(CBS/WWJ) DETROIT – A customer at a Detroit gas station was shot and killed Friday night by a store clerk, apparently during a dispute over the price of condoms.
An employee at the BP gas station where the shooting took place told CBS Detroit the customer bought a box of condoms, but claimed he was overcharged and could have bought them somewhere else for a cheaper price.
When told he would not be given a refund, the customer allegedly began tossing items off the shelves, CBS Detroit reports. The employee says the overnight clerk came out with a gun and fired what was meant to be a warning shot, which struck the customer in the shoulder.
Police say the customer was taken to a nearby hospital where he died from his injuries. They say the store clerk, whose name has not been released, is in custody and the investigation is ongoing.
SAO PAULO — Brazil’s government says it handed out nearly a half-billion free condoms last year — a record for the nation’s campaign to reduce AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Brazil’s Health Ministry says it distributed 493 million condoms last year. That’s 2 1/2 condoms for every person in Latin America’s largest nation. They cost the government about $19 million.
The ministry says the Brazilian government buys and distributes more condoms than any other nation. About 90 percent of all condoms used in Brazil are provided by the government.
The federal government distributes the condoms, with some going to states and municipalities to be handed out in various programs including in Brazil’s schools.
THE Vatican has confirmed that Pope Benedict has approved a historic shift to allow condoms to avoid AIDS – while carefully painting it as no change at all.
In a typical Vatican clarification that left both conservatives and progressives convinced they were correct, a spokesman, Federico Lombardi, said that the Pope did mean to say that someone with AIDS should use condoms to prevent infection, whether ”man or woman or transsexual”.
But he said the Pope’s ”reasoning certainly cannot be defined as a revolutionary shift”, that he still taught abstinence and fidelity as better than condoms, which were ”not a real or moral solution”.
The stunning U-turn on condoms – traditional Catholic teaching says it is always sinful to use condoms within marriage because it blocks the transmission of life – emerged in interviews with a German journalist published in a book this week. But because Pope Benedict used the example of a male prostitute, conservative Catholics denied that it applied outside homosexual sex. However, in Italian the example was of a female prostitute.
Father Lombardi said because of the confusion he asked the Pope to clarify. The Pope told him the critical point was for someone with AIDS to take ”into consideration the life of another with whom you have a relationship”.
He said several moral theologians had held similar positions – without saying they had been ruthlessly silenced – ”however it is true that until now we had not heard them expressed with such clarity from the mouth of a pope”.
On Monday, the Bishop of Paramatta, Anthony Fisher, a bioethics specialist, released a statement insisting that ”despite some misinterpretation in the international media, the Pope has not deviated from or altered in any way Catholic teaching on the wrongness of contraception”. The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, also released a statement endorsing Bishop Fisher.
Neither was available for comment yesterday, but conservatives were still unimpressed by the apparent clarification. The bioethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, from the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, said the Pope maintained condoms were not the solution because of their failure rate.
”If you have AIDS it’s irresponsible to have sex with anyone, full stop. It’s not an act of love to put someone’s life at risk.”
Dr Tonti-Filippini said there had been considerable discussion within the church about whether sex within marriage using a condom was still the ”marriage act”. If it was, then the use of condoms to prevent infection would be allowable.
”But others, including the Pope, have said that is not the marriage act. It’s like mutual masturbation if you use a condom.”
KUALA LUMPUR: The sale of condoms in South Korea has risen five-fold after fans celebrated their football team winning in the opening World Cup game against Greece.
The game on June 12 saw about a million red-shirted fans nationwide, including 200,000 in Seoul, crowd boulevards, stadiums and parks to cheer the side’s 2-0 win over Euro 2004 champions Greece, reports the New Strait Times.
According to the JoongAng Daily, convenience stores and fried chicken outlets were doing brisk business, and the Bokwang Family Mart chain stores saw a near doubling of sales as fans took to the streets.
Stores in residential areas also did well, as those tuning in at home bought three times the beer and more than twice the number of snacks.
It also said after the game, fans in celebratory mood bought five times more condoms than during the team’s lacklustre 2006 World Cup performance.
The owner of a factory in central China’s Hunan Province has been referred to prosecutors for allegedly producing more than 2 million fake brand-name condoms and selling almost half of them.
Li Anping and 10 of his workers were caught in a joint operation on July 24 by food and drug regulators and police in Shaoyang City.
Officers seized 40,000 boxes of condoms labeled with Jissbon, Durex, Sixsex, Love Card, NOX and Rough Nider brands and more than 1.62 million unlabeled condoms worth a total of 536,000 yuan (US$78,511).
Dusty condoms were scattered over the floor and lubricants was stored in large oil drums.
Teenage girls hired by Li were lubricating condoms and putting them into two packaging machines when officers broke in the 20-square-meter workshop, according to a China Youth Daily report.
