Ask Zelda: Quesitons on sexless marriage and unrequited love answered

By Zelda West-Meads

PUBLISHED: 18:01 EST, 28 September 2013 | UPDATED: 18:01 EST, 28 September 2013

Is it possible to have a sex-free marriage?

I love my husband dearly, and wouldn't dream of hurting him, but if he turned around and said he never wanted sex again I would be ecstatic. I am in my late 40s, he is 55 and we have been married for 15 years. I would rather have a cup of tea than sex. I would just like a cuddle but he might see this as an invitation for sex.

I know it sounds horrible - but I can't be bothered. We had sex two weeks ago and before that it was last summer. I don't fancy him but I don't fancy anyone else either. If I told him that it would break his heart. If we stop making love altogether, I think we would end up divorcing. I would be sad but almost relieved. Is there anything I can do to get my libido back? Surely there must be successful marriages out there that don't rely on sex.

It is possible to be happily married and not have a sexual relationship, but - and it's a big but - only if you both feel the same way.

I get lots of letters about the loss of sexual desire from women - and some from men, though fewer. The first question for someone who no longer wants to make love should be: is it that you no longer fancy your partner, or that you have lost your libido completely?

Loss of sexual desire is often due to problems in the relationship but it sounds as if you have a good marriage, so I think we can rule that out. Complete loss of sexual desire can be caused by stress, depression, diabetes, an underactive thyroid, drug or alcohol misuse - all of which can suppress your libido.

With your menopause just around the corner, it could be a diminishing level of hormones such as oestrogen or testosterone. So discuss all of this with your GP. There is help available such as HRT or testosterone patches. Tell your husband that you still love him but you are suffering with a low libido or hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD, as it is known) and that you are going to get help.

As you have made love only once in the past year, he must have some idea that there is a problem and he could be feeling quite rejected. It is better to admit to a general loss of sexual desire, rather than just making excuses not to make love, or not daring to show him any affection in case it leads to sex.

Our dog is taking over our life

Six years ago my husband and I bought a puppy who we both love to bits, but I have developed a fear of leaving her when we go on holiday. It's getting so bad that I don't want to go away and this is annoying my husband.

We have been married for 18 years and are happy together. We chose not to have children. Although we have found a very reliable dogsitter, in the weeks leading up to our departure I have been unable to sleep and I don't want to go away. On one occasion we cancelled the holiday at the last minute and suffered a heavy financial loss. If we do go, I wish the time away so I can get back to the dog. I would like to be able to relax and enjoy going on holiday again but I can't.

Think of it this way - you are not exactly being fair to your husband or yourself. If you keep refusing to go or are counting the days until you return, your husband could accuse you in a cross moment of putting the dog before him. Dogs are thought not to have the same concept of time as we do but to live more in the moment, so she won't be counting the days until you return, though of course she will be delighted to see you.

If you look a little deeper I suspect the dog has become a substitute child. Or it could be that it's taking you back to a deeply buried feeling that you had when you were a child. Perhaps you were separated from your mother because she went away and this is igniting all those past fears of loss and separation. Contact Anxiety Alliance (anxietyalliance.org.uk, 0845 296 7877) to help you deal with your worries about leaving her.

How can I tell her how I feel?

I am in love with my best friend but I don't know how she feels about me. We are on the same course at university. I see her every day and we go out to supper a lot and she says she loves my company. However, she also spends a lot of time with strapping rowers, leaving me with a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to my body. I'm quite fat and she is very beautiful. I don't want to ruin our friendship by blurting out how I feel. This isn't just a lust thing - she is a fragile, intelligent and truly gorgeous person.

It does seem that she sees you as a lovely and close friend rather than a prospective romantic partner. So it's probably best to tread carefully and don't blurt anything out. If the opportunity arises, you could say something such as: 'Do you ever see us going out on a proper date together?' If she replies along the lines of: 'I wouldn't want to spoil our friendship', then you will know where you stand and you could still be friends, but loosen the ties a little and date other girls zelda costume. Could you try exercising to lose weight or take up a sport? It would be good for your health and your self-esteem.

