Unhappy people watch significantly more television compared with happy people who are more socially active, vote more and read more, U.S. researchers say.

John Robinson and Steven Martin of the University of Maryland conducted an analysis of U.S. national data of nearly 30,000 adults. They examined the activity patterns of happy and less happy people in the General Social Survey from 1975 to 2006.

The study authors found that happy people were more socially active, attended more religious services, voted more and read more newspapers.

The study, published in the Social Indicators Research, also notes that TV watching requires very little activity compared with other leisure activities. TV viewers don't have to go anywhere, dress up, find company, plan ahead, expend energy, do any work or pay for anything, the researchers said.

The lack of effort required probably accounts for why TV watching takes up more than half of Americans' free time, the study said.

The study found that 51 percent of unhappy people were more likely to have unwanted extra time on their hands compared with very happy people, at 19 percent, and to feel rushed for time -- 35 percent versus 23 percent. >>>>

Overweight women are more likely to report having sex with men than women considered to be of "normal weight," U.S. researchers said.

The study is based on data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, which looked at sexual behavior of more than 7,000 U.S. women.

Dr. Bliss Kaneshiro of the School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii and Oregon State University professor Marie Harvey studied the relationship between body mass index and sexual behavior -- including sexual orientation, age at first intercourse, number of partners and frequency of sexual intercourse.

The study, published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, contradicted widely held stereotypes that overweight and obese women are not as sexually active as other women. If anything, the researchers concluded the opposite seems to be true.

"These results were unexpected and we don't really know why this is the case," Kaneshiro said in a statement.

Ninety-two percent of overweight women reported having a history of sexual intercourse with a man, as opposed to 87 percent of women with a normal body mass index.

"This study indicates that all women deserve diligence in counseling on unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease prevention, regardless of body mass index," Kaneshiro said. >>>>

 While Nicole Kidman isn’t planning another pregnancy any time soon, she thinks a new bundle of joy might be a good idea for Katie Holmes.

The “Golden Compass” star told Glamour magazine that Connor Cruise, 13, the son she adopted with ex-husband Tom Cruise, is craving another sibling. Cruise's current wife, Holmes, at 29, could just be the one to make his wish come true.

“(Connor) would like one of us to have a boy,” she explained. “He wants that boy. Katie?”

Kidman confidante told OK! magazine it just makes sense for Holmes to broaden the brood.

“At 41, Nicole knows she’s not likely to have another baby,” the pal said. “It’s obviously up to the much-younger Katie to give Connor that baby brother.”

Ree Hines

The families of British victims of the 2002 Bali bombings have spoken out against the imminent executions of three of those convicted over the plot.

Susanna Miller, of the Bali Bombing Victims' Group, said the executions may provide propaganda for jihadists.

Ms Miller, whose brother was killed, told BBC Radio 4 execution would offer a "state-sponsored route to martyrdom".

Indonesia officials say Imam Samudra, Amrozi Nurhasyim and Ali Mukhlas (Ghufron) will be shot dead this month.

The men were sentenced to death five years ago for their role in bomb attacks in the tourist bars of Bali which killed 202 people, including 28 Britons.

They have often said they welcomed death, while filing numerous appeals.

Ms Miller, whose brother Dan was killed, told the BBC: "Capital punishment for jihadist terrorism seems particularly anomalous to me. It effectively provides a state-sponsored route to martyrdom.

"There are two strands to justice: one is to punish the deed and the other is to deter subsequent deeds.

"If, in trying to do justice to my brother and the others that died, they carry out a punishment that actually can be used as a propaganda coup to encourage the very people who carried out the act, I think that makes a mockery of the whole idea of justice.

"Having gone through the suffering that I have seen so much of over Bali, it would be such a tragedy if it just served to fuel the jihadist cause."

Ms Miller said her concerns were shared by a large number of relatives of victims of the bombings and that she had raised the issue with the Indonesian authorities.

Protest fears

About 30 people have been convicted in Indonesia for taking part in the bombings.

Ms Miller said the three men due to be executed were only "secondary" participants.

The man thought to be the mastermind of the attack is being held by US authorities in Guantanamo Bay.

The three convicted men have expressed the hope that their execution will provoke revenge attacks.

Although sympathy for the bombers is low across Indonesia, officials are concerned that the executions of men claiming an Islamic mandate for their deeds could spark protests. >>>>

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Bali bombers' execution date set

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Three men convicted over the 2002 Bali bombings will be executed in early November, the Indonesian attorney general's office says.

The three - Imam Samudra, Amrozi and Mukhlas, also known as Ali Ghufron - were sentenced to death for their roles in the attacks which killed 202 people.

They were found guilty of planning the attacks, which targeted nighclubs at Bali's tourist resort of Kuta.

The bombings were blamed on the militant group Jemaah Islamiah.

Friday's announcement comes after several appeals made on behalf of the three men.

The three are held in Nusakambangan maximum security prison, where officials said the executions would take place.

A pledge by the attorney general to see them die by Ramadan - which fell in early September - was not met.

However in its latest statement, his office said: "All legal recourse for the convicts has been finalised, and all requirements met.

"The execution of Amrozi, Ali Ghufron and Imam Samudra will be carried out at the beginning of November."

Earlier this month, Indonesia's Constitutional Court rejected defence arguments that the three should be beheaded, instead of being executed by firing squad, which, they argued, did not guarantee instant death and would amount to torture.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson in Jakarta says few Indonesians support the bombers, but the execution of men who say they were defending Islamic values is likely to spark some reaction even so. >>>

Today’s economic turmoil, it seems, is an implicit indictment of the arcane field of financial engineering — a blend of mathematics, statistics and computing. Its practitioners devised not only the exotic, mortgage-backed securities that proved so troublesome, but also the mathematical models of risk that suggested these securities were safe.

What happened?

