Wednesday's news in under 2 minutes.

By MAMAMIA NEWS

1. A 44-year-old Belgian man who was born a woman has been euthanised on the grounds that a botched sex change caused him “unbearable psychological suffering”. Nathan Verhelst, who was born as Nancy, had received hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery, but wasn’t satisfied with the results. Mr Verhelst told a newspaper: “When I looked in the mirror, I was disgusted with myself. My new breasts did not match my expectations and my new penis had symptoms of rejection. I do not want to be… a monster.”

The doctor who carried out the euthanasia, is the same doctor who euthanised a pair of twins who were deaf and who found out they were going to go blind.

2. Approximately 800,000 US public servants have now started a period of unpaid leave – which will last for an unknown period of time – as the US governments shuts down for the first time in 17 years. President Obama has slammed the shut down saying: “This Republican shutdown did not have to happen – I want every American to understand why it did happen… This Republican shutdown threatens our economy when millions of Americans are still looking for work and businesses are getting some traction.”

Still not sure what the shutdown is, exactly? Mamamia will be bringing you a cheat sheet today.

3. A second recount in the electorate of Fairfax has been scheduled to begin on Thursday, after last week’s recount of the distribution of preferences found that Clive Palmer beat his National Party opponent Ted O’Brien by only seven votes. The previous count had Palmer ahead of O’Brien by only 36 votes.

4. Two people tragically died yesterday, and five others were injured, when a fuel tanker crashed into a number of cars in Sydney’s north. Witnesses reported several explosions, after the tanker rolled on to its side and burst into flames.

6. Apparently lesbians are the best hand holders. A study released this month has looked at what factors come into play in the handholding positions in lesbian partnerships. The authors of the paper Alison Che and Richard Wassersug explain, “the simple biomechanics of handholding require one partner to take an overhand grip of the other person’s hand.”

In every relationship, there is a hand at the front, and a hand underneath. In heterosexual relationships, men are more likely to have the ‘dominant’ hand position, which it has been theorised is either due to the fact that men are typically taller – or that stereotypically men are ‘dominant’ in the relationship. The study on lesbian hand-holding found that, “Our results suggest that handholding position does not reflect a dominance or power differential between partners, at least within a female-female relationship.”