| Circumcision in boys may help prevent STDs | | Posted Monday, November 13, 2006 2:47:16 AM by Blog57 Team | | The report of a 25 year New Zealand study, published in the November issue of the international journal Pediatry, suggests that neo-natal circumcision may reduce the risk of STDs by upto 50%. The latest study conducted on 510 boys, teens and young men from birth to the age of 25, shows that 356 uncircumcised boys had a 2.66 fold increased risk of contracting STDs in contrast to 154 circumcised boys. .... | |
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| | | Girls mutilated for 'tradition' | | Posted Monday, November 06, 2006 6:47:35 AM by Blog57 Team | | AT least 50 women who have undergone painful and illegal female circumcision have been treated at two Sydney hospitals in the past year. Health workers fear a new generation of Australian-born girls are being forced to undergo the painful procedure by their migrant families to comply with cultural traditions. Obstetricians and gynaecologists at Auburn Hospital have treated 38 patients with female circumcisions over the past year. Canterbury Hospital also treats between 10 and 15 such patients a year. All say they had the procedure done overseas but there are fears many more Australian women have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) because it is unreported to authorities. Health workers say there is evidence some parents are taking their daughters overseas or to secret practices within the country to have the procedure.... | |
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| | | Female circumcision trial may be first in U.S. | | Posted Monday, October 30, 2006 10:47:28 AM by Blog57 Team | | LAWRENCEVILLE, Georgia (AP) -- The trial of an Atlanta-area father accused of circumcising his 2-year-old daughter with scissors is focusing attention on an ancient African practice that experts say is slowly becoming more common in the U.S. as immigrant communities grow. Khalid Adem, a 30-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia, is charged with aggravated battery and cruelty to children. Human rights observers said they believe this is the first criminal case in the U.S. involving the 5,000-year-old practice. Prosecutors say Adem used scissors to remove his daughter's clitoris in their apartment in 2001. The child's mother said she did not discover it until more than a year later. "He said he wanted to preserve her virginity," Fortunate Adem, the girl's mother, testified this week.... | |
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| | | Putin jokes about Israeli sex scandal | | Posted Monday, October 23, 2006 6:47:08 PM by Blog57 Team | | President Vladimir Putin made joking references to the sexual assault accusations against Israeli President Moshe Katsav during a meeting with the visiting Israeli prime minister in remarks that shocked longtime Kremlin-watchers. A Kremlin spokesman said Friday that Putin's meaning had been lost in translation from Russian to English. As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with the Russian leader in an ornate reception room in the Kremlin on Wednesday, reporters overheard Putin tell him: "Say hello to your president. He really surprised us." The microphones were then cut off, but a member of the Israeli delegation told The Associated Press that Putin went on to say of Katsav: "I met him. He didn't look like a guy who could be with 10 women." The Israeli ambassador quipped, "It seems like he's envious of him," and Olmert told his host: "I wouldn't envy him," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press.... | |
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| | | Waiter, there's a fly on the wall | | Posted Friday, October 20, 2006 12:46:05 PM by Blog57 Team | | LONDON (Reuters) - Many of life's personal dramas are in restaurants. From flirtations, proposals to divorce, people lay them out over food and wine — assuming there is no audience. But there is — and thanks to the Internet, it might be a global one. "My new customers are too busy French kissing to notice me. I skid to a halt, turn around, and walk away … I don't have anything against public displays of affection, but there is something called room service." Waiter, as the anonymous narrator of this extract from http://waiterrant.net calls himself, has changed details to protect the privacy of his customers, and keep them coming to his upmarket New York Italian restaurant, alias The Bistro. Since April 2004, his weblog has been building into a situation comedy of life in and around a restaurant - its owner and staff, motley customers, the local homeless guy who shows up at the window, or the woman neighbor who stepped out naked on the street — but for a towel — on a dare.... | |
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| | | Uganda: Minister Fights Against Female Circumcision | | Posted Monday, October 16, 2006 10:46:43 PM by Blog57 Team | | Female Genital Mutilation is sabotaging girls' education, mostly in the eastern region, the State Minister for Gender Ms Rukia Isanga Nakadama has said. Nakadama was recently speaking at an anti-female genital mutilation function organised by the Sabiny communities of Bugiri and Kapchorwa districts. The function was under the theme, "A war against Female Genital Mutilation." Also known as female circumcision, the cultural rite common among the Sabiny sometimes involves the accidental removal of some sexual organ parts. The practice is outlawed in some nations including the United States of America. Nakadama said a number of girls among the Sabiny have been tortured into accepting the cultural norm, which makes them runaway from school in search of refuge. She said victims of such carnal advances, cysts and abscesses get more vulnerable to HIV/Aids.... | |
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| | | Female circumcision banned in Indonesia at physician level | | Posted Tuesday, October 10, 2006 6:46:18 AM by Blog57 Team | | Doctors and nurses in Indonesia have been barred from performing female genital cutting -- a practice sometimes referred to as female circumcision or female genital mutilation in which there is a partial or full removal of the labia, clitoris or both -- under a notice issued by the government, a Ministry of Health official announced on Wednesday, the AP/International Herald Tribune reports (AP/International Herald Tribune, 10/4). According to Sri Hermiyanti, head of the health ministry's family health directorate, "[h]urting, damaging, incising" and "cutting" of the clitoris are not permitted under the ban because "[t]hese acts violate the reproductive rights of these girls and harm their organs." She added that physicians are allowed to continue performing symbolic female circumcisions that do not involve physical harm.... | |
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| | | Weekend Beat: BOOK REVIEW, Beauty Up | | Posted Tuesday, October 03, 2006 2:46:14 PM by Blog57 Team | | Homo sapiens are smelly, hairy, messy and much closer to their primate brethren than most would like to admit. Fortunately for cosmetics companies and plastic surgeons, humans are also insecure. In "Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics," Laura Miller examines how these insecurities are milked for all they're worth by Japan's wily and thriving beauty industry. The author's curiosity and lively writing style enable her to deliver years of anthropological research and gender-studies theory in a format that is as palatable and personable as a gab at the local beauty parlor. When Miller, an associate professor of anthropology at Loyola University Chicago, first pitched a research project on the beauty industry, some colleagues dismissed the topic as fluff. Her book is anything but.... | |
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| | | "My Pet Virus" | | Posted Tuesday, September 26, 2006 10:46:24 PM by Blog57 Team | | It is a situation almost unimaginable to most -- what happens if you fall in love with a person who is HIV-positive? What does the risk of contracting HIV mean for a romantic and physical relationship? For HIV-positive Shawn Decker and HIV-negative Gwenn Barringer, it meant the practical application of a lifelong advocacy message -- that practicing safe sex can prevent HIV infection. For the past seven years, the Charlottesville natives have made their relationship work and have traveled the country speaking to college students about their own experiences with HIV, relationships and the importance of safe sex. The couple gave a presentation at the University Wednesday night, in an event sponsored by AIDS Service, Awareness and Prevention. For Barringer and Decker, safe sex isn't just a tag line; it's a necessary part of their lifestyle.... | |
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| | | Kenya: Sort Out Row With Ministry Over Funds, Council Told | | Posted Tuesday, September 19, 2006 10:46:35 PM by Blog57 Team | | Mombasa council has been told to sort out its differences with the Local Government ministry to allow the release of funds for preparations for next year's world cross-country championships. Sports permanent secretary Rachel Dzombo said yesterday that the council was wrong to say that the preparations were not moving fast "yet there are issues that they need to settle with the parent ministry." .... | |
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