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.

But several government departments and companies will have to change their official forms for the more neutral terms.

An impact assessment, issued alongside the consultation document, said: “Changing legislation to allow same-sex couples to enter into a marriage will create some costs for certain government departments and agencies and for local government because changes will need to be made to IT systems and processes to remove references to marriage between a man and a woman.”

The consultation has been dubbed a “sham” by the Coalition for Marriage, a group supporting traditional marriage. The Siasat Daily

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.

“Many experts think that, on the whole, economic opportunities – better jobs and higher wages – have been the single biggest driver of international migration,” it said.

“At the same time, religion remains a factor in some people’s decisions to leave their countries of birth and their choices of where to go.”

The study defined migrants as people living in another country in 2010 for over a year, including estimates of illegal immigrants and long-term refugees including Palestinians and their descendants.

“Perhaps contrary to popular perception, … Christian immigrants outnumber Muslim immigrants in the European Union as a whole,” the report said, indirectly referring to far-right parties that have long campaigned against Muslim newcomers.

Of the 47 million migrants in the EU, 26 million (56 percent) are Christians, double the 13 million Muslim migrants, who make up only 27 percent of the total, it said.

The gap narrows when intra-EU migration – for example, Christian Greeks to Germany or French-born Muslims to Britain – is excluded, but Christians migrating from outside the EU still outnumber non-EU Muslim migrants by about 13 million to 12 million.

CHRISTIANS HEAD FOR U.S.

The United States is the leading destination for Christian migrants, who account for 32 million (74 percent) of its 43 million-strong foreign-born population. Two-thirds of them are from Latin America.

“The United States has received about as many immigrants from Mexico alone (more than 12 million, including both legal immigrants and unauthorised ones) as any other nation has received from all sources combined,” the study said.

The U.S. is also the world’s top destination for Buddhists, many from Vietnam. “About five percent of U.S. immigrants are Muslims, a much lower share than in Europe,” it added.

Saudi Arabia is the top destination for Muslim migrants, mostly workers from other Arab countries, the Indian subcontinent, Indonesia and the Philippines.

While nearly half of all Muslim migrants come from the Asia-Pacific region, the largest single group – over five million – is made up of migrants and their descendants from the Palestinian territories, the study said.

Israel takes in the most Jewish migrants, many of them from Russia and Ukraine, followed far behind by the U.S., Canada and Australia.

The United Nations estimates that about three percent of the world’s population are migrants.

“If the world’s 214 million international migrants were counted as one nation, they would constitute the fifth most populous country on the globe, just behind Indonesia and ahead of Brazil,” the study said. By Tom Heneghan, Yahoo Daily News

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.

“By posting something even vaguely negative about your work on these social media sites, it’s breaking the relationship of trust and confidence between the employer and employee and the company reserves the right to sack the employee,” she said.

According to Whelan and other lawyers, how bosses control the use of social media by their staff and utilise it to judge job candidates, is one of the biggest legal employment issues currently on the agenda.

Right now, companies are also well within their legal rights to sack a staff member over something they said referencing their job on their Facebook page, even if their privacy settings mean the world wide web cannot see their updates.

It still equally remains a grey area as to what type of comment on social media constitutes “bringing a company into disrepute”.

Somebody writing “I had a bad day at work”, and that person’s job being publicly available via a search on LinkedIn, could get somebody in trouble with their company, resulting in them losing their job, according to Whelan, as it could make the firm concerned look like a bad place to work.

In January 2012, John Flexman, a human resources executive was forced out of his job after angering his employer by putting his CV online and advertising that he was interested in other “career opportunities”, a tribunal heard.

He is thought to be the first person in the country to bring a case for constructive dismissal after a dispute with bosses over his profile on the professional networking site LinkedIn.

Last year David Rowat, a father-of-three who has cancer, was sacked by Argos after complaining about his job on Facebook.

He was fired for gross misconduct after complaining about work on the social networking website after he arrived from a two-week holiday.

After Rowat went back to work after the holiday, he said that “the deliveries hadn’t been done and the place was a bit of a tip”.

“Had a great day back at work after my hols who am I kidding!!” he wrote on Facebook.

“Back to the shambles that is work,” he said.

An Argos spokesperson commented on the firing of Rowat.

“We take matters of this nature extremely seriously and have arrived at this course of action after an extensive internal investigation that involved multiple factors and events,” the spokesperson said. DNA

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:

– Not having a plan. Many of us reach middle age with little more than a vague notion of our plans for retirement. At a minimum, all of us ought to have at least a best-guess estimate of (a) how much money we’ll need to retire, and (b) how much we’ll have to save and invest each year to get there. Also worth considering: (c) how we plan to use our time and energy in retirement.

– Not having alternative plans. These days one plan is no longer enough. You might plan to retire early, late or never, but your employer might have different ideas. So it makes sense to have at least a plan B and possibly a C, D and E. For example, what would happen if you had to retire before age 65, when Medicare eligibility begins? What if you find yourself supporting an adult child? What if you plan to sell your house but the real-estate market collapses?

