Jeremy Clarkson sparks complaints after spoof advert jokes about Second World War on Top Gear - watch it here

Loudmouth Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has got himself in trouble again with a spoof car advert that jokes about Germany’s invasion of Poland.

Angry viewers complained to the BBC, media watchdog Ofcom and on online message boards after it was shown on Sunday night’s Top Gear.

The ad, for the Volkswagen Scirocco TDI, has a clip of people in Warsaw panicking and rushing to board trains and buses in a bid to escape the city.

Making a joke about the German-made car’s fuel economy, it ends with the tag line: “Volkswagen Scirocco TDI. Berlin to Warsaw in one tank” – a reference to Adolf Hitler’s decision to invade Poland which triggered the Second World War.

The advert has been posted on YouTube and prompted a heated debate about the joke.

Some dubbed Clarkson xenophobic and accused him of supporting the far right while others praised him for ‘speaking his mind’.

One said: “I just love how people find any comments made by Jeremy insulting or rude. After countless years of Top Gear running you should all know by now he speaks his mind. If you are easily offended then don't bloody watch the show.”

Another: “Many of us just find Clarkson an ignorant, rich, slob...with a sense of humour as sharp as a turd after a vindaloo...he's the champion of England's disaffected 'little men' who regard shouting at foreigners in English as the best way of communicating because they're too thick to learn another language.”


Clarkson is well known for his forthright and outspoken views and it is not the first time he has made a dig at the Germans.

In 2005 he gave a Nazi salute on Top Gear while discussing a the German-made Mini.

After saying that the car’s indicators should go up and down, demonstrating with the salute, he went on to say that the vehidoncle might have a GPS system 'that only goes to Poland'.

A spokesman for the BBC2 show said it had only received a handful of complaints, although Ofcom figures are understood to be higher


Clarkson also made headlines last month after telling a live Top Gear audience off-air that Gor-Brown was a ****. He was given a dressing down by BBC bosses over the comment, but the presenter insisted that because filming had not started he had no reason to retract the statement.

Earlier in the year Clarkson was forced to apologise after calling the Prime Minister a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'.

Last year, more than 500 people complained after the presenter made a remark suggesting that lorry drivers murder prostitutes.

The episode on Sunday was the last in the present series. Clarkson had caused speculation that the show was being axed when he said during the programme: 'This feels like an ending.'

But the BBC has confirmed that it will return in November.

Clarkson said he would keep making the show as long as people watch, saying: “I couldn't think of anything I'd want to do more.

“I can assure everyone I'll be back in November doing Top Gear. We're filming the next series and already have several things in the can.”

Gym massacre gunman's chilling blog

A warped gunman plotted a killing spree on a web log for months before murdering three women and wounding nine others in a gym.

George Sodini, 48, who also killed himself, had been planning the massacre since January because women kept spurning his advances.

His twisted online diary, in which he complained of not having had a girlfriend since 1984, said he had "chickened out" of executing his sick plot earlier in the year.

Sodini also admitted that this time he had carried out a practice run 24 hours earlier.

His last blog before setting out to murder said he was staying focused because "Tomorrow is the big day".

He signed off: "Death lives!" Late on Tuesday night, Sodini barged into a Latin dance class in the LA Fitness gym of Collier Township in Pennsylvania.

Without saying a word he turned off the lights, pulled two guns from a gym bag and opened fire. He then shot himself.

The 10-minute killing spree left Heidi Overmier, 46, Elizabeth Gannon, 49, and Jody Billingsley, 38, lying dead. At least nine women were seriously wounded.

Sodini used the web to broadcast his problems in meeting women, difficulty making friends and his fear of losing his job.

Sickeningly, the killer also used it to plot his revenge as far back as 2008. His ramblings reveal how he lost his nerve on his first try.

On January 6, he wrote: "It is 6.40pm, about hour and a half to go. God have mercy."

He later added: "It is 8:45PM: I chickened out! Hell!" Four months later he wrote that his relationship problems "have gotten worse over a 30-year period".

In a further bizarre twist, Sodini's blog then told how he had turned to booze and drugs after being teetotal for 20 years.

He tried getting drunk and doped up to get the courage to kill.

On May 5 he wrote: "To pull the exit plan off, it popped into my mind to just use some booze. I want to do this before I get laid off... But don't seem to have the balls.