If you have a problem, write to Zelda West-Meads at: YOU, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS, or em ail Zelda reads all your letters but regrets that she cannot answer them all personally z.west-meads@you.co.uk

Source: Dailymail

The Detroit Lions will have to beat the Washington Redskins without the help of their dual-threat running back reggie Bush. ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter reports that Reggie Bush has been listed as "officially out" of the game today.

Reggie Bush officially out. RBs Eddie Lacy, Mark Ingram also out.

- Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 22, 2013

This shouldn't come as too big of a surprise. Despite Bush's optimism all week, there were doubts all along that he'd be available to play. There were reports that the Lions might hold him out of the game to give him extra rest to recover instead of risking a further set back.

Due to knee injury, Lions RB Reggie Bush is not expected to play today vs. Washington. He is expected to play next week.

- Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 22, 2013

There were reports that he was pushing to play, but ultimately he wasn't able to convince coaches to let him on the field. In his place Joique Bell will get the start for the Lions.

Source: Fansided

Family members of Eain Clayton Brooks, the 5-year-old West Side boy who police say was fatally beaten last weekend, vow to hold Erie County Child Protective Services accountable for his death.

They said the agency's workers, despite numerous warnings, failed the child.

"If I have to take it to the steps of Washington, I'm going to do that," Paul Henry, Eain's great-uncle, said outside Sanborn Funeral Home, which is handling arrangements for the boy's funeral.

Police on Thursday arrested Matthew Kuzdzal, the boyfriend of the boy's mother, on a charge of second-degree murder.

People who report allegations of child abuse deserve some follow-up, family members said Friday.

"There needs to be confirmation," Henry said.

He said when individuals report suspected child abuse, they should be issued a confirmation number so they can follow the case through the system.

Several family members have said they took their fears for Eain to Child Protective Services several times, to no avail.

Henry said he received no confirmation number when he called last winter to report his suspicions that Eain was being abused.

He said he was told: "We got the report, and we'll look into it."

Family members said Eain's mother, Nora Brooks, did not take her son away from Kuzdzal because she was being manipulated by him and was unable to take action.

Meanwhile, State Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, called on the state Office of Children and Family Services to investigate the boy's death and the handling of his case by Erie County Child Protective Services, as well as conduct a broader examination of the state's child protection agencies.

"Eain's death is an intolerable and heartbreaking tragedy, and we must do all we can to prevent anything like this from ever happening again," Kennedy said in a statement.

email: lmichel@buffnews.com

Source: Buffalonews

Hydrogen bombs dropped as doomed B-52 plunged to earth. One almost detonated.

A doomed Air Force B-52 accidentally dropped two hydrogen bombs on North Carolina in January 1961, and one came perilously close to exploding and scattering deadly radioactive fallout over the Eastern Seaboard, according to a recently declassified report.

The 4-megaton Mark 39 bombs -- each packing 260 times the explosive power of the weapon that decimated Hiroshima -- broke loose over Goldsboro, N.C., as the bomber went into a tailspin and crashed.

The Mark 39 hydrogen bomb had an explosive yield of 4 megatons, equal to 4 million tons of TNT. Two fell accidentally on Goldsboro, N.C., in 1961, and one nearly detonated.(Photo: U.S. Air Force)

All four safety mechanisms designed to prevent accidental detonation worked properly on one bomb, which landed in a meadow, but three failed on the other, and only a low-voltage switch kept it from exploding upon impact in a field in Faro, N.C., said the 1969 report.

The accident happened just three days after President John F Kennedy was inaugurated. Only one crew member survived the crash.

The report was obtained by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser for his newest book, Command and Control, about the nuclear arms race. Schlosser found that between 1950 and 1968 alone, at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded.

Mother Jonesfirst reported Schlosser's findings Sunday, and the Goldsboro incident attracted new attention Friday based on an article in the Guardian. The British paper also published the report, written by Parker F Jones, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia National Laboratories.

