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90 Pregnant Teens at Memphis High School

MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - As Memphis City Schools leaders discuss the best way to deal with the crisis at Frayser High School, one young student is dealing with parenthood.

The Action News 5 Investigators recently discovered 90 girls who attend Frayser High School are now pregnant or have already had a baby this school year.

Frayser is in Memphis City School Board member Stephanie Gatewood's district. She said a former principal of the school first sounded the alarm about the issue about a year ago.

Sources told Action News 5 there is a massive initiative in the works dedicated to preventing teen pregnancy in the Frayser community. The initiative will include after-school and in-school programs funded with grant money and run by a local nonprofit that already does some work for city schools.

Gatewood said there are programs right now to help students.

"Noting that our young ladies absolutely did not get pregnant in the hallways of our schools," said Gatewood. "So while everything that happens in our communities, it just spills over into our schools. Now we as a community have to deal with them."

Greenwood said the school board has implemented some plans to help children who are already parents or are about to become parents.

Meanwhile, Terrika Sutton is getting used to the challenges of being a teen mom.

Sutton's two-month-old daughter, Camiya, keeps the 16-year-old Frayser High School student busy.

"In the morning time, she'll wake me up about 5:00, and I'll get up and find me something to wear to school," said Sutton. "I'll get her dressed, and if she has to go somewhere, her daddy keeps her sometimes and I'll get ready for school."

Sutton said she was five months along when she found out she was pregnant. Her parents and classmates were stunned.

"They were like, 'Terrika, I never knew you would get pregnant,'" she said. "I was like, 'well, it happened.'"

Roughly 20 percent of the female student population at Frayser High is already experiencing the trials of parenthood.

"It's a shame that all these girls at Frayser are pregnant, but it ain't nothing new," said Sutton. "Some girls just try to do it because they think it's cute. For some, it's an accident."

Sutton said she believes some girls are making agreements with each other to get pregnant.

"They probably plan it," she said. "Plan what they're going to do to get pregnant. No telling."

Sutton said educators need to do more to try to help prevent teen pregnancies.

"They need a class where they can teach the girls before they get pregnant to use protection and stuff," said Sutton. "And don't try to get pregnant."

[TheSNakE]

Empornium and PureTNA porn trackers closed their doors

Two of the Internet?s biggest adult entertainment BitTorrent trackers have today confirmed to TorrentFreak that they have permanently closed down. With comfortably more than 2.5 million members between them, the closure of Empornium and PureTNA leaves a sizeable number of porn fans both empty handed and with nowhere to put their seeds. For the last few days the huge BitTorrent porn trackers Empornium and PureTNA have been dark, with both sites routing to 127.0.0.1. Understandably, users of the sites have been pretty concerned since these pair of giants, which are connected by the same management, have massive memberships and are long-standing mainstays of the community. To give an idea of size, PureTNA had in excess of 1,329,500 members, Empornium a similar number. At last count PureTNA?s database sat at nearly 67,000 torrents servicing around 630,000 peers. Empornium listed more than 82,000 torrents and 660,000 peers. That?s a hell of a lot of filth and depravity, just how their members liked it.

But for their users, speaking of the sites in the permanent past tense is the sad reality today. The management of both Empornium and PureTNA have confirmed to TorrentFreak that they are ?offline permanently?. Requests for elaboration were declined, but a comment obtained from Breeze, the manager of both sites, said simply: ?Such is bittorrent life.? So considering that both sites had continued to grow, both in terms of torrents and membership, why suddenly close down? The main unconfirmed rumor to have gained traction is that due to a lack of investment in code development, both sites have been vulnerable to malicious attacks. This resulted in one or both of the sites being hacked in recent days. Rather than pump money into the sites to prevent this happening again, their hard drives were wiped by the sites? owners to protect user privacy, or so the story goes.

