A secure environment for women appears to be a far cry in India. Crime against the fairer sex is steadily increasing, and less and
less number of the accused are getting convicted. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data tells this sorry tale, prevailing for the last three years.
In 2005, a whopping 1.55 lakh cases of crime against women were registered across India, but convictions were recorded in only 30,826 cases - a mere 19.8%. In 2006, case registration jumped to 1.64 lakh, but convictions declined to 28,998, or 17.5%. Continuing the trend, more than 1.85 lakh cases were registered in 2007, but the trial courts found the charge sustainable only in 27,612 cases, a meagre 14.9%.
In Delhi, where working women's security has been a concern, conviction in these cases remained lower than national average in all three years - 10.8% in 2005, 12.4% in 2006 and 13.4% in 2007.
Andhra Pradesh remained at the top of the list in terms of number of cases relating to crime against women -- 20,819 in 2005, 21,484 in 2006 and 24,738 in 2007. And there were convictions in 5,353 cases in 2005 (25.7%), 3,579 in 2006 (16.6%) and 3,911 in 2007 (15.8%).
Such mismatch between cases registered and conviction surely casts an ominous shadow on functioning of the justice delivery system at the lower levels, but importantly, it also raises a serious question about the ability of the police to conduct proper investigation and prepare a watertight case.
In Maharashtra, the conviction rate remained abysmally low at around 4% in each of these three years - 616 of 13,370 cases in 2005, 584 of 14,452 in 2006 and 597 of 14,924 in 2007.
This trend negates the consistent efforts of the Supreme Court to sensitise judges to the heinous crime that scars the victim for rest of her life. It had in numerous rulings said: "Courts must hear the loud cry for justice by the society in cases of heinous crime of rape of innocent helpless girls of tender age, and respond by imposition of proper sentence."
This passionate appeal of the apex court through its ruling appears to have gone unheeded even in Delhi, where the conviction rate in these three years has remained low despite the city registering an increase in such cases from 10.8% in 2005 to 12.4% in 2006 to 13.4% in 2007.
While 4,351 cases of crime against women were registered in 2005, the trial courts recorded conviction only in 473 cases. In 2006, as many as 4,544 cases were registered, but conviction was recorded in 565 cases and in 2007, 4,804 cases were registered, while courts found the police case true in 646 cases.
West Bengal was another state, like Maharashtra, that recorded very low conviction rate, or as statistics tell us, the accused went scot-free. If in 2005 the conviction rate was 6% of the cases registered, it recorded a small increase to 7.8% in 2006 before falling to 2.8% in 2007.
With these statistics staring at us, another missive of the Supreme Court to the trial courts has fallen in deaf ears. It had said: "Protection of society and deterring the criminal was the avowed the object of the law and that was required to be achieved through appropriate sentencing policy."
But, if the police does not prepare a water tight case, there is little the courts can do to bring the culprits to book.
Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu appear to have somewhat acceptable levels of conviction rate. In UP, 2005 saw a conviction rate of 43.5%, but it steadily declined to 41.5% in 2006 and 32.9% in 2007. Tamil Nadu, which had recorded a conviction rate of 53.5% in 2005, also showed a downward trend - 45% in 2006 and 27% in 2007.
Hazlin Hassan
The Straits Times
The number of women with HIV infections in Malaysia has soared.
The rise has added urgency to calls for the government to make HIV screening compulsory for Muslims before they get married.
Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the move to make human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) screening mandatory after chairing a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Aids yesterday.
'Next year, we will make it mandatory for all states to impose the HIV screening as part of the pre-marital course,' he told reporters.
Some states, including Kelantan, Negeri Sembilan, Sabah, Sarawak and Selangor, have already made it mandatory for Muslim couples to undergo HIV screening before they get married.
This latest move comes as fresh statistics reveal that the number of women infected with HIV is rising sharply.
The number of women infected through normal sexual intercourse rose from 5.02 per cent in 1997 to 16.3 per cent last year.
Back in 2006, the Malaysian health authorities had already detected a rise in the number of women infected with HIV/Aids.
According to the Malaysian Aids Council, the country's leading Aids non-governmental organisation, the majority of them were housewives.
It said that among women infected then, 1,628 were housewives while only 406 were sex workers.
As of June this year, the total number of housewives infected was 2,565, compared with 525 cases of infections among sex workers, according to Ministry of Health figures.
Many of these new infections were among married monogamous women, indicating that they acquired the virus from their husbands.
HIV infections among housewives were highest in Kedah, Terengganu and Kelantan, with each recording more than 200 cases, according to the New Straits Times.
Among the male cases, the majority of them were drug users. They comprised some 59,000 of the total 83,527 HIV cases in the country.
Aids researchers said this likely indicates that men who were infected via contaminated needles were transmitting the disease to their partners.
Left untreated, HIV causes Aids, which can lead to death.
While the number of women infected is rising sharply, the overall HIV infection rate in Malaysia has dropped by nearly half over the past five years, Datuk Seri Najib pointed out yesterday.
This year, there were 3,452 new HIV cases, compared with 6,756 in 2003, thanks to a national programme to stem infections, he said.
The government's goal is to reduce the figure to 11 cases per 100,000 population by 2015 compared with 12.8 cases now, he added.
But the move to make HIV screenings mandatory was condemned yesterday by the Malaysian Aids Council, which called it 'alarming'.
Council president Adeeba Kamarulzaman said in a statement that it was crucial that each person who receives a positive HIV test result also receives counselling and treatment.
She warned that women, in particular, 'due to their lower status in society, are more likely than men to be vulnerable to discrimination, violence, abandonment and ostracism, if they are found to be infected with HIV'.
The statement also warned that a policy of mandatory screening 'may drive those infected with HIV underground and not achieve its purported goal of protecting public health'.
However, most ordinary Muslims who have yet to tie the knot have welcomed the move.
Anis Abdullah, who is single and in her 30s, said that the test is not a big deal to her.
'If I'm going to be sleeping with someone, I'd really like to know that he's safe and I wouldn't be offended if he asked me to take the test either.
'It's because of this day and age we're in. It's very easy to tell yourself 'no sex before marriage', but it's not always that easy,' she told The Straits Times.
Lavinia Rahman, 38, said: 'I wouldn't want to feel 'cheated' if I were to discover my significant other is HIV- positive after we are married, regardless of how he got it.'
KOLKATA: The way Seema Sai murdered her two children is a chilling pointer to the rising crimes against women and girls in the state, say experts.
The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau paints a grim picture of the state as far as crimes against women and girls are concerned.
In 2006, West Bengal recorded the highest number of cases of 'procuration of minor girls', which means seducing or forcing a girl into intercourse, under Section 366A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The state has reported 77 such cases — a share of 33.3% at the national level — and is followed by Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. Among the cities Kolkata takes the top slot with 11 cases, comprising 68.8% of the countrywide city break-up of such cases.
