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The names of the world's greatest golf venues roll off the tongue like a putt rolling toward the cup. Pebble Beach. St. Andrews. Valderrama. Then there are Vestmannaeyja and Porlakshafnar. Those names don't trip off the tongues of anyone except the hardy residents of Iceland. Surprisingly, this island in the frigid North Atlantic is one of the most golf-obsessed places on earth. With 65 courses for a population of 322,000, Iceland has more courses per person - one for every 5,000 people -- than any other country. Though many are just nine holes, that's nearly twice as many courses per capita as Scotland, according to a 2007 survey by Golf Digest. The magazine said Scotland had the most courses per capita but it didn't count countries with fewer than 500,000 people.   About 10 percent of Iceland's population plays golf - a higher rate than the United States or Britain - making it the country's second most popular sport, after soccer. In contrast to America

Angela Merkel's conservatives want to increase the use of German in Europe if they are re-elected in September, calling in their campaign program for the language to be treated on a par with English and French in top Brussels institutions. "German is the most frequently spoken native language and one of three working languages of the European Union," a draft program from Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), reads. "We will push for a further strengthening of the German language in Europe. Our goal is that it is treated in the same way as English and French in the European Parliament, the (European) Commission and (European) Council." English and French have been the dominant working languages of the EU in the past few decades, although French has declined since 2004 as the bloc expanded from 15 to 27 members, most from eastern Europe where English is a more common second language.  

"Gangs of New York" seems a fitting favourite movie for Egypt's new culture minister, a film studies professor who styles himself an outsider fighting to break the hold of a privileged elite over spending on the arts. Artists enraged that he fired the head of Cairo Opera, and fearing Muslim puritans may ban ballet, have barricaded Alaa Abdel Aziz from entering his own ministry.   The "culture war" has come to symbolise a wider conflict between the Islamist government and secular opponents ahead of rival mass rallies later this month to mark the first anniversary in power of President Mohamed Mursi. Speaking at the dusty state publishing house where he has set up camp, Abdel Aziz told Reuters he would ban nothing. Rather, he would support "people's art" beyond the capital, end corruption inherited from the old regime and see that cultural spending reflects how democratic revolution has changed Egyptian society. "My concern is providing cu

Former Mayor Ed Koch was 88 years old when he died in February, despite what his gravestone said. A worker at the Trinity Cemetery in Manhattan noticed last week that the gravestone's inscription shaved 18 years off the mayor's life after a stonecutter transposed two digits in his birth year, a Trinity spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The correct year of 1924 was mistakenly carved as 1942, she said. "It was a simple human mistake," said Tommy Flynn, owner of Flynn Funeral & Cremation Memorial Centers, which worked with Koch to create his funeral monument. "Did you ever write a phone number down wrong?" Flynn said he was horrified to get the call from the cemetery alerting him to the error.   "I've had better days," he said, adding that the inscription had been re-engraved. The stone has been in place for several years since Koch bought the burial plot, but the inscription of the dates was only added last week. George Arzt, a long-time s

A New York City real estate company offered to buy the Empire State Building for $2 billion, a written offer showed, significantly below the skyscraper's appraisal price and about three weeks after investors in the iconic building approved a plan to take the tower public in a real-estate investment trust. _0"> On Tuesday, Cammeby's International Group, a privately held company headed by real-estate mogul Rubin Schron, offered to buy the building for cash from the Malkin family which controls the Empire State Building and allow the current investors to remain stakeholders if they chose. Schron was not available for comment late Tuesday.   The Malkin family's law firm has received the offer but a representative had no comment when contacted by Reuters. Both the Malkins and the Helmsely Trust, which majority-owns a sublease, would have to approve the proposed deal. It also would have to be endorsed by the other investors. The offer, described as "out-of-left

