Britain leads the world in the rate of porn downloads, according to a survey by a national newspaper. The study for The Independent on Sunday found that just under 40 per cent of British males visited pornographic websites in 2005. This adds up to nine million men, compared with an estimate of two million back in 2000. The new figures show that one in four men aged 25 to 49 have visited an adult website in the past month, and UK net users search for the term ‘porn’ more than anyone in the English-speaking world. The survey, which was carried out by Nielsen//NetRatings, also revealed that the number of UK women downloading pornography has risen from one million to 1.5 million in the past year. More than half of all children questioned also said they had found adult websites online while they were ‘looking for something else’. The Independent on Sunday said that its study was the first real measure of how much pornography the British consume, and that Britain is now the fastest growing market for adult downloads.
PARIS — The European Union’s highest court ruled Tuesday that the Union had overstepped its authority by agreeing to give the United States personal details about airline passengers on flights to America in an effort to fight terrorism. The decision will force the two sides to renegotiate the deal at a time of heightened concerns about possible infringements of civil liberties by the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism, and the extent to which European governments have cooperated. The ruling gave both sides four months to approve a new agreement, and American officials expressed optimism that one could be reached. But without an agreement, the United States could take punitive action, in theory even denying landing rights to airlines that withhold the information. That could cause major disruptions in trans-Atlantic air travel, which accounts for nearly half of all foreign air travel to the United States. The European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, found that the European Commission and the European Council lacked the authority to make the deal, which was reached in May 2004. Specifically, the court said passenger records were collected by airlines for their own commercial use, so the European […]
MOSCOW – – Moscow’s influential mayor said on Tuesday the city banned gay activists from holding a parade because it is morally cleaner than the West, which is caught up in ‘mad licentiousness’. The gay activists tried to hold their protest against homophobia and discrimination at the weekend despite the ban, but were detained by police, abused by militant Christians and attacked by neo-fascists. They had wanted to lay flowers at the grave of the unknown warrior, a monument to those who died defeating Nazi Germany, but police blocked their path. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said such an action would have been a desecration of the sacred monument, and rejected Western criticism of his ban as prejudiced and homophobic. ‘Our way of life, our morals and our tradition — our morals are cleaner in all ways. The West has something to learn from us and should not race along in this mad licentiousness,’ he told Moscow radio, according to local news agencies. ‘We may have a democratic country, but we live in an organised country and an organised city.’ The protest on Saturday, which was intended as a Gay Pride solidarity event as have become […]
ATLANTA – You can add Canada to the list of nations that are healthier than the United States of America. Americans are 42 per cent more likely than Canadians to have diabetes, 32 per cent more likely to have high blood pressure, and 12 per cent more likely to have arthritis, Harvard Medical School researchers found. That is according to a survey in which American and Canadian adults were asked over the telephone about their health. The study comes less than a month after other researchers reported that middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England. ‘We’re really falling behind other nations,’ said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the Canadian study. Canada’s national health insurance program is at least part of the reason for the differences found in the study, Dr. Woolhandler said. Universal coverage makes it easier for more Canadians to get disease-preventing health services, she said. James Smith, a RAND Corp. researcher who co-authored the American-English study, disagreed. His research found that England’s national health insurance program did not explain the difference in disease rates, because even Americans with insurance were in worse health. ‘To me, that’s unlikely,’ […]
Rivers of air that move both storms and airplanes around the planet have been creeping poleward over the past 26 years. The migration of these so-called ‘jet streams’ has widened the planet’s tropical belt and could expand dry regions around the world in coming decades, a new study reports. ‘If they move another 2 to 3 degrees poleward in this century, very dry areas such as the Sahara Desert could nudge farther towards the pole, perhaps by a few hundred miles,’ said study team member John Wallace from the University of Washington. The researchers used satellites to measure heat in the form of microwave radiation emitted by oxygen molecules in the atmosphere from 1979 to 2005. The troposphere at 30 degrees latitude in both hemispheres - roughly the location of Austin, Texas, and Cordoba, Argentina - has warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) during that time. The troposphere extends up to about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) from Earth’s surface and is the part of the atmosphere in which most weather occurs. Anatomy of the air The warming of the atmosphere at these latitudes causes the troposphere to expand and bulge poleward. This […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