Life is over, who cares?" His last entry was this week. He wrote: "I took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practise my routine and make sure it is well polished. I need to work out every detail, there is only one shot.

"Also I need to be completely immersed into something before I can be successful.

"I haven't had a drink since Friday at about 2.30pm. Total effort needed. Tomorrow is the big day."

Last night, people who were in the gym hall when Sodini opened fire recalled the panic and carnage.

Stacey Falk, 26, said: "All I could hear were shots and screams."

Basketball player Richard Walker, 23, carried one injured woman to safety.

He said: "She kept repeating, 'He's going to kill me!' Then she collapsed."

Local police chief Charles Moffat added: "I have never seen anything quite like this."

HIS SICK DIARY

Jan 6: I can do this... It is 6.40pm, about hour and a half to go. God have mercy... It is 8.45pm, I chickened out! S***! I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!

Aug 4: Took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practise my routine and make sure it is well polished. I need to work out every detail, there is only one shot... I haven't had a drink since Friday. Total effort needed. Tomorrow is the big day... Need to remain focused and absorbed COMPLETELY. Last time I tried this, in January, I chickened out. Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus... Death Lives!

IPhone Maker in China Is Under Fire After a Suicide

By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: July 26, 2009

SHENZHEN, China — When a closely guarded prototype of a new Apple iPhone went missing at a huge factory here two weeks ago, an internal investigation focused on a shy, 25-year-old employee named Sun Danyong.

Mr. Sun, a college graduate working in the logistics department, denied stealing the iPhone. But he later complained to friends that he had been beaten and humiliated by the factory’s security team. On the night he was questioned, he sent an anguished text message to his girlfriend.

“Dear, I’m sorry. Go back home tomorrow,” he wrote, according to a message she later posted online. “I ran into some problems. Don’t tell my family. Don’t contact me. I’m begging you for the first time. Please do it! I’m sorry.”

Soon after, in the early-morning hours of July 16, Mr. Sun apparently jumped to his death from the 12th floor of an apartment building in what his employer, Foxconn Technology, says was a suicide.

Apple and Foxconn, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of consumer electronics and a major Apple supplier, issued statements last week expressing sorrow for the death. Foxconn said it suspended one security officer, pending a police investigation, and that the company was now considering counseling services for its employees.

The Apple statement said: “We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death. We require that our suppliers treat all workers with dignity and respect.” The company would not comment further.

The local police bureau declined to answer questions about the case. But reports of the apparent suicide have set off a firestorm of criticism of Foxconn’s treatment of Mr. Sun, labor conditions at its factories and the pressures Apple places on suppliers to abide by the culture of secrecy that surrounds its development of new products.

The case also underscores the challenges that global companies face in trying to safeguard their designs and intellectual property in the hotly contested smartphone market, particularly here in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, an electronics manufacturing center known for piracy and counterfeiting.

Apple’s popular iPhone is already widely imitated and counterfeited in China. And there are regular rumors on Chinese Web sites about new Apple prototypes leaking out of Chinese factories.

“When you outsource to a third party, you lose some control,” says Dane Chamorro, general manager in China at Control Risks, a global consulting firm. “And if you’re outsourcing to China, it’s going to be even more challenging. There’s going to be a bounty on every design.”

Labor rights groups say the worker’s death should compel Apple to improve conditions at its supplier factories in China and prevent worker abuse.

Foxconn, part of Taiwan’s Hon Hai group, has also been sharply criticized because of suspicions about unduly harsh treatment of the worker.

Foxconn, which produces electronics for some of the world’s best-known brands, like Sony and Hewlett-Packard, operates a cluster of sprawling factories in southern China. One of its Shenzhen campuses has nearly 300,000 workers.

But some labor rights activists say the company treats employees harshly, routinely violating labor laws.

In an e-mail message on Thursday, China Labor Watch, which monitors Chinese factories and is based in New York, blamed Mr. Sun’s death on “Foxconn’s inhumane and militant management system, which lacks fundamental respect for human rights.” The group said it published an in-depth study of Foxconn last year, detailing its abuses.

James Lee, general manager of China operations at Foxconn, defended the company’s labor practices in a lengthy interview on Friday, and also said the company would strive to improve management of its facilities.

“It’s very difficult for the company to defend itself against such charges,” Mr. Lee said of complaints from labor rights groups. “You’re welcome to look at how employees are treated here.”

A reporter toured two of the company’s campuses in Shenzhen on Friday, including the one where Mr. Sun worked. The campuses were so large they contained retail stores, banks, post offices and high-rise dormitories with outdoor swimming pools.

The reporter was not allowed to see manufacturing lines because the company said it had to protect trade secrets.

Outside the gates of one campus, most workers interviewed independently of the company said they were well treated. One of about 15 workers questioned admitted to being forced to work overtime above the legal limit.

In his interview, Mr. Lee, the Foxconn manager, said the company also had a duty to protect the intellectual property of its customers, and that it was honestly seeking answers to what happened to the product.

Foxconn said it still does not know what happened to the missing iPhone. The company said Mr. Sun was given 16 prototypes on July 9 or 10 to deliver to research and development, and failed to report one missing until three days later.

The company says his explanation for the missing phone did not seem credible and that he had had problems before.

“Several times he had some products missing, then he got them back,” Mr. Lee said. “We don’t know who took the product, but it was at his stop.”

In an interview with Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper last week, the security officer suspended by Foxconn denied beating Mr. Sun, saying only that he “became a little angry” and grabbed Mr. Sun’s right shoulder.

Even so, the company paid compensation to Mr. Sun’s family. It declined to say how much, but Mr. Sun’s brother cited a figure of 300,000 renminbi, or more than $44,000, and said Mr. Sun’s girlfriend was also given an Apple laptop computer.

Mr. Sun’s brother doubts he stole the prototype.

“He was honest and modest. He would never steal anything,” said Sun Danxiong, 28, his brother.

Mr. Sun grew up in a small, impoverished village in southwest Yunnan province and ranked first in his high school, his family says. He graduated from the Harbin Institute of Technology, one of the nation’s top schools, before joining Foxconn about a year ago.

On Thursday, with his son Danxiong standing nearby, holding a box with Sun Danyong’s ashes, the father, Sun Yangdong, said Foxconn had treated the family well. But he said he was still in shock that his son could leap from a building because he was so gentle and tender.

Soon after, a security guard, who was joined by two men wearing Foxconn shirts, threatened to “beat up” a journalist’s translator if she persisted in asking the family questions. Foxconn officials later said the guard was not on their staff and might have been with the police bureau.

Back in Yunnan, Mr. Sun said that on the night of his brother’s death, he had e-mailed friends, angry about Foxconn’s questioning of him. In one message, Mr. Sun said he was locked up and beaten. “A Fortune 500 company even has these things,” he wrote.

On Sunday, Danxiong said some of his brother’s friends told him Mr. Sun killed himself out of anger at Foxconn. His brother said: “They told me he was extremely angry at Foxconn; they humiliated him and he wanted to resist the company, and planned to do something big.”

Online Scammers Prey on the Jobless

By RIVA RICHMOND
Published: August 5, 2009

When Claude Vera responded to the customer-service job opening he saw on the online-classified site Geebo.com back in February, it seemed like one of a hundred small acts that might get him back to work. Most of his e-mail messages to prospective employers were going unanswered, so he was relieved when Penguin Express Inc. replied the next day with a work-from-home job.

To help him get a home office started, Penguin sent him money orders so he could buy, via money wire, the requisite laptop and other equipment from several different people. Mr. Vera, of Jamaica, New York, deposited nine United States Postal Service money orders into his Chase bank account and wired a total of nearly $8,000 to the various vendors. But he never received a laptop or anything else, and the money orders turned out to be already cashed or counterfeit. The scam consumed Mr. Vera’s tax refund and put him in the red by $6,700 to Chase, which sent his case to a collection agent.

“Looking back at the whole thing I was very, very naïve, but I needed a job so bad,” he says. “I’m behind in everything. I’m behind in my rent. I’m behind in all the bills I’m responsible for. It has wiped me out financially.”

With unemployment high and rising, more people are streaming onto the Web in search of jobs — but running into costly scams. Like job seekers, criminals are after moneymaking opportunities online. And they’re setting increasingly sophisticated traps to prey on the desperation of the jobless, whose guards are down amid eroding savings, swelling debts and calamities like foreclosure and bankruptcy. Victims can ill afford another financial setback. “If you are a con artist, having more people out of work to deal with increases your odds of finding a victim,” says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. “They are thriving right now. If business weren’t good for the scammers, we wouldn’t be getting so many complaints.”