Source: Usatoday

The lawsuits are still flying around between residents near the CTS Superfund Site in South Asheville, and the CTS Corp., but today there was a glimmer of hope that things are moving forward, if ever so slightly.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said today, Friday, Sept. 20, it will start sampling activities for the Soil Vapor Extraction Confirmation Sampling and Analysis Plan and the Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids Investigation at the CTS Superfund site off Mills Gap Road in South Asheville.

The work will include collecting soil and water samples to better understand how deep and wide the highest concentrated contamination exists on and adjacent to the former plant property, said Samantha Urquhart-Foster, EPA remedial project manager.

"The intent of the sampling is to find the most contaminated parts to the soil and groundwater to begin clean up," Urquhart-Foster said. "The work plans were approved in December 2012, but we hadn't begun work because we didn't have approval for some of the properties. But we decided to go ahead and start sampling."

"We were hoping it would start back at the beginning of the year, but we are glad that they are continuing with the sampling without stalling," said Lee Ann Smith, chair of a community group called POWER (Protecting Our Water and Environmental Resources).

"We are celebrating this sampling event because it will bring us one step closer to the full-scale cleanup that we seek," Smith said.

Urquhart-Foster said the sampling will begin on the site of the former CTS plant and move outward. CTS manufactured industrial switches and resistors at the Mills Gap Road plant from 1959-87. Chemicals used at the site, including the industrial solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, have been found in high concentrations in the ground and in nearby drinking water wells.

Residents have been pushing for action on a cleanup for years. They have alleged numerous health problems, including cancer, were caused by the contamination. Some homes have since been connected to city water, while others have had filter systems installed.

Smith, a teacher at Glen Arden Elementary School, has lived less than a mile from the former CTS site for nearly 20 years. Both of her children, who spent their entire lives in that home, are cancer survivors.

The EPA announced in March 2012 the site had been added to the National Priorities List of Superfund sites.

Source: Citizen-times

Five young men dead within the space of four years. They died of different causes: accidents, drugs, and suicide. They had in common being black, male, from rural Mississippi and friends or relatives of Jesmyn Ward, author of a new memoir titled "Men We Reaped."

Ward's previous book, the novel "Salvage the Bones," won the 2011 National Book Award. You can find our conversation on that book here.

Jesmyn Ward joined me in our studio to discuss her new work. In this extended conversation, we discuss the role and strength of women in her community, and the time it took to write and understand the loss of her loved ones.

Source: Pbs

Stocks on Wall Street were little changed as investors hoped that remarks by several senior Federal Reserve officials scheduled to speak on Friday would shed light on the Fed's recent surprise decision to keep its stimulus efforts intact.

In early trading the Standard & Poor's 500-share index was up 0.1 percent, the Dow Jones industrial average was flat, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.2 percent.

Trading could be volatile as Friday marks the "quadruple witching," when stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures all expire on the same day. Trading increases as investors replace or repurchase existing contracts.

Two days after an unexpected decision by the Federal Reserve to delay scaling back its massive monthly bond purchase program, four central bank officials are scheduled to speak at events around midday, and investors hope their remarks may contain signals on how much longer the Fed's stimulus will continue.

In global markets, which jumped on Thursday after the Fed's announcement, trading was largely subdued as investors took stock of their positions and locked in some of the gains, with half an eye on German elections on Sunday.

On Thursday, Wall Street retreated slightly as investors paused after the Federal Reserve's decision Wednesday to keep its stimulus intact sparked a rally that day which took the Dow and S&P 500 to record highs.

In company news, Apple shares rose 1 percent on the day the new iPhone models went for sale across the globe.

Microsoft could be in the spotlight. The company's chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, has made an impassioned plea to investors at an annual meeting to support his vision of the world's largest software company as a unified devices and services powerhouse. He said in August he planned to step down within 12 months. The stock was down 1.4 percent.

In afternoon trading Europe's FTSEurofirst 300 index of blue chips was down 0.2 percent, and London's FTSE 100 was also down 0.2 percent. Euro zone bond markets were little changed, while the euro was holding near an eight-month high after its best week since July.