– Not knowing what you’ve got. Part of any planning exercise should be a thorough inventory of investments. Besides retirement accounts, many of us have picked up an assortment of other assets over the years: shares of an ex-employer’s stock, a bit of leftover cash in a child’s 529 college savings plan — you name it. The result of sorting it all out could be a pleasant surprise.

– Underfunding accounts. Each year we don’t put as much money as we can into 401(k)s and similar tax-deferred plans, we’ve missed an opportunity. This year the limits on 401(k) contributions have risen to $22,500 for anybody over 50 and $17,000 for everybody else. Consumer Reports Money Adviser notes that it’s worth contributing as much as you can, especially if you’re entitled to an employer match.

– Wimping out on risk. There’s a sudden aversion to risk among many new retirees. With any luck, most of us could be retired for three or four decades, and a portfolio consisting of “safe” investments like CDs and Treasuries is unlikely to keep pace under even modest inflation. With inflation recently running at 3.9 percent and five-year CDs yielding an average of 1.2 percent before taxes, overly cautious retirees can lose ground pretty fast.

– Ignoring fees. Many of us were outraged recently, and rightly so, when banks started hiking debit card fees and other charges. But we seem to have resigned ourselves to retirement plan fees, which can be just as dastardly and far less transparent. In one illustration provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, a 401(k) plan charging 1.5 percent a year left a participant with 28 percent less money after 35 years than a similarly performing one charging 0.5 percent. You also need to be aware of fees on investments outside your retirement accounts.

– Depending on home equity. It’s best not to count home equity in your net worth unless you plan to sell your house and are absolutely certain how much profit you’ll walk away with. Consumer Reports Money Adviser suggests looking at home equity as a form of insurance in case your other retirement projections don’t work out exactly as planned. And given the world we live in now, that’s a possibility. Hartford Courant

Perhaps the most inspiring exercise science published in 2011 involved the effects that working out can have on the brain. By studying both lab rodents and people, scientists this year showed that exercise increases cognitive sharpness, even if the amount of exercise is small. In a representative experiment involving mice, which I wrote about in September, scientists at the University of South Carolina found that the equivalent of about 30 minutes of jogging a day changed the animals’ brain cells at a molecular level. After a few months of running, their neurons contained more mitochondria, a cell component that produces energy, than did the neurons of sedentary mice. In effect, their brain cells had become more robust and physically fit, thanks to the jogging.

Similarly, other studies published this year found that even in volunteers who were not distance runners or mice, activity significantly improved cognitive function. One fascinating study of elderly Canadians that I wrote about this summer showed that those who regularly walked around the block, gardened, cleaned the house, cooked or otherwise remained active without formally exercising, scored much better on tests of memory and other mental skills than older people who were almost completely inactive.

This study and the many others now linking activity and improved mental functioning represent “a wake-up call,” Dr. Eric Larson, the vice president of research at Group Health Research Institute in Seattle and author of an editorial that accompanied the study, told me.

“None of us wants to lose our minds,” he said — a sentiment with which I fervently agree — so we “have to find ways to get everybody moving.”

One means might be to direct people to the most popular column I wrote this year, in terms of both the number of page views and the number of comments, about the effect of exercise on aging. In the study highlighted in that column, Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, a professor of pediatrics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, took rats bred to age at an accelerated rate and had them start running.

After a few months, by which time the non-running control rats were frail, bald and dying, the runners still had virtually all of their youthful muscle mass, balance, mental acuity and fur and, unlike the sedentary animals, had not developed shrinkage in their hearts, brains or gonads. I have rarely skipped an exercise session since reading that study, and am happy to report that I still have a full head of fur.

Not all of the exercise science this year was quite so encouraging, however. Another column that inspired considerable interest and comments involved several new studies intimating that too much running might – and I would stress the word “might” – produce scarring or other damage in the heart. In one study, M.R.I. scans of a small group of lifelong elite male endurance athletes found signs of scarring in some of the men’s heart muscles.

A separate study of rats that had undergone the equivalent of years of marathon training showed similar signs of scarring within their hearts.

But these results, although certainly provocative, are preliminary and may turn out to be meaningless, as the scientists who conducted the studies acknowledge. There is no evidence that heart muscle scarring, if it occurs, leads to heart problems. And as Dr. Paul Thompson, the chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and an expert on sports cardiology, told me, “Too much exercise has not been a big problem in America. Most people just run to stay in shape, and for them, the evidence is quite strong that endurance exercise is good” for the heart.

Just as the evidence is increasingly strong that it is good for your brain, muscles, mitochondria and gonads.