Where have all the carpenters gone? Home builders across the United States are scratching their heads for an answer as they struggle to assemble crews to keep up with growing demand. In some parts of the country, the shortage of skilled carpenters - especially framers - is so bad that builders cannot get projects off the ground and it is taking as much as two months longer than normal to complete a project.   "Right now I have framing material sitting on the job site with the foundation on the ground," said Stephen Paul, executive vice president at Mid-Atlantic Builders in Rockville, Maryland. "It's been sitting there a week because I have not been able to get a framer to start the house." According to a National Association of Home Builders survey published last month, 48 percent of single-family home builders could not find framing crews in the first three months of this year, and builders in all four regions struggled. In the middle of last year, that fi

"Gangs of New York" seems a fitting favourite movie for Egypt's new culture minister, a film studies professor who styles himself an outsider fighting to break the hold of a privileged elite over spending on the arts. Artists enraged that he fired the head of Cairo Opera, and fearing Muslim puritans may ban ballet, have barricaded Alaa Abdel Aziz from entering his own ministry.   The "culture war" has come to symbolise a wider conflict between the Islamist government and secular opponents ahead of rival mass rallies later this month to mark the first anniversary in power of President Mohamed Mursi. Speaking at the dusty state publishing house where he has set up camp, Abdel Aziz told Reuters he would ban nothing. Rather, he would support "people's art" beyond the capital, end corruption inherited from the old regime and see that cultural spending reflects how democratic revolution has changed Egyptian society. "My concern is providing cu

Journalist Michael Hastings, whose 2010 Rolling Stone magazine profile of the U.S. military chief in Afghanistan , Stanley McChrystal, led to the general being relieved of command, died on Tuesday in a car wreck in Los Angeles, his employer said. _0"> A statement from the editor-in-chief of online news outlet BuzzFeed reporting that Hastings, 33, had been killed, gave no details of the accident, and neither Los Angeles police nor the county coroner's office would confirm his death.   But police said a man who had not been identified was killed before dawn on Monday when his car slammed into a tree near Hollywood and burst into flames in what authorities say was the only fatal traffic accident reported in the city during the day. The driver was the lone occupant of the automobile, police said. Coroner's Lieutenant Fred Corral said the body of the driver was burned beyond recognition and that further investigation was required to make a positive identification. Aut

Heavy flooding in southwestern France killed a woman and forced the closure of the Roman Catholic pilgrimage site at Lourdes on Wednesday, less than a year after flash floods caused millions of euros of damage to the shrine. _0"> Video footage showed frothy water a meter (3 feet) deep swirling around the Lourdes grotto, a hillside site where the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to a peasant girl in 1858 and Catholicism's most-visited miracle shrine.   Authorities had to evacuate several hundred pilgrims from hotels and camping sites after melting snow and summer storms caused the Gave de Pau river to burst its banks late on Tuesday, a Lourdes local official told Reuters. The 70-year-old woman died on Tuesday evening while trying to get out of her flood-trapped car in the town of Pierrefitte-Nestalas, the regional prosecutor's office said. Water levels were slowly receding on Wednesday. Interior Minister Manuel Valls was due to visit the area, in the foothill

The ruins of a grandiose Roman theatre behind them, two foreigners taking pictures in the Libyan coastal city of Sabratha make a rare sight these days. The ancient Roman city used to attract more than 20,000 foreign visitors annually before the 2011 war that ousted Muammar Gaddafi. Now the temples and mosaics overlooking the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean are usually deserted.   The two European visitors touring the UNESCO World Heritage site on this quiet day are geologists on a work trip to Libya. A few Libyan families and a group of boy scouts mill around. "The numbers are low these days, people no longer come to Libya as tourists. Our visitors are people who already work in Libya or those who travel here on business trips," Mohammed Bujila, head of the antiquities department at Sabratha, said. "Things are different because of the problems we have but we hope that maybe next year, tourism will begin again." With Gaddafi's iron-fisted rule isolat