The models, according to finance experts and economists, did fail to keep pace with the explosive growth in complex securities, the resulting intricate web of risk and the dimensions of the danger.

But the larger failure, they say, was human — in how the risk models were applied, understood and managed. Some respected quantitative finance analysts, or quants, as financial engineers are known, had begun pointing to warning signs years ago. But while markets were booming, the incentives on Wall Street were to keep chasing profits by trading more and more sophisticated securities, piling on more debt and making larger and larger bets.

“Innovation can be a dangerous game,” said Andrew W. Lo, an economist and professor of finance at the Sloan School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The technology got ahead of our ability to use it in responsible ways.”

That out-of-control innovation is reflected in the growth of securities intended to spread risk widely through the use of financial instruments called derivatives. Credit-default swaps, for example, were originally created to insure blue-chip bond investors against the risk of default. In recent years, these swap contracts have been used to insure all manner of instruments, including pools of subprime mortgage securities.

These swaps are contracts between two investors — typically banks, hedge funds and other institutions — and they are not traded on exchanges. The face value of the credit-default market has soared to an estimated $55 trillion.

Credit-default swaps, though intended to spread risk, have magnified the financial crisis because the market is unregulated, obscure and brimming with counterparty risk (that is, the risk that one embattled bank or firm will not be able to meet its payment obligations, and that trading with it will seize up).

The market for credit-default swaps has been at the center of the recent Wall Street banking failures and rescues, and these instruments embody the kinds of risks not easily captured in math formulas.

“Complexity, transparency, liquidity and leverage have all played a huge role in this crisis,” said Leslie Rahl, president of Capital Market Risk Advisors, a risk-management consulting firm. “And these are things that are not generally modeled as a quantifiable risk.”

Math, statistics and computer modeling, it seems, also fell short in calibrating the lending risk on individual mortgage loans. In recent years, the securitization of the mortgage market, with loans sold off and mixed into large pools of mortgage securities, has prompted lenders to move increasingly to automated underwriting systems, relying mainly on computerized credit-scoring models instead of human judgment.

So lenders had scant incentive to spend much time scrutinizing the creditworthiness of individual borrowers. “If the incentives and the systems change, the hard data can mean less than it did or something else than it did,” said Raghuram G. Rajan, a professor at the University of Chicago. “The danger is that the modeling becomes too mechanical.”

Mr. Rajan, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, points to a new paper co-authored by a University of Chicago colleague, Amit Seru, “The Failure of Models That Predict Failure,” which looked at securitized subprime loans issued from 1997-2006. Their research concluded that the quantitative methods underestimated defaults for subprime borrowers in what the paper called “a systematic failure of default models.”

A recent paper by four Federal Reserve economists, “Making Sense of the Subprime Crisis,” found another cause. They surveyed the published research reports by Wall Street analysts and economists, and asked why the Wall Street experts failed to foresee the surge in subprime foreclosures in 2007 and 2008. The Fed economists concluded that the risk models used by Wall Street analysts correctly predicted that a drop in real estate prices of 10 or 20 percent would imperil the market for subprime mortgage-backed securities. But the analysts themselves assigned a very low probability to that happening.

The miss by Wall Street analysts shows how models can be precise out to several decimal places, and yet be totally off base. The analysts, according to the Fed paper, doggedly clung to the optimists’ mantra that nominal housing prices in the United States had not declined in decades — even though house prices did fall nationally, adjusted for inflation, in the 1970s, and there are many sizable regional declines over the years.

Besides, the formation of a housing bubble was well under way. Until 2003, prices moved in line with employment, incomes and migration patterns, but then they departed from the economic fundamentals.

The Wall Street models, said Paul S. Willen, an economist at the Federal Reserve in Boston, included a lot of wishful thinking about house prices. But, he added, it is also true that asset price trends are difficult to predict. “The price of an asset, like a house or a stock, reflects not only your beliefs about the future, but you’re also betting on other people’s beliefs,” he observed. “It’s these hierarchies of beliefs — these behavioral factors — that are so hard to model.”

Indeed, the behavioral uncertainty added to the escalating complexity of financial markets help explain the failure in risk management. The quantitative models typically have their origins in academia and often the physical sciences. In academia, the focus is on problems that can be solved, proved and published — not messy, intractable challenges. In science, the models derive from particle flows in a liquid or a gas, which conform to the neat, crisp laws of physics.

Not so in financial modeling. Emanuel Derman is a physicist who became a managing director at Goldman Sachs, a quant whose name is on a few financial models and author of “My Life as a Quant — Reflections on Physics and Finance” (Wiley, 2004). In a paper that will be published next year in a professional journal, Mr. Derman writes, “To confuse the model with the world is to embrace a future disaster driven by the belief that humans obey mathematical rules.”

Yet blaming the models for their shortcomings, he said in an interview, seems misguided. “The models were more a tool of enthusiasm than a cause of the crisis,” said Mr. Derman, who is a professor at Columbia University.

In boom times, new markets tend to outpace the human and technical systems to support them, said Richard R. Lindsey, president of the Callcott Group, a quantitative consulting group. Those support systems, he said, include pricing and risk models, back-office clearing and management’s understanding of the financial instruments. That is what happened in the mortgage-backed securities and credit derivatives markets.

Better modeling, more wisely applied, would have helped, Mr. Lindsey said, but so would have common sense in senior management. The mortgage securities markets, he noted, grew rapidly and generated high profits for a decade. “If you are making a high return, I guarantee you there is a high risk there, even if you can’t see it,” said Mr. Lindsey, a former chief economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Among quants, some recognized the gathering storm. Mr. Lo, the director of M.I.T. Laboratory for Financial Engineering, co-wrote a paper that he presented in October 2004 at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference. The research paper warned of the rising systemic risk to financial markets and particularly focused on the potential liquidity, leverage and counterparty risk from hedge funds.

