Femeile îşi petrec, în medie, 10 ani din viaţă ţinând cură de slăbire, potrivit unui studiu realizat de cercetătorii britanici, care reflectă importanţa greutăţii corporale pentru reprezentantele sexului frumos şi presiunile la care acestea sunt supuse în societate.

Studiul a scos la iveală faptul că fiecare femeie adoptă, în medie, două planuri de alimentaţie sănătoasă în fiecare an, fiecare dintre acestea durând, în medie, cinci săptămâni, informează telegraph.co.uk.

Acest lucru înseamnă o medie de 104 diete alimentare între 18 şi 70 de ani, şi un total de 10 ani din viaţă în care femeile ţin cure de slăbire.

Cu fiecare dietă s-ar putea renunţa la o medie de 2,86 kilograme, adică aproape 6 kilograme anual.

Însă, un sfert dintre femei nu reuşesc să piardă niciun kilogram, iar faptul că femeile urmează, în medie, două cure de slăbire pe an sugerează că, deşi femeile slăbesc, nu reuşesc să-şi menţină greutatea.

Studiul a mai scos la iveală faptul că 10% dintre femei petrec 25 de ani din viaţă ţinând cură de săbire.

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Dacia va lansa în România modelul în două volume Sandero la 3 iunie, iar comenzile pentru maşină vor putea fi preluate după lansare, astfel încât primele livrări către clienţi vor fi realizate la sfârşitul lunii iunie, au declarat, luni, agenţiei MEDIAFAX, oficiali ai companiei.

Dacia Sandero a fost prezentat pentru prima dată la salonul auto de la Geneva, desfăşurat în prima parte a lunii martie. Modelul Dacia Sandero este derivat din automobilul Renault Sandero, comercializat de grupul francez în Brazilia şi Argentina.

Maşina va fi disponibilă în patru variante de motorizare, respectiv două pe benzină (1,4 litri de 75 de Cai Putere şi 1,6 litri de 90 de cai Putere) şi două diesel (ambele de 1,5 litri, în variante de putere de 70 şi 85 de Cai Putere), la un preţ care nu va depăşi 9.500 de euro pentru cea mai echipată versiune, potrivit datelor anunţate de constructor la prezentarea modelului.

Dacia Sandero are o lungime de 4,02 metri, o lăţime de 1,75 metri şi un ampatament (distanţa dintre punţile roţilor din spate faţă de cele din partea frontală) de 2,59 metri. Înălţimea până la plafon în zona banchetei spate este de 878 milimetri.

Distanţa între nivelul genunchilor pasagerilor din spate şi spătarul scaunelor anterioare este de 145 milimetri, iar lăţimea la nivelul coatelor este de 1.425 milimetri.

Accesul la interior se face uşor datorită deschiderii ample a uşilor din spate, care poate ajunge până la 67 de grade.

Portbagajul are o capacitate de 320 de litri, iar prin rabatarea banchetei spate, fracţionabilă în proporţie de 1/3 – 2/3 (în funcţie de versiune), se poate ajunge la o capacitate de încărcare maximă de 1.200 de litri.

Modelul poate fi prevazut cu pană la patru airbag-uri. Airbag-ul pentru şofer a fost special conceput pentru Dacia Sandero, fiind prevăzut cu un orificiu prin care se reglează presiunea exercitată asupra corpului în cazul activării. Cele două airbag-uri laterale din zona capului şi a toracelui, disponibile opţional în funcţie de versiune, oferă o protecţie suplimentară în caz de impact lateral, completată de structurile de protecţie încorporate în portiere.

Printre dotările maşinii se numără ABS, airbag-uri frontale şi laterale, precum şi un sistem de asistenţă la frânarea de urgenţă în premieră pentru marca Dacia. Acest sistem permite reducerea distanţei de frânzare cu 20%.

Scaunele ranforsate au tetiere special concepute pentru a evita rănirea gâtului şi coloanei, în cazul unui impact brutal din spate. Aceasta configuraţie nouă ameliorează poziţia spatelui şi asigură o poziţie mai confortabila a capului.

