Marriage helps men live longer
And other stories from the stranger side of life

Marriage may help men live longer, research has found. Lifelong bachelors are twice as likely to die from heart failure as men who get married, according to a study of 6,800 American adults. Men who had never married were 2.2 times more likely to die within five years of a diagnosis than those who had “tied the knot”, said The Times, while for women there was no link between marital status and their risk of death from heart failure. Experts believe this is because women are better at looking after themselves.
Korea’s ‘DMZ zone’ becomes haven for wildlife
The demilitarised zone between North and South Korea has become a “haven for wildlife”, said CNN. Newly-released Google street view images show more than 6,100 species thriving in the 160-mile zone, ranging from reptiles and birds to plants. Google said that of Korea’s 267 endangered species, 38% live in the DMZ, because it has “built up a new ecosystem not seen around the cities and has become a sanctuary for wildlife”.
Welsh farmers break their own sunflower record
A Welsh family broke their own Guinness World Record when they harvested a sunflower head that weighed 14.21 pounds. Kevin Fortey, a farmer, who grew the colossus with help of his relatives, said he was “shocked” by the weight of “the monster flower”. The new sunflower weighed 2.71 pounds more than the Fortey family’s previous record-breaking sunflower head, which was harvested in 2021, noted UPI.
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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.
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