Spam filters provide some protection, and job boards work hard to remove bogus offers from large pools of legitimate offers. But none of the technology is foolproof. Job seekers have to keep their wits about them, no matter how much they need a job.

“The bottom line is if anything seems weird, just don’t apply,” says Tabatha Marshall, founder of PhishBucket.org, a non-profit that tracks online job scams and estimates they’re up a third from a year ago. “You’re going to take yourself down a road where you could lose money or time.”

Here are some of the more common scams and tips for avoiding them:

Common Frauds

HELP FOR A FEE Watch out for fake recruiters and charlatans who promise to train you for a lucrative new career. A well-known scam of the latter type is Google Treasure Chest, which offers people a cheap DVD that will teach them how to prosper placing Google ads.

But in the small print of the buyer’s agreement is notice of a $72.21 monthly charge. Stopping the charges proves difficult; some people claim to have gotten relief only by changing their credit card numbers. Google Treasure Chest did not reply to requests for comment.

FISHING FOR IDENTITY DATA Ads for attractive white-collar jobs can be, in fact, sophisticated fraud schemes.

Applicants may be steered to an authentic-looking corporate Web site, where they are asked to type personal information into a fake human-resources department Web form. Sometimes scammers go to great lengths, staging phone interviews or sometimes even conference calls with multiple people in an effort to appear legitimate. The goal? To talk people into handing over Social Security and bank-account numbers.

WORK FROM HOME Proliferating recently are fake “Mystery Shopper” positions evaluating the services of companies, especially money-wiring services. Victims are typically asked to deposit a check for several thousand dollars into their bank account, immediately use a bit of the money to shop at big-box stores and wire the rest via a service like Western Union or MoneyGram. Of course, the check is counterfeit, leaving victims out any money they wired and opening them to criminal prosecution for passing a bad check.

MONEY-MULE AND RESHIPPER These are some of the most dangerous schemes, since they can turn people, often unwittingly, into accomplices of international crime rings. More sophisticated than the now-familiar Nigerian e-mail messages, money mules are recruited by purported international companies looking for “receiving payment agents” who will accept payments into their bank account from “customers” (identity fraud victims) and wire the money to their “employer” (criminals). Some are told to keep 10 percent, but many are promised payment by direct deposit, which, of course, never comes.

Reshipper scams start with international shipping companies looking for “logistics managers” to receive packages of laptops, iPods and cameras, bought with stolen credit cards, and send them on to a foreign country. Again, direct-deposit payment never comes.

How to Protect Yourself

BE SKEPTICAL. Red flags include offers using poor grammar and spelling and that come from e-mail addresses that don’t match the name of the company. Real companies use polished language, emphasize a job’s duties and use corporate e-mail addresses, not Yahoo or Gmail accounts.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Research the company. Do they have a professional Web site with lots of content, a list of executives’ names and a phone number where you can reach a human being?

Often a simple Google search will be enough to spot trouble; there are scads of warnings from people who believe they were cheated by Google Treasure Chest, for instance. You can also check companies’ reputations with the Better Business Bureau and look for complaints on Web sites like Complaintsboard.com and PhishBucket.org.

KEEP IT PRIVATE. Limit the personal information you give online. This starts with your résumé: Don’t include any information you wouldn’t want broadcast to the world, which is exactly what you’re doing. Avoid providing your home address, a key bit of information for perpetrators of identity fraud; most real employers are happy with a general geographic location, like Greater New York City region. Unless you’re signing an employment agreement, keep your Social Security number to yourself.

SPECIALIZE YOUR SEARCH. “If you are in a particular sector or profession, go to the niche site first,” Ms. Dixon says. Scammers want the volume provided by big sites. Moreover, niche sites often filter job posts by hand and tend to be intimately familiar with the companies posting them, making it easier for them to spot fakes. Look for industry-specific job boards or professional groups with online listings.

