World at a glance

Blinking is bad newsLONDON: The unease some people feel while watching the news could have more to do with the newsreader than the storie...

Blinking is bad news

LONDON: The unease some people feel while watching the news could have more to do with the newsreader than the stories being reported, Japanese scientists said on Friday. Television newscasters blink more often and with less regularity than other people, which could convey a sense of nervousness. 8220;When the audience feels uneasiness or nervousness while watching news broadcasts, it might not be due to the bad news itself, but to the high and irregular frequency of the newscasters8217; blink rates,8221; Japanese ophthalmologist Dr Kazuo Tsubota said in a letter to the Lancet Medical Journal. Blinking is an involuntary movement that protects the eye. But Tsubota and his colleagues at the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo said blinking patterns can convey different emotions. When they studied videotapes of 24 Japanese newscasters using autocues, they found they blinked once every second, compared to once every four seconds for a control group of volunteers. One woman broadcasterblinked 176 times per minute. People usually blink less while using visual display terminals but the opposite was true for the broadcasters. 8220;Since newscasters are presumably under pressure not to make errors and the environment in the TV studios is bright and dry, these factors may also affect their blinking patterns,8221; the doctors added.

A good head for figures

SYDNEY: It8217;s not the radiant smile, the gorgeous hair, the peerless complexion or the beautiful face that makes the supermodel 8211; it8217;s the freakish figure, a researcher in Australia said on Friday. Less than one in a 100 young women have a body shape like a supermodel, said Tim Olds, a lecturer at the University of South Australia. And only two per cent have the right height, weight and body shape to bother even thinking about a career in modelling. To come to these less-than-amazing conclusions, Dr Olds and his team ran the statistics of 3,200 women aged between 18 and 34 through a computer to see how many matched up to the height, weightand shape of the current crop of supermodels. Less than one per cent of the sample had the ideal height 177 cm and weight 54 kg to warrant a daydream about getting on the cover of Vogue. Dr Olds said the figures he came up with were 8220;a sliding scale from the impossible to the semi-achievable8221;. But the models8217; body shapes being just within the realm of the possible was important, he said. 8220;It8217;s important because if women didn8217;t feel that these shapes were just within their grasp, they wouldn8217;t diet, they wouldn8217;t exercise, they wouldn8217;t buy the clothes,8221; he said.

8220;They are meant to be semi-achievable so women will keep those consuming habits up.8221;

Living long in Vietnam

HANOI: Vietnam8217;s population includes 17 people between 120 and 130 years old, according to official census figures released on Friday. They are among the 3,695 centenarians 8212; 77 per cent of them women 8212; documented by the Central Census Steering Committee, which presented its preliminary findings on the first populationcount in a decade. Sixteen of the 17 oldest are ethnic minority Vietnamese, including 130-year-old Lu Thi May, a minority Hmong woman listed as the country8217;s oldest person. The oldest ethnic Vietnamese comes in at a sprightly 120. The remarkable list also includes a 129-year-old woman, the country8217;s oldest man at 126, and three 125 year-olds. The committee would not go so far as to say May is the oldest person on earth. Jeanne Calmet, generally acknowledged at the time to have held that honour, died in 1997 at age 122. May was born in the late 1860s during the reign of Emperor Tu Duc, the last emperor of Vietnam as an independent state before Indochina came under French control. The census determined there to be 76.3 million people in the Communist-ruled nation as of April 1 8212; about three million fewer people than originally thought. It also said Vietnam has four times as many children as older people, though this ratio is expected to drop to two to one by 2025 as the birth rate drops and the nationgradually ages.

UN lists high-risk children

NEW YORK: Children are at risk most in Angola, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, the United Nations Children8217;s Fund has said in an attempt to capture in numbers the factors that thwart normal development. Releasing what it called its child risk measure,8217; the agency said on Thursday that it was trying to develop ways to measure the environment and conditions in which children up to 18 years live, taking into account mortality rates, nutrition, primary education, security and health. Countries with the highest risks, determined by a scale of 100, are Angola 96, Sierra Leone 95, Afghanistan 94, Somalia 92 and Ethiopia 85. A total of 16 African countries are classed as high risk. Afghanistan 94 led central Asia where the average risk was put at 41. Cambodia 60 led Southeast Asia and the Pacific while Haiti 47 led the Americas where the average rating is ten. The agency warned that the measure is a new and unfinished idea, hoping that it wouldtrigger more discussion. Children in about 20 developed countries face non-significant risks, including Singapore, Australia, Japan, Portugal, Germany, the US and Britain. Costa Rica and Argentina also have non-significant risks.