.

The hapless males that tried the direct approach wound up keeping the free meal but not getting what they were really after.

Males that played dead were also allowed to copulate longer than males that did not, ensuring more eggs could fertilized, the researchers reported.

Playing dead is a well-known defense mechanism in nature, but this is apparently the first time such behavior has been observed as a strategy for obtaining sexual favors.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Ten U.N. agencies launched a new campaign on Wednesday to end female genital mutilation, urging governments to help abolish a practice they said remained widespread in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

“If we can come together for a sustained push, female genital mutilation can vanish within a generation,” U.N. Deputy Secretary General told an annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.

“We call on (U.N.) member states to join us as full partners in this fight, to promote the end of this terrible practice, to respond to its consequences, and to hold those who perpetrate it criminally responsible for inflicting harm.”

An estimated 100 million to 140 million women and girls worldwide are estimated to have undergone genital mutilation, also called female circumcision, with U.N. agencies estimating that another 3 million a year are subjected to it.

The practice usually involves cutting off the clitoris and other parts of the female genitalia. Many of the practitioners are untrained and use crude instruments.

Proponents of the ancient custom say it reduces female sexual desire, maintaining chastity before marriage and fidelity afterward. It can cause health complications and psychological damage and is sometimes fatal.

In a statement condemning the procedure, the U.N. agencies expressed concern that it has been in effect legitimized in some countries where is often done by medical professionals.

“The rate of decline in this practice leaves much to be desired,” the statement said. “If we are to eliminate it, we must redouble our efforts.” The campaign aims to eradicate the practice by 2015.

Last year the United Nations called for a worldwide ban on genital mutilation. The east African country of Eritrea, where the practice has been widespread, banned it in April 2007.

Egypt, where UNICEF estimates that some 97 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have suffered the procedure, strengthened its ban last year by eliminating a legal loophole allowing girls to undergo the procedure for health reasons.

Genital mutilation predominantly occurs in 28 African countries, including Sudan, Chad, Sierra Leone and Djibouti, as well as in some Middle Eastern nations, parts of Asia, including Indonesia, and among immigrant communities in Europe and North America.