Bengal accounts for an alarming 92.7% of the recorded cases of girls being bought or sold for sex trade. OF the 123 cases reported across the country in 2006, 114 were in the state. Kolkata is definitely not an 'oasis of peace' for the girl child. The city recorded six cases of girls sold into the sex trade.
This constituted 66.7% of the national average. No other city in India comes even close to Kolkata.
The figures indicate that Bengal has emerged as the major centre for trafficking. Despite several intervention programmes across the state, trafficking remains the biggest menace not only in the rural Bengal but even in Kolkata.
There was a silver lining in the report though. Bengal accounted for just 7.7% of the total number of crime against children in the country.
Social scientist Pradip Chattopadhyay said, "The strict enforcement of anti-sex determination laws has ensured that there are fewer cases of female foeticide in the state. Even then, giving birth to a girl child is still seen as a matter of shame, for which the mother suffers life-long trauma. Just imagine what goes on in the mind of the girl child when she starts understanding these things. The Belur incident is just an indication of the devastating fallout of such stigma."
Sydney, March 4: Unlike popular belief, not only the youth, but also older men with lower sex drives are likely to feel morose and depressed, according to a new study.
Depression affects between two and five percent of the population at any given time, the study said. Women are more likely to be depressed until the age of 65, when physical differences between the stronger and the weaker sex all but disappear. Studies suggest sex hormones might be responsible for this phenomenon.
Osvaldo P. Almeida of the University of Western Australia and his colleagues based their study on a survey of 3,987 men aged 71 to 89. Between 2001 and 2004, the men completed reported on their demographics and health history.
They underwent testing for depression and thinking, learning and memory difficulties. Information about physical health conditions was obtained from a short survey and an Australian health database.
Researchers also collected blood samples from the participants and recorded levels of total testosterone and free testosterone, which are not bound to proteins.
A total of 203 of the participants (5.1 per cent) met the criteria for depression. They had significantly lower total and free testosterone levels then men who were not depressed.
After controlling for other factors - education level, body mass index and cognitive scores - men in the lowest quintile (20 per cent) of free testosterone concentration had three times the odds of having depression compared to men in the highest quintile.
The mechanism by which low hormone levels might affect depression risk has not been identified, but might involve changes in the levels of neurotransmitters or hormones in the brain, the authors note.
Findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Jessica Alba was bullied and branded a "slut" at school after developing her ample bosom at a young age.
The actress claims the main perpetrators were classmates' mothers and her elementary school principal, who made her life misery.
Writing in If I'd Known Then - a forthcoming book of essays by female celebrities - Alba writes, "The accusation still ricochets. 'They think I'm a slut?'"
The pregnant star also hands out advice to troubled teens, urging them to practice safe sex: "Boys are awful. They are made of nothing but hormones until they are about 20 or 21. But it's fun to have a crush, but don't think it's forever. And use birth control and condoms, please."
RANGOON - Cherry and Kay Kay walk into room Number Two of a Rangoon karaoke bar, where a man waits alone for them on a brown leather sofa.
"Come on, girls. Sing, please," he says, as they flick the karaoke machine to a Burma folk song they hope he likes.
The scene may not be uncommon in many parts of Asia, but was until recently rare here in isolated Burma, where economic desperation is increasingly pushing young women into a sex trade that hides behind the facade of karaoke bars and massage parlours.
At the bars, known locally as KTVs for "karaoke television," young women in their late teens and early 20s entertain clients in private air-conditioned rooms furnished with sofas and karaoke equipment.
Waiters enter only when customers order food and drinks, or if the women ring a bell to alert the management that a client is getting out of hand.
You could be here
Workers at KTVs say sex is not necessarily on offer, but they add that in the private rooms boundaries can be vague.
"It's hard to control men in this kind of room," 22-year-old Kay Kay says.
"They are so wild when they get drunk. I need to hold both his hands to protect myself. Sometimes I need to ring the bell to call for help from the waiters," she says.
Customers vary from teenagers to adults. Sometimes they come with friends, occasionally even with family, to venues that blur the line between casual entertainment and brothels.
Cherry and Kay Kay are among 20 girls working in their KTV bar, located near Rangoon's landmark Shwedagon Pagoda, one of the Buddhist country's holiest shrines. Ostensibly they are hostesses, paid to keep customers company, encourage them to buy drinks, and to sing for them.
Prostitution is illegal in Burma, but it began to take root underground after the ruling junta abandoned socialism for a market economy in 1996.
Myanmar is one of the world's poorest countries, where even urban professionals scrape out a living on less than a dollar a day. Salaries for civil servants, for example, start at about 20,000 kyats (about $17.50) a month.
Many industries have been decimated by decades of economic mismanagement by the military, coupled with the effects of Western sanctions imposed over the regime's failure to make good on promises of democratic reforms.
Cherry says she decided to work in the karaoke bar after quitting her low-wage job at a garment factory.
The eldest daughter in her family, Cherry was taken out of school before she reached her teens so her family could afford to send her brothers to school.
She then started working in the factory, but quit after discovering that she could earn more in tips in one night at the karaoke bar than she earned in a month at her old job.
Cherry and Kay Kay say they both grew up in broken families, and have not told any of their relatives about their new jobs.
"I didn't tell my mom that I'm working at KTV. She thinks that I'm working as a sales girl in a supermarket," Cherry says.
Many of the girls working in Rangoon's KTV bars have come from Burma's impoverished countryside in search of better opportunities in the city.
The bar that employs Cherry and Kay Kay provides them with free room and board, and a base salary of 20,000 kyats, or about $17.50.
"The basic salary is similar to what I earned at the factory, but here we get tips from customers," Cherry says. "Sometimes we earn 30,000 kyats ($27.00) in one night just from the tips."
The women are not allowed to leave the bar before its 2 am closing time, and then they are driven back to the hostel.
In a nation that prides itself on the glories of its past and its literary culture, the growth of the entertainment industry has caused some public soul-searching.
One poet, who wrote about the trend in a poem called "Rangoon Nights," said poverty was not the only culprit driving young women to their after-hours jobs.
"As many of them are uneducated and don't value their life, so they eventually end up in this community," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But Wine, who worked as a cashier in a music restaurant, said that even some professional women are turning to the nightlife for second jobs to help make ends meet.
"The girls working in our shop include schoolgirls, nurses who are available to work at night and university graduates," Wine said, adding that she started working at the restaurant after twice failing her high school graduation exam and being unable to find any other job.
"Many friends of mine work in KTVs or music pubs while also taking university correspondence courses," she said.
The stigma attached to the bar girls remains strong, and many parents would rather see their children join the millions of Myanmar migrants heading overseas to search for work.
"My youngest daughter wanted to work in a KTV bar. I did not allow her, because once she takes the step of working there, it becomes very easy for her to become a commercial sex worker. It's very hard to control," said Ei, a 59-year-old mother of two daughters.