Dacia Sandero va beneficia de trei ani de garanţie, sau 100.000 de kilometri, pe majoritatea pieţelor europene pe care va fi comercializată.

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BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) — The fiery leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant movement assured Lebanon on Monday that his movement will cooperate in the country’s political life.

Hassan Nasrallah said: “We don’t want to have control over Lebanon, or to have governance over Lebanon or to impose our ideas over the people of Lebanon, because we believe Lebanon to be a special and diverse country that needs the collaboration of everyone.”

Nasrallah spoke a day after Lebanon’s parliament elected Michel Sleiman the country’s president after a six-month vacancy in the position.

Nasrallah, speaking at a packed stadium, told his followers: “I renew my appeal and invitation for a true national partnership with no eliminations or impositions. The national unity government is not the victory of the opposition against the pro-government. It is the victory of all Lebanese.”

He said Sleiman’s election “renews the hope amongst the Lebanese people to a new era and a new start.”

“I must say that there are deep wounds from our side and theirs, we are both in front of two choices; either to expand the wounds and add salt to them or try to cure them for the sake of Lebanon and we prefer the second choice.”

The parliament had tried 19 times to vote on a new president, but failed because of disagreements over how to share power in a new Cabinet.

Lebanon’s Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition reached a deal last week aimed at ending an 18-month political crisis that pushed the country to the brink of civil war, and paved the way for Sleiman’s election.

The agreement, reached in Doha, Qatar, calls for a consensus government in which the Cabinet would be comprised of 30 posts — 16 for the majority, 11 for the Hezbollah-led opposition and three set aside for the president to nominate.

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(CNN) – NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander began sending photos of the planet’s surface on the first day of its three-month mission “to taste and sniff the northern polar site’s soil and ice,” the space agency said.

The first pictures, which the lander began taking shortly after touching down near Mars’ north pole — the end of a 422 million-mile trek — showed a pattern of brown polygons as far as the camera could see.

“It’s surprisingly close to what we expected and that’s what surprises me most,” said Peter Smith, the mission’s principal investigator. “I expected a bigger surprise.”

He added: “We see the lack of rocks that we expected, we see the polygons that we saw from space, we don’t see ice on the surface, but we think we will see it beneath the surface. It looks great to me.”

The Sunday landing on the Red Planet’s arctic plains — which ended a 296-day journey — was right on target, a feat NASA’s Ed Weiler compared to landing a hole-in-one with a golf ball from 10,000 miles.

The landing — dubbed the “seven minutes of terror” — was a nerve-wracking experience for mission managers, who have witnessed the failure of similar missions.

In mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, they celebrated the lander’s entry.

“It was better than we could have imagined,” Barry Goldstein, project manager for the Phoenix mission, said.

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SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) – In these hallowed halls, Indiana Jones almost seems out of place.

A banner with a two-dimensional cutout of the swashbuckling archaeologist swings through the lobby of Industrial Light and Magic, where life-size replicas of Darth Vader and Bobba Fett from “Star Wars” stand guard.

The home of George Lucas’ visual effects company is a high-tech temple to everything from the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” to the talking robots in “Transformers.” But Indy can’t take credit for the digital wizardry for which ILM has become famous over the last couple of decades.

Not yet, anyway. That’s because he hasn’t been around for 19 years, a time in which special effects has mostly migrated from soundstage to server.

The first three Indy films were gritty, sweaty and tactile affairs, largely because everything onscreen physically existed somewhere. Not so with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” — though that was almost the case.

When first approaching the latest “Indy,” director Steven Spielberg considered dusting off his old-school approach.

“He thought maybe we should just go back to the way we did things before, like matte paintings on glass and things like that,” said visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. “We entertained that idea for a little bit, but we realized we could serve the story better by using our digital tools.”

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MIAMI BEACH, Florida (AP) – Charity Simon is sharing a bedroom and a bathroom with two other young women she has never met during her stay at the Tropics Hotel & Hostel in Miami Beach. But that’s fine with her since she is saving a ton of money every night.

Simon, who is from Germany, used to stay in four-star hotels until she found out about hostels, which offer low-price lodging and the chance to make new friends.

