SEOUL – Married South Korean women are the least happy with their sex lives, Japanese men are the most likely to try and dodge a certain sex problem and French men are the most fond of their frolicking, according to a recent survey. The survey released this week by the pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Co., one of the makers of the anti-impotence drug Cialis, of 1,200 married men and women in South Korea, Japan, France and the United States also found the French had the best sex lives followed by the Americans. Lilly Korea said the findings would be released globally next week ahead of Valentine’s Day. Less than one in three South Korean women said they were at least slightly happy about sex with their husbands, which was the lowest of the four groups of women. About half the South Korean men, however, said they were satisfied in bed with their wives. Not often enough topped the list of complaints by men in all four countries while the main complaint of wives was not enough romance. Less than one in three Japanese men said they would seek help for erectile dysfunction, which […]
WASHINGTON — The top television executive at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Thursday that he would be stepping down. This is the latest in a string of departures of officials and consultants who played central roles in an effort by conservatives to bring what they viewed as more balance to public television and radio. The executive, Michael Pack, controlled a $70 million production budget and was described by the official who hired him as a conservative Republican. He chose to resign after Patricia S. Harrison, the corporation’s new president, forced him to decide between renewing his employment contract and exercising a soon-to-expire option that gives him $500,000 to produce a documentary. Ms. Harrison said the departures of Mr. Pack and a senior consultant, James Denton, were business decisions and were not part of any purge of ideologically driven officials. “You are connecting dots when there is no connection,” she said in an interview. “I have not fired a single person since I came on board here.” But other officials in public broadcasting saw political overtones to the moves. Since being named president of the corporation last June, Ms. Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican […]
Guarding the Fatah oil refinery used to be a pretty straightforward job for Saif Mohammed. Insurgents hit only sporadically, and usually missed important targets. But by early last year, attackers were using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and heavy machine guns in brazen daylight assaults. They seemed to know about everything and everybody in the refinery. Ambushes were common. “We were afraid to even take vacation and go home,” says 26-year-old Mohammed. “The people who worked with us used to tip off the fighters. They wanted to play both sidesto keep their jobs and be informants for the terrorists.” When insurgents killed the man Mohammed shared guard duty with last April, then threatened Mohammed with the same, he quit. In the past year, there have been close to 20 large-scale assaults on Fatah, part of Iraq’s largest oil-production complex in Bayji. Last month the Bayji site shut down completely for two weeks. It re-opened with the New Year, but three days later insurgents pinned down a 60-truck fuel convoy in an hourlong gun battle. Across the country, there’s a major attack on oil facilities about once every three days. December was the third month in a row that Iraqi oil production […]
WASHINGTON — Fewer Americans died of cancer in 2003 than in previous years, the first such decline ever recorded, although the number of cancer deaths among women increased, the American Cancer Society said on Thursday. “From 2002 to 2003, the number of recorded cancer deaths decreased by 778 in men, but increased by 409 in women, resulting in a net decrease of 369 total cancer deaths,” the American Cancer Society said in a statement. Due largely to a decline in smoking among men, it is the first decrease in numbers since 1930, when nationwide data was first compiled. The society predicts that 2006 will see a slight decline compared to 2005, projecting that 1.4 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in 2006, and 565,000 will die of it. “The death rate from all cancers combined has decreased in the United States since 1991, but not until 2003 was the decrease large enough to outpace the growth and aging of the population and reduce the actual number of cancer deaths,” the society said. “While it is unclear whether the decline in the total number of cancer deaths will continue, it marks a notable milestone in […]
Sweden says it aims to completely wean itself off oil within 15 years – without building new nuclear plants. The attempt is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, car manufacturers, farmers and others. The country aims to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change damages economies and growing oil scarcity leads to price rises. According to the Guardian newspaper, a Swedish minister said oil dependency could be broken by 2020. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is worried that oil supplies are peaking, shortly to dwindle, and that high oil prices could cause global economic recession. “Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020,” said Mona Sahlin, Sweden’s minister of sustainable development. “There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline.” The Scandinavian country, which was hard hit by oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets the majority of its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power. In 2003, 26% of all energy consumed came from renewables, compared with an EU average of 6%. The oil committee is to […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
