Quality Of Life

When Diane and Noel Diotte began dreaming of leaving their San Gabriel Valley condominium to live full time on their 34-foot sloop, one question nagged at them. What would they do with all their stuff? "A year later, my husband asked what we had in storage and I couldn't even remember," said Diane Diotte, an executive for an El Segundo-based software company. "That's how quickly you realize just how little possessions matter."

Exercise has been touted as a good way to help prevent certain diseases and conditions, but can it be useful after the fact? Yes, says a study, which suggests that a fitness regimen can enhance the health of patients following treatment. The paper analyzed 34 studies that looked at the effect of exercise on patients who had breast cancer, as well as other types of cancer, such as prostate and lung. The various studies included aerobic, resistance and strength workouts, the average length was 13 weeks and the average number of people in each trial was 93. Most of the control groups consisted of people who were sedentary or told to do no exercise.

In the hallway, Bella and Diva are asleep once again, snoring as only contented dogs can snore, eight legs splayed in the air. One floor up, there is the smell of baking bread. In the gardens out back, a visitor and her young daughter happily explore the playground. Nothing is particularly unusual about that scene in Fairfax City, Va.--except that it's unfolding at a nursing home, a setting more typically associated with loss and dying than joy and living.

Every summer, Volkmar and Vera Kruger spend three weeks vacationing in the south of France or at a cool getaway in Denmark. For the other three weeks of their annual vacation, they garden or travel a few hours away to root for their favorite team in Germany's biggest soccer stadium. The couple, in their early 50s, aren't retired or well off. They live in a small Tudor-style house in this middle-class town about 30 miles northwest of Frankfurt. He's a foreman at a glass factory; she works part time for a company that tracks inventories for retailers.

Medicare's new prescription benefit will cover sexual performance drugs, like Viagra, in addition to medications for such ailments as high blood pressure and heart disease, program officials confirmed Monday. The move into what some consider "lifestyle" -- rather than life-saving -- pharmaceuticals is being criticized by conservatives, who see it as an unnecessary frill for a program that already is projected to cost at least $400 billion over its first decade.

Pushed to the fringes by a money-driven social divide, Rosa is what Cubans call a "marginal" person. She's lived all of her 72 years in a shabby enclave of Marianao, a neighborhood where crude wooden cottages, their rotting boards held together with coats of paint, descend into a gully strewn with refuse and sewage.

His day begins at 4:30 a.m. The 64-year-old retired math teacher doesn't own a clock or even a watch, but the internal alarm that has kept him alive while so many of his fellow North Koreans have starved to death tells him he had better get out to pick grass if his family is to survive. Soon the streets of his city, Chongjin, will be swarming with others doing the same. Some cook the grass to eat. The teacher feeds it to the rabbits his family sells at the market. At 10 a.m.

To pick the world's top 10 cities based on quality of life, the Geneva-based Corporate Resources Group looked at security, public services, medical and health structures and political and social stability. Boston was the highest-scoring U.S. city, at No. 30. San Francisco was 31, New York was 44 and L.A. 46. 1) GENEVA: 106 points 2) VANCOUVER: 105.29 points 3) VIENNA: 105.24 points 4) TORONTO: 105.20 points 5) LUXEMBOURG: 105.19 points 6) Zurich: 105.09 points 7) MONTREAL: 104.

The Canadian cities of Vancouver and Toronto, and Auckland, New Zealand, have the highest quality of life for major world cities, according to a business survey. Cities at the bottom of the survey's rankings for quality of life were Brazzaville, Congo; Baghdad; and the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

Orange County's 15-month-old bankruptcy continues to plague residents, with a third of the voters complaining that the crisis has greatly diminished the quality of life in the county and has directly affected them or members of their families, according to a new Times Orange County Poll. Residents also remain angry at their local leaders. More than 40% of voters say the Board of Supervisors has done a poor job in handling the financial collapse.