Over the next two years, Mr. Lo also made presentations to Federal Reserve officials in New York and Washington, and before the European Central Bank in Brussels. Among economists and academics, he said, the research was well received. “On the industry side, it was dismissed,” he recalled.

The dismissive response, Mr. Lo said, was not really surprising because Wall Street was going to chase profits in the good times. The path to sensible restraint, he said, will include not only better risk models, but also more regulation. Like others, Mr. Lo recommends higher capital requirements for banks and the use of exchanges or clearinghouses for the trade of exotic securities, so that prices and risks are more visible. Any hedge fund with more than $1 billion in assets, he added, should be compelled to report its holdings to regulators.

Financial regulation, Mr. Lo said, should be seen as similar to fire safety rules in building codes. The chances of any building burning down are slight, but ceiling sprinklers, fire extinguishers and fire escapes are mandated by law.

“We’ve learned the hard way that the consequences can be catastrophic, even if statistically improbable,” he said.

STEVE LOHR

 

Iran's parliament has voted to dismiss Ali Kordan, the country's interior minister, for allegedly lying about his credentials and presenting a fake degree from Britain's Oxford University.

The scandal has been a major embarrassment to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, who has defended Kordan.

Ali Larijani, the parliament's speaker, said 188 politicians among the 247 members present voted on Tuesday to impeach Kordan while 45 were against the motion and 14 abstained.

In a speech carried live on state radio, Larijani said: "The impeachment was approved by parliament and he cannot be interior minister from now on."

Smear campaign

It is the 10th change in the 21-member strong cabinet of Ahmadinejad, who had described Kordan as a "victim" and insisted he be allowed to remain in the job.

Under Iran's constitution the entire cabinet would have to be submitted to a new vote of confidence if half the ministers change.

Kordan had been under pressure to quit the cabinet post he took up just three months ago after the university denied awarding him any qualification, as he had claimed.

Ebrahim Nekunam, a member of Iran's parliament, said: "A person who has to be entrusted with the country's security has mocked parliament's trust."

Nekunam said that not only does Kordan, who worked as a university law professor, not possess a Phd in law from Oxford, but also that he "does not have a master's or bachelor's degree".

Kordan accused the media of launching a smear campaign against him by portraying him as a "terrorist" and "violence-seeking person", naming Israeli radio and unnamed Persian-speaking media based outside Iran.

He had shown the purported degree to members of parliament on August 5 but he told the assembly on Tuesday that he would not have presented the degree if he had doubted its validity.

But Bijan Nobaveh, another member of parliament, accused him of "still lying".

He said politicians had sought to "restore the reputation" of the Islamic system by the impeachment as Kordan "had reduced public faith and confidence in the system".

Kordan replaced Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, a critic of Ahmadinejad, in the key post in one of the many cabinet reshuffles since the president took office in 2005.

'Utter disbelief'

The interior ministry is charged with maintaining domestic security as well as holding elections, appointing provincial governors and issuing permits for political parties and non-governmental organisations.

Kordan served for years as the administrative and financial vice-president of Iran state television when it was headed by Larijani. 

He has also served in Iran's oil ministry.

Kordan had asserted that the degree was issued for his "managerial and executive experience and for submitting a thesis to Oxford University via a person who had opened an affiliate office in Tehran in English-language affairs".

He later said he had approached the university after politicians cast doubt on his degree, but "to my utter disbelief, the university did not confirm [the degree] when my representative went there."

Kordan said he had pressed charges against the person who claimed to be the university's representative in Tehran as soon as he realised his degree was fake.

>>>>

Exposure to some forms of entertainment is a corrupting influence on children, leading teens who watch sexy programs into early pregnancies and children who play violent video games to adopt aggressive behavior, researchers said on Monday.

Researchers at the RAND research organization said their three-year study was the first to link viewing of racy television programing with risky sexual behavior by teens.

"Our findings suggest that television may play a significant role in the high rates of teenage pregnancy in the United States," said Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist who led the research at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

"We're not saying we're establishing causation, but we are saying this is one factor that we were able to prospectively link to the teen pregnancy outcome," Chandra said in a phone interview.

The researchers recruited adolescents aged 12 to 17 and surveyed them three times between 2001 and 2004, asking about television viewing habits, sexual behavior and pregnancy.

In findings that covered 718 teenagers, there were 91 pregnancies. The top 10th of adolescents who watched the most sexy programing were at double the risk of becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy compared to the 10th who watched the fewest such programs, according to the study published in the journal Pediatrics.

The study focused on 23 free and cable television programs popular among teenagers including situation comedies, dramas, reality programs and animated shows. Comedies had the most sexual content and reality programs the least.

"The television content we see very rarely highlights the negative aspects of sex or the risks and responsibilities," Chandra said. "So if teens are getting any information about sex they're rarely getting information about pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases."

TEEN PREGNANCY ON DECLINE

Teen pregnancy rates in the United States have declined sharply since 1991 but remain high compared to other industrialized nations. Nearly 1 million girls aged 15 to 19 years old become pregnant yearly, or about 20 percent of sexually active females in that age group. Most of the pregnancies were unplanned, the report said.

Young mothers are more likely to quit school, require public assistance and live in poverty, it said.

"Television is just one part of a teenager's media diet that helps to influence their behavior. We should also look at the roles that magazines, the Internet and music play in teens' reproductive health," Chandra said, acknowledging still other factors can influence teen sex habits.

Living in a two-parent family reduced the chances of a teen getting pregnant or causing a pregnancy. Black teenagers, and those with discipline problems, had higher risks.

The report suggested broadcasters provide more realistic portrayals of the consequences of sex and that parents limit their children's access to sexually explicit programing.

A second study in the journal added to existing evidence that youths who play violent video games -- a worldwide trend with American children averaging 13 hours of video gaming a week -- led to increased physically aggressive behavior.

Researchers from the United States and Japan evaluated more than 1,200 Japanese youths and 364 Americans between 9 and 18 years old and found a "significant risk factor for later physically aggressive behavior ... across very different cultures."