Ei says that like many families here, hers is struggling to survive. But she would rather see her daughters try to find work overseas than let them work in a karaoke bar.
Cherry and Kay Kay say they are happy they make enough money to support their families without having to leave the country.
"I can support my family well. One of my brothers will graduate from university very soon," says Cherry.
"I don't need to work very hard like I did in the factory but you know customers treat us just as bar girls, they look down on us. The reputation of a bar girl is not so good in this community."
It is shocking to see the number of advertisements floating around these days which portray women as desired objects and man as consumer, directly or in-directly. According to these advertisements the Man is the hunter, woman the hunted. Man the voyeur, woman the victim. At times some of these women advertisements are so over the top, that it makes it hard for the whole family to sit together and watch television. And sadly, there is no one to question the present market-and-media ethics that turns women’s bodies into consumer objects?
Consumerism talks about manipulating people’s desires. It’s basic and founding ideology is that one should be able to acquire all one wants. In other words, desired objects become commodities - available to the highest bidder. Bodies (commodities) are for sale, in “representation” and in “reality”. Modelling, be it nude or semi-nude is not considered a big deal in today’s society. It is considered as one of the few ways for women qua women to make money. Male desire is aroused by this display of titillating female bodies. This results in passive viewing to active buying. And this is where Consumerism meets Sexism. This however is not where the relationship ends; it at times further leads to “Sexual Violence”.
Bodies advertised on television - or others like them - are available in the real marketplace. Therefore today “Sex work” is a fast-growing service industry, in India and abroad. Sex all over the world is still considered to be labour for women and pleasure for men. Obviously there is something not quite natural about the explanation of sexuality if it is a commodity on sale like any other.
Women are learning to wear less and less in order to be appreciated. Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat claims that exhibiting her physical assets was the only way an ordinary woman like herself could make it in glamorous Bollywood. On the other hand, high-circulation daily newspapers discuss the ‘oomph factor’ and present ‘mirchi meters’ comparing various ’sizzling’ females (Mandira Bedi during the Cricket World Cup matches & Ashwariya Rai during her visit to Cannes Film Festival). Images of nude women, vulnerable and seductive, are doing the rounds on computer, television and cinema screens, mobile phones (MMS controversies). Tell me, are we returning to the time when slave traders would make a woman open her mouth to count the number of teeth she had, and feel her muscles to ensure she could do the work? Today many Indian women make a beeline towards cosmetic surgery to sculpt their figures and faces into desirable shapes and contours. Why is that even today, the privileged male gaze still seems to determine and dictate ideal female form, image and behaviour.
Former US President Bill Clinton revealed in his biography My Life, that he did have an affair with Monica Lewinsky (which he had earlier conveniently denied). Having confessed, he excuses himself, dismissing it as a mistake that should never have happened. His book sold like hot cakes, the media excused him and men at large were again reassured that they do not need to take responsibility for their own sexual behaviour. This makes me wonder are we still living in Patriarchy type of sociological conditions. Patriarchy has always allocated sexual rights to men and responsibilities to women. It’s simply sad and pathetic to see that this ethical code still exists, even among progressive and enlightened people.
Lane Jensen, an Edmonton tattoo artist, decided that in order to make his calf tattoo of a buxom woman more realistic, he would get silicone implants for it. You can guess for which part of the tattoo, I'm sure.
However, even in women, silicone implants don't always take. In this case, they didn't take either. His body rejected them.
According to Jensen, augmenting tattoos with implants is becoming more popular. As an artist, I'm sure he's always into the latest developments.
In this case 3-D might have been better achieved with 3-D glasses, I guess. You can see the tattoo above prior to the rejection. I'm sure you can make out the, er, shapeliness.
Two Iranian sisters convicted of adultery face being stoned to death after the supreme court upheld the death sentences against them, the Etemad newspaper Monday quoted their lawyer as saying.
The two were found guilty of adultery -- a capital crime in Islamic Iran -- after the husband of one sister presented video evidence showing them in the company of other men while he was away.
"Branch 23 of the supreme court has confirmed the stoning sentence," said their lawyer, Jabbar Solati.
The penal court of Tehran province had already sentenced the sisters identified only as Zohreh, 27, and Azar (no age given) to stoning, the daily said.
Solati explained that the two sisters had initially been tried for "illegal relations" and received 99 lashes. However in a second trial they were convicted of "adultery."
The pair admitted they were in the video presented by the husband but argued that there was no adultery as none of the footage showed them engaged in a sexual act with other men.
"There is no legal evidence whereby the judge could have the knowledge for issuing a stoning sentence," Solati said, adding that he had appealed to the state prosecutor.
"The two sisters have been tried twice for one crime," Solati protested.
Under Iran's Islamic law adultery is theoretically punishable by stoning, although in late 2002 judiciary head Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi issued a writ suspending such executions.
However in July 2007, Jafar Kiani was stoned to death for adultery in a village in the northwestern province of Qazvin in a rare execution by stoning that provoked a wave of international outrage.
Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug trafficking and adultery. Iran currently makes more use of the death penalty -- almost always by hanging -- than any other country apart from China.
Zohreh's husband -- who accused his wife and her sister in January 2007 of having extra-marital affairs -- had planted a camera in his house in a bid to catch them in the act.
"She did not treat me well and her actions made me feel she did not want to live with me any more," said the husband, who was not named.
"To make sure I planted a camera in the house... When I watched the tape two days after, I found out that she and her sister brought over men after I left and had relationships with them," he said.
Zohreh said she had an edgy relationship with her husband because of the strict limits he imposed on her life.
"I was a teacher and loved my job but my husband did not let me work... he was always suspicious of me and thought our differences were because I had an affair," she was quoted as saying by the daily.
"I do not approve the confessions that I made in the investigation phase and I deny what I said," she said.
Etemad reported that the husband of the other sister, Azar, had not filed any complaint against her.
The official New York City condom has a different look and a sexy new slogan: New Yorkers are being encouraged to 'get some' on Valentine's Day.
Street teams will be handing out the free condoms at busy hubs around the city on Thursday, including Times Square, Wall Street and near City Hall.
And an ad campaign on television, radio and subways and buses will soon begin, featuring the catch phrase.
'We want to give away as many condoms as people will use because we're trying to make New York City an even safer place to have sex, and this is a powerful way to do it,' said Monica Sweeney, the Health Department's assistant commissioner for HIV prevention and control.
The free condom initiative is part of the city's effort to reduce rates of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. About 100,000 of New York's 8.2 million residents have HIV or AIDS, and many more are diagnosed each year.
The city has made free condoms available for years, but last year revamped the package with a distinct look to encourage usage. Since then the city has been giving away 3 million condoms a month on average, up from 1.5 million a month before the redesign.
The design introduced last year was a black wrapper stamped with the letters 'NYC CONDOM' in the same font and bright colors used on city subway maps and signs.
