Japan’s Prime Minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, is a man renowned for his love of physical pleasure. “It is now a truth generally acknowledged that SSRIs cause sexual dysfunction more than any other class of anti-depressants,” they write.
SSRIs are used by millions around the world. But the US researchers say that between 40 and 50 per cent of those taking Prozac and similar anti-depressants, including Zoloft, Paxil, and Luvox, suffer from some sort of sexual dysfunction. Conventional medical wisdom has long held that users of SSRIs are less prone to side-effects than those who use other forms of anti-depressants. The downside to taking Prozac and other SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) can be a dramatic loss of libido, say the authors of a study published in Primary Psychiatry. Prozac, the anti-depressive drug often described as “sunshine in a bottle”, can take its toll on users’ sex lives, research published in the US has claimed.

Public bodies are failing to meet government guidelines on openness, a survey showed yesterday. More than a quarter of organisations contacted fell short of the standards enshrined in their published commitments to open government. According to the Press Gazette survey, 50 government departments and quangos were asked for information, which the public is entitled to under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information.
But results showed only 11 departments replied “quickly and willingly”, 25 responded only “adequately”, some giving information after being prompted to reply, and 11 failed to comply with the code by providing “wrong or inadequate” information. They are seeking to strike a deal with a manufacturer who would test the new design and ensure that it could perform for at least 100,000 miles.
The catalyst is the invention of Professor James Cairns of the university’s department of applied physics and electronic and mechanical engineering, and Dr James Thomson, lecturer in the department of chemistry. The university has patented its development and is now in discussions with components manufacturers around the world after presenting their breakthrough to the Society of Automobile Engineers in Detroit.

The new design, developed at Dundee University, replaces these precious metals with a cheaper mixture of palladium and zinc. Existing converters used by vehicle manufacturers all use platinum and rhodium. Scientists have developed a catalytic converter which would be cheaper to manufacture and more efficient in controlling exhaust emissions, they announced yesterday. The statutory infected area was yesterday widened by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to include Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria and Northumbria.
The designation makes the movement of bees into and out of the infected area prohibited except under licence.. The whole of England and Wales has been declared a statutory infected area after the government and beekeepers failed to halt the spread of a devastating disease among bees. Forty people were travelling in the trains, which did not have seat belts, when the accident happened.
Richard Barraclough, of the Health and Safety Executive, said that a senior Butlin’s official interviewed by the HSE “was pretty scathing about local management practices at Butlin’s”.. Butlin’s, the holiday camp giant, was yesterday fined pounds 25,000 for “poor” safety standards following a monorail crash.

Seven holidaymakers were injured in a head-on collision between two trains at the company’s Somerwest World in Minehead, Somerset, last August.The town’s magistrates heard track signals had been disconnected and the monorail was being run by a 20-year-old worker on his first day in the job. The woman eventually recovered physically, but would remain mentally scarred for life, Knightsbridge Crown Court was told. At one point, the gang leader, Barclay Walters, pulled out a gun, loaded it with a single round, held it to her temple and pulled the trigger. She was also beaten, her long hair was hacked off, and she was threatened with scalding water and told her fingers would be amputated. Their first bid in November was rejected but they have since “significantly increased” their first offer of pounds 1.4m. The island, which has 63 inhabitants, was put on the market last summer by the German artist Marlin Eckhard Maruma, for pounds 2m. He bought it in 1995 from Mr Schellenberg, a Yorkshire businessman Kate Watson-Smyth.

A member of a violent drugs gang, Manjeet Gill, of Esher, Surrey, was yesterday found guilty of kidnapping and imprisoning a rival woman drug-dealer who suffered a 72-hour ordeal which included a mock execution. It is the second time they have tried to buy the Scottish island which has been up for sale since last summer. But families of the crew and shipping experts have argued that the disaster was caused by structural defects in the vessel.. The long-running battle for ownership of the Isle of Eigg took another turn yesterday as residents, who want to buy the tiny island, discovered they are facing competition from a rival bidder. An official inquiry into the disaster in 1987 said the weather was probably to blame. Their findings resulted in this official expedition being mounted, the results of which could be known later this year.
The United States research vessel Thomas G Thompson was due to leave Guam, in the Pacific, today to travel to the wreckage site 400 miles off Okinawa.