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Gay laws: Britain May Remove Husband, Wife Terms

March 18, 2012 by ·

If Britain’s plan to legalise gay marriages takes shape, offices across the country will have to remove terms like “husband” and “wife” from forms and use more neutral terms like “spouse” and “partner”, an impact assessment report said.

The plan to legalise gay marriages may cost the government millions in removing the terms from computer systems, the Daily Express reported.

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone has said the government was determined to change marriage legislation by 2015.

Under plans put out for consultation, same-sex couples will be entitled to get married in a register office or convert existing civil partnerships. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Humanities, Lifestyle, People ·

Far More Christian Than Muslim Migrants Worldwide

March 9, 2012 by ·

Christians far outnumber Muslims as migrants around the world, including in the European Union where debates about immigration usually focus on new Muslim arrivals, according to a new study issued on Thursday.

Of the world’s 214 million people who have moved from their home country to live in another, about 106 million (49 percent) are Christians while around 60 million (27 percent) are Muslims, the study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said.

Only 3.6 million Jews around the world have moved across international borders, the study said, but that is 25 percent of the world’s Jewish population, by far the highest proportion on the move of any faith group. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Humanities, Lifestyle, Religion ·

Tweeting About Bad Day At Work Could Get You Fired

February 19, 2012 by ·

Employees who tweet or update their Facebook status saying “I had a bad day at work” could end up losing their jobs, a leading employment lawyer has claimed.

According to Paula Whelan, an employment partner at Shakespeare’s law firm, if an employee writes anything vaguely negative about their employer, including saying something as neutral as ‘I had a bad day at work’, bosses are well within their legal rights to sack the staff member.

“Employees think they are bullet-proof when they post anything on Facebook or Twitter. But if they bring their employer into disrepute, the boss of that firm is well within their legal right to sack them,” the Telegraph quoted Whelan as saying. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Humanities, Lifestyle ·

Consumer Reports: Seven Mistakes Of Retirement Planning

February 11, 2012 by ·

When it comes to retirement planning, never before have so many things been so much in flux: the job market, the stock market, the entire world economy. At this point it’s anybody’s guess how Social Security and Medicare might change. Ditto for the U.S. tax code, which plays a role in countless retirement-related decisions. Why bother to plan at all?

The answer, according to Consumer Reports Money Adviser, is that this is one of those situations in life where there are things we can control and others we can’t. And we might as well not mess up the former.

In that spirit, here are seven common mistakes most of us can avoid if we choose to: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Industry, Lifestyle, Places ·

The Year In Fitness

December 28, 2011 by ·

If all the Phys Ed columns published this year have a single message, it is that now is a fine time to own a body. The diverse exercise-related experiments published in 2011 and covered in this space each week suggest that it’s possible to retain your cognitive powers, muscle mass, running speed and waistline, even as you age, and that a little exercise can go a long way in terms of physiological benefit. Recent, important science even tells us that coffee, chocolate and beer enhance exercise performance, which is fortunate, since I have no plans to give up any of those. As most of us prepare our exercise resolutions for 2012, now seems an ideal time to review the past year in fitness science and the lessons it contained, both encouraging and cautionary. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Health & Fitness, Lifestyle, Research & Study ·

Lots Of Sex ‘Key To Happier Retirement’

November 22, 2011 by ·

Married pensioners with a regular sex life are more likely to be happy, say scientists

The more often older people have sex, the more likely they are to be happy with life and enjoy a good marriage, a small study suggests.

The figures show that elderly people who had sex more than once a month were 50% more likely to say they were very happy with their life than those who reported no sexual activity during the previous year.

The findings were based on a US opinion poll of 238 people aged 65 or over and analysed by researchers at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Participants were asked to rate their feelings about life and their marriage according to whether they were happy, pretty happy or not too happy. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Health & Fitness, Lifestyle, Sex Education ·

How Earth’s Axis Affects Your Sleep Habits

November 5, 2011 by ·

At 2 a.m. on Sunday (Nov. 6), most of the United States will enjoy the upside to the annual daylight saving time shift — setting our clocks back by an hour.

But be careful how you enjoy it, cautions Dr. Anita Valanju Shelgikar, director of the sleep medicine fellowship program at the University of Michigan.

“It’s truly easier to go this way than in the other direction,” Shelgikar said, referring to the spring-time shift forward an hour. “It does give you an extra hour in the morning to sleep, but it can throw people off, primarily because people say I can stay up a lot later because I have an extra hour in the morning to sleep and ultimately, they sleep deprive themselves.” [Are You Getting Enough Sleep?] [Read more...]

Filed Under: Health Care, Lifestyle, Research & Study ·