The new design unveiled Wednesday features the letters 'NYC' in black, inside three adjoining white circles. Underneath the 'NYC' is the word 'CONDOM,' with each letter in a different color. The wrapper is still black and the condom inside, from the Lifestyles brand, is the same.
Designer Yves Behar, founder of the San Francisco-based agency fuseproject, created the wrapper's new look, which he said he wanted to be friendly and unintimidating.
The city said new condom dispensers, also designed by Behar, will be available for establishments that wish to distribute the condoms. Currently about 900 establishments _ some restaurants, bars and salons but mostly nonprofit groups _ offer the condoms, Sweeney said.
Last year, the city's condom campaign angered New York's top Catholic leaders, who said Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration was promoting promiscuity by 'blanketing our neighborhoods with condoms.'
By: Christy Lemire, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Surely it's not too early to feel nostalgic for 1992. After all, it was 16 whole years ago. No iPods yet - and those clunky cell phones! Kurt Cobain was still alive and Bill Clinton hadn't even met Monica Lewinsky, much less had sexual relations with that woman. Thankfully, writer-director Adam Brooks doesn't wallow too obnoxiously in the not-so-distant kitsch with "Definitely, Maybe," a surprisingly clever romantic comedy that starts brightly but unfortunately loses its spark at the end. He mainly uses the period to establish the story of Ryan Reynolds'Will, a disillusioned New York ad man who's just been served divorce papers when the movie opens. That afternoon, he picks up his 10-year-old daughter Maya (the always adorable Abigail Breslin) from school and is horrified to discover that she and her classmates have had a sex education lesson, which prompts a flurry of uncomfortable questions about where she came from and who else Will dated besides her mom. (Maya has fun using the new terminology she's learned that day, loudly and often.) And so Will reluctantly tells her of his romantic past as a bedtime story, changing the names so that she (and we) won't know which girlfriend became her mother until the end. There's Emily (Elizabeth Banks), his wholesome college sweetheart from Wisconsin; April (Isla Fisher), a flighty but quick-witted aide he meets while working on Clinton's presidential campaign; and the sophisticated writer Summer (Rachel Weisz), who's out of his league. Brooks, who previously co-wrote the flat sequel "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" and the reasonably pleasing "Wimbledon," jumps back and forth between Will's recollections of his various interludes and his present-day attempts to keep them clean for his daughter, who chimes in with sweet and frequently smart-alecky commentary. (If Breslin seems too precocious, you're too cynical.) His characters are distinctly drawn and well cast, with each woman believably shaping Will into the man he becomes. And Reynolds, who is in every scene, continues to move beyond such raunchy comedies as "Van Wilder" and "Waiting ..." to establish himself as a viable leading man, with terrific looks and even better comic timing. He has especially great chemistry with the effervescent Fisher, who is as irresistible here as she was in "Wedding Crashers"; when they're together, as close friends who clearly long to be more, they make "Definitely, Maybe" feel like a throwback to the classics of the genre. Banks, who is a bit underused, brings a sense of warmth and calm to the film, while Weisz sexes things up. Kevin Kline has a couple of crackling scenes as Summer's mentor and lover - a prolific, drunk writer whom Will mistakes for her father in his initial innocence. But while Brooks has made an inventive romantic comedy - something that seems impossible to do these days - his ending takes way too long and makes too many twists. We have to slog through repeated permutations of who Maya's mom might have been and who Will's soul mate might be. (If you're paying attention, there's a hint in the lyrics of a Vanessa Williams song that plays at one point.) It is amusing and especially timely, though, that Will's optimism mirrors that of the Clinton administration. When we first meet him, he's out to change the world, too, and perhaps become president himself someday. In time, he learns too much about the candidate in whom he had so much faith, and about the women to whom he opened his heart; the knowledge hardens him, leaving him depressed and jaded. Brooks says he finished the script just before Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her run for the White House, but the timing is a hoot. So is a comment from Derek Luke as Will's best friend on the campaign staff, who has his own dreams of becoming the nation's first black president. Three stars out of four.
Yelena laughs. "What else can I do now but laugh," she asks. She has a nice smile and a hearty laugh, a youthful body and a pink, smooth face that belie her 41 years. They also belie the accident. The fire did not touch her face.
The horror is concealed beneath her clothes. The fire slowly licked every inch of her body. Limb after limb, without letup. But seven years later Yelena tells her story calmly, without tears, without trembling. At the most difficult moments she laughs. "That's how I survive," she says. Only during a late-night conversation does she add: "When you leave, I'll be left with my thoughts. I won't be able to fall asleep."
Yelena (not her real name) and her attorney, Ahuva Zalcberg, are behind one of the most unusual lawsuits ever submitted to the Be'er Sheva District Court. The incident that prompted it occurred seven years ago. In 2000, Yelena was working as a prostitute in a discreet apartment in Be'er Sheva. One night in December of that year, at 3 A.M., as part of a battle with the owner over control of the business, unknown men broke in, beat and stabbed the guard to death and set the apartment on fire. They locked in Yelena and her Russian-national coworker, Tania, who is also a plaintiff in the case.
Yelena and Tania's survival was close to a miracle. Their bodies in flames, they broke through the window bars on the second-floor apartment and jumped. Both were hospitalized in serious condition in the intensive care unit of the city's Soroka Medical Center.
Yelena was on a respirator for three weeks and underwent several skin grafts. One of her feet became gangrenous and had to be amputated. She had third-degree burns over 60 percent of her body. After a long period at Soroka she was moved to Beilinson Hospital at Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva. In March 2001 she was admitted to Loewenstein Hospital Rehabilitation Center, Ra'anana, where she remained for six months.
Tania had third-degree burns on her arms and legs. After several operations her condition deteriorated and she returned to intensive care. Eventually, scorched and scarred, both women came through.
Today, in an unusual step, they are demanding monetary compensation from everyone responsible for operating the apartment where they provided sex services. They are suing the Be'er Sheva municipality, which according to the lawsuit was guilty of negligence and of violating its legal duty by not doing enough to close the business within its jurisdiction, about which it was cognizant. They are suing the Israel Police on the grounds that it knew about the business and about the violent incidents occurring there and did not do enough to close it or at least ensure the safety of its workers. They are suing the operator of the massage parlor, Meir Danino, who according to the suit neglected to ensure the safety of the employees and to observe fire safety regulations, including the provision of emergency entrances and exits.
Yelena and Tania are claiming compensation for lost future income. They say that had it not been for the accident they would have continued working in prostitution and earned tidy sums. In addition, Yelena seeks compensation for her exceptional expenses in the wake of her serious injuries. "It is unconscionable that there be a business, much less an illegal one, which everyone allows to exist without ensuring basic safety conditions for the clients and the workers," says Zalcberg. "Either close the business, or demand the same safety conditions as in every business. You can't have it both ways."
