For better and for worse but with a prenup

Americans are taking a cautious approach to marriage and are seeking more prenuptial agreements before walking down the aisle.

And it is not just the wealthy and famous who are looking to safeguard their assets when a marriage crumbles.

More women and middle-class couples are opting for prenups, which can also include adultery clauses, protection of retirement benefits and even custody of the dog, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), which represents more than 1600 lawyers.

"It's a planning tool. Given that half of marriages end in divorce it makes sense to plan," said Marlene Eskind Moses, the president of the AAML.

Nearly three quarters of members who responded to the AAML poll reported an increase in prenups in the last five years, and more than half said more women are seeking the legal agreements.

Once thought of as only for the rich and famous, prenups are appealing to all income levels but for different reasons.

"Sometimes it can be a prenuptial to protect against debt so that one is not responsible for debt their spouse accumulated before the marriage," Moses explained.

The legal agreements can also include clauses on financial arrangements such as budgets and whether the couple will have separate bank accounts.

More women are working now than in previous decades and they are earning higher salaries. Women comprised 46.8 percent of U.S. workers in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Labor and that number is expected to rise to 46.9 percent in 2018.

"In our historically male-dominated culture women didn't control money and now they need to plan as much as the men. More women have more assets these days and have more control over funds," said Moses, a family lawyer with 30 years of experience.

Toxic Waste Spill Floods Hungarian Towns, Kills 3

Officials in western Hungary declared a state of emergency Tuesday after a toxic sludge spill that killed three people and injured 120 others.

The emergency order covers three counties near a metals plant where a reservoir burst Monday, flooding several towns with the waste.

Officials say as much as 700,000 cubic meters of the sludge were spilled at the plant, about 160 kilometers west of Budapest.

The plant makes alumina -- a derivative of the metal ore bauxite that is used to make aluminum.

The waste can be fatal if swallowed.Police are investigating what caused the reservoir to break.

How to read a politician's mind? Try looking at his hands

If you want to know when a politician is burying bad news, here is a handy hint.

A study of body language has found leaders tend to signal good news by pointing with their dominant hand – but gesture gloomy tidings with their weaker hand.

It means a right-handed politician, such as Nick Clegg, will wave his right hand when passing on positive news, while a left-hander – such as David Cameron – will gesture with his left.

The Dutch researchers say the discovery does not just help voters tell if their politicians are trying to disguise their meaning.

They say the difference in the way left and right-handed leaders gesture could also explain the unlikely number of left-handers in office.

Five out of six of the most recent presidents of America have been southpaws, far exceeding chance, they said.

Dr Daniel Casasanto of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics said: ‘Since the dawn of the television era, we have had many, many more left-handers in presidential office than we should expect according to their prevalence in the population.

Dr Casasanto analysed the final debates of the US presidential elections in 2004, which involved two right-handers John Kerry, and George W Bush, and in 2008 with two left-handers Barack Obama and John McCain.

The left-handed candidates used left hand gestures when making positive statements – and right hand gestures when being negative. The opposite pattern was found in right-handed candidates, he reports in the journal PLoS One. He believes voters subconsciously note which hand their leaders are using.

He said: ‘Right-handers automatically think “good stuff” is on the right, and “lefties” think “good stuff” is on the left, And vice versa. When we see someone on television that is a mirror image.

‘A “rightie” gesturing with his right hand appears on our bad side of TV. While a left-hander appears to be putting things in a much more positive light for the 90% of viewers who are right-handed.’