After being battered in May and June by the prospect of reduced stimulus, emerging market currencies and stocks have some of the biggest winners from Wednesday's Fed move. Indian financial markets were roiled again on Friday, however, after the Reserve Bank of India unexpectedly raised interest rates by 25 basis points. The Indian rupee fell 1.0 percent to 62.34 to the dollar while Indian shares fell almost 2 percent.

The Indonesian rupiah also gave up some of Thursday's gains to trade at 11,390 to the dollar, down 1.0 percent on the day. Jakarta shares, which jumped 4.7 percent on Thursday, lost 1.9 percent.

Brighter economic data out of the United States on Thursday, which included a surge in home sales and some encouraging unemployment claims figures, provided a timely reminder that a scaling back of stimulus will come eventually, despite this week's delay.

That helped push the yield on the United States 10-year Treasury note back up to 2.75 percent from a five-week low of 2.67 percent touched just after the Fed's decision, and kept the dollar index just clear of a seven-month low at 80.417 points.

In the commodities market, benchmark crude oil slipped 65 cents a barrel to $105.74 on Friday after a 1.5 percent drop the previous day on increased Libyan production and signs of a thawing of diplomatic relations between Iran and the West.

Meanwhile, gold - whose reputation as an inflation hedge means it usually benefits from central bank stimulus - hovered at $1,369 an ounce, on track for its best week in five.

Source: Nytimes

More A-Rod: Knobler: Like it or not, A-Rod is the all-time grand slam king

Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez set a record when he was suspended 211 games for his ties to Biogenesis last month. He's appealing the ban and allowed to play in the meantime, which gave him a chance to set another record: the all-time grand slam record. A-Rod here hit his 24th career grand slam on Friday to pass Lou Gehrig on the all-time list. Here's the record-setting blast:

Here's the updated all-time grand slam leaderboard, courtesy of Baseball Almanac:

1. A-Rod -- 24
2. Gehrig -- 23
3. Manny Ramirez -- 21
4. Eddie Murray -- 19
5. Willie McCovey & Robin Ventura -- both 18
6. Jimmie Foxx, Carlos Lee & Ted Williams -- 17 each
7. Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth & Dave Kingman -- 16 each
8. Ken Griffey Jr. & Richie Sexson -- 15 each
9. Jason Giambi, Gil Hodges, Mark McGwire & Mike Piazza -- 14 each
10. Eight tied with 13

Source: Cbssports

It's like AA without the rambling speeches, stale coffee or stink of cigarettes. You can show up in the middle of the night, without leaving your bed.

It's no wonder self-help "communities" online are shoving conventional in-person support groups to the sidelines.

They offer more than 24-seven advice; they can be an encouraging counterpoint to the prevailing narrative of Internet cruelty and faceless online bullies.

I discovered that this summer, when my daughter downloaded an app that might, in the long run, save her life. It's the "Dare to Quit Smoking" website, where thousands of people from across the country and around the world come together to kick the habit.

My daughter's attraction to cigarettes blossomed when she was a freshman in college. The DSA - designated smoking area - outside her dorm was where the renegades hung out. She showed up for the camaraderie and left with a pack of Marlboro Lights.

In the four years since then, she's tried to quit, but it never stuck. Her habit had become an addiction; a tyrant and a crutch.

Now she's three months smober - that's what they call it - and she credits ex-smokers on the website with bringing her this far.

When she has the urge, she goes online and someone talks her down.

It's a place to discuss the fallout from quitting that only smokers know: bad dreams, headaches, anxiety, cravings that come and go for years after your last smoke.

And it's a place to celebrate the simple blessings of quitting: a bike ride without getting winded, a stranger who notices how good you smell.

They share tactics for managing withdrawal: a nicotine patch, e-cigarettes, acupuncture, meditation, yoga, a straw to chew on while you commute, herbs to help you sleep. here They track how many cigarettes they smoke, and how much money they save when they don't.

And they know they'll be offered encouragement, whether they're crowing about success - Feeling pretty proud. Hung out with two smokers last night and drank beer all night with them and I didn't smoke - orconfessing failure:

Fell off the wagon after an 8 month quit. Stupidest thing ever, but a valuable lesson was learned: never, ever let your guard down and think you can handle just one cigarette.

