Stay slim, live longer
Here鈥檚 another reason to stay trim: even being moderately overweight shaves years off your life. A study of 900,000 adults shows that moderate obesity, defined as a body mass index of 30 to 35, takes two to four years off life expectancy, while severe obesity cuts eight to 10 years (The Lancet, ).
Women鈥檚 health boost
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After seven years of withholding funds for ideological reasons, the US will resume contributions to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the world鈥檚 biggest backer of programmes to improve women鈥檚 reproductive health and rights. On 11 March, President Barack Obama announced that the US will offer $50 million, a tenth of UNFPA鈥檚 existing budget.
Go-Go-GOCE!
After a last-minute glitch forced a day鈥檚 delay, one of the European Space Agency鈥檚 most advanced satellites, GOCE, lifted off on Tuesday. The launch of the satellite, which will map Earth鈥檚 gravity field, had been postponed just seconds before it was due to fly because the launch tower failed to retract.
Predator X vs T. rex
The skull of a fearsome marine predator 15 metres long and weighing 45 tonnes has been found on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Dubbed 鈥淧redator X鈥� by finder J酶rn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, the animal is a new species of pliosaur that lived 147 million years ago. It had teeth 30 centimetres long and a bite four times as strong as Tyrannosaurus rex.
Drinking water only
By 2015, 90 per cent of the world鈥檚 population will have safe drinking water, but a third will still lack adequate sanitation, warns the third UN World Water Development Report, launched on 16 March in Istanbul, Turkey.