Which is why I plan to continue running — and biking, hiking, walking, gardening and weight training — in 2012, although I may leave the housecleaning to my husband. In reviewing the year in fitness, in fact, what struck me most strongly was that, although this column covers science, it is also sneakily about me. I’m a middle-aged lifelong exerciser with an increasingly leaky memory and sometimes-wavering resolve. I’ve found inspiration and encouragement in the fitness science this year, although I do wish that it could have discovered that typing constitutes a workout. At least fidgeting counts. By Gretchen Retnolds, The New York Times

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.

Sexual frequency

The researchers found that 40% of older people who said they had no sexual activity within the past 12 months reported feeling very happy with life in general. This rose to 60% in those who said they indulged in sexual activity at least once a month.

Similarly, while about 59% of individuals who reported no sexual activity in the last 12 months said they were very happy with their marriage, almost 80% who had sex more than once a month said they were very happy with their relationship.

The research has been presented in Boston at a meeting of The Gerontological Society of America, an organisation devoted to studies on ageing.

Adrienne Jackson, an assistant professor at the university, said in a statement: “This study will help open the lines of communication and spark interest in developing ‘outside the box’ approaches to dealing with resolvable issues that limit or prevent older adults from participating in sexual activity.

“Highlighting the relationship between sex and happiness will help us in developing and organising specific sexual health interventions for this growing segment of our population.”

Stereotypes

The Sexual Advice Association says the issues surrounding mature sexuality are still not openly discussed, leaving a prevailing stereotype of older people as “asexual, devoid of feelings or emotion”.

For older people, the quality of their sex life can be dependent on their general health, the Association says. However, on the positive side, retirement and children leaving home can leave older couples with more time on their hands for each other, and studies have found that over half of women aged over 50 are satisfied with their sex lives.

An online poll carried out for Saga Magazine found that 85% of older people reported that sex was less frequent for them now than when they were in their 20s and 30s. However, 82% said they felt less pressure to have sex and 61% said it was more fulfilling. By Peter Russell, WebMD

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?]

The arrival of winter presents a more difficult transition than the shift back, since, as the days shorten, a gap widens between our internal body clocks and the natural day, she said. This becomes more of an issue farther north, since days become even shorter.

Why turn back the clock?

Daylight saving time, which is now ending, is an attempt to take advantage of the annual fluctuation in the amount of time we see the sun above the horizon. This fluctuation happens because the axis around which the Earth rotates doesn’t stand straight relative to the sun, rather our planet is tilted 23.5 degrees.

This means that as the Earth travels around the sun on its annual course, one hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, getting more than its fair share of light and warmth, while the other is titled away and enduring winter.

This effect becomes stronger as you travel farther north or south away from the equator, so that summer at either pole means 24-hour sunlight, and winter means 24-hour darkness. The continental U.S. experiences a less extreme fluctuation in day length over the course of the year.

Daylight saving time is an attempt to deal with this situation, by shifting the national schedule forward an hour in March to take advantage of lengthening daylight hours, and back again in November as daylight shrinks. The idea was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in 1874.

Dealing with darkness

Light is the most important environmental cue that tells our brains to wake up in the morning, so darkness in the morning makes it hard to get out of bed, Shelgikar said.

She recommends exposing your eyes to light right when you get up. While natural light is probably the best cue, artificial light in your bedroom can still help, she said.

A routine also helps. Shelgikar also recommends sticking to a set sleep schedule, with a fixed bedtime and a fixed wake time. By Wynne Parry, Yahoo Daily News

The Ministry of Defence has launched a campaign to promote better awareness of the mental health injuries of war.

Called “Don’t bottle it up”, it aims to remove the stigma from wounds that cannot be seen – and urges servicemen and women not to ignore warning signs.

The charity Combat Stress says 85% of veterans are too embarrassed to admit to depression or anxiety, while one in three fail to tell their families.

The launch coincides with World Mental Health Day.

Psychological scars

Staff Sgt Vicky Charnock became ill after several tours of Afghanistan – but found it difficult to talk about her problems when she most needed to. Eventually, she was diagnosed with depression.

Vicky says: “While I was going through it, I didn’t want people to know – I was embarrassed about it.

“But once I got better and realised how common it is I realised that there was no need to be embarrassed or ashamed – and at that point I was more than happy to talk about it now if it comes up in conversation, and say this was what I went through.”

Former soldier Neil Blower talks about his experience of post-combat stress

One practical measure that’s already been introduced is trauma risk management training – or Trim for short.

More than 5,000 servicemen and women have been trained to recognise the signs of mental distress in their comrades, so they can encourage troops suffering in silence to get help.

Sgt Dave Harrison, Trim trainer, said: “There’s still an expectancy for our soldiers – guys and girls – to crack on with the job, knowing the difficult task that they have.

“But what we’ve got with them with that is that if anything goes wrong, we’re going to support you, not just physically, but mentally. We have mental systems in place now – psychological systems and pillars of support – that will help you if you’re suffering from a traumatic event.”

It is hoped that encouraging service personnel who struggle with the events and scenes they have witnessed, to share their burden sooner, rather than later, will avoid long-term damage. BBC

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