GET TO KNOW THE COMPANY. During the hiring process, both parties should be looking for a good fit. Craigslist’s chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, says job seekers on his site should, as general rule, “deal with only local businesses you can meet face to face.” Mr. Buckmaster says Craigslist’s system captures the large majority of scams before they reach the site, but “it’s virtually impossible to keep every scam from traversing an Internet site that 50 million people are using each month.”

GO LOW TECH. Most people get jobs through local want ads, professional associations, job-search agencies, temp agencies and their personal networks of colleagues, friends and family. “The old-fashioned way is still sometimes the best way,” says Linda Foley, a founder of the consumer advocacy Identity Theft Resource Center.

Why we all love legging it

Lisa Armstrong | August 05, 2009

I FINALLY got my head around leggings -- and then leggings around my thighs in a way that seemed relatively successful -- this year, a full 30 months after their first appearance outside a gym since the early 1990s.

That's it, I thought. I can do this. Therefore, according to the Law of Sod, in another three or four months they'll begoners.

By rights they should be dead already. It's two years since Nicolas Ghesquiere put gold metal leggings on the Balenciaga catwalk and Beyonce snapped them up for pound stg. 12,000 (about $24,000); she's still rocking the 80s look on her I Am... tour, courtesy of Thierry Mugler's show-stealing costumes. It's a year since Lady Gaga hit the ground in her Catwoman high-shine leggings. That's a lifetime in youth trend years. Yet leggings, having momentarily slowed down towards the end of last summer, are back stronger than ever. In Britain, River Island has sold 750,000 pairs of leggings over the past 12 months. Marks & Spencer sells more than one pair of leggings every minute.

According to Averyl Oates, the buying director at Harvey Nichols, where cashmere or Ottoman leggings ring in at about pound stg. 400 a pair, they will still be hot come late (northern) winter, early spring. How did this dead cat bounce come about? Why has the most influential force in the business -- the public -- taken to leggings the way it previously took to skinny jeans, a trend that lingered in the spotlight far beyond its allotted 15minutes and can accurately be said to have transcended from passing fad to wardrobe necessity? On a subliminal level, leggings mark the end of a decade's obsessions with big breasts. The erogenous focus is switching to legs. On a practical level, leggings may ultimately have even more longevity than drainpipes, simply because they're more comfortable and more forgiving now that we've learned to wear them under dresses, tunics, oversized boyfriend jackets, baggy T-shirts, mini-kilts, cocktail dresses and other ingenious thigh-concealers. This is not the early 90s, when the only way to wear leggings was with a teeny tunic or patterned shirt. Although teenagers are choosing to wear their leggings increasingly with skimpy tops (presumably to differentiate themselves from their more cautious mothers), wearing leggings now comes with numerous safety clauses.

Even the age issue seems to have been packed off to the style mortuary. Leggings are just the job to help legs that may be slightly past their best or have what Jane Shepherdson of Whistles delicately calls "the corned beef effect" of mottled skin. Oates agrees: "We've noticed women wearing them across the age divide. To be honest, there's no such thing as age at Harvey Nichols. It's more about mental attitude. Actually, leggings or treggings (trousers-cum-leggings) are great for older women as they give them the opportunity to wear something form-fitting without revealing too much skin."

The more ingenious brands now offer support leggings and styles, courtesy of Damart, that promise to burn off calories while you wear them (that would probably be true of most clothing, strictly speaking). But the main sell is that being black (unless you're really up for a challenge), any pair is optically slimming and as Belle Robinson, co-owner of the Jigsaw chain, notes, "a brilliant way of putting a twist on a classic outfit, whether it's a little tweed jacket or a sprigged tea-dress". Robinson had just finished shooting Jigsaw's autumn catalogue when we spoke, and hadn't planned to use leggings.

"But the model showed up with her own pair and whatever we put on her just looked more youthful and a bit edgier worn withleggings".

For those with ostentatiously good legs, there are leggings that offer advanced degrees in treacherous style challenges (laser-cut leather leggings from Rodarte spring to mind: worn in the wrong way, they look like congealed vermicelli). In other words, leggings offer the complete course in fashionology, from the Janet and John early reader of plain matte black to the PhD of stretch chiffon and sequins leggings from the cult brand Les Chiffoniers. Like the denim trend of the early noughties, leggings have spawned a cluster of premium brands, including Lindsay Lohan's own range and Kova & T, the label started by Roman Abramovich's girlfriend Dasha Zhukova and her friend Christina Tang, which spawned a craze for wet-look leggings. It took all of six weeks for approximations of Les Chiffoniers and Kova & T to filter on to the high street. At about pound stg. 8, for the cheapest pair at H&M, up to pound stg. 35 at Topshop, leggings are proving to be the high street's God-sent (or Balenciaga-sent) recession buster, albeit one that has eaten into sales of trousers.

