Being overweight can damage your career - study

Being overweight or obese is not only bad for your health but can also be bad for your career, according to a U.S. study.

As obesity rates in the United States rise, researchers at Detroit's Wayne State University looked at over 25 years of research on weight-based bias in the workplace to see whether being overweight hindered the chance of getting a job or moving up the work ladder.

A woman walks along the boardwalk while leaving the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York in this September 4, 2007 file photo. Being overweight or obese is not only bad for your health but can also be bad for your career, according to a U.S. study. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

After examining the results of 25 separate studies, they concluded that obesity does have a denigrating effect in the workplace, with the weight-based bias stronger for sales positions than for managerial positions.

"There are a whole set of stereotypes that go along with being overweight, and a lot of them transfer into the workplace in terms of people's judgment about others' abilities and appearance in relation to job performance," researcher Cort Rudolph said in a statement.

The researchers found the results of all the studies examined were consistent in finding that people who are overweight are viewed more negatively in the workplace than those who are of average weight.

The bias was felt most when overweight people applied for a job and went through the initial selection process with body weight found to be less of a factor at the performance evaluation stage, and with stereotypes having a minimum influence when it comes to promotions.

Rudolph said this was not surprising based on what was known about weight-based stereotypes.

"Some of the basic stereotypes associated with being overweight include laziness, sloppiness, untidiness and lack of self-discipline and control," he said.

"Overweight people are also regularly labeled as having increased health problems, which is an issue often considered cumbersome by organizations."

But Rudolph, who will present the study's findings at a conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in San Francisco in April, said there was good news for overweight employees.

"The bias effect tends to decrease as people's tenure with an organization increases," he said.

Rudolph said this was an issue that could become more a problem as Americans became heavier.

"Considering this growth, stigmas associated with body weight can become more and more of an issue," he said.

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Iconic Philippine leader calls on Arroyo to quit

Iconic Philippine leader Corazon Aquino called on Tuesday for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo over a kickbacks scandal, saying she had lost the moral right to remain in office.

The comments by Aquino, who served as president after the ouster of strongman Ferdinand Marcos in the 1986 "People Power" revolution, are a blow for Arroyo but should not materially affect her position.

Former Philippine president Corazon Aquino is seen in Manila in this August 21, 2007 file photo. Aquino called on Tuesday for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo over a kickbacks scandal, saying she had lost the moral right to remain in office. (REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco/Files)

Aquino has called for Arroyo's resignation before, over charges of cheating in the 2004 presidential elections, but the president was not affected.

"Our guiding light should not be an obsession to evict the president," Aquino said in a speech to the influential Makati Business Club of local industry leaders.

"But in an environment where abuse of power closes all doors of legitimate redress, sadly we are too often pushed to the brink. That is why the most noble -- and least disruptive -- way out of the moral crisis would be for the president to resign.

"These critical times call for strong moral leadership, which clearly she is no longer in a position to provide."

Allegations of $130 million worth of kickbacks in a $329 million government telecoms deal with China's ZTE Corp. have bedevilled Arroyo for the past few months, and her husband has been named by witnesses testifying at a Senate inquiry into the deal.

But Arroyo has already survived three impeachment bids and at least three coup plots and has vowed to see out her final term, which ends in 2010.

Political analysts say she will likely do so because the powerful Catholic Church has not come out directly against her and she enjoys the support of the military and the lower house of Congress.

Arroyo has cancelled the ZTE deal and said on Tuesday that inquiries by the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice into the kickbacks allegations should be open so that the public could judge what was happening.

"This is the new people power, vigilance in the process of law to ferret out the whole truth," she said in her televised comments.

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China, Pakistan, Vietnam on bird flu alert

China and Pakistan have announced bird flu outbreaks among poultry, a day after two women, one in China and one in neighbouring Vietnam, died of the virus.