::

What makes online sites work, experts say, is not just the advice and encouragement, but the combination of accountability, anonymity and the bonds that develop when strangers feel safe enough to share personal revelations.

"Psychological monitoring is very successful as a technique to change behavior," said Karen North, a psychologist who heads USC's Annenberg Program on Online Communities in its School of Communication. "When you're checking in with your peer group, that provides both social pressure and social support."

Because they don't know each other in real life, group members can be more honest and intimate than they might be with friends, family members or even in a doctor's office.

"What they want is for someone to listen and care and talk about things that might be too private or embarrassing to people in the physical world," North said.

"These people know what you're going through and want to help. They've got advice to share. But they're not integrated in the rest of your life, so you can say things that, in your daily life, you wouldn't want people to know.

"It's a confessional group," she said. "And if you're lucky enough to connect with people who really care about each other, the process of sharing can bring you closer and help you reach your goal."

::

My daughter is lucky; I can tell from visiting the site and scrolling through posts. It amazes me how unfailingly kind and supportive her group's members are.

It's corny, maybe, their ceaseless cheerleading and inspirational sayings. But what a breath of fresh air in a social networking world so mean that teenagers can be pushed to suicide by ugly online screeds.

These people comfort one another in ways that go beyond quitting or smoking. They share the pleasures and irritations of disparate daily lives: the husband who won't help with the dishes, the kids that drive them crazy, the diet that finally kicked in.

Their confessions are a revelation to my 22-year-old, who mourns the losses and celebrates the victories: the man whose cancer is in remission, the woman struggling to right a wayward teenage daughter.

She's learned about the real-life hazards of smoking in a way she can't ignore, from a woman diagnosed with cancer 12 days after she quit.

I'm grateful for the lesson and the way they've embraced her. On the morning she started her new job, still nervous about the prospect, she awoke to stream of "good luck" messages on her app. She checks in with her group first thing in the morning and at night when she's in bed.

They've given her a peek at private lives that prime her for compassion and arm her with insight. These people, it's clear, are more than her mentors; they have become her friends.

sandy.banks@latimes.com

Source: Latimes

Areas under a "Flood Watch" this weekend

DALLAS - Large sections of Texas are under flood watches with forecasts calling for rain through the weekend.

Parts of state are already getting soaked as rain and cooler temperatures make their here way into the state after a long hot, dry stretch.

Utilities report more than 26,000 customers in North Texas have lost electricity amid the storms. Most of the power outages are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The National Weather Service says much of West Texas and part of South Texas are under flood watches, while Central Texas could get up to 3 inches of rain.

Source: Wkyc

Adam Sandler may be returning to the dramatic scene as he is here in talks to star in the indie drama " The Cobbler" which Tom McCarthy is directing.

Mary Jane Skalski is producing the feature. Plot details are being kept under wraps.

Sandler's last dramatic role was Judd Apatow's "This Is 40″ while he also starred in Paul Thomas Anderson's 2002 drama "Punch Drunk Love."

In addition to "The Cobbler," Sandler is circling Jason Reitman's next film "Men, Women & Children" so it's unclear which movie he will do first.

Actor-turned-director McCarthy last helmed "Win Win" and "The Visitor."

Sandler is repped by WME while McCarthy is at Gersh Agency.

Source: Variety

When developer Realmac announced that it would release a new, separate version of its popular Clear to-do app for iOS 7, the crowd went wild. With anger, that is.

"What's this? Greed?" one user said on Twitter. "I have to get a whole new app just for upgrading?" tweeted another Clear user. "That seems ridiculously unfair. Why can't you just update the original app?"

Their frustration boils down to a couple of pertinent questions: "Why do I here have to pay again for an app I already bought?" and "Are these developers ripping me off?" Behind these questions are valid frustrations, but what most people don't know is that Apple doesn't give developers much choice in how to charge for new content. And if you can't effectively charge for new content, you go broke.