Michelle Obama and her daughters threaded roses through the narrow slots of a Berlin Wall memorial on Wednesday, honoring those who died trying to cross the Cold War barrier at a site which holds special poignancy in the once divided city. Accompanied by Angela Merkel's husband Joachim Sauer, who like the German leader hails from the former East Germany , President Barack Obama's family toured the Bernauer Strasse memorial where desperate residents of East Berlin once tried to jump from their windows into the western half of the city. At Bernauer Strasse, the wall, erected in 1961 by East Germany's communist rulers to prevent citizens from fleeing to the West, cut right in front of the apartment blocks.   Two years after the wall went up, U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited the west of the city and delivered his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in which he pledged not to abandon the citizens of Berlin. President Obama's visit has been timed to coin

Antibodies to a high-risk type of a virus that causes mouth and throat cancers when transmitted via oral sex can be detected in blood tests many years before onset of the disease, according to a World Health Organisation-led team of researchers. In a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers said their findings may in future lead to people being screened for human papillomavirus (HPV) antibodies, giving doctors a chance to find those at high risk of oral cancers.   "Up to now, it was not known whether these antibodies were present in blood before the cancer became clinically detectable," said Paul Brennan, of the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), who led the study and described the findings as "very encouraging". "If these results are confirmed, future screening tools could be developed for early detection of the disease," he said. While HPV is better known for causing cervical and other genital cancers, i

Four more people have died and three more have fallen ill in Saudi Arabia from the new SARS-like coronavirus MERS-CoV, the Saudi Health Ministry said on Monday. _0"> The ministry said the four deaths were among previously registered cases. The new infections were in Eastern Province, in the capital Riyadh and in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.   Saudi Arabia has been the country most affected by the respiratory-system virus, with 49 confirmed cases, of whom 32 have died, according to data from the ministry. In a statement confirming the four additional deaths and three additional cases in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the worldwide toll now stood at 38 deaths from a total of 64 laboratory-confirmed cases. The virus, which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, has spread from the Gulf to France , Germany, Italy, Tunisia and Britain. The WHO has called it the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV). It is a relative of the viru

Watching and routinely examining men with early, slow-growing prostate cancer is more effective and cheaper than sending them to surgery or radiation right away, according to a new study. The findings are based on a model of 65- to 75-year-old men that takes into account costs of tests, treatment and missed work, treatment side effects, men's quality of life and their chance of dying from prostate cancer.   "Most of the men who are diagnosed in this country these days have low-risk prostate cancer," said Dr. Julia Hayes, who led the new study at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Boston. That type of disease may never grow large or fast enough to threaten a man's life. But treating it can cause side effects such as incontinence and impotence. "There's a huge group of men out there who are probably treated unnecessarily," Hayes told Reuters Health. The American Cancer Society estimates about one in six U.S. men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer

Two long-awaited independent reviews of a controversial Medtronic Inc bone growth product show it works as well as traditional bone grafts taken from patients, but it may not be as safe. The analyses, published on Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, suggest that Medtronic's Infuse product was associated with a small, increased risk of cancer, and that early published data on the trials underreported side effects and emphasized favorable results.   Writing in an editorial in the same journal, doctors said the Medtronic product should be reserved for certain, select patients, and that the costs and risks of the product should be clearly spelled out. The reviews were prompted by questions raised by spine experts and U.S. lawmakers about the safety of the Infuse product, which contains a genetically-engineered protein used to promote bone growth known as recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein 2. Infuse was once hailed as a major advance in spine surgery by offering a

Johnson & Johnson said it would pay up to $1 billion for Aragon Pharmaceuticals and its experimental drugs for prostate cancer, to bolster J&J's role in the field after it acquired another experimental prostate-cancer treatment four years ago that has become a leading brand. J&J on Monday said Aragon's lead product, called ARN-509, has potential to help patients whose prostate cancer has not yet spread to other parts of the body, as well as patients whose cancer has spread.   By contrast, J&J's blockbuster Zytiga treatment, acquired through its $1 billion purchase of Cougar Biotechnology in 2009, was approved in 2011 only for patients whose cancer has already spread. Moreover, although Zytiga has become a blockbuster only two years after being launched, it could face competition from cheaper generics by 2016 in the United States, while ARN-509 will have U.S. marketing exclusivity until 2028, Leerink Swann analyst Danielle Antalffy said in a research not

