A Missing Breast Does Not An Annulment Make

Just because your wife is missing a breast doesn't mean you're entitled to annul your marriage - especially if you didn't figure it out until your 20th month of marriage. So rules an Egyptian court, in a suit filed by a husband who accused his wife of misleading him by not telling him she had but one breast, thus affecting her femininity and posing a potential negative impact on pregnancy. There were but two things wrong with his argument: one, a medical examiner testified his wife was perfectly healthy and thus well-capable of "performing her marital duties"; and, two, many couples in the more conservative portions of Egypt do not take all their clothes off when they make love. Apparently, it wasn't revealed just how or why it otherwise took this husband 20 months to discover his wife's breast missing.

ROME - Italian lawmakers, mindful that Italian art galleries, magazines, and even television have an abundance of it, are considering legislation to let people take off their tops on the beach. The Italian Social Affairs Commission thinks some 80,000 Italian naturists high-tail it to neighboring countries each summer. Italy's highest court has ruled women could go topless on the beach as long as the bikini bottoms and/or swim trunks stay where they are - this, following a lower court ruling last year to free a German nude sunbather. The new bill by Sauro Turroni of the Greens Party is said to have multi-partisan support, and calls for local authorities to set clear boundaries on their beaches for nude sunbathing. Naturism is common throughout much of Europe, and in Germany in particular, where nude sunbathing in city center parks is said to be a normal occurrence.

MAYS LANDING, N.J. - Meanwhile, back at the New Jersey ranch, a Cape May County couple is challenging a ban on nude sunbathing here, with their attorney telling a judge this week the ordinance is unconstitutional and too vague to be enforceable. Bill Vogt took it all off at Higbee Beach last July to protest the law and was fined $1,000; his wife, Arlene, took off her top a month later and was fined $500. Their attorney argues banning women but not men from going topless is wrong. Local officials banned nudity last year over reports of sexual activity in the dunes and bushes of the beach. Web sites had also listed Higbee as a good meeting place for gay men. It isn't known when a decision will come on the Vogts' action.

--- Compiled by Humphrey Pennyworth