"Leggings are hard to beat," says Yasmin Yusuf, the creative director at Miss Selfridge. "We're finding that our customers wear them during the day to tone down little tunic dresses and whip them off at night when they want to ramp it up. Given that you can wear them with cropped T-shirts or shirt dresses, they're one of the most versatile pieces in a wardrobe."

Miss Selfridge has more than a dozen categories -- leather, wet look, patterned, lace, cut-out, metallic, denim, geometric, slashed, latex, liquid -- and three lengths, knee, mid-calf and ankle.

"I knew when I was in LA last September that they were going to get a second wind," Yusuf says. "They had made the journey from American Apparel to all the really upscale boutiques such as Kitson, where you could buy leather ones for $US1300 ($1585). Until then, leggings had been merchandised as accessories, but now retailers are arranging their looks around them, specifically shoes and jackets. In 2006 girls wore leggings with flat pumps. Now women are using them to draw attention to an amazing pair of heels."

None of this has passed unnoticed by designers, who filled their autumn-winter 2009 collections with what might best be described as extreme leggings, from Alexander Wang's black bandages, worn with tourniquet stretch minidresses, Meadham Kirchhoff's heavily embroidered leggings or Gucci's oil-slick shine leggings to Stella McCartney's silk ones that seemed to be attached to stalactite-heeled boots.

Even so, the continuing appeal this summer has taken retailers by surprise. "We're selling many more shorter dresses than we anticipated," says Shepherdson, "because women feel confident when they can wear them with leggings: the shorter length looks much more modern and sharper now, but it's difficult to wear in summer without the comfort blanket of thick black tights."

There is one sector of the population, however, for whom leggings will forever be a barbed issue: men. That alone will seal their success for a while yet.

Divorce, It Seems, Can Make You Ill

By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: August 3, 2009

Married people tend to be healthier than single people. But what happens when a marriage ends?

New research shows that when married people become single again, whether by divorce or a spouse’s death, they experience much more than an emotional loss. Often they suffer a decline in physical health from which they never fully recover, even if they remarry.

And in terms of health, it’s not better to have married and lost than never to have married at all. Middle-age people who never married have fewer chronic health problems than those who were divorced or widowed.

The findings, from a national study of 8,652 men and women in their 50s and early 60s, suggest that the physical stress of marital loss continues long after the emotional wounds have healed. While this does not mean that people should stay married at all costs, it does show that marital history is an important indicator of health, and that the newly single need to be especially vigilant about stress management and exercise, even if they remarry.

“When your spouse is getting sick and about to die or your marriage is getting bad and about to die, your stress levels go up,” said Linda Waite, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago and an author of the study, which appears in the September issue of The Journal of Health and Social Behavior. “You’re not sleeping well, your diet gets worse, you can’t exercise, you can’t see your friends. It’s a whole package of awful events.”

The health benefits of marriage, documented by a wealth of research, appear to stem from several factors. Married people tend to be better off financially and can share in a spouse’s employer health benefits. And wives, in particular, act as gatekeepers for a husband’s health, scheduling appointments and noticing changes that may signal a health problem. Spouses can offer logistical support, like taking care of children while a partner exercises or shuttling a partner to and from the doctor’s office.

But in the latest study, researchers sought to gauge the health effects of divorce, widowhood and remarriage in a large cohort of people over time.

Among the 8,652 people studied, more than half were still married to their first spouse. About 40 percent had been divorced or widowed; about half of that group were remarried by the time of the study. About 4 percent had never married.

Over all, men and women who had experienced divorce or the death of a spouse reported about 20 percent more chronic health problems like heart disease, diabetes and cancer, compared with those who had been continuously married. Previously married people were also more likely to have mobility problems, like difficulty climbing stairs or walking a meaningful distance.

