News

"Would you send an STD e-card?"

By Rob Winters - Published on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 16:03

"E-cards are last-minute lifesavers when you’ve forgotten to send a happy birthday card.  But they’re not the first thing you think of when you learn you have a sexually transmitted disease.

But since 2004, a free Web site, inSpot.org has allowed users to anonymously notify their partners to get tested for STDs such as HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis.  The online program allows users to send an e-card anonymously, specifying the STD.

The tool exists, but do people use the STD e-cards?

Well, that depends."

Read more: http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/31/would-you-send-an-std-e-card/?hpt=he_c2

"General admits 'virginity checks' conducted on protesters"

By Rob Winters - Published on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 15:59

"Cairo (CNN) -- A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.

The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/31/egypt.virginity.tests/

The world is going hungry

By Rob Winters - Published on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 15:55

"The price of staple foods such as corn, already high, could more than double in the next 20 years, and climate change is responsible for up to half of this expected increase, warns a report Tuesday by the international aid organization Oxfam.

The world's poorest people will be hardest hit as the demand for food rises 70% by 2050 while the world's capacity to increase food production declines, according to the "Growing a Better Future" report."

Read more: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/05/oxfam-food-prices-double-climate-change-/1

"Mobile phones possibly carcinogenic"

By Rob Winters - Published on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 15:44

"The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation, has classified the radiation emitted by handsets as “possibly carcinogenic” although it did not find evidence of a clear link.

Its decision - putting mobiles in the same risk category as lead, the pesticide DDT and petrol exhausts - will put governments under pressure to update their advice to the public on the potential dangers of talking on mobiles for long periods of time.

Christopher Wild, the director of IARC, said that while more research is carried out “it is important to take pragmatic measures to reduce exposure such as hands-free devices or texting”."

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8548725/Mobile-phones-possibly-carcinogenic-say-World-Health-Organisation-experts.html

"What's up your butt campaign?"

By Rob Winters - Published on Monday, 30 May 2011 20:16

"A health board in Washington state has reversed itself and voted against endorsing a colon cancer awareness campaign that uses billboards saying, "What's up your butt?"

The Tri-City Herald reports that Wednesday's vote by the Benton Franklin Health District in Kennewick, Wash., was in response to complaints the ads are in poor taste."

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43181747/ns/us_news-weird_news/

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