Daring dentist

Amsterdam, Nov. 3 (Reuters): A Dutch dentist who chopped off his finger and then faked a car crash before claiming 1.8 million euros from insurers was given a suspended sentence and fined by a court today.

The man, aged 50, mutilated himself and crashed his car into a tree in Belgium in the hope of convincing insurers that the steering wheel had inflicted the injury, the court said.

However, the shape of the cut on his index finger, the level of anaesthetic in his blood and the absence of skid marks on the road suggested otherwise.

“It was not an accident but an amputation he carried out himself, or he had someone do it for him,” a court spokeswoman said.

Media fuss

(Reuters): Leading Catholic publication Famiglia Cristiana stirred up a media storm in Italy on Thursday with its first ever photograph of a naked woman, part of an advertisement for a bathroom ventilation system. The photograph ? chaste by the standards of Italy’s bawdy television shows ? shows only a female bottom shot through a misty shower door. But it has been enough to put Famiglia Cristiana back in the headlines.