News In Brief

SORRY IF I'M OUT OF BREATH

"It just goes to show that the art of good theater is timing," Jeff Knight told the Christ-church (New Zealand) Press. An obvious point, right? Right, but what the Shakes-pearean actor meant had nothing to do with picking up cues properly on stage. He was appearing in a performance of "Othello" last Tuesday night when word came that wife, Lisa, had gone into labor. Knight left the theater and raced to her side, arriving minutes before the baby did. Since all went so smoothly, "Lisa said I might as well go back and finish the show." So he did.

DON'T MAKE ME GET TOUGH

Eyebrows probably went up in Stavanger, Norway, when a course began in techniques for bouncers at local taverns. Not so much because police had ordered a customarily peaceful night spot to hire some for weekend duty, but because one of those in the class was Marta Aurenes. A woman? Yes, but not just any woman. She is 91. What's more, she was hired.

Koreans and Turks put in the longest workweeks, polls says.

South Korean workers average 55.1 hours on the job each week - the most of any industrialized country, results of a new study show. A survey of 32 countries by market researcher Roper Starch also found that France has the shortest workweek, an average of 40.3 hours, with Italy right behind at 40.5. American and Chinese workers put in the same amount of time - 42.4 hours. The global average: 44.6. Countries with the longest full-time workweeks, followed by the average number of hours worked, based on 30,000 face-to-face interviews and "projectable" to 1.2 billion people:

South Korea 55.1

Turkey 54.1

Argentina 53.5

Taiwan 53.4

Vietnam 53.3

Egypt 52.9

Hong Kong 52.2

Colombia 50.8

Thailand 49.7

Mexico 49.7

- Reuters

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor