If you are still using your discoloured lipstick to add an extra shade of pink to your lips, think again – old and out-of-date make up can cause infection.

Discoloured or smelly lipsticks, mascara and eye pencils can accumulate dangerous bacteria.

Although all cosmetics come with a best before date, a study by Debenhams found 89per cent of women did not know that this information was available on beauty products’ labels.

More than two-thirds of women only change products when they run out, while about three-quarters are not in the habit of washing make-up sponges.

“Women don’t like throwing things away but you have to remember it is probably no longer doing its job properly and could well give you a nasty infection,” the Daily Star quoted Ruth Attridge from Debenhams, as saying.

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Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise’s three-year-old daughter Suri Cruise has added a costly accessory to her wardrobe, a tiny version of a designer bag so that she can match it with mother Katie Holmes.

Suri carried a mini version of her mother’s Salvatore Ferragamo handbag while in Jamaica earlier this month and the little accessory cost a whopping USD 1000, reported Daily Mail online.

The extravagant family have reportedly spent over a million pounds on their daughter’s wardrobe. However, the mini bag was not custom made for Suri, but is part of a collection from the fashion house, and mother and daughter received the bags as Christmas gifts from Ferragamo.

The duo clearly enjoy matching up, as this isn’t the the first time that Suri has matched her fashionable mother. The tiny tot has showcased a series of grown-up and girly looks of late.

She has stepped out with a make-up bag, has been seen browsing for make-up, has sported high heels and wore wear red lipstick on a trip to the the theatre in New York recently.

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Butter may be good for you after all, claims a new study.

The research by Lund University in Sweden shows that butter leads to considerably less elevation of blood fats after a meal compared with olive oil and a new type of canola and flaxseed oil.

The main explanation for the relatively low increase of blood fat levels with butter is that about 20 per cent of the fat in butter consists of short and medium-length fatty acids. These are used directly as energy and therefore never affect the blood fat level to any great extent.

“A further explanation, which we are speculating about, is that intestinal cells prefer to store butter fat rather than long-chain fatty acids from vegetable oils. However, butter leads to a slightly higher content of free fatty acids in the blood, which is a burden on the body,” explains Julia Svensson, a doctoral candidate in Biotechnology and Nutrition at Lund University.

The greater difference in men is due to, among other things, hormones, the size of fat stores, and fundamental differences in metabolism between men and women, which was previously known. This situation complicates the testing of women, since they need to be tested during the same period in the menstruation cycle each time in order to yield reliable results.

“The findings provide a more nuanced picture of various dietary fats. Olive oil has been studied very thoroughly, and its benefits are often extolled. The fact that butter raises blood cholesterol in the long term is well known, whereas its short-term effects are not as well investigated. Olive oil is good, to be sure, but our findings indicate that different food fats can have different advantages,” says Svensson.

“Finally, all fats have high energy content, and if you don’t burn what you ingest, your weight will go up, as will your risk of developing diseases in the long run,” she adds.

The study involved 19 women and 28 men.

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A South African man has won the 2010 Mr Gay World pageant, beating rivals from Australia, Hong Kong, China and Spain, the organisers said on Sunday.

Charl Van den Berg, 28, who runs a restaurant in Cape Town, won after four days of competition finished with a walk down a fashion runaway in an Oslo nightclub dressed in skimpy swimwear and various costumes.

The competition is aimed at “finding a leader who can take on the responsibility of being a spokesman for the community and who can also speak out on equality and human rights on the world stage,” a statement said.

Xiaodai Muyi, 26, from China and who took fourth place, competed despite Beijing’s attempts to prevent him doing so.

The Chinese authorities blocked China’s own first gay pageant, in which contestants were vying for the right to represent China at Mr Gay World, last month.

Xiaodai’s identity had been kept secret in the run-up to the competition in which some 20 men from around the world vied for the Mr Gay World title.

Homosexuality was a crime in China until 1997 and it was officially considered a mental illness until 2001. Since then, however, an increasing number of visible gay and lesbian events has taken place.

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