Finished products in plastic bags were directly inserted into fake brand packs by the teenagers who worked part time during summer vacation at plastic card Systems is a leader in plastic ID card and badge printing technology,the workshop, the newspaper said.
Many of the condoms were destined for an unnamed country in western Asia, according to police.
Li allegedly started his business last December with orders from an unidentified buyer.
He bought unprocessed condoms from Dongguan City in southern China’s Guangdong Province and initially worked alone at home, police said
After Presently PPR pipes has been used in plumbing due to their reliable chemical features.receiving more and more orders from the mysterious buyer, Li bought two packaging machines from Dongguan in March and recruited workers.
Li’s workshop fiber isolator is used in the networks to block out reflected and unwanted optic light.allegedly made 2.16 million fake brand condoms from March.
They also turned waste rubber into hair ribbons and sold I want to show my great appreciation for all of you coming to the short presentation about the gu10 led.them nationwide, police said.
Tan Peng, a police officer handling Li’s case, told the newspaper that Li had sold about 340 cartons to the mysterious buyer from March.
People who use lubricants during anal sex are three times as likely to contract a rectal infection than those who don’t, putting them at much higher risk of contracting STDs and HIV, according to a new UCLA study. New research also shows HIV transmission is nearly 20 times higher in unprotected anal sex than unprotected vaginal sex.
The study, which took place between 2006 and 2008 with nearly 900 men and women participating, found that 229 men and 192 women said they have partaken in receptive anal sex in the past year. About half said they used lubricants, and the majority of participants who used lubes had contracted STDs. Not good.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh studied the six most popular brands of lubricants used for anal sex. Five water-based lubes-Astroglide, Elbow Grease, ID Glide, KY Jelly and PRE-and one condom-safe silicon-based-Wet Platitum-were tested. Research found that water-based lubes draw water out of cells, weakening and even killing the cells. Some of the tested products also weakened or destroyed the surface of epithelial cells, which act as a sort of protective cover in the mouth, nose, and rectum. The safest of the six lubricants were Wet Platiunum and PRE, while the most harmful appeared to be Astroglide and KY Jelly.
The effects of lubricant in anal sex is a topic that hasn’t been studied very much-the study out of Pittsburgh is the first to ever examine the effects of lubricants in anal sex-but the International Microbicides Conference is putting out the call for more research.
“We know we can’t make any conclusions based on this one small study,” Marc-Andre LeBlanc of the IMC said in a news release. “Further research is absolutely necessary to understand the potential role of sexual lubricants in HIV transmission. We should be able to provide consumer guidance regarding lubes that are found to be safer than others.” Currently there’s not enough research to do so.
This is obviously disheartening for men who have sex with men-90% of which, gay or not, say they have participated in receptive anal sex. More men say they use lubricants than condoms, increasing the risks of transmitting STDs and HIV substantially.
Sexual health charities are warning England football fans heading to South Africa – which has one of the worst Aids and HIV rates in the world – to take care.
With its new football stadiums, expensive hotels and sandy beaches, South Africa may look like any other tourist hotspot welcoming visitors this summer.
The country has poured 33bn rand (£2.9bn) into preparations for the 2010 World Cup, but behind the glistening new buildings lies the other side of South Africa – deprived townships, high levels of crime and health problems.
According to Avert, an Aids charity based in Horsham, West Sussex, an estimated 5.7 million people were living with HIV and Aids in South Africa in 2009 – a higher number than in any other country.
Charities are warning football fans travelling to South Africa to make sure they do not put their own sexual health at risk.
“We are urging people to take condoms with them – have fun but look after yourself”
Jason Warriner Terrence Higgins Trust
The London-based Terrence Higgins Trust surveyed 454 British 18 to 34 year olds and found one in ten admitted drinking so much alcohol while watching sporting events that they could not remember what they did afterwards.
The sexual health charity has published a World Cup guide to football fans on its website to help prevent the spread of infections both abroad and in the UK during the tournament.
Jason Warriner, clinical director at the trust, said: “When people go on holiday their behaviour pattern is very different to back home.
“People sometimes drink more than usual or use social drugs – opportunities may arise and they may not make the judgement call like they usually do.
“We are urging people to take condoms with them – have fun but look after yourself.”
Earlier this year, the UK government donated £1m to South Africa to buy 42m condoms as the nation prepared for the World Cup and the influx of visitors.
New football stadiums have been built to host World Cup matches
The UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Aids, HIVsport, which raises awareness of sexual health during sporting events, and the Foreign Office has launched advice website Keep a Clean Sheet.
It warns that large sporting events often lead to an increase in sexually transmitted infections.
Veronica Oakeshott, policy advisor to the group, said: “We are concerned that there will be fans going out there who are going to get drunk, be very over-excited and be approached by very lovely-looking women who do not look like prostitutes and may take risks that they will later regret.”
Making money
With the world’s spotlight on South Africa throughout the tournament and with some 450,000 tourists expected to pile into the country, there is money to be made.