“It started with I wanted to travel around the world as much as possible,” said Simon, who declined to give her age. “I asked what is it all about? They said a hostel is where you save first of all a lot of money, where you meet a lot of people international from all over.”

With its Art Deco buildings, bikini-clad women and late-night party scene, experts say South Beach is becoming a hot tourist destination for young travelers looking to spend less money on where they are going to sleep and more on sightseeing.

Anywhere between three to 14 travelers are cramped in one room at a hostel, sleeping on bunk beds. A room with 12 beds can run for $18 a night per person; an eight-bed room is $18; $30-$40 for smaller rooms.

At Jazz on South Beach Hostel, some rooms are divided by gender (four or six-bed rooms for women) while other rooms are mixed. Depending on occupancy, and if there are any empty rooms, people who are traveling together can request to room together - just like they would in a hotel.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraqi soldiers rounded up six teenagers in northern Iraq who were being trained, against their will, to carry out suicide bombings for al Qaeda in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said Monday.

Troops conducting house-to-house searches in Mosul found six teens, ages 15 to 18, who were being trained to perpetrate attacks against Iraqi security forces, said ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf.

Insurgents had threatened to kill the boys or their families if they refused to comply with the training, Deputy Interior Minister Kamal Ali Hussein told reporters.

“The Saudi insurgent threatened to rape our mothers and sisters, destroy our houses and kill our fathers if we did not cooperate with him,” one of the youths told The Associated Press in Mosul.

The boys were rounded up as part of the Mother of Two Springs operation targeting al Qaeda in Iraq in Mosul and Nineveh province. The offensive has netted the detentions of more than 1,300 suspects.

The teens had been trained in recent weeks, Khalaf said.

A Saudi national — a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq operative — had been one of their trainers, but he was believed to have died in a military operation, Khalaf said. It is not known where or when he was killed.

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CHARLEVILLE-MEZIERES, France (AFP) - The trial of French serial killer Michel Fourniret and his wife heads for a verdict this week, with prosecutors seeking life in jail for the couple described as a “devil with two faces.”

Fourniret, a 66-year-old machine operator, and Monique Olivier, a 59-year-old nurse, will be sentenced on Wednesday at the end of a two-month trial exposing one of France’s most gruesome cases in recent years.

Dubbed the “Ogre of the Ardennes”, the bespectacled grey-haired Fourniret has admitted to murdering, raping and kidnapping seven young girls and women between 1987 and 2001.

His wife is accused of helping him trap victims including 12-year-old Elizabeth Brichet, who was kidnapped while walking home from a friend’s house in 1989, strangled and buried on the grounds of Fourniret’s chateau — a plastic bag over her head.

Olivier is also charged as an accomplice to the murder of 13-year-old Natacha Danais who was lured into the couple’s van in the parking lot of a supermarket and stabbed during an attempted rape.

Among the most disturbing accounts, the court heard testimony from a coroner suggesting Fourniret sexually assaulted Danais after killing her. The body was found on beach on the French Atlantic coast in 1990.

Describing the couple as “inhuman and cruel criminals, the likes of which our country could have never imagined”, state prosecutor Francis Nachbar demanded the maximum sentence of life in prison for Fourniret, with no possibility of parole.

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CHENGDU, China - A powerful aftershock destroyed tens of thousands of homes in central China on Sunday, killing six people and straining recovery efforts from the country’s worst earthquake in three decades. More than 500 others were injured.

Meanwhile, soldiers rushed with explosives to unblock a debris-clogged river threatening to flood homeless quake survivors.

The fresh devastation came after a magnitude 6.0 aftershock — among the most powerful recorded since the initial May 12 quake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The China National Seismic Network said the aftershock was the strongest of dozens in the nearly two weeks after the disaster.

The new tremor killed two people in Sichuan province and injured more than 480 others, 41 seriously, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The news agency said Monday that the aftershock also killed four people and injured 20 others seriously in neighboring Shaanxi province.

Some 71,000 homes that had survived the original quake were leveled, and another 200,000 were in danger of collapse from the aftershock that caused office towers to sway in Beijing, 800 miles away.

Xinhua did not give any details on whether the houses were occupied.

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