Women discover they share a husband through Facebook

An American woman was astonished when she befriended another woman on Facebook - only to find they were married to the same man. The story came to court as the man's first wife filed charges in the state of Washington.

According to the court documents, the man, Alan O'Neill, had married Wife No 1 in 2001, but moved out in 2009 and changed his name without divorcing her.

At the end of last year, he married a second woman. His bigamy came to light as a consequence of Facebook's suggestions of people users might know, based on mutual friends.

The site suggested to Wife No 1 that she may know Wife No 2 - and when she viewed photos of the woman, she discovered a photo of her husband, the woman and a wedding cake. That's when she filed bigamy charges.

Don't look back in anger

Looking back in anger can be harmful to your health, according to scientists in Spain, who have clearly been taking research tips from the British band Oasis.

The group topped the charts in 1996 with Don't Look Back in Anger, and now researchers at the University of Granada have confirmed that remembering past events in a negative way can affect your current health.

"We have observed that when people are negative about past events in their life, they also have a pessimistic or fatalistic attitude towards current events," said Cristian Oyanadel, one of the authors of the study.

The research looked at the attitudes of 50 people to the past, present and the future, noting that those who remembered past incidents with regret tended to take a fatalistic and anxious attitude to the present.

Similarly, those too focused on attaining future goals tended to neglect their experiences in the present. There is no word yet on the health impact of listening to the music of the Gallagher brothers.

The dread of being red

Redheads have long been on the receiving end of unfair taunts, but scientists are now trying to discover whether they feel more physical pain, too.

Researchers at Southampton University in the UK have started a trial to see whether red-haired people react more strongly to pain. Scientists feel that redheads may require greater levels of anaesthetic during operations or larger doses of painkillers - a suggestion backed up by a study from 2002 that found women with red hair needed 19 per cent more painkillers.

Red hair stems from a variation of a particular gene and scientists believe the same gene may also be involved in the production of endorphins, the hormone that regulates the body's reaction to pain.

You don't know Jack

With Jack Nicholson now well into his seventies, it is perhaps understandable that the Hollywood actor might be looking for a leafy Brazilian bolthole in which to retire.

However, police were sceptical when a fraudster in the northern Brazilian town of Recife brandished his ID with the actor's face on it. Nor had the Brazilian, Richardo Sergio Freire de Barros, tried all that hard to cover his tracks: he used Nicholson's photo cut from an Entertainment Weekly cover, only signing his name across it, and, according to police, there was "no resemblance between the suspect and actor".

Barros, who is in his 40s, was arrested after he tried to use the fake ID to open a bank account. Police discovered he also had other fake documents, though none with Nicholson's face or name.