Aggressiveness in children is also associated with violence later on, according to the study by researchers from Iowa State University in Ames, the National Institute on Media and the Family in Minneapolis and Ochanomizu University and Keio University in Tokyo.

Andrew Stern

A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic militants, a human rights group said.

Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses. The Islamic militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.

Initial local media reports said Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty International she was 13. Some of the Somali journalists who first reported the killing later told Amnesty International that they had reported she was 23 based upon her physical appearance.

Calls to Somali government officials and the local administration in Kismayo rang unanswered Saturday.

"This child suffered a horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayo," David Copeman, Amnesty International's Somalia campaigner, said in a statement Friday.

Somalia is among the world's most violent and impoverished countries. The nation of some 8 million people has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 then turned on each other.

A quarter of Somali children die before age 5; nearly every public institution has collapsed. Fighting is a daily occurrence, with violent deaths reported nearly every day.

Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaida have been battling the government and its Ethiopian allies since their combined forces pushed the Islamists from the capital in December 2006. Within weeks of being driven out, the Islamists launched an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians.

In recent months, the militants appear to be gaining strength. The group has taken over the port of Kismayo, Somalia's third-largest city, and dismantled pro-government roadblocks. They also effectively closed the Mogadishu airport by threatening to attack any plane using it. >>>> 

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Parents arrested at wedding of boy, 7, girl, 5

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A Pakistani court has freed the parents of a 5-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy on bail a day after police raided an illegal wedding for the children.

Police arrested the parents and a cleric preparing to perform the ceremony before 100 guests in Karachi on Friday.

On Saturday, a judge ordered the parents released pending the next hearing in their case.

Marriage below the age of 18 is illegal in Pakistan, though some Muslim scholars say it is permissible if the bride and groom have reached puberty.

The parents reportedly arranged the wedding to end a long feud between the families.

A Pakistan Human Rights Commission official says the maximum punishment for the parents would be one month in prison and a fine of about $10. >>>>

About 40 percent of women report having sexual problems, but most aren't bothered by them, according to the largest study ever published on a women's sexual health.

The study, led by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and published in the November issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, found that only 12 percent of women suffering from a low sex drive are actually bothered by the problem.

"Sexual problems are common in women, but problems associated with personal distress, those which are truly bothersome and affect a woman's quality of life, are much less frequent." said study leader, Dr. Jan Shifren, of Massachusetts General's Obstetrics and Gynecology Service, in a news release. "For a sexual concern to be considered a medical problem, it must be associated with distress, so it's important to assess this in both research studies and patient care."

The study surveyed 32,000 women aged 18 to older than 100 from across the U.S. In addition to asking standardized questions about their sexual health, the survey also measured the women’s distress related to their sex lives — including feelings of anger, guilt, frustration, and worry.

Forty-three percent of respondents reported some level of sexual dysfunction — 39 percent reported low levels of desire, 26 percent had problems with arousal and 21 percent had difficulties with orgasm.

But distress related to any of these problems was reported by only 12 percent of study participants. Although the prevalence of sexual problems was highest in women older than 65, that group reported the lowest levels of distress, while distress was reported most frequently in women ages 45-64.

The youngest group, ages 18-44, had lower levels of both problems and distress. Women with depression were more than twice as likely to report distress over any type of sexual problem compared to those not suffering from depression. >>>> 

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We all know the obvious ways to add years to your life: Don't smoke, eat your veggies, wear a seat belt (even in the backseat). But there are other, lesser-known habits and attributes that can help you live to a ripe old age.

YOU SKIP SODA (EVEN DIET)
I finally kicked my diet cola habit in my 20s, a good thing too, because scientists in Boston recently found that drinking one or more regular or diet sodas every day doubles your risk of metabolic syndrome-- combination of conditions that increase your chances of heart disease and diabetes. The exact culprit isn't completely understood, but it could be the caramel color added to colas and other dark sodas, which increased the risk for metabolic syndrome in animals. Experts also speculate that exposing your tastebuds to the sweet fizzy flavor of soda conditions you to crave sugary foods, which can lead to weight gain. Whatever the reason, it's an easy enough habit to quit. Club soda (sodium free, of course) with a splash of juice satisfies the fizz craving with just enough sweetness. For a good alternative, try Sassy Water.

YOUR LEGS ARE STRONG
Lower-body strength means you also have good balance, flexibility, and endurance. While you probably care more about how your legs look in a mini and a pair of knee-high boots right now, as you get older those attributes reduce your risk of falls, injuries, and hip fractures, all of which are associated with declining health in older folks. So do some squats, lunges, and stair climbing to look good now-- and be strong and healthy later. It's win-win! Get up to 10 pounds lighter and take 10 years off your body with this workout.
A few years ago, on a morning like any other, I had a sudden realization: I was in danger of wasting my life. As I stared out the rain-spattered window of a New York City bus, I saw that the years were slipping by.

“What do I want from life?” I asked myself. “Well…I want to be happy.” I had many reasons to be happy: My husband was the tall, dark, handsome love of my life; we had two delightful girls, ages 1 and 7; I was a writer, living in my favorite city. I had friends; I had my health; I didn’t have to color my hair. But too often I sniped at my husband or the drugstore clerk. I felt dejected after even a minor professional setback. I lost my temper easily. Is that how a happy person would act?

I decided on the spot to begin a systematic study of happiness. (A little intense, I know. But that’s the kind of thing that appeals to me.) In the end, I spent a year test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and tips from popular culture. If I followed all the advice, I wanted to know, would it work?

Well, the year is over, and I can say: It did. I made myself happier. And along the way I learned a lot about how to be happier. Here are those lessons.

