Friday, April 22, 2005
• Young people remain at high risk of STIs, with those aged less than 24 years having the highest rates of chlamydia, gonorrhoea, genital herpes and genital warts diagnosed at Sexual Health Clinics.
• There were 46 cases of syphilis reported in 2004, an increase of 53% from 2003.
• Chlamydia trachomatis infection is the most commonly diagnosed STI in New Zealand.
• From 2000 to 2004 the number of confirmed chlamydia and gonorrhoea cases diagnosed at SHCs has increased by 28.2% and 44.4% respectively. There were 4 061 chlamydia cases in 2004 at SHCs, and 445 at Student & Youth Health Clinics.
Chlamydia may now be the most common communicable disease in New Zealand after influenza-like illness.
The number of STI cases reported through the clinic-based surveillance system underestimates the true burden of disease in New Zealand. A comparison of clinic-based and laboratory data for areas where both are collected has been made. This indicated that the incidence of chlamydia is three times higher than that reported from clinics and twice as high for gonorrhoea.
First the thought police - now the art police. Tariana Turia wants to twink out the pipe being smoked by a Maori in a famous Goldie painting. She says the elder never smoked, and the painting has created an image between Maori and smoking which is hard to displace. Seeing just about every artist in history has juxtaposed elements that were never in the same vicinity, or artistically "arranged" their relationship - the Mona Lisa, and Constable's "The Haywain" for starters - where do we stop? Art galleries had better start frisking visitors for Twink bottles.
How come the clients of underage prostitutes are not being prosecuted, asks ECPAT and Stop Demand Foundation? They point out that this week's report “The Nature and Extent of the Sex Industry in New Zealand” cites Police claims that some 210 children under the age of 18 years were identified as selling sex, with three-quarters being concentrated in one Police District. It is illegal under the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 to use in prostitution persons under the age of 18 years. Police know who these people are - why are they not being prosecuted?
Tax freedom day for New Zealand this year is April 24, the BRT calculates. That's two days later than last year. Tax freedom day in the US was last Sunday, April 17.
"We've allowed our heroes to be melted into victims. We've allowed honour and courage and character to languish. We've allowed rights to reign and responsibilities to be ignored. We've allowed the contemptible to be tolerated and the despicable exonerated on the basis of some socio-cultural matrix that makes everything nobody's fault." Jim Hopkins gets serious, and makes some good points.
Hurrah! Don has taken up the cudgels on my behalf! The National Party Leader has announced that National will repeal provisions in Labour's new building legislation that stop New Zealanders from carrying out DIY renovations on their own homes.
A new study of mainstream media bias in the USA has gone farther than just pointing out a leftward tilt — it's quantified just how often reporters turn to liberal sources for their stories. But the report, "A Measure of Media Bias," also reveals some facts that run contrary to popular perception. UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose, and his associate, University of Missouri professor Jeff Milyo, tracked the references used by reporters in their stories. The research shows that reporters and members of Congress, depending on their politics, tend to quote the same sources, predominately liberal. There were some surprises, however. For instance, you might think The Wall Street Journal is conservative. But "We found that the news articles of The Wall Street Journal were just about as liberal as 'CBS Evening News' or the New York Times," Grossclose said. "Fox News with Brit Hume" and the Washington Times are in a dead-heat for most conservative. The study can be found online at www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm
The elderly population in every US state will grow faster than the total population, and seniors will outnumber school-age children in 10 states in the next 25 years, population projections released today by the Census Bureau indicate. The Bureau predicts that 26 states will double their populations of people older than 65 by 2030.
Spain's lower house of parliament, the Congress, has approved legislation that would allow same-sex couples to marry and to adopt children, a move supporters said would make Spanish laws on gays and lesbians among the most liberal in Europe. The law has still to be ratified in the Senate, but that appears a foregone conclusion.
Women whose babies are prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome report that "their obstetricians had failed to provide enough up-to-date printed material" and "felt rushed or pressured into making a decision about continuing the pregnancy." The study of mothers whose children have Down syndrome was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Tail-out: Three graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a computer program that generates fake research papers loaded with ridiculous gobbledygook -- and got one of the resulting papers accepted at a conference.