The other rumor, which is circulating on the fringes of the adult entertainment industry, is that the sites buckled under legal pressure, or at least the threat of it. As can be seen from a list retrievable via Google cache which was updated only last week, dozens of porn sites and studios have issued some kind of legal ?do not upload? orders to the sites. While there may be some triumphant gloating from elements of the porn industry, these lists could merely be an indication that both sites were trying to stay within the law by abiding by the desires of copyright holders who preferred for their material not to be shared on the sites. In any event, with the demise of both sites, that point is moot.

Interestingly, although PureTNA is still listed by Google, a similar search for Empornium draws a a complete blank. As far as the world?s leading search engine is concerned, Empornium doesn?t exist. In the future, those looking for nostalgia will have to settle for the Empornium song from Futuristic Sex Robotz which lives on with YouTube. Whatever the reason ? hackings, legal pressure, a combination of the two or just plain old lack of interest in continuing ? the sites are not coming back so for BitTorrent porn consumers this certainly marks the end of an era.

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[Predator24]

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Women searching far and wide for o.b. tampons after they mysteriously disappear from store shelves

BY CHRISTINA BOYLE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, January 19th 2011, 4:00 AM



The recent disappearance of a popular tampon brand is really cramping the style of city women.

Drugstore shelves have been mysteriously empty of o.b. nonapplicator tampons since late fall, leaving the feminine hygiene product's devotees puzzled and peeved.

The popular product is in such short supply that eBay users are bidding up to $76 for three packs, which usually sell for just $8.79 a pack.

And loyalists are taking to blogs and Twitter to figure out where their beloved o.b. tampons might be.

"This month, they were gone, gone, gone," said freelance writer Janessa Wilson, 40, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a user for decades.

"I searched everywhere I could, maybe a dozen drugstores, but I couldn't find any."

Johnson & Johnson, the company that makes the o.b. tampons, shed little light on the mystery, saying only that it experienced a "temporary supply interruption" that led to stores being out of stock.

The company wouldn't explain the manufacturing or distribution glitch, which began in the fall, any further.

And the federal Food and Drug Administration said it was not aware of any product recall, or health and safety concerns, related to the shortage.

Debbie Stoller, editor in chief of the popular feminist magazine BUST, says many women who use nonapplicator tampons do so for environmental reasons, so it was notsimply a matter of changing brands.

"It has been a big deal because it's one of the only nonapplicator tampons you can buy," she explained. "People who choose to use this are a little bit politicized around it. They feel very strongly about these tampons."

Maura Weiler, on the website dscriber.com, described being so loyal to the brand that she tried to buy a box from a colleague after checking her local Target and Walgreens stores with no luck.

"But alas, we learned [the tampon box] was empty before [her colleague] could come up with an asking price," she wrote.

Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman Yukela Williams apologized to customers about the inconvenience, adding that women should expect to see the product on store shelves soon.

"Thank God - and goddesses," Wilson said to that.

cboyle@nydailynews.com

[Predator24]

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DURBAN, South Africa ? South Africa is in the grip of a dangerous new drugs craze that could threaten the country's battle against AIDS, Sky News reported Thursday.
The street drug called "whoonga" is a cocktail that includes the anti retroviral (ARV) medication prescribed to people with HIV.
Demand for the substance has prompted a wave of thefts of AIDS drugs across the country.
Users crush the ARVs and smoke them with a mixture of rat poison, detergent and marijuana to get high. The powder is said to be so addictive that users are hooked within days.
"If I don't smoke it, I get pains and I can't sleep until I get some more," said a 31-year-old man known only as Jomo, his eyes red and glazed after a few deep drags on a joint.
He and his fellow whoonga addicts, huddled in the grounds of a church in one of Durban's side streets, smoke up to thirty "packets" of the drug every day at a cost of almost $160.
"I just rob people to get the money. I don't have a job, this is all I do," Jomo said, rolling another joint.
Another young woman, who did not giver her name, said she sells her body to get whoonga.
In the back streets of Durban, whoonga dealers tout the powder for 30 rands (about ?3) per packet.
The highly toxic drug has been blamed for the deaths of scores of addicts across South Africa over the past year and has fueled a spate of thefts of AIDS medication.
In the township of Umlazi, near Durban, officials say dozens of patients are being robbed of their anti-retroviral drugs every week.
Read more:
However, the country's Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS lobbying group, has described the belief that the drugs have recreational value as a "myth."
"We are not even convinced that whoonga contains ARVs. The dealers just say it does," group spokeswoman Caroline Nenguke said.

