Monday, June 05, 2006
Study: 1 in 5 students practice self-injury
Nearly 1 in 5 students at two Ivy League schools say they have purposely injured themselves by cutting, burning or other methods, a disturbing phenomenon that psychologists say they are hearing about more often.
For some young people, self-abuse is an extreme coping mechanism that seems to help relieve stress; for others it's a way to make deep emotional wounds more visible.
The results of the survey at Cornell and Princeton are similar to other estimates on this frightening behavior. Counselors say it's happening at colleges, high schools and middle schools across the country.
'Send for Disney' to save Venice
The waters are rising around Venice. Each year the floods worsen and last longer. Carpets of slime coat St Mark's Square. Statues and church walls are coated with filth. The city is drowning. But there is a solution: run the place like Disneyland, says leading UK economist John Kay.
According to Kay, author of The Truth About Markets and other key works on economics, there should be a major restructuring of the city's operations.
St. Paul man's washing machine explodes
A St. Paul man is thankful to be alive tonight, after his washing machine exploded this morning in his basement.
Glenn Johnson of St. Paul put gasoline in his machine to clean some greasy clothing. Johnson says he's done this for 25 years to break up grease stains.
He puts detergent, water and a little gasoline together and after what happened this morning, he says he'll never do it again.
"I've done it a hundred times before," Johnson tells 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. "This is the first time it ever exploded on me."
`Shot Girls' Take Hold
The Central Connecticut State University freshman works one day a week. Her business attire includes knee-high boots and a cut-off T-shirt, and many nights she walks away with hundreds of untaxed dollars.
The slender, attractive young woman uses sex appeal to sell tubes of liquor to patrons at Club Blu in Hartford. She is a "shot girl."
"It's easy for a college student," Roos said. "You're going to class all week, you're working on papers, and on weekends, college kids want to go out. So why not work at a bar?"
Has porn entered mainstream cinema for good?
Trash maestro John Waters, director of such cult classics as Pink Flamingos and Multiple Maniacs, once told me that he believed one of the last taboos of cinema would be broken when A-list Hollywood stars performed actual sex acts on screen. Only then would we know that hard-core pornography, once the preserve of the underground and the illegal, had finally been totally absorbed by the mainstream. Judging by several of the movies I saw at Cannes this year, that day is not so far away.
British men have the worst sex lives while Canadians have the best
British men have the worst sex lives while Canadians have the best, a new research published by the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy says.
The new data reveals that three out of 10 British men have not had sex in the last 12 months, and only 70 percent of men in Britain have had sex in the last year.
The journal also reports that the number of sexually active women in Britain is below 60 percent.
The research, based on 6,000 people in the age group of 40 to 80, in Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, shows large differences in sexual activity.
It says in the US, Australia and Canada, 80 percent of men are "sexually active" - those who have had sex at least once in the previous year.
In Britain, 41 percent of British men and 33 percent of women are "very sexually active" - those who have had sex at least once in the previous week.
New Zealand was the only country where more women than men were termed as very sexually active.
Man shows up drunk to DUI hearing
James Kassab arrived bright and early -- 9:45 a.m. -- at the Centre County Courthouse Annex on Thursday, where he was scheduled to plead guilty to drunken driving.
The problem was that he was drunk when he got there. A portable breathalyzer test found his blood alcohol level to be about .15 percent, or almost double the legal limit to drive in Pennsylvania.
Centre County Judge Bradley P. Lunsford was not amused and ordered Kassab, 24, of 622 Galen Drive, State College, handcuffed, led from the courtroom and put in a holding cell for the rest of the day to sober up. Kassab did not even receive a lunch.