Better to die
In Yelena's house the lights are dimmed and the atmosphere is peaceful. Her young son is sleeping, her older daughter is off in her room with the phone. They live in a cozy, orderly apartment in a good area in the center of the country. Yelena, serious and carefully groomed, earns a living from casual babysitting jobs. She is afraid the rent will increase next year and they will have to leave. That is her greatest fear, to be left without a home for her children. It was this fear that drove her into the sex industry 10 years ago, when she was a new divorcee with a young daughter. Most of the people in her life today do not know about her shady past. When people ask about her scars she says she was injured in a terror attack.
Be'er Sheva was not the first city where she worked as a prostitute. "I went to work in Be'er Sheva because a prostitute has to go all over [the country] to survive," Yelena says. "If you stay in the same place the men get tired of you. That's how I came to Be'er Sheva, too. You know, every place has its own character and its own men. I worked in Jerusalem, Haifa, the center of the country, everywhere the work is different. It's easiest to work in Be'er Sheva, in the periphery," she smiles, whispering, "The men aren't sophisticated, it doesn't take much to satisfy them. The Israeli men in the center of the country can drive you crazy with their fantasies. In Be'er Sheva it's enough for them to see me naked and they come. A minute or two, all I do is touch their hand and good-bye."
She was unaware of the struggles for control among the city's pimps. All she wanted was to work and to leave with her money. "In prostitution it's not the police that are scary, it's the conflicts among the pimps. And I was the victim of such a disagreement." What exactly was it over? She doesn't know and doesn't want to know. "What else could they argue about? Money."
A few days before the fire several unknown men came and roughed up Yelena and the security guard at the massage parlor. She realized that serious trouble was brewing. "Scary men came in. One came over, pulled my lips up and down and looked at my teeth. Like buying a horse. I don't know what kind of nerves a person needs to allow someone to do that to him and not to move, to remain silent. Not to say a thing. At that moment I erased myself. I knew that man could kill. When they left I asked Yasha, the guard: 'Who is that? What is that?' He explained that they were the muscle for one of the big massage parlor operators in the city. We prostitutes don't get involved in the politics among the pimps. I worked, paid the cashier what I needed to and went home. But when that happened I knew I had to get out."
She did not get out. On December 21, 2000 Yelena reported for her shift as usual. "That night, from 2 A.M. to 3 A.M. I was in one room and Tania in the other, and Yasha was at the entrance. Yasha was a good guy. A father of three, he had a regular job in the morning and at night he was a guard at the massage parlor. He was always worried about his livelihood. I barely knew Tania. There was no connection, each did her own work. It was a slow night and we wanted to close up already. And then the owner called and told me to stay for another hour because he was sending a friend of his. I said alright. The client arrived. I was already naked. While I was with the client we suddenly heard a loud noise. Our door was kicked open. Men wearing black masks, with clubs in their hands, came in. At first I felt my blood flood with adrenalin, that I had no air. They laid the client on the bed and began hitting him on the legs with the clubs. And I was there. Standing in front of them and watching, naked. I thought: 'What should I do, what should I do?' And then one said to the other: 'Why are you standing there, bring the bottle.'
"I realized they wanted to burn the place down," Yelena continued. "He told me 'Go there,' to the other room. And when I started going he poured kerosene on the floor and on me, too. At that moment I thought that it was better to die on the spot than to be so scared. I went into the bathroom, I wanted to open the window and jump out. Tania, who had also come in, said: 'Don't do it now. They'll kill us.' The window was hard to open, they would have heard and killed us. Meanwhile we saw them pouring kerosene all over the apartment. I turned on the water in the bathtub, maybe it would help. And then they left and threw matches inside. Boom. The flames rose all at once."
The arsonists left and locked the apartment, dooming those inside to death. "You know, from the shock of the fear you don't feel a thing. I didn't feel the fire burning me. I didn't feel pain. The entire apartment was in flames. I saw Yasha there, lying on the floor, and told him: 'Get up, Yasha, get up or you'll burn.' At that point I didn't know that he was badly hurt. As soon as they came in they had stabbed him in the stomach. When Tania managed to open the window I couldn't see anymore. I closed my eyes and suddenly opened them. I think I woke up because I felt I had no air. And then I jumped from the second floor. The thought in my mind was that I had a child waiting for me.
"I started rolling in the sand, I tried to cool my skin a little. I saw Tania sitting in front of me not understanding what was happening. Her dress was torn, everything was black. I was completely naked. Tania said to me: 'Let's go.' We were in a backyard but we were afraid that the arsonists were still there. In the end we went out into the street. A taxi driver stopped, I never learned his name. But I thank him. He brought us to the hospital." When she saw the doctors she managed to utter one sentence: "Put me to sleep. I can't stand it anymore."
Is that hell?
"I think that there, in hell, it's easier. I was clinically dead, I closed my eyes, I know what it's like when you get there. There's nothing there that's like what I went through in that apartment. Now I'm not afraid of death."
Security
Yelena immigrated to Israel in 1991 from St. Petersburg, Russia with her husband and their daughter. They divorced soon afterward and Yelena found herself alone in a foreign country, without a support network, without language skills and without any source of income. In Russia she had studied track and field, there was no work in Israel in that. "I didn't see any work I could do apart from prostitution," she says.
In 1997 she began working at a massage parlor in the center of the country. Yelena does not condemn prostitution: just the opposite. Were it not for the arson and her injuries she probably would have continued to spend her nights in a moldy apartment with strange men. She sees nothing wrong with it. Yelena says that the professional life of a prostitute lasts for about 15 years, and she barely managed to work for three. It was thanks to prostitution that she managed to settle down and be a good mother, she says. Her daily schedule was like that of a perfect mother. In the morning she would bring her daughter to kindergarten or school, then sleep until noon, cook lunch, pick up her daughter and spend the rest of the day with her. It was only after her daughter fell asleep that Yelena would go out for another night in the massage parlor.
"When I'm in the massage parlor I'm not myself," she says. "I'm someone else entirely. It's theater. 'The prostitute' is a disguise I wear. I don't know if you can understand, but the garbage in that place is the men. They beg for my services. I'm the strong one. You know, in those places you could explode from laughter."
What's funny?
"We would laugh at the men, at ourselves, at everything. We laughed at one another because we're all in the gutter there, as low as possible, and only in such a situation can you say everything and laugh about everything, because otherwise what's left?"
From the sidelines it's hard to understand your acceptance of prostitution. Didn't you want to get out of it?
"I didn't see anyplace to go to. How could I get out? My Hebrew wasn't good, worse than now. When I came to Israel they sent me to work in a packing house. I didn't want to. In prostitution I made money. I traveled abroad a lot with my daughter, I had a housekeeper. I lived very well. My status as a prostitute was entirely different. I wasn't a tourist, like the ones they smuggle here via Egypt, take away their papers, smuggle them from place to place and don't give them money. In my case it was a choice, I saw prostitution as work. I didn't go there to pass the time. I would see the tourist prostitutes at the massage parlors depressed, sitting, drinking, talking and not wanting to work. I came to work, not to talk. I needed the money, after a few hours I would return home to my daughter."