1. Don’t start with profundities.
When I began my Happiness Project, I realized pretty quickly that, rather than jumping in with lengthy daily meditation or answering deep questions of self-identity, I should start with the basics, like going to sleep at a decent hour and not letting myself get too hungry. Science backs this up; these two factors have a big impact on happiness. Learn how to Get a Good Night's Sleep.

2. Do let the sun go down on anger.
I had always scrupulously aired every irritation as soon as possible, to make sure I vented all bad feelings before bedtime. Studies show, however, that the notion of anger catharsis is poppycock. Expressing anger related to minor, fleeting annoyances just amplifies bad feelings, while not expressing anger often allows it to dissipate. (See 16 Ways to Manage Your Anger from Real Simple)

3. Fake it till you feel it.
Feelings follow actions. If I’m feeling low, I deliberately act cheery, and I find myself actually feeling happier. If I’m feeling angry at someone, I do something thoughtful for her and my feelings toward her soften. This strategy is uncannily effective.

4. Realize that anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
Challenge and novelty are key elements of happiness. The brain is stimulated by surprise, and successfully dealing with an unexpected situation gives a powerful sense of satisfaction. People who do new things — learn a game, travel to unfamiliar places — are happier than people who stick to familiar activities that they already do well. I often remind myself to “Enjoy the fun of failure” and tackle some daunting goal.

5. Don’t treat the blues with a “treat.”
Often the things I choose as “treats” aren’t good for me. The pleasure lasts a minute, but then feelings of guilt and loss of control and other negative consequences deepen the lousiness of the day. While it’s easy to think, I’ll feel good after I have a few glasses of wine…a pint of ice cream…a cigarette…a new pair of jeans, it’s worth pausing to ask whether this will truly make things better.

6. Buy some happiness.
Our basic psychological needs include feeling loved, secure, and good at what we do and having a sense of control. Money doesn’t automatically fill these requirements, but it sure can help. I’ve learned to look for ways to spend money to stay in closer contact with my family and friends; to promote my health; to work more efficiently; to eliminate sources of irritation and marital conflict; to support important causes; and to have enlarging experiences. For example, when my sister got married, I splurged on a better digital camera. It was expensive, but it gave me a lot of happiness bang for the buck.

7. Don’t insist on the best.
There are two types of decision makers. Satisficers (yes, satisficers) make a decision once their criteria are met. When they find the hotel or the pasta sauce that has the qualities they want, they’re satisfied. Maximizers want to make the best possible decision. Even if they see a bicycle or a backpack that meets their requirements, they can’t make a decision until they’ve examined every option. Satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers. Maximizers expend more time and energy reaching decisions, and they’re often anxious about their choices. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

8. Exercise to boost energy.
I knew, intellectually, that this worked, but how often have I told myself, “I’m just too tired to go to the gym”? Exercise is one of the most dependable mood-boosters. Even a 10-minute walk can brighten my outlook. Try one of these 15-Minute Workouts.

9. Stop nagging.
I knew my nagging wasn’t working particularly well, but I figured that if I stopped, my husband would never do a thing around the house. Wrong. If anything, more work got done. Plus, I got a surprisingly big happiness boost from quitting nagging. I hadn’t realized how shrewish and angry I had felt as a result of speaking like that. I replaced nagging with the following persuasive tools: wordless hints (for example, leaving a new lightbulb on the counter); using just one word (saying “Milk!” instead of talking on and on); not insisting that something be done on my schedule; and, most effective of all, doing a task myself. Why did I get to set the assignments?

10. Take action.
Some people assume happiness is mostly a matter of inborn temperament: You’re born an Eeyore or a Tigger, and that’s that. Although it’s true that genetics play a big role, about 40 percent of your happiness level is within your control. Taking time to reflect, and conscious steps to make your life happier, really does work. So use these tips to start your own Happiness Project. I promise it won’t take you a whole year.

Liz Vaccariello 

A new study has found a direct link between warm hands, and having emotionally warm thoughts about someone.

The study was led by Lawrence Williams of the University of Colorado.

The study was carried out with a group of college students in a controlled experiment.

The student volunteers were tested at Yale University’s psychology building.

They gave half of the students a cut of hot coffee, and the other half an iced coffee.

They held the cups of coffee for just a few seconds while riding an elevator.

The coffee was given to them by a woman who was taking them up in an elevator.

During the elevator ride, they were handed the cup of coffee in a discrete way for just a couple of seconds.

Once on the fourth floor, the students had to then fill out a questionnaire, which included evaluating the personality of the woman.

The students who held the hot coffee stated that the woman was more generous, social, and happier.

This compared directly to the students who held the iced coffee.

The study found a direct link between having warm hands, and feeling emotionally warm about someone else.

This was backed up by another similar experiment with the same result.

The study was published in the journal Science. >>>>

The son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott was launched into orbit early Sunday (US time) aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket to become the sixth paying visitor to the International Space Station. Additionally, Richard Garriott becomes the first second-generation American astronaut to launch into space.

The 47 year old computer video game pioneer launched from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:01am EDT (0701 GMT). Creator of the Ultima computer game series, Garriott paid $30 million for the 10 day trip to the ISS. The trip takes place under an agreement between Russia’s Federal Space Agency and Space Adventures.

"Today, my dream of following in my father's footsteps to explore new frontiers is being realized," Garriott said. "It's with honor and appreciation that I launch on my greatest adventure yet, and step into a role assumed by only five private individuals before me."

Garriott is travelling aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 with Michael Fincke and Yury Lonchakov, who will stay behind aboard the ISS as they begin Expedition 18. The third member of Expedition 18, NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoffc, is already aboard the station. Garriott’s two travelling companions will replace Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko of Russia, who will return to Earth with Garriott on October 23.

"I feel well prepared for this flight, and have complete faith in my crew mates, our beautiful rocket, and the huge number of people it takes to launch our Soyuz and operate the ISS," Garriott wrote on his Web site prior to launch. "I wish I could share this experience with each of you, in the way I have had the opportunity to experience it."