Ever since Taiwan's democracy took shape in the 1990s, elections have revolved around relations with mainland China. But the hot-button issue of independence from China was bumped from the top of the campaign list in recent months as incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou and main challenger Tsai Ing-wen vied for votes ahead of the presidential election Saturday. Both major candidates sought to establish themselves as leaders with fail-proof strategies for helping a vast lower-middle class.

When Willie Mitchell suffered a concussion almost two years ago, getting back to hockey became secondary to living a normal life. "It's tough. You can't do anything. You can't read. You can't drive your car. It hurts," said Mitchell, the Kings defenseman who was then with the Vancouver Canucks. "Living in pain, it's almost like, I always say, it's like a snippet into a terminal illness, so to speak. It gives you a little snippet because not only physically it bothers you. But it's also the emotional aspect of it, as well as that.

Buck up, all you smokers who are trying to quit or thinking about quitting: a study finds your quality of life might improve once you stop smoking. Researchers found there is a light at the end of the tunnel for smokers who have quit, as several factors that affect their quality of life improve. They followed 1,504 regular smokers for three years after they quit smoking and matched them with daily smokers who did not quit. People in both groups reported a drop in overall quality of life at the one- and three-year follow-up points.

Mike Dicorato was sitting on the Seal Beach pier with his daughter Tuesday, enjoying the quiet of a fall afternoon. His neighbor, the editor of the local newspaper, approached with a question for his weekly Sidewalk Talk feature. "Do you feel safe where you live?" he asked. Dicorato, 57, thought for a moment. "Physically, yes," he said. "But you can't leave anything unlocked or it will be gone. " He'd had a couple of beach chairs stolen from his alley. The following afternoon, Seal Beach witnessed the deadliest shooting in Orange County history.

If there is anything about which the average American has no doubt, it's that the state of the economy is a five-alarm emergency. Consumer demand, already weak, is destined to ebb even more as Americans watch their retirement savings and other investments shrivel in the global markets meltdown. Businesses won't hire in this kind of environment, no matter how much cash is sitting on their balance sheets. And the cycle continues to roll, downhill. These are the times when Americans look to Washington for leadership and solutions.

Dan Haren is a veteran of nine big league seasons, a three-time All-Star with a four-year, $45-million contract, so the image of the pitcher lugging dirty laundry to his in-laws' house like some home-for-the-weekend college student seems a little farfetched. But that's exactly what the 30-year-old Haren did several times over the final two months of the 2010 season, after his July 25 trade last summer from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Angels. Haren, who is married with two young children, owns a home in Phoenix, and with the Angels trying to catch the Texas Rangers in the American League West, he knew he wouldn't have the time and energy to relocate his family to Orange County right away.

The quality of life for California's children has steadily declined in the last four years as more and more young people have been forced to cope with poverty, child abuse and violence, a report released by an advocacy group concluded Thursday. Nearly three-fourths of the state's children live in communities where violent crime is worse than the national average and where homicide has become a major cause of teen-agers' deaths, the report found.

It's moving day for Masamichi Kanari, again. He travels light, toting a blue backpack and brown gym bag stuffed with donated dress shirts and a few personal possessions. The 58-year-old teacher is leaving the Tokyo hotel-turned-refugee-center where he has lived on and off since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant near his home in Iwaki City. Though Iwaki City is not within the government's mandatory evacuation area, the subsequent release of radiation from the plant -- and the fear of a full-blown nuclear meltdown -- prompted Kanari and his wife to flee.

Our leader had a megaphone strapped over his shoulder and a list in his pocket of drug treatment programs and women's shelters. There were half a dozen of us invited to join him, walking in the dark down Western Avenue, scanning doorways and street corners. "I think I see one," somebody would announce, and we'd quicken toward our target … only to realize that the woman we thought was a prostitute was waiting for a bus or heading toward the market. Maybe word of the Friday night sweep had reached the streets, mused Najee Ali, the irrepressible activist leading the push against prostitution along this part of Western known as a nexus of sex-for-sale and drug dealing.