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reminds me of that Seinfeld episode about Elaine stockpiling contraceptive sponges

[maxbailey]

German porn star "Sexy Cora" died last Thursday after undergoing a sixth breast enlargement operation.



The 23-year-old, who was born Carolin Ebert, according to German newspaper Bild, fell into a coma on Jan. 11 during surgery at a clinic in Hamburg, a spokesperson for the state prosecutor told CNN. Two doctors have since been charged with negligent manslaughter.

According to Sky News, Berger was having 28 oz "of silicon injected into each breast" and was going from a size 34F to a 34G.

BBC News reports that she may had suffered from two heart attacks during the procedure.

According to German newspaper Bild, she was put into an artificial coma following the procedure. CNN reports she died on Thursday.

A statement from the clinic obtained by CNN said the doctors were "extremely upset and deeply regret the death."

"As matters stand currently a defect in the anesthetizing device can be ruled out," the clinic statement said. "The claim that the monitoring could have given readings other than the actual vital functions of the patient has nothing to do with the facts and has no connection to reality."

The doctors in question are cooperating with police, the statement reads.

According to Bild, Cora appeared in over 100 pornographic films and the German edition of the reality TV show Big Brother.

[Eccles]

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[TheSNakE]

Newly-formed Thai airline recruits 'Ladyboys' as air hostesses



By Ian MacKinnon, Bangkok 12:36PM GMT 28 Jan 2011

PC Air, which has yet to take to the skies, selected three "Ladyboys" in its first round of hiring this week to promote equal opportunities for what is dubbed the "third sex" in Thailand.

Peter Chan, the new airline's boss, is enthusiastic about his groundbreaking move because of the opportunities it would afford transsexuals.

"I think these people can have many careers ? not just in the entertainment business ? and many of them have a dream to be an air hostess," he said. "I just made their dream come true. Our society has changed. It's evolution. I'm a pioneer and I'm sure there will be other organisations following my idea."

One of the successful candidates was Thanyarat "Film" Jiraphatpakorn, who won the annual Miss Tiffany "katoey" beauty pageant in 2007. "At first I thought they would just take applications but not actually recruit us, as happened at other places before," said the 23-year-old, adding that she was delighted to have been chosen.

Thailand has the largest number of "katoeys" ? as they are called in Thai ? in the world, with the country's surgeons pioneering cheaper and quicker sex change operations because of the sky-high demand from men wishing to become women.

But PC Air did not make proof of sexual reassignment a criteria for the job, merely that the applicants possessed the necessary language skills and the potential to provide good service.

Many "katoeys" do not undergo sex change operations, either because of the expense or possible medical complications. But they dress as women, often taking birth control pills to reduce facial hair and grow breasts.

More than 100 transsexuals applied for the first places. The airline decided on a quota of three in the initial round of recruitment, where 17 men and ten women were also hired.

The transsexual flight attendants will wear special gold-coloured "third sex" name badges to help passengers and immigration staff to easily identify the gender they are faced with.

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Al Gore Explains 'Snowmageddon'

f the planet is warming, why is a third of America locked in a deep freeze, with record-low temperatures as far south as the Mexican border, where the thermometer in Ciudad Juarez plummeted Wednesday night to a bone-chilling 9-below zero?
Self-proclaimed planetary climate czar Al Gore thinks he has answer.
"As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now, and they say increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming," Gore write in a blog post. The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president was responding to a question posed by Fox News? Bill O?Reilly, who wondered on air why global warming was such an urgent science policy priority when the New York City area had become a ?tundra? this winter.
Gore also indicated that he believes a rise in global temperatures is creating ?all sorts of havoc,? from hotter dry spells to colder winters and ever more violent storms. This is even endangering certain species of animals and leading to forest fires and floods.
But not surprisingly, some climate-change skeptics are a bit hot under the collar over Gore?s ?scientific? explanation.