While remarrying led to some improvement in health, the study showed that most married people who became single never fully recovered from the physical declines associated with marital loss. Compared with those who had been continuously married, people in second marriages had 12 percent more chronic health problems and 19 percent more mobility problems. A second marriage did appear to heal emotional wounds: remarried people had only slightly more depressive symptoms than those continuously married.

The study does not prove that the loss of a marriage causes health problems, only that the two are associated. It may be that people who don’t exercise, eat poorly and can’t manage stress are also more likely to divorce. Still, researchers note that because the effect is seen in both divorced and widowed people, the data strongly suggest a causal relationship.

One reason may be changes at the cellular level during times of high stress. In an Ohio State University study, scientists analyzed blood samples of people undergoing the stress of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease. The research focused on telomeres, which insulate and protect the ends of chromosomes; with aging, telomeres shorten and the activity of a related enzyme also declines.

Compared with a control group, the Alzheimer’s caregivers showed telomere patterns associated with a four- to eight-year shortening of life span. Dr. Waite said the stress of divorce or widowhood might take a similar toll, leading to chronic health and mobility problems.

None of this suggests that spouses should stay in a bad marriage for the sake of health. Marital troubles can lead to physical ones, too.

In a series of experiments, scientists at Ohio State studied the relationship between marital strife and immune response, as measured by the time it takes for a wound to heal. The researchers recruited married couples who submitted to a small suction device that left eight tiny blisters on the arm. The couples then engaged in different types of discussions — sometimes positive and supportive, at other times focused on a topic of conflict.

After a marital conflict, the wounds took a full day longer to heal. Among couples who exhibited high levels of hostility, the wound healing took two days longer than with those who showed less animosity.

“I would argue that if you can’t fix a marriage you’re better off out of it,” said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an Ohio State scientist who is an author of much of the research. “With a divorce you’re disrupting your life, but a long-term acrimonious marriage also is very bad.”

OMEGA 3 IS THE SECRET OF LONG LIFE

By Dana Gloger

EATING oily fish can help ensure a long life as it slashes the risk of heart failure by a third, scientists have discovered.

As a result, they say the fatty acid found in fish oil, omega 3, should now be taken daily by everyone in Britain.

Oily fish has long been known to help those with existing heart problems, but just 500mg a day – the equivalent of two three-ounce portions a week – could also cut the risk for healthy people.

The “compelling” new evidence could reduce heart attack deaths in the UK by up to 30 per cent – without a need for extra medication.

Heart disease is still the country’s biggest killer and scientists at the Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans looked back at 30 years of research.

They say people with existing heart problems should take “at least 800 to 1,000mg” of omega 3 each day – the amount found in three to four 3oz portions of oily fish a week.

Half that amount of fish would provide enough omega 3 for healthy people – the equivalent of one supplement capsule.

Although the substance is considered an “essential fatty acid”, omega 3 is not produced naturally by the body, and therefore it can only be obtained through diet or supplements. The Food Standards Agency recommends mackerel, tuna and herring as the best source of the oil, which according to previous studies can also protect against strokes and cancer.

But it has previously sounded warnings about eating too much oily fish, claiming that it can contain low levels of pollutants that might build up in the body.

Experts say there is no harm in men and most women eating four portions of fish a week, but girls and women who might later have a baby and those who are pregnant or breast-feeding should limit their intake to two portions a week.

Dr Carl Lavie, who led the study which was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, said: “This isn’t just hype.

“We now have tremendous and compelling evidence from very large studies ... that demonstrates the protective benefits of omega 3 fish oil in multiple aspects of preventive cardiology.

“And we are talking about a very safe and relatively inexpensive therapy.”

Last night the findings were hailed as a true breakthrough in tackling heart disease, which kills 200,000 people a year in the UK. Around 275,000 Britons suffer heart attacks each year.

Nutritionist Carina Norris said: “This is great – very welcome research. It shows that omega 3 is one of the closest things to a true superfood.

“It is involved in so many areas of health, especially the heart and brain, and it is really good news that they have now found it can also reduce the risk of heart attacks in healthy people as well as those with existing heart problems. Those who don’t like fish can just take a supplement instead.”

The British Heart Foundation welcomed the research last night and Linda Main, dietician at the charity Heart UK, said: “These findings could be a radical way of cutting heart attacks.”

But she warned that adding omega 3 to a diet needed to be coupled with overall healthier eating.