Michael Schildberger Lost Battle to Prostrate Cancer

Veteran broadcaster and former A Current Affair host Michael Schildberger has died.

The Channel Nine and ABC journalist and personality was suffering from prostate cancer and passed away in a Melbourne hospital this morning with his children by his side. He was aged in his 70s.

Schildberger became a familiar face on Australian television after taking over as host of A Current Affair in the 1970s.

He joined Nine in 1955 as a copy boy and completed a journalism cadetship before climbing the ranks to become director of news.

Schildberger later joined the ABC and presented 3LO-774's popular morning program.
Later in life he started his own media production company and penned an autobiography, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

He was diagnosed with cancer 14 years ago.
Friends and colleagues have paid tribute to Schildberger on talkback radio this morning.

His son Nick told ABC 774's morning host Jon Faine his father had astounded doctors with his lengthy fight against the disease.
"He was a very kind generous man, and also a very strong man," Nick Schildberger said.

"He didn't let things get him down. He was the most positive and optimistic person I know. He refused to give up.

"Unfortunately the cancer, in the end, took over and he was unable to fight any more."

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Mexican Gang Attack Sir Paul McCartney

Sir Paul McCartney has been left “shaken up” after a gang attacked his tour bus.

The 67-year-old star had to be rescued by police in Mexico after the youths surrounded his vehicle and jumped up and down on the roof after a concert at the Foro Sol stadium in Mexico City on Saturday.

A source said: "At first his security team thought it was just swarms of fans but when people started scaling the bus, the situation changed in a flash. Paul and the team were shaken up.”

According to reports, the troublemakers left the scene as soon as they heard police sirens.

The singer’s management team are now reviewing his security.

Paul recently admitted he is happy to carry the “weight” of fame.

He said: “Fame can get pretty annoying but now I have rules, I've finally grown up and finally realised I've got rights. I'm happy to talk to people on a one to one human basis but the minute they turn me into this celebrity that I'm pretending not to be for that minute, I sort of say no, I'm not going to do that.

"I will just go shopping or go to the movies on my own, and I like that. It is very much a balancing part of my life." 

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Emigration Increasing the rate of Infanticides in Senegal

In Senegal women who become pregnant outside of marriage - their husbands living abroad - commonly kill their babies out of fear and shame.

Husbands' absence is one of many factors contributing to infanticide in Senegal, where many young women with unwanted pregnancies see eliminating the child as their only option, authorities and researchers say. Abortion is illegal in Senegal and clandestine abortion is also common.

Poverty, sexual promiscuity and ignorance about contraception are other factors, but the common thread is severe shame around unplanned pregnancy particularly by extramarital relations, according to sociologist Aly Khoudia Diao in the capital Dakar.

"Infanticide has become the antidote to illicit affairs [that result in pregnancy] - to avoid gossip and shame to the family and to hide infidelity, especially when the woman is bound by marriage," said Diao.

In the city of Louga, capital of Louga region 200km north of Dakar, at least two babies are known to have been killed by their mothers since October 2009, with five cases of infanticide registered in 2008, according to Moustapha Ndour, gendarmerie commander.

"These infanticides are linked to emigration," he said. "The men leave their wives - who are very young - for two, five, 10 years."

One Louga woman recently charged with the crime is married to a man living abroad, Ndour said. "She did not want anyone to ever see the child, which is why she threw the body into a well." Infants' bodies have turned up in wells and in the streets; some are buried.

More than 20,000 men from Louga city - or 10 percent of the population - live in Europe or the United States, Amadou Fall, deputy mayor, said. Six in 10 youths remaining are unemployed, and women make up 80 percent of the population, according to Fall.

Diao estimates from his research that 30 to 40 percent of women with unwanted pregnancies commit infanticide. "It is a worrying statistic, and it's growing," he said. No national statistics are available, Justice Ministry spokesperson Cheikh Bamba Niang said.

"Five to 10 percent of these are linked to emigration," Diao said. "Sex is a physiological need. Some of these women marry quite young and sooner or later they will be pursued by other men. And in a moment of weakness they commit adultery."

Women with unplanned pregnancies often have no one to turn to, according to Fatou Sarr Sow, gender director at Dakar's Cheikh Anta Diop University.

"These girls submit to the social pressure, the fear of shaming the family," she said. "They have no place to go to talk about their situation; they are alone in their misfortune." She said infanticide is common in rural zones, where illiteracy is high.

Diao said many young women start wearing ample clothing and withdraw from friends and family once the pregnancy starts to show. Some move to another locality, where at least one relative is aware of the situation.

Senegalese women who emigrate also have extramarital sexual relations, he noted. "But [if they get pregnant] they have abortions because they are no longer restricted by the country's socio-cultural constraints."

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Men who do more housework get more sex

MEN who do more housework get more sex. It's official. And women who do more housework get more sex, too. A new US study of almost 7000 married couples shows that couples who work hard, play hard.

''Go-getter'' couples who devote lots of time to paid work and household chores still make sex a priority, the study says. Published in the Journal of Family Issues, the study rebuts the view that the ''time crunch'' has killed passion stone dead.

''As life gets busier and time gets tighter, a select group of go-getter spouses can successfully balance multiple time commitments,'' say the authors, Constance Gager, of Montclair State University, New Jersey, and Scott Yabiku, of Arizona State University.

The study shows that sexual frequency averaged 82.7 times a year, or 1.6 times a week, although there was wide variation. Age and the duration of the relationship dampened sexual frequency, as did being Catholic compared to being Protestant. The presence of small children reduced frequency but older children were associated with more frequent sex.

Women on average did 41.8 hours of housework a week, almost twice as much as men, and 19.7 hours of paid work, bringing their total labour to 61.5 hours compared to 57.1 hours for men's total work hours. The more time spent on housework, the more sex the men and women reported.

The study found if slothful women and men - those who did housework for only 16 hours and two hours a week, respectively - increased their effort to match the high performers (women who did 68 hours and men 45 hours a week) they could expect to have sex 15 more times a year.

As well, men and women who spent more time in paid work reported more sex, leading the researchers to conclude that ''individuals may be achievers across multiple spheres''.

Barbara Pocock, the director of the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia, in a study of Australian working women found resentment over housework killed libido.

''Women's feelings about their husband were shaped by perceptions of fairness around housework,'' she said.

''If the resentment factor was high that's when their sex life was not great. The best sex aid a man could use was a vacuum cleaner.''

She also wondered about the sex lives of those women - about one-third - who say they feel ''almost always rushed and pressed for time'', especially mothers who did more than 20 hours a week of paid work.

The US researchers say their findings debunk the theory that time spent on some pursuits, such as jobs or housework, must be stolen from other areas, such as sex. ''The much-lamented speed-up of everyday life … does not appear to have adverse effects on sexual frequency,'' they say.

But the quality of the sex? The researchers said they don't know whether sex has also speeded up and is not very satisfying.

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