Didn't it tear you apart, to go from the everyday world to an underworld of massage parlors? Didn't you want to work in a decent profession?
"I knew what I was doing. I understood that it was hard-earned money, but every day you make a sum of money and for me that was security. I was here by myself, I had to pay rent. My greatest fear was to find myself on the street with my daughter."
Does your daughter know?
"She knows. There was a time when she kept telling me that a friend from school had told her that her mother was such and such, and I always told her it wasn't true. You know how it is when someone pressures you. In the end I told her: 'Yes, it's true.' I told her one thing, that I don't want her to be in this profession. I told her what had happened. I explained to her why sometimes I'm in a bad mood, why sometimes I cry and why sometimes I don't feel like getting out of bed."
Do you talk about your past, does she ask why?
"We've never sat and talked. I never asked whether or not she's been traumatized or not. She's learned to live with it. I explained to her that I started working in prostitution because I had no choice. I explained to her that I had tried everything. The city welfare department doesn't pay rent. We needed the money."
Raw flesh
The moment Yelena opened her eyes in the hospital she began to cry. "The doctors came and told me what the situation was. I was covered with burns. I was like a mummy, all wrapped in white: my legs, my arms, my back. In my legs I felt something hard, heavy. The doctors explained that they had to amputate my foot. I couldn't speak, I was attached to a respirator. I simply cried."
During those first days of hospitalization Yelena was told that Yasha had died of his injuries. She was happy to find out that Tania had survived and was with her in the hospital. The two, who until that night had barely known one another, became close friends, supporting each other through the prolonged hospitalization. Yelena's mother came from Russia to care for her granddaughter, who remained at home.
"It's a very slow rehabilitation. The worst part is the baths. The pain that can drive you crazy. Every 24 hours they have to change the bandages covering your body. They put you into a room with a special bed, with two nurses on each side. I still remember the cold in that room. And then, together, they begin pulling off the bandages and they very quickly wash your skin with soap. Under the bandages there is actually no skin, it's raw flesh. And then they put on clean bandages. There is no word to describe that pain. After such a treatment you remain empty, airless. Sometimes even the nurses couldn't do it because they couldn't stand to see my suffering. Today nothing hurts me, not after those treatments."
Yelena remained at Soroka for over three months, receiving numerous skin grafts. From there she was transferred to Beilinson and then to Loewenstein for rehabilitation.
"I was a temperamental patient. I screamed. It hurt, it drove me crazy, I was impatient. I was angry at myself, why had this happened to me. I didn't do anything bad to anyone, why did I deserve it. But in the morning, when I opened my eyes, I had to laugh with Tania. We laughed over nonsense. The nurses were amazed at how we laughed. We would ask the doctors when we would be sexy again, and they would laugh. With all the pain there was joy as well. We were glad we were still alive."
Were there moments when you were in despair?
"In Soroka there was a period when I didn't want to recover. And then my daughter came to the hospital. She cried, I cried, and at that moment I decided that I would recover. I agreed to begin going to physiotherapy, which is very difficult because the skin shrinks and you can't stretch your arms and legs. I'm here today thanks to her. She gave me the motivation. She needed me."
After about a year Yelena returned home. "When I left the hospital I didn't even take my medical records. I didn't want to know how hard it had been. It's hard to return to life afterward. You keep thinking about it. I had bad moods. I didn't always want to get up in the morning. Even today, every morning I get up and look at the stump and it puts me in a bad mood."
How did your daughter react to all the events?
"I missed a year with her, and that's hard. She was just beginning adolescence when it happened. When I returned from the hospital I found another child, grown up, she already had a ring in her navel. She went through something and I lost the mother- daughter relationship. She began to menstruate and I wasn't even there."
Like any mother
Yelena met Zalcberg, who specializes in damage suits and does a lot of work on behalf of foreign workers, while she was at Beilinson. The hospital social workers called the lawyer and asked if she would meet with a solitary woman who needed help. "I came Friday evening," Zalcberg says. "I can't forget that day. She was lying in the room alone, for fear of infections. I saw a figure entirely covered with white bandages, with her extremities raised. Like in the movies. I could barely understand her when she spoke. But this figure, from inside the wrappings, radiated great strength and power."
Zalcberg also met Tania, who was staying at a police shelter for foreign nationals who are victims of trafficking and women and are to testify against their employers. "Tania's case was more difficult because she had no health insurance. After Soroka she had nowhere to go. Her medical condition was serious. The only organization that aided her was Physicians for Human Rights. She needed daily medical care, she had lots of burns and bandages."
Zalcberg took the unprecedented step of demanding that the National Insurance Institute (NII) recognize Yelena and Tania as the victims of a work accident, guaranteeing paid medical care and a lifetime disability allowance. "The NII is the most conservative organization in the world, and nevertheless we succeeded," Zalcberg says. Using documents obtained from the police Zalcberg was able to prove that the accident happened on the job and because of the job. "This is the first time the NII is recognizing an incident like this as a work accident, and it saved their lives."
The Be'er Sheva police arrested three men in connection to the incident, brothers Moti, Asher and Michel Abecassis, who are known to the police as being involved in the battle for control of the city's sex industry. They were held for a period of time but were never indicted. "There was no evidence," their attorney, Esther Bar-Zion, says. Tania was asked to testify but she was unable to recall the appearance of the attackers.
Zalcberg has been a witness to Yelena's difficulties. She was repeatedly evicted for failing to pay her rent when she was unable to find work. "I personally tried to find her a job," Zalcberg says. "It didn't work out. There's a language problem. She can't work as an office clerk, in sales or at any physical work, because of her disability. With all my connections I was unable to help. At one point I spoke to [Bar-Zion, whose client] was suspected in the arson, and asked whether there was any way to compensate these women, who are completely free of blame, without her clients confessing. The answer was that there's no possibility."
Zalcberg suggested to Yelena and to Tania, who returned to Russia after her recovery, that they sue the authorities and Danino, the owner of the massage parlor, for damages. The women were fearful and hesitant at first but eventually they came to realize that their lives had been destroyed and that someone had to pay. "Now I'm not longer afraid," Yelena says. "When I worked for Danino in the parlor, he always got his half, now I deserve to get something. After the incident I tried to contact him, he immediately hung up. He didn't take an interest in my fate, nor do I want to see him. I know he has a luxury car, a wife, a business, children. His children can study at the university. What about my children? I don't want money for new clothes, I want to guarantee my children's future. I want them to go and study. I keep telling my daughter: 'Knowledge is power.' I don't want my daughter to be like me."