Apple has traditionally encouraged developers to either offer free updates or in-app purchases, but with the exception of a few companies like FiftyThree, Evernote, and freemium gaming developers, in-app purchases cannot support a business forever. If a developer wants to keep making apps, they must launch new versions of old apps for full price every so often. At the crux of the story is the fact that Apple has rolled out various useful tools for developers to leverage, like in-app purchases and volume discounts for companies, but has never provided a way for developers to issue free or paid upgrades to current users, or to users who bought an app within the last month and feel cheated.

"We can't keep making this stuff for free."

OmniGroup CEO Ken Case, who makes popular "getting things done" app OmniFocus, has been lobbying Apple for paid upgrades since the App Store launched in 2008. OmniFocus, in fact, was a launch title, and Case felt bad asking his dedicated user base to pay full price for the app if they already used his desktop software. OmniFocus, like Clear, released a new app for iOS 7, which means current OmniFocus users will have to pay for the new app. Case has no regrets about charging again after faithfully updating and supporting the last version of OmniFocus for iPhone for the past five years - for free.

"Now seemed like the right time to ask for another $20," says Case. "If I'm buying a movie, I don't expect to get the sequel for free." Obviously, providing free updates and support for an app forever isn't sustainable, yet some customers still expect it. An even greater contingent of users hope for discounted pricing, but such a mechanism doesn't exist.

OmniGroup has traditionally offered refunds to customers who purchased their apps less than 30 days before a new version launches, but the App Store makes it impossible to identify those customers if they don't contact the company directly. OmniGroup and Realmac only receive a ledger of how many apps were sold in the App Store, and not who bought the apps. "If people had a perfect understanding of what we're doing and why, they're not going to be upset," says Case, "but there will always be people that we don't reach. We can't keep making this stuff for free."

"You might say 'I could build Clear in a weekend,' but you can only copy the end result."

Setting aside App Store upgrade drama, users asked to pay full price again for an app often ask if the app includes enough features to be worth it. For developers, there's a hidden cost to launching "sequel" apps like Clear that most users don't know about. During the months spent building version 2.0 of an app, most developers also spend time supporting and updating version 1.0 for free. Clear, for example, hit the market 18 months ago, and Realmac has provided support and updates for the $0.99 app ever since. Fantastical for iPhone, another example, launched less than a year ago, but will be launching a new, paid app in the near future.

"It's not easy at all to calm down upset users."

At first glance it might seem like rebuilding Clear just means thinning out the app's fonts to fit in with iOS 7 and updating the app for iPad, but that's far from the truth. It means utilizing the new "UI Dynamics" APIs Apple provides, which give every tap and swipe a distinct bounce to it, and implementing "Motion," Apple's tool for adding parallax to your apps like on the iOS 7 home screen. There's also the cost of developing and iterating on Clear's core idea. "Judging a product by its end result is what users do," says Realmac's Nik Fletcher. "You might say 'I could build Clear in a weekend,' but you can only copy the end result." The first iterations of Clear had buttons and recurring tasks, and if the app had launched with these features, it likely wouldn't have been as successful or influential.

Even so, and despite Clear's very low price tag, your frustration is warranted if you bought Clear within the last couple months and now have a to buy a new version, or if you bought Reeder, an RSS app, expecting months or years of updates and now have to buy a new version. Reeder developer Silvio Rizzi left his iPad users out in the cold by abandoning the app when its syncing engine, Google Reader, was killed off by Google. Several months later, Rizzi debuted Reeder 2, which works on both iPhone and iPad, but many of his Reeder for iPad users were appalled. The previous version of Reeder for iPhone still works, while Reeder for iPad users were forced to upgrade or find another RSS app. Some of them likely would have been more forgiving had Rizzi been more communicative during the process, but the developer is notoriously qu iet online in comparison to others in the iOS community.

"It's not easy at all to calm down upset users - I think one of the problems is that some people don't understand that this is not just a hobby for me," says Rizzi. "Although we're probably not quite there yet, I think there are more and more people realizing that free does not work." Providing updates free of charge becomes even more difficult when you make two separate apps, as Tapbots developer Paul Haddad does. "Some folks will always complain, regardless," he says, "but for others it'll depend on how much has changed [in the new app] and how long the app has been out." Haddad has not yet announced his plans for iOS 7.