Watching the liftoff was Garriott’s father, as well as Space Adventures’ next paying tourist Charles Simonyi, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has himself put down a $5 million down payment for a future Space Adventures flight. 

YURI KOCHETKOV

 

Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace.

Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan.
In many ways this province, Bamian, is unique. A half-dozen years of relative peace in this part of the country since the fall of the Taliban and a lessening of lawlessness and disorder have allowed women to push the boundaries here.

Most of the people in Bamian are ethnic Hazaras, Shiite Muslims who are in any case more open than most Afghans to the idea of women working outside the home.

But the changes in women's lives here are also an enormous step for Afghanistan as a whole. And they may point the way to broader possibilities for women, eventually, if peace can be secured in this very conservative Muslim society, which has been dominated by militia commanders and warlords during the last 30 years of war. In a country with low rankings on many indicators of social progress, women and girls are the most disadvantaged.

More than 80% of Afghan women are illiterate. Women's life expectancy is only 45 years, lower than that of men, mostly because of the very high rates of death during pregnancy. Forced marriage and under-age marriage are common for girls, and only 13% of girls complete primary school, compared with 32% of boys.

The cult of war left women particularly vulnerable. For years now they have been the victims of abduction and rape. Hundreds of thousands were left war widows, mired in desperate poverty. Particularly in the last years of

Taliban rule, even widows, who had no one to provide for them, were not allowed to work or leave the home unaccompanied by a male relative.

Indeed, growing economic hardship has helped drive some women to join the work force or to take other bold steps as they try to help their families cope with problems like a severe drought, rising food prices and unemployment. >>>>

A commuter train engineer sent a cell phone text message 22 seconds before his commuter train crashed head-on into freight train in Southern California last month, killing 25 people, federal investigators said Wednesday.

Cell phone records of Robert Sanchez, who was among the dead, show he received a text message a minute and 20 seconds before the crash and sent one about a minute later, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a news release.

Investigators are looking into why Sanchez ran through a red signal before the Metrolink train collided with a Union Pacific train Sept. 12 on a curve in the San Fernando Valley community of Chatsworth.

The records obtained from Sanchez's cell phone provider also show that he sent 24 text messages and received 21 over a two-hour period during his morning shift. During his afternoon shift, he received seven messages and sent five.

Sanchez sent his last text message at 4:22:01 p.m. According to the freight train's on-board recorder, the accident occurred at 4:22:23 p.m.

Metrolink board member Richard Katz said in an interview that the NTSB told his agency that another engineer on a Metrolink train has been suspended for sending a text message from his cell phone at about the same time as the Sept. 12 collision. That engineer was not identified.

Katz said Metrolink officials don't know whom the other engineer was texting.

Metrolink's engineers are supplied by a contractor, Veolia Transportation. A spokeswoman for the company, Erica Swerdlow, declined to comment on Katz's statements, saying she couldn't discuss personnel records. But she did say that the company has a strict policy on cell phone use and that anyone who violates it will face discipline.

NTSB investigators continue to correlate times from Sanchez's cell phone, the train recorders and data from the railroad signal system, officials said.

"I am pleased with the progress of this major investigation to date," acting NTSB Chairman Mark V. Rosenker said in a statement. "We are continuing to pursue many avenues of inquiry to find what caused this accident and what can be done to prevent such a tragedy in the future."

NTSB spokesman Terry Williams declined to release information about who was exchanging text messages with Sanchez or the content of the messages.

In the days after the crash, several teenage train enthusiasts told a reporter that Sanchez sent them a text message just before the collision. Federal investigators spurred by the media reports interviewed two 14-year-old boys, who they said cooperated in the investigation and provided their cell phone data.

One of the teens showed KCBS-TV a message from Sanchez, which had a 4:22 p.m. time stamp. The message read: "Yea ... usually (at) north Camarillo." The Metrolink 111 train he was operating stops in Camarillo, northwest of Chatsworth.

The collision, which also injured more than 130 people, occurred on a track shared by both freight and commuter trains.

Investigators said Sanchez was supposed to stop and allow the approaching freight train to switch onto a parallel track, but instead went past the red signal and crossed the closed switch, putting the commuter train on a collision course.

The Metrolink train was coming around a curve at 42 mph and the freight train was coming out of a tunnel at 41 mph.

Federal investigators said the engineers of each train had no more than four or five seconds to react before the crash. The freight engineer activated the emergency brake two seconds before impact, but brakes were never applied on the Metrolink train.

Given the speed of the trains and the time each engineer had to see the other, a collision at that point could not have been prevented.

DAISY NGUYEN

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Engineer Was Texting Seconds Before Crash

The engineer implicated in a train accident last month that killed 25 people in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley sent a text message from his cell phone 22 seconds before the crash, federal investigators said today.

Federal investigators combed through the cell phone records of 46-year-old Robert Sanchez, who was killed in the crash, and found the text message, which was sent at 4:22 p.m., the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement.

Investigators are still trying to pinpoint what caused Sanchez to run through a red-light signal and collide with a Union Pacific train Sept. 12 in Chatsworth, Calif.

The accident, which also injured 130 people, was the deadliest rail mishap in the United States since 1993.

Attention has turned to text messages sent and received by Sanchez since several teenaged "train enthusiasts" told television reporters from Los Angeles' CBS2 that they had been communicating with Sanchez moments before the crash.

But Sanchez's brother, John P. Sanchez, in an interview with The Los Angeles Times, said he feared his brother's reputation was being unfairly tarnished before all of the facts could be gathered and asked for a "more thorough investigation into whether Metrolink signal lights, radios and other safety equipment were functioning." >>>>

Leads to Appreciation for Oily Fillets

Packs of Fish Catch On as Currency, Former Inmates Say; Officials Carp

When Larry Levine helped prepare divorce papers for a client a few years ago, he got paid in mackerel. Once the case ended, he says, "I had a stack of macks."