A vendor carries chickens at a poultry market in Guangzhou, Guangdong province February 25, 2008. China and Pakistan have announced bird flu outbreaks among poultry, a day after two women, one in China and one in neighbouring Vietnam, died of the virus. (REUTERS/Stringer)

The Chinese outbreak, first noticed on Feb. 17 in Zunyi in the southwestern province of Guizhou, had killed nearly 4,000 birds and triggered the culling of more than 238,000, Xinhua news agency said late on Monday, citing the Ministry of Agriculture.

China has reported four outbreaks of the disease in poultry since December, when average temperatures across the country hit their lowest in decades. Bird flu tends to be more active in the cold.

Experts fear the H5N1 strain could mutate or combine with the highly contagious seasonal influenza virus and spark a pandemic. With the world's biggest poultry population and hundreds of millions of farmers raising birds in their backyards, China is seen as crucial in the global fight against the disease.

Pakistani authorities found a fresh outbreak of H5N1 in chickens, the fourth case in a month, in the southern city of Karachi, a government official said on Tuesday.

Pakistan confirmed its first human death from the virus near the northwestern town of Abbottabad in December.

China has reported three confirmed human deaths from bird flu this year, the most recent in the southern province of Guangdong, neighbouring Hong Kong.

The woman, a 44-year-old migrant worker, probably contracted the H5N1 virus from sick poultry she kept in her backyard, Hong Kong government health officials said.

The spate of cases is a concern for a country that has the world's biggest poultry population, many of them backyard birds roaming free. China has struggled to combat the virus with mass inoculations for birds and an education campaign for those who handle them.

State-run Voice of Vietnam radio said on Tuesday a woman teacher had died from H5N1 in the north of the country, the fourth death from the virus this year.

The 23-year-old woman died on Monday at a Hanoi hospital after falling sick as she ate chicken in her home province of Phu Tho, the radio quoted the Health Ministry as saying.

In communist-run Vietnam, official announcements are often made in state-run media.

The woman's death is the fourth out of five people infected by bird flu so far this year in Vietnam after an extended cold spell in northern provinces.

Excluding the two deaths on Monday, bird flu has killed 232 people among the 366 known cases globally, among them 50 deaths in Vietnam, the World Health Organisation has said.

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China military paper urges long-term defence budget rises

China needs to increase defence spending to keep pace with economic growth and overcome historic shortfalls, the military's newspaper said on Tuesday.

China's official defence budget for 2007 was $45 billion, a rise of 17.8 percent on the previous budget that continued a string of double-digit military spending rises for a decade.

Reservists of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) are seen attending a ceremony at a stadium in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu province, in this April 28, 2007 file photo. China needs to increase defence spending to keep pace with economic growth and overcome historic shortfalls, the military's newspaper said on Tuesday. (REUTERS/Jeff Xu/Files)

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) official budget for 2008 is likely to be unveiled shortly before the national parliament meets for its annual session in early March.

The repeated rises have prompted worried calls from other countries for Beijing to explain more clearly how and why the PLA is spending its extra money.

China focuses many of its navy ships, missiles and military aircraft on Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own and says must accept eventual reunification.

The Pentagon has estimated China's true military budget could be more than double the public number.

But in an unusually blunt piece of public lobbying, China's Liberation Army Daily warned of grave consequences if increases in defence spending did not continue, arguing that the rises were making up for slimmed budgets for much of the 1980s and 1990s, when economic priorities squeezed spending.

"When economic conditions improve, this (defence spending) shortfall must be compensated. Otherwise there will be dire consequences," the paper said.

"Now the time has come when we must increase defence spending to make up for historic arrears."

The paper estimated that defence spending must keep rising until 2030 to make up for past tight budgets and to properly reflect China's growing economic strength.

"To make up for the arrears, naturally there must be compensatory increases in military spending that are higher than the rate of economic growth," the paper said.

"Our country's current rises in military spending are merely bringing that spending into step with economic growth ... but we are far from completing this compensation and closing the shortfall."

The report did not specify what levels of spending would satisfy PLA needs.

Faced with international calls for greater military candour, China has often said its intentions are peaceful and pointed to the much higher budget of the Pentagon.

The Bush administration asked for $484.1 billion for the Defense Department in the fiscal year from October 2007. That figure does not cover military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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