Ask Amy: Waiting for marriage

I have found the love of my life! He is amazing and wonderful. We are only 21 years old and don't plan on marrying until we graduate from college — and then we have to find jobs and plan for a wedding. It will probably be three or more years until we marry.

The thing is, I'm Catholic and promised myself I wouldn't have sex until marriage, but I really want to share that experience with my boyfriend.

I feel so conflicted. I know my family would be so disappointed if I had sex before marriage. I know I should feel that God wants me to wait and that I should follow this rule without complaint. It is just hard because sex is so prevalent.

My boyfriend has been great and says he can wait, but sometimes we both have a weak moment and have come close. I don't know what to do. — Conflicted Catholic

Dear Confused: You need to be true to your values.


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How Successful Companies Develop Their Sales Teams

Not enough companies have learned how to employ sales training as a strategic tool. Those that have are leaders in their industries, offering their shareholders maximum return on investment. They are able to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, are respected by their customers, and provide consistent sales performance.

The salespeople who work for those companies are motivated, stay in their jobs longer and are proud to help in recruiting their friends who have been successful selling for other companies. That improves the "bloodline" and saves on recruiting fees.

Quite often, sales managers and executives don't have the time and experience to train correctly. Companies with internal training departments often provide guidance, but sales training is quite different from designing and delivering training to other areas within an organization, such as customer care, engineering, or human resources.


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Reed runs on self-confidence

VICTORIA–At his mother's prodding, the little boy looks in the mirror and speaks to the face gazing back at him.

"I'm just as good as anyone else. Don't have to be better. Don't have to be worse. But I'm just as good as anybody else – and I won't ever let anybody tell me I'm not."

It was no idle exercise for Canadian runner Gary Reed. His family was dirt-poor, lived in a trailer park, and relied on food banks to eat. Reed is of mixed race – white mother and black father – which made him something of an oddity in rural B.C. He was raised by his mom after the marriage broke up when he was a baby.

The playground can be a cruel place, but Mary Reed couldn't stand the thought of her son Gary and daughter Nicole thinking they weren't good enough.

"They felt like they were less and it's just from kids bullying or talking like that," recalls Mary Reed.


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Success hasn?t spoiled Wohrley

While it might be disappointing, it certainly wouldn't be the biggest shock in the world to find out that an athlete of Taylor Wohrley's caliber had a bit of an attitude problem.It seems to happen far too often. A kid knows how to run faster and jump higher, which in their mind makes them God's gift to mankind, and Wohrley is certainly in that faster/higher mold from purely an athletic standpoint. A junior at Timberland, Wohrley is simply one of the best swimmers in the state.At the MSHSAA Girls Swimming & Diving Championships in mid-February, Wohrley won a pair of gold medals and was named the Swimmer of the Meet. She took first place in the 100 backstroke for the third straight season, posting a time of 56.43 seconds, and competing at state in the 200 freestyle for the first time, Wohrley set a state record with a championship effort of 1 minute, 50.32 seconds.


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Relationship Maps:

But, as is often the case, it turns out that fighting with your partner wasn't the part that was good for you. What was healthy was "expressing anger constructively." The research showed that feeling anger but not expressing it is bad for you and is even associated with a shortened life span.

So it's not the fighting that's healthy; it's the expression of anger.

At one point in our culture's history, there was a dominant belief that authenticity and a "free spirit" required that you "tell it like it is," with full license to say anything you wanted in any way that made you feel good, the more direct and blunt the better. Courtesy and sensitivity, consideration and empathy were considered marks of inauthenticity. Fortunately, our culture outgrew, for the most part, this rather adolescent and self-indulgent attitude.


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Fresh thinking needed on drink and drugs problems, says community worker

CHANGING attitudes towards drink and drug addiction can only be achieved through shifting cultural norms, executives were told yesterday.

At a meeting of Cardiff Breakfast Club, Western Mail Welsh Woman of the Year Rhoda Emlyn-Jones said tackling legal and illegal drugs misuse needed new direction from the Government.

Ms Emlyn-Jones said all parts of society needed to revise the way they think about drugs if the problems associated with them are to be resolved – and that includes alcohol, as well as stigmatised illegal narcotics.

The model-turned-community activist was crowned 2008 Welsh Woman of the Year and is the service manager of Cardiff and the Vale Alcohol and Drug teams.

She has previously described alcohol as the nation's "favourite drug", calling for a change in the way people are first introduced to drinking.


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(AFX UK Focus) 2008-05-01 06:52 Carrefour stores hit by protests in China - report

BEIJING (Thomson Financial) - Hundreds of protesters demonstrated Thursday outside stores belonging to French supermarket chain Carrefour in three cities in China, state media reported, in a new sign of anti-French sentiment.

Holding Chinese national flags, they shouted slogans against Carrefour and against independence for Tibet, the Xinhua news agency said.

The protesters also expressed support for the Beijing Olympics outside the Carrefour stores in Changsha, capital of the central province of Hunan; Fuzhou in the southeast, and Shenyang in the northeast.

The French retailer last week cancelled an advertising campaign scheduled to launch in China on Thursday following anti-French demonstrations in the country in protest against France's attitude over Tibet and China's hosting of the Olympic Games this year.


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