Mr. Levine and his client were prisoners in California's Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex. Like other federal inmates around the country, they found a can of mackerel -- the "mack" in prison lingo -- was the standard currency.

"It's the coin of the realm," says Mark Bailey, who paid Mr. Levine in fish. Mr. Bailey was serving a two-year tax-fraud sentence in connection with a chain of strip clubs he owned. Mr. Levine was serving a nine-year term for drug dealing. Mr. Levine says he used his macks to get his beard trimmed, his clothes pressed and his shoes shined by other prisoners. "A haircut is two macks," he says, as an expected tip for inmates who work in the prison barber shop.

There's been a mackerel economy in federal prisons since about 2004, former inmates and some prison consultants say. That's when federal prisons prohibited smoking and, by default, the cigarette pack, which was the earlier gold standard.

Prisoners need a proxy for the dollar because they're not allowed to possess cash. Money they get from prison jobs (which pay a maximum of 40 cents an hour, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons) or family members goes into commissary accounts that let them buy things such as food and toiletries. After the smokes disappeared, inmates turned to other items on the commissary menu to use as currency.

Books of stamps were one easy alternative. "It was like half a book for a piece of fruit," says Tony Serra, a well-known San Francisco criminal-defense attorney who last year finished nine months in Lompoc on tax charges. Elsewhere in the West, prisoners use PowerBars or cans of tuna, says Ed Bales, a consultant who advises people who are headed to prison. But in much of the federal prison system, he says, mackerel has become the currency of choice.

Mackerel supplier Global Source Marketing Inc. says demand from prisons has grown since 2004. In recent years, demand has switched from cans -- which wardens don't like because inmates can turn them into makeshift knives -- to plastic-and-foil pouches of mackerel fillets, says Jon Linder, a vice president at supplier Power Commissary Inc., in Bohemia, N.Y.

Mackerel is hot in prisons in the U.S., but not so much anywhere else, says Mark Muntz, president of Global Source, which imports fillets of the oily, dark-fleshed fish from Asian canneries. Mr. Muntz says he's tried marketing mackerel to discount retailers. "We've even tried 99-cent stores," he says. "It never has done very well at all, regardless of the retailer, but it's very popular in the prisons."

Outstripping the Tuna

Mr. Muntz says he sold more than $1 million of mackerel for federal prison commissaries last year. It accounted for about half his commissary sales, he says, outstripping the canned tuna, crab, chicken and oysters he offers.

Unlike those more expensive delicacies, former prisoners say, the mack is a good stand-in for the greenback because each can (or pouch) costs about $1 and few -- other than weight-lifters craving protein -- want to eat it.

So inmates stash macks in lockers provided by the prison and use them to buy goods, including illicit ones such as stolen food and home-brewed "prison hooch," as well as services, such as shoeshines and cell cleaning.

The Bureau of Prisons views any bartering among prisoners as fishy. "We are aware that inmates attempt to trade amongst themselves items that are purchased from the commissary," says bureau spokeswoman Felicia Ponce in an email. She says guards respond by limiting the amount of goods prisoners can stockpile. Those who are caught bartering can end up in the "Special Housing Unit" -- an isolation area also known as the "hole" -- and could lose credit they get for good behavior.

For that reason -- and since communications between inmates and nonprisoners are monitored by prison officials -- current inmates can't discuss mackerel transactions without risking discipline, say several lawyers and consultants who represent incarcerated clients.

Ethan Roberts knows about mackerel discipline first hand. Mr. Roberts, who was released in 2007 after serving eight years on a methamphetamine charge at prisons including the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, says he got busted for various piscine transactions. "I paid gambling debts" with mackerel, he says. "One time I bought cigarettes for a friend who was in the hole."

Mr. Roberts and other ex-inmates say some prisoners make specially prepared food with items from the prison kitchen and sell it for mackerel.

"I knew a guy who would buy ingredients and use the microwaves to cook meals. Then people used mack to buy it from him," says Jonson Miller, an adjunct history professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia who spent two months in federal prison after being arrested at a protest on federal property.

Mr. Miller was released in 2003, when prisoners were getting ready for cigarettes to be phased out, and says inmates then were already moving to mackerel.

Since the Pensacola Federal Prison Camp commissary in Florida was only open one day a week, some inmates would run a "prison 7-Eleven" out of their lockers, reselling commissary items at a premium in exchange for mackerel, says Bill Bailey, who served three months last year on a computer-hacking charge. "I knew one guy who would actually pay rent to use half of another guy's locker because his locker wasn't large enough to store all his inventory," he says.

Big Haul

The Pensacola lockers, at about 4 feet high, could store plenty of macks, he says, a good thing for inmates who played poker, since a winning hand could result in a big haul. A spokeswoman for Pensacola said prison authorities discipline inmates who are caught bartering. At Lompoc, says spokeswoman Katie Shinn, guards "are not aware of such a problem with mackerel." When officials do catch inmates bartering, she says, punishments can include a loss of commissary privileges or moving to a less desirable cell.

There are other threats to the mackerel economy, says Mr. Linder, of Power Commissary. "There are shortages world-wide, in terms of the catch," he says. Combined with the weak dollar, that's led to a surging mack. Now, he says, a pouch of mackerel sells for more than $1 in most commissaries.

Another problem with mackerel is that once a prisoner's sentence is up, there's little to do with it -- the fish can't be redeemed for cash, and has little value on the outside. As a result, says Mr. Levine, prisoners approaching their release must either barter or give away their stockpiles.

That's what Mr. Levine did when he got out of prison last year. Since then, he's set up a consulting business offering advice to inmates and soon-to-be prisoners. He consults on various matters, such as how to request facility transfers and how to file grievances against wardens.

It's similar to the work he provided fellow inmates when he was in prison. But now, he says, "I get paid in American dollars."