AstraZeneca has chosen a science park on the southern outskirts of Cambridge, England, next to the world-renowned Addenbrooke's Hospital, for its new $500 million global headquarters and research center. Property industry sources told Reuters last month that the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC) was the most likely site for the new facility, which will house some 2,000 employees - a decision confirmed by the drugmaker on Tuesday.   Transplanting the heart of the company to the university city is the centerpiece of a $2.3 billion restructuring plan unveiled by new Chief Executive Pascal Soriot in March, which also includes a 10 percent cut in overall staff numbers by 2016. Soriot is trying to turn around the group's fortunes after a series of drug development disappointments by investing more in research and bolt-on acquisitions, while reining in costs. AstraZeneca said at the time that it planned to establish a new global research and development center and corporate head

The marketing of unhealthy foods to children has proven "disastrously effective", driving obesity by using cheap social media channels to promote fat-, salt- and sugar-laden foods, the World Health Organisation's Europe office said on Tuesday. The United Nations health agency called for tighter controls on such marketing, saying tougher regulations were crucial to winning the fight against childhood obesity. "Children are surrounded by adverts urging them to consume high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt foods, even when they are in places where they should be protected, such as schools and sports facilities," said Zsuzsanna Jakab, director of the WHO's regional unit for Europe. The promotion of foods high in saturated and trans-fats, sugars and salt has for years been recognized as a significant risk factor for obesity in children and for diet-related chronic diseases such as heart disease and some cancers later in life. In a report on food marketing, WHO Eu

GlaxoSmithKline is discussing the sale of its thrombosis drug brands Arixtra and Fraxiparine, along with a related French factory, to Aspen Pharmacare in a deal that could be worth some $1 billion. Britain's biggest drugmaker said on Tuesday that Aspen had offered to buy the medicines, sales of which are in decline, and it was now in exclusive talks with the South African company about a deal, which is subject to consultation with employees.   Arixtra and Fraxiparine had worldwide sales of approximately 420 million pounds ($660 million) in 2012, down from 510 million in 2011, and revenues are expected to slide further in 2013. Neither company put a value on the proposed deal but assuming Aspen pays twice this year's anticipated sales, it could be worth around 700 million pounds - after stripping out sales in China , India and Pakistan, which GSK will retain. About 1,000 GSK employees would transfer to Aspen, if the deal goes through, the majority of whom work at the Notre

Turning around drugmaker AstraZeneca will be a long haul, with a strategy of revamping research and boosting acquisitions set to take up to four years to pay off, its chief executive said on Tuesday. Speaking as the group unveiled the location for a new global headquarters and research center in Cambridge, England, Pascal Soriot said he was not expecting any short-term fixes for the group, which is struggling from falling sales as patents expire. "You've got to look at this over a horizon of three to four years, it is not a six-month horizon," he said in a telephone interview from Cambridge. "And it is not going to be a smooth journey. We will have ups and downs." The company's new $500 million site on the southern outskirts of the university town, which will be purpose-built, is only set for completion in 2016.   However, AstraZeneca plans to transfer some staff from its existing Alderley Park facility in northwest England before then, possibly as ear

Studies that are funded by pharmaceutical companies or involve industry-backed scientists tend to be more prominent at cancer meetings than independent studies, a new report suggests. "Figuring out the reasons behind these findings is critical," said Dr. Beverly Moy, who led the analysis at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston.   She and her colleagues also found the proportion of presentations with a financial conflict of interest increased between the 2006 and 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meetings. "As long as the studies are done well, I don't think there's any objection to them becoming more prominent," Moy told Reuters Health. However, she added, past evidence suggests industry-funded research is more likely to be published if it's positive - in favor of a product or pill - than if it's negative, a phenomenon known as publication bias. So it's important to make sure relationships between s