Hard work isn't free, and the fact that Apple doesn't allow upgrade pricing - something many developers would offer - and has trained people to expect free updates makes it tough to satisfy users and your own needs. The reviews section for Clear in the App Store is littered with preemptively scathing reviews from current users complaining of Realmac's "greed." More than ever, it's up to users to decide if buying into a developer's vision is a long-term commitment, or a short-term fix, and up to developers to communicate their rationale for whichever path they choose.

Source: Theverge

DETROIT (AP) - BMW is recalling more than 134,000 5-Series cars in the U.S. because the rear lights can fail.

The recall, posted here Friday on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website, affects 528i, 535i, 550i and M5 cars from the 2008 through 2010 model years.

The U.S. safety agency says that increased electrical resistance can damage connections to the lights. That could cause loss of tail, brake turn-signal or backup lights. The agency says the loss of lights can increase the risk of a crash, although BMW says in documents that it has no reports of any accidents or injuries from the problem.

The cars, made from March 1, 2007 to Dec. 31, 2009, will give drivers visual and audible warnings if the problem occurs, and unaffected rear lights will display to warn drivers behind the cars, BMW said in documents filed with NHTSA.

BMW doesn't believe the problem is an unreasonable safety risk, but the company decided to do the recall due to a precedent set by a 2011 recall for a similar problem, BMW said in the documents.

In August of 2011, BMW recalled 241,000 of its popular 3-Series cars to fix the rear light connections. That recall affected cars from the 2002 through 2005 model years.

Owners in the latest recall will be notified starting next month. Dealers will replace part of the rear lamp connections at no cost to customers.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: Usatoday

Reading the coverage of the Tennessee Titans...

Will the Titans hurry up to get back to their hurry-up offense? John Glennon of The Tennessean considers how often the Titans can, and will, use it.

The Titans are doing here a disservice to Jake Locker by keeping training wheels on, says David Climer of The Tennessean. "At some point, you've got to accept the challenge that comes with the position and prove you can succeed."

To which I say: A bad side effect of the conservatism is that a lot of people wonder if they trust Locker.

Rob Turner said it bothered him that J.J. Watt made a big stink about his peel back block and Turner's attempt to explain himself, says Jim Wyatt of The Tennessean. Turner was fined but didn't reveal how much.

To which I say: Turner will be crushed for this by Texans faithful, who will say the guy who executes a dangerous block surrenders the right to complain about anything connected to it.

The Chargers have been good at finding matchups they can win, says David Boclair of the Nashville Post.

ESPN Tennessee Titans reporter

Source: Go

Associated Press Friday September 20, 2013 9:23 AM

DETROIT - BMW is recalling more than 134,000 5-Series cars in the U.S. because the rear lights can fail.

The recall, posted today on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website, affects 528i, 535i, 550i and M5 cars from the 2008 through 2010 model years.

The U.S. safety agency says that increased electrical here resistance can damage connections to the lights. That could cause loss of tail, brake turn-signal or backup lights. The agency says the loss of lights can increase the risk of a crash, although BMW says in documents that it has no reports of any accidents or injuries from the problem.

The cars, made from March 1, 2007 to Dec. 31, 2009, will give drivers visual and audible warnings if the problem occurs, and unaffected rear lights will display to warn drivers behind the cars, BMW said in documents filed with NHTSA.

BMW doesn't believe the problem is an unreasonable safety risk, but the company decided to do the recall due to a precedent set by a 2011 recall for a similar problem, BMW said in the documents.

In August of 2011, BMW recalled 241,000 of its popular 3-Series cars to fix the rear light connections. That recall affected cars from the 2002 through 2005 model years.

Owners in the latest recall will be notified starting next month. Dealers will replace part of the rear lamp connections at no cost to customers.

Owners can call BMW at 800-525-7417 for more information.

Source: Dispatch