JUSTIN SCHECK

A convicted sex offender died Sunday during a struggle with a father who found the naked man in or near his 17-year-old daughter's bedroom, police said.

Police responding to a call from the city's northwest side about 3:20 a.m. found 64-year-old Robert McNally on the hallway floor with his arm around the neck of 52-year-old David T. Meyers, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police spokesman Sgt. Matthew Mount said Meyers had a heart condition and may have had a heart attack. An autopsy was planned.

Police said Meyers was naked except for a mask and latex gloves and had entered the home through a window near the girl's bedroom with rope, condoms and a knife. He was familiar with the home's layout because it belonged to a relative, police said.

The girl awoke and screamed when she saw the man in her room, police said. The father responded and struggled with the intruder while the girl's mother phoned 911.

Police did not anticipate any charges against McNally.

"If a person breaks into your home, you are justified in using deadly force in defending your family," said Mount. "In this situation, I don't think he was trying to kill him, he was trying to hold him down."

Meyers had served 10 years in prison for criminal confinement and sexual deviate conduct and was wanted in Boone County for failure to register as a sex offender. He was registered as a sex offender in Marion County.

Police said Meyers lived with his mother and had recently lost his job.

The death is under investigation and will be reviewed by a Marion County prosecutor.

"Nobody wins," McNally told The Indianapolis Star. "It's a lose-lose situation for everybody. He has family also."

He said his daughter went to church Sunday after the incident. >>>>

With one hand, Yang Aiping held her squirming 4-month-old son amid the crowd in the maternity hospital. With the other, she dug through her purse for the near-empty bag of milk powder she worried had sickened him.

"Is this brand OK?" she asked, holding up the packet of Bei Yin Mei formula. "I'm still not sure. I don't have time to watch the news."

Nor does she have the time to breast-feed her baby.

The number of Chinese women who rely on breast milk alone to feed their newborns has dropped as working mothers have less time to nurse and fall prey to advertising about the benefits of infant formulas.

Such economic pressures have taken China's tainted milk crisis to every corner of the country. They also explain why a country disgusted by an even deadlier fake baby formula scandal four years ago has been so badly hit again.

More than 54,000 children have been sickened by tainted milk products so far. Four deaths have been blamed on the products.

As the scandal grows, the World Health Organization and UNICEF are publicly declaring breast-feeding as the healthiest option for babies.

But it's not an option for many women like Yang, one of Shanghai's millions of migrant workers, who spends most of her waking hours on the job. Less than two months after giving birth, she stopped trying to pump her breasts before and after work on a construction site and switched to milk powder. She worried her own milk, and her time, was not enough.

Then the tainted milk scandal broke and, like millions of other Chinese parents, she suddenly had to ask if the formula she was feeding her son might kill him. Fortunately, Bei Yin Mei's infant formula was declared melamine-free by authorities and Yang's son was given a clean bill of health by doctors.

But thousands of other babies have been hospitalized with kidney stones or kidney failure from the milk powder they drank.

The melamine scandal follows one in 2004 when 12 babies in eastern China's Anhui province died of malnutrition after drinking fake powdered formula. More than 200 babies suffered wasted limbs and swollen heads — common symptoms of malnutrition.

Baby formula and other substitutes, such as soy milk, rice porridge, and cow or goat milk, are necessary staples in rural areas where many young parents are forced to leave their children at home with grandparents or relatives to find work in the cities.

"The countryside doesn't have any more young people. Even the young women who could breast-feed for you are gone," said Yang Li, a migrant worker from central Chongqing who was selling bags and watches along a Shanghai street. "It's difficult. You have to make money."

The latest figures from China's Ministry of Health show that 71.9 percent of mothers of infants under 4 months practiced breast-feeding in 2007. The rate is similar to that in the United States, but lower than in many European countries.

Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Turkey all have general breast-feeding rates above 90 percent.

But health experts say figures on China's nursing habits can be misleading because the number of mothers who exclusively breast-feed — who don't supplement breast milk with animal milk, commercial formula or other substitutes — is actually declining.

According to the Chinese Food and Nutrition Surveillance System, 76.6 percent of rural women exclusively breast-fed their children in the first four months of life in 1998. But by 2002, only 60 percent of rural women were exclusively breast-feeding their newborns.

Ling Shi, a researcher in family and reproductive health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, blames the decline on the unpopularity of pumping breast milk and the surge in migrant labor. But she says TV commercials are also to blame.

"There are a lot of advertisements now on Chinese television showing the cute baby face and the formula milk and they are talking about all the advantages and strengths of the baby formula," said Ling. "These advertisements deliver some very wrong messages to families."

In China, generations raised on food rations often see baby formula as a status symbol, giving it to new mothers as gifts.

"Some people even think feeding with milk powder is a way to show off," said Dai Yaohua, a researcher with the Beijing-based Capital Institute of Pediatrics.

Breast-feeding supporters say a strong message is needed to fight the baby milk formula industry, which has a powerful voice in China. It spent $765 million on advertising last year, according to Nielsen Media Research figures. Spending this year seems to be on the rise, with $657 million in advertising as of the end of August.

Yang and other migrant worker mothers in Shanghai said they had believed milk powder was not just a healthy alternative to breast milk, but one that could make their babies smarter.

One brand that had not been removed from some Shanghai shelves over the weekend, Dumex, features a dolphin in a mortarboard cap and the letters "IQ."

UNICEF has criticized such product claims as extreme and unethical. China's UNICEF communications chief, Bill Rutstein, said the organization is working with China's Health Ministry to prepare pro-breast-feeding announcements for national television.

"Ideally, all infants should be fed exclusively with breast milk for the first six months of life," said a statement released Thursday by the China offices of UNICEF and the WHO.

The tainted milk crisis has driven Chinese worried mothers of every income to find alternatives to milk powder, with wet nurses becoming popular again. But that's a solution left mostly to the wealthy.

For now, some Chinese women are offering to share or even sell their breast milk.