Case for cheese

Bern, July 10 (AFP): The Swiss are eating more cheese — and that’s official.

Some 19.9 kg of cheese were eaten on average per inhabitant last year, compared with 19.8 kg in 2001, the Swiss Cheese Producers’ Organisation said today.

But while Emmental may be the Swiss cheese that is most widely produced in the country, it is Mozzarella that appeals most to Swiss taste buds.

Hot on its heels in the Swiss’ favourite cheeses is Gruyere, followed by Swiss Raclette, the organisation said.

Cheese consumption has been rising consistently in Switzerland in recent years, helped by a more liberal market, the organisation said. Customs barriers are being progressively abolished under Switzerland’s bilateral accords with the European Union.

Don Juan

Managua (AFP): His name is Miguel, but friends call him “Don Juan” — after marrying 15 women in three years while divorcing none, prosecutors said Wednesday. A tenacious worker at the office of civil registries uncovered Miguel Gutierrez, by searching for records of previous marriages when the businessman attempted to register marriage number 15. Prosecutors said Gutierrez, 38, married women to improve their chances of finding work outside Nicaragua. Gutierrez, a former immigration office worker, denies the charges. Prosecutors noted that the computerised civil registry only goes back three years, so Gutierrez may face additional violations. Investigators could locate only the most recent of the 15 wives. The rest had left Nicaragua to work in neighbouring countries. Gutierrez said his new wife does not believe the charges, nor does she feel any jealousy toward the other 14. “I’m taking it easy,” he said.

Job jolt

Berlin (Reuters): A Berlin job centre unwittingly offered an unemployed woman work in a brothel. “The advert just said they were looking for someone to work in a massage parlour, we weren’t to know it was a brothel,” said a spokesman for the government-run agency in Berlin’s central Mitte district on Thursday. “It is a bit embarrassing though”, he said. Rage, rather than embarrassment was the response of the 25-year-old woman to the offer, who has been looking for work without success since April in Germany’s cash-strapped capital. “It really is a bit too much if the job centre assumes that the best thing is for you to try your luck in a whorehouse,” she told Tageszeitung newspaper. “We’ll spoil you with hot kisses, tender and loving massages or no-holds-barred sex,” the brothel says on its website.