All industries in the country will be looking forward to profiting from the event – and prostitutes will be no exception.
“A lot of these women will be infected (with HIV or Aids),” said Annabel Kanabus, director of Avert. “They will have other things as well.
“A lot of these people are not particularly choosing to live that sort of life – they are living it because they have to live it.
“It’s an opportunity to make money.”
There are fears that prostitution, which is illegal in South Africa, will thrive during the World Cup, with prostitutes flocking to the country from elsewhere in the world.
But Marlise Richter, a member of the women’s sector of the South African National Aids Council, said she did not expect a significant increase in sex workers on the streets.
“There has been a lot of sensationalism about the increase in sex workers and trafficking,” she said, adding that she was more concerned about how police will deal with prostitutes during the tournament.
She said the demand and supply of sex workers would be monitored and added that a lot of work had been done in the run-up to the World Cup to educate people in South Africa about safe sex.
A new study has given some hope on controlling the transmission of HIV by use of Bananas. So effective is the chemical found in banana can surpass two current synthetic anti-HIV drugs T-20 and Maraviroc in terms of performance. The study conducted by University of Michigan Medical School was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
As per the study, Benlec, a lectin compound found in Bananas holds the key to prevent HIV transmission.Lectins can be defined as proteins that bind carbohydrates.
Lectin in the form of BenLec has the capability to bind to carbohydrates of the HIV-1 envelope thereby inhibiting viral entry and thus preventing sexualtransmission of infection. “Lectins can bind to the sugars found on different spots
of the HIV-1 envelope, and presumably it will take multiple mutations for the virus to get around them.” lead author Michael.DSwanson said.
Using BenLec to develop an anti-HIV microbicide would mean a breakthrough in the efforts to contain the transmission of HIV. Not only would this microbicide keep the synthetic components at bay but would also prove cost effective. It is expected that 20% coverage with a microbicide that is only 60% effective against HIV may prevent up to 2.5 million HIV infections in three years.
Though Condoms are a safe method to prevent the spread of HIV, its usage has not gained popularity in developing nations. The use of condoms in these countries where the risk of infection is the highest is restricted due to cultural inhibitions. This is where BenLec based microbicide is expected to achieve results. “That’s particularly true in developing countries where women have little control over sexual encounters so development of a long-lasting, self-applied microbicide is very attractive”, revealed study Senior Author Dr. David Marvovitz.
Prior to this study, Co Authors Erwin Goldstein and Harry Winter had developed means to isolate BenLec from Bananas using biopurification method .Now to take these efforts forward Michael Swanson is developing a process to enhance BenLec’s potential clinical utility through molecular alteration. Swanson is a doctoral student in the graduate program in immunology at the Univ. of Michigan Medical School.
Though there is still a very long way to go, a lead in the form of BenLec could hold the key to changing millions of lives across the world.
A leading condom manufacturer in Switzerland has created extra-small condoms for boys as young as 12 years old, the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph reported.
The condom, called the Hotshot, was produced after family planning groups and the Swiss AIDS Federation campaigned to have the condoms made following several studies that showed adolescent boys were not using proper protection when engaging in intercourse.
“The result that shocked us concerned young boys who display apparently risky behavior,” Nancy Bodmer, who headed the research, told the newspaper. “They have more of a tendency not to protect themselves. They do not have a very developed sexual knowledge. They do not understand the consequences of what they are doing and leave the young girls to take care of the consequences.”
Bodmer said the results of the study suggest that early prevention makes sense.
A spokeswoman for the company, Lamprecht AG, said the United Kingdom would be a “top priority” if they expanded abroad, especially since the U.K. has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in Europe.
A standard condom has a diameter of 2 inches; the Hotshot’s is 1.7 inches.
One of the Olympic stats most talked about around Vancouver this weekend wasn’t medals or scores, per se, but condoms. One hundred thousand condoms are being given out in the Athletes’ Village, which adds up to 14.6 condoms for each of the 6,850 athletes and officials expected to attend the Olympics and Paralympics. And apparently, that’s what happens when you get the hottest, healthiest young people together for two weeks.
Or is it? The questions that come to mind are why so many condoms are needed by those bobsledders, skaters and other athletes? And why there’s so much interest in the number they go through anyway? After all, I haven’t seen any reports of the number of Q-tips or toilet paper needed to fulfill the whims of the denizens in Athletes Village
Officials have handed out free condoms to athletes since the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona. In the next Summer Games in Sydney, the initial supply of 70,000 ran out, and organizers had to order 20,000 more. Then in Athens, officials brought in a whopping 130,000. And most recently, in Beijing, organizers brought in 100,000, all with the motto “faster, higher, stronger,” then auctioned off the leftover 5,000.
So the magic number seems to be about 100,000: for winter or summer. Assuming that most condoms are used between two people, the number presupposes 29 encounters in two weeks. That’s two a day, and rivals Wilt