?Gore?s statement actually indicates a deeper problem -- lack of precise predictions,? said Dr. William M. Briggs, a statistician and climate scientist. His research shows that there are no increased weather problems because of global warming, Briggs told FoxNews.com.
?He?s saying that anything bad that happens must be because global warming caused it. Activists like Gore are great at identifying events after the fact as being caused by global warming, but terrible at predicting them beforehand,? Briggs said.
Meteorologist Art Horn agreed, noting the extensive history of devastating weather over the millennia -- none of which he connects with global warming.
?If one actually studies the history of weather over the last 2,000 years, you see massive storms, amazing heat, brutal cold waves, devastating droughts, terrible floods and disastrous hurricanes -- none caused by global warming,? he told FoxNews.com.
?Gore has no appreciation for large natural variability in weather,? Horn said.
Other scientists were quick to leap to Gore's support, arguing that the extreme cold weather is a logical, expected outcome for our warming planet.
?It?s not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming,? meteorologist Jeffrey Masters told FoxNews.com. ?There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming with plenty of opportunities for snow.?
The contretemps over global warming and winter weather -- and the bickering among scientists about man's effect on the climate -- has had a profound impact on public opinion around the globe.
A January poll by Rasmussen Reports indicates that Americans are still more inclined to believe global warming is primarily caused by long-term planetary trends, although the gap narrowed a bit this month. But Americans don't blame global warming for this winter?s weather.
Skepticism is very clearly increasing overseas; a poll released this week by the Office for National Statistics in the U.K. indicated that the number of climate skeptics there had nearly doubled during the last four years. The proportion of people who said they were ?not very concerned? about global warming now numbers more than one in five, the U.K. government said.
But many still argue that global warming is real, and the ultimate cause of the wretched weather. One environmental consultant pointed FoxNews.com to an article that detailed a polar bear's nine-day swim to find an ice raft for refuge -- due to global warming?s impact on the environment of Alaska.
Others take a less anecdotal approach, and say that pure science supports Gore's global-warming argument.
?It?s basic atmospheric physics,? said Meg Wilcox, a spokeswoman for Ceres, a national network of investors and environmental organizations. ?Warmer air holds more moisture. This fact is apparent when you see water vapor hanging in the air after turning off a hot shower. When warm air holding moisture meets cooler air, the moisture condenses into tiny droplets that will fall as precipitation, rain or snow, depending upon atmospheric conditions.?
Warm air meets cold air seems simple enough. So why can't scientists agree?
If it all seems confusing and contradictory, other experts say, the real blame lies not with the climate, or with science, or even scientists or former politicians, but with the incompetent media for failing to provide critical context for readers.
?The last 2,000 years is full of incredible weather events that dwarf what we see today,? said Horn. ?Nature isn't cooperating with the global warming camp and theory.?
He points to a New York Times story from the 1970s, which said the planet was getting so cold that humanity was in danger of starving to death. The article argued that the world?s weather would soon be so frigid that it could no longer permit the cultivation of crops for food. The Times? headline on August 8, 1974, was simple enough: ?Climate changes Endanger World?s Food Output.?
?First we were told the world was cooling. Then it was getting hotter,? Dan Gainor, a spokesman for the Media Research Center, tells FoxNews.com. ?Then cooling again. Then hotter. Now it?s just climate change -- so they can?t be wrong no matter what change occurs.?

[maxbailey]

Is California the most miserable US state to live in?

A new survey of the "most miserable cities" in the US suggests that five of the 10 worst are in California. The BBC's Peter Bowes considers whether life in the Golden State has really got that bad.

As I jog along the beach, under wall-to-wall blue sky, with the winter sunshine beating down, I often remind myself that "it doesn't get any better than this".

It has been a glorious week in Los Angeles and much of California. The balmy February weather is proof enough that life in the Golden State can be very good.

For many, the sunshine epitomises the "California dream", although wealth and property ownership usually play a role in the romantic depiction of America's most populous state.

And that's where my argument falls down.

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