Did BBC just recognize that their reporters statements are opinions?

This article from the BBC on current state of events in Israel includes this paragraph;

The Israeli leader must choose between going ahead with military action that would endanger the life of the captured soldier or risk being seen as weak, says the BBC's Jon Leyne in Jerusalem.

There are no quotes around the statement, but the way it is seperated and includes the name of the person making the statement makes it appear like they are quoting a spokesman. Is this a way to implicitly show that they recognizes that their own reporters statements are opinions? I hope so but won't count on it.

Singapore caught in sex=courtesy cycle

This article reports that they have figured out why they are the fifth least courteous city, it's because they don't get enough sex!. For thirty years the government has sponsored campaigns to get people to be more courteous. The article's author suggests that they should just tell people to have more sex!

However I think that his logic is incomplete, but since he does not provide full references to the surveys I can't be sure. The opening sentence is "IF it's not bad enough that Singaporeans are the second worst lovers in the world, apparently we are also the fifth least courteous people in the world, according to Reader's Digest." I found the Reader's Digest survey on courtesy here. I am not sure how to take it given that it show's New York got the highest rating (80) while Paris fell in the middle of the pack with 57, the same as London. I would love to see a comparison of US cities (New York was only US city on survey).

Apparently the survey he is referencing for "...second worst lovers..." is this one from Durex that shows in 2005 Singapore men and women reporting having sex on average 73 times a year, down from 79 in 2004 and 96 in 2003. I can't find anywhere in the survey where they rated sex, so I guess this author believes that quantity equals quality or maybe that lack of quality equals lack of quantity. Singapore comes in seventh on age at which first had sex (18.4 in a range of 15.6, Iceland to 19.8, India with a global average of 17.3).

There is a section on Views on Sex, but it seems like Singapore comes in around average for; a) I'm happy with my sex life (44 average, Singapore 42), b) I wish I had sex more frequently (36 average, Singapore 42), and c) My sex life is monotonous (44 average, Singapore 42) . One would think given how low on the list of frequency they stand that more would want sex more often, but their number is quite a bit below average. For comparison the US is 52, 45, and 9 on this three questions and 113 times a year.

I would say that there may be a link of less sex causes less courtesy which leads to less sex and so on.

Confusing report from Environmentalists

A new report (or should I say a repackaged report?) from environmentalists (I won't call them scientists) states;
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The last few decades were the warmest on Earth in the past 400 years, and may well have been warmer than any comparable period since the Middle Ages, U.S. scientists reported on Thursday.

Gee, like we didn't know that at times it has been both colder and warmer than it is today. But later the message gets more confusing.

First they have to restate the facts (actually their opinion)

The scientists also noted that temperature reconstructions for periods before the Industrial Revolution -- when levels of climate-warming greenhouse gases were much lower -- supported the notion the current global climate change was caused by human activities, rather than natural variations in climate.

But this guy actually comes out an tells the truth (emphasis is mine).

"Natural climate variability is something that we'd like to know about," said Kurt Cuffey of the University of California-Berkeley, who served on the council's committee and spoke at a Webcast about the report.

"But if we did know for example that the climate was as warm at 1000 AD as it is now, it would have no essential impact on our understanding of climate change in the 20th century, the role of humans in causing it and the need to think seriously about how that may evolve in the next few centuries," he said.

So no matter if the evidence says that it has been warmer at times in the past before the Industrial age it won't change their understanding (read opinion)!