About a year after returning home Yelena decided to have another baby (and did so with a friend). "After what had happened, I felt that I had to have something that would make me get up in the morning," she explains. "Something that would wake me up, literally and figuratively. I'm extremely lonely here. A few friends, but mainly alone. I became pregnant. The moment the child was born, my joie de vivre returned."
But a child is also a big financial responsibility.
"What's better, to die of loneliness? I'm a good mother."
They live very modestly, but the house is pleasant, the kitchen is well stocked and Yelena is always there, with her children. The pain does not disappear, there are mornings when she can't get out of bed, but with endless pride she tells about her daughter's grades and her son's after-school activities. "The only joy in my life is the children. I'm like any mother, I take my son to the park, to activities, to friends, I don't deny them anything."
What is your dream?
"An apartment of my own."
And on a more personal level?
"To dance in high heels."
Scientists have paved way for helping humans live longer and healthier by creating baker's yeast capable of living up to 800 yeast years without apparent side effects.
Since yeast's genes are similar to humans', the findings signify that even humans can have a manifold life extension.
The study, led by Valter Longo of the University of Southern California, achieved the important discovery through a combination of dietary and genetic changes.
"We're setting the foundation for reprogramming healthy life," Longo said.
In the study, the researchers put baker's yeast on a calorie-restricted diet and knocked out two genes, RAS2 and SCH9 that promote aging in yeast and cancer in humans.
"We got a 10-fold life span extension that is, I think, the longest one that has ever been achieved in any organism," Longo said.
Anna McCormick, chief of the genetics and cell biology branch at the National Institute on Aging and Longo's program officer said: "I would say 10-fold is pretty significant."
In the study, the scientists identified a major overlap between the genes previously implicated in life span regulation for yeast and mammals and those involved in life span extension under calorie restriction.
"We identified three transcription factors that are very important for the effect of calorie restriction, but at the same time, we also showed that it's not enough because even without these transcription factors, calorie restriction can still extend life span a little bit," Longo said.
"So that means that we've identified a lot of the key players in the calorie restriction effect but not all of them," he added.
Calorie restriction, in practice, controlled starvation, has long been shown to reduce disease and extend life span in species from yeast to mice.
Scientists contemplate that a nutrient shortage kicks organisms into a maintenance mode, enabling them to re-direct energy from growth and reproduction into anti-aging systems until the time they can feed and breed again.
Two men wheeled a dead man through the streets in an office chair to a check-cashing store and tried to cash his Social Security check before being arrested on fraud charges, police said.
David J. Dalaia and James O'Hare pushed Virgilio Cintron's body from the Manhattan apartment that O'Hare and Cintron shared to Pay-O-Matic, about a block away, spokesman Paul Browne said witnesses told police.
"The witnesses saw the two pushing the chair with Cintron flopping from side to side and the two individuals propping him up and keeping him from flopping from side to side," Browne said.
The men left Cintron's body outside the store, went inside and tried to cash his $355 check, Browne said. The store's clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O'Hare told the clerk they would go and get him, Browne said.
A police detective who was having lunch at a restaurant next to the check-cashing store noticed a crowd forming around Cintron's body, and "it's immediately apparent to him that Cintron is dead," Browne said.
The detective called uniformed New York Police Department officers at a nearby precinct. Emergency medical technicians arrived as O'Hare and Dalaia were preparing to wheel Cintron's body into the check-cashing store, Browne said. Police arrested Dalaia and O'Hare there, he said.
Cintron's body was taken to a hospital morgue. The medical examiner's office told police it appeared Cintron, 66, had died of natural causes within the previous 24 hours, Browne said.
"He was deceased in the apartment when he was removed by these two," Browne said.
Dalaia and O'Hare, both 65, were being held by police and faced check fraud charges, Browne said.
A call to a telephone number listed for Cintron at the apartment he shared with O'Hare went unanswered Tuesday evening. Police said they didn't have an address for Dalaia or attorney information for him or O'Hare.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy might be a father for the fourth time. It has been revealed that his fiancee, former supermodel Carla Bruni, is pregnant with his child, less than two months after their high-profile relationship began. Bruni’s pregnancy has been confirmed by doctors in Paris, French website reported last night. Reporter Allain Jules said he received the information from a source at the American Hospital in the Paris where Carla had been last week for a scan. He said: “I am told that she had a scan and the pregnancy was confirmed.” The couple met at a party on November 23, just one month after the president divorced his ex-wife Cecilia, and are said to be getting married on February 9. French reporter Jules added that “They had a whirlwind romance after meeting at a party seven weeks ago, and have been almost inseparable ever since. If she is indeed pregnant it may explain why they are planning to marry so soon after meeting.” It is not at all what the French expect from their head of state. As one Paris-based friend of mine remarked, Sarkozy has “betrayed the national code of honour. Sarkozy has opened the curtains on a country which was happily eating cheese and climbing up the backstairs to visit mistresses. France likes hypocrisy. It does not like sexual openness. We are not Italy.” Sarkozy, of course, has a different interpretation. “I broke with a deplorable tradition in our country, that of hypocrisy and lies,” he said yesterday. With Carla, we decided not to lie. We don’t want to hide.”
Washington, January 9; Danish researchers have revealed that staying active, and drinking moderately can lower the risk of death from heart disease and other causes.
The study led by Professor Morten Gronbaek, Director of Research of the National Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark in Copenhagen, and Professor Berit Heitmann, Director for Research of the Institute of Preventive Medicine at Copenhagen University Hospitals disclosed that people who neither drink alcohol nor exercise have a 30-49 per cent higher risk of heart disease than those who either drink, exercise or both.
The researchers examined the data of 11,914 Danish men and women aged 20 or older taking part in the larger Copenhagen City Heart Study and a 20-year follow up showed that there were 1,242 cases of fatal ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and 5,901 deaths from all causes.
"Our study shows that being both physically active and drinking a moderate amount of alcohol is important for lowering the risk of both fatal IHD and death from all causes," said Gronbaek.
"For both men and women, being physically active was associated with a significantly lower risk for both fatal IHD and all-cause mortality than being physically inactive; and drinking alcohol was associated with a lower risk of fatal IHD than abstaining," he added.
A weekly moderate alcohol intake reduced the risk of all-cause mortality among both men and women, whereas the risk among heavy drinkers was similar to non-drinkers.
The researchers divided physical activities into three categories: Physically inactive less than two hours of light physical activity a week, low level of activity that is light physical activity for two to four hours and moderate to high level of physical activity, a light physical activity for more than four hours a week or more vigorous activity for two to four hours a week.
And alcohol intake was total weekly intake. Non-drinkers consumed less than one drink a week, moderate drinkers had between 1-14 drinks a week, and heavy drinkers drank 15 or more a week.
The findings revealed that within each level of physical activity the risk of IHD was 30-31 per cent high among non-drinkers as compared to moderate drinkers.
Non-drinkers who had a moderate or high level of physical activity had a reduced risk at 31 and 33 per cent respectively compared to physically inactive non-drinkers.
People who drank at least one drink a week and were physically active had a 44-50 per cent lower risk of IHD compared to physically inactive non-drinkers.
"An important finding from our research for people who have reasons for alcohol abstention such as religious beliefs, previous alcoholism or pregnancy, is that physical activity can reverse some of the adverse health effects associated with alcohol abstention."
"People who did not drink but whose physical activity was moderate or high, had a lower risk of IHD than the inactive non-drinkers," said Jane Ostergaard Pedersen, the lead author and research assistant at the National Institute of Public Health.
They also found physically active people had 23 per lower risk of deaths from all causes as compared to physically inactive non-drinkers and those who are physically active and drinking at least one drink a week had 12-33 per cent lower risk of death.
"The lowest risk of death from all causes was observed among the physically active moderate drinkers and the highest risk among the physically inactive non- and heavy drinkers," said Ostergaard.
"Neither physical activity alone nor alcohol intake can completely reverse the increased risk associated with alcohol abstention and lack of physical activity. Thus, both moderate to high levels of physical activity and a moderate alcohol intake are important for lowering the risk of fatal IHD and deaths from all causes," she added.
The findings appear in the European Heart Journal.
The U.S. Supreme Court says a lesbian motorcycle group that leads the annual Gay Pride parade in San Francisco can keep its trademark — Dykes on Bikes®.
The high court today refused to hear an appeal from East Bay lawyer Michael McDermott, who claimed the name was "scandalous and immoral" and disparaged lesbians and men, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. He challenged a January 2006 decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that granted the San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent exclusive rights to the name it has used for more than 30 years. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., which rules on patent and trademark issues, dismissed McDermott's case in July, saying he could not demonstrate how he would be harmed by the name.
Seeking comment from McDermott, the Chronicle writes that he replied with an e-mail describing the motorcycle procession as an "anti-male hate riot" but did not comment on the ruling.
*Vivica A. Fox's camp is denying that she is involved in a sex tape currently making its rounds on the Internet.
Last week, Atlanta blogger Sandra Rose reported that local radio personality, Porsche Foxx, "confirmed that her close friend Vivica Fox appears in a controversial sex tape." However, Fox's manager, Lita Richardson, tells New York Daily News column Rush & Malloy, "It's not true," without saying what part of the report she was disputing.
As previously reported, Rose said the footage was secretly recorded by the man in the video, then reportedly e-mailed to his friends. The clip was eventually e-mailed to Fox, who promptly sought advice from "a friend at the Atlanta Police Department."
Atlanta police spokesman James Polite told Rush & Malloy: "At this time, we have no formal complaint from Miss Fox."
"If it was something that was consensual, we're not looking at a crime, per se," Polite added. "If the [boyfriend] is trying to extort Miss Fox, that's when we begin to look at a criminal element."
A federal grant program available to the state Department of Health for sex education must be used to promote abstinence as the single way to avoid teen pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases.
But a new state law requires that sex education materials used in public schools, including those developed by the state Department of Health, explore a full range of methods for preventing unintended pregnancies and STDs.
No small wonder that the federal government has balked at delivering the annual $800,000 federal grant to the state for its sex education program.
This looks like a case where the conditions attached to the federal grant are too burdensome to accept, especially in light of the new state law.
Abstinence programs call on children to just say "no" to sex prior to marriage. The Bush administration has pursued this approach to sex education with fervor, spending $176 million on abstinence-only programs in 2007, which is nearly triple the program's annual budget before the president took office.
This despite the fact that study after study has raised serious questions about this myopic approach to sex education.
The U.S. Congress ordered a study of this controversial topic last year, relying heavily upon empirical data. The report by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. found no statistical difference between children in a community who attended sex abstinence programs and those in the same community, in terms of the percentage and age of teens having sex. In each group, about half of the teens were sexually active, according to the study.
The 2007 state Legislature had a lengthy and vigorous discussion of sex education in public schools. Lawmakers passed a bill that prohibits abstinence-only sex education in public schools that do chose to tackle the subject.
The measure calls on public schools to rely on a sex ed curriculum that is medically and scientifically accurate, addressing all aspects of sexuality, including the use of contraceptives.
Obviously, this is a very emotional topic that reaches into the realm of morals, politics and religion.
But the Bush administration has not done the next generation of adults any favors by pursuing such a narrow sex education agenda. At least 14 states have refused to apply for the federal matching grants, contending that abstinence-only programs don't work.
Like it or not, young children, pre-teens and teenagers are bombarded with conflicting, promiscuous messages and images of pre-marital sex in advertising, movies, television shows, internet sites and just about every other medium of modern U.S. society.
If the sex education programs offered in public schools, coupled with strong family values, can bring some sanity to the already difficult process of discovering one's sexuality, that's a good thing, even if it means losing access to a federal grant.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two U.S. soldiers who died last month in Iraq were apparently shot to death by an Iraqi soldier during a combined U.S. and Iraqi Army operation, the U.S. military said.
A man receives treatment at a hospital in Baquba on Saturday after being injured by a roadside bomb.
"For reasons that are as yet unknown, at least one Iraqi Army soldier allegedly opened fire killing Capt. Rowdy Inman and Sgt. Benjamin Portell, both of whom were assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment," the military said in a statement released Saturday.
Three other U.S. soldiers and a civilian interpreter were wounded in the attack, the military said.
The incident happened on December 26 in northern Iraq's Ninewah province as the U.S. Army and the Iraqi Army were working together "to establish a combat outpost," the military said.
"The Iraqi soldier who allegedly opened fire, fled the scene but was identified by other Iraqi Army personnel and was then apprehended," the military said.
The military said two Iraqi soldiers were being held in connection with the incident.When the deaths of Cpt. Inman and Sgt. Portell were announced last month, the military made no mention of how they were killed other than that they died "from wounds received from small-arms fire during operations."
Several roadside bombs killed at least seven and wounded 12 people in Iraq, while five bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baghdad Saturday morning, according to Iraqi officials.
The deadliest attack happened about 50 miles northeast of Baquba in the town of Saadiya when a roadside bomb destroyed a minibus loaded with men, women and children, according to Baquba police. Six people on the bus died and three were hurt, police said.
One civilian died and three were wounded by a roadside bombing in the Othmaniya neighborhood in southwestern Baquba Saturday, police said.
A second bomb exploded nearby just minutes later, wounding two members of Baquba's Awakening Council who arrived to help the first bombing victims, police said.
Awakening Councils predominantly comprise Sunni Muslims and some former militants. Many of the councils have been recruited by the U.S. military's "Concerned Local Citizen's Program" to work against al Qaeda in Iraq.
In recent weeks, al Qaeda in Iraq has launched an aggressive attack campaign against Awakening Councils.
Members of a local Awakening Council found the bodies of five people who were shot to death in southern Baghdad's Dora district Saturday morning, the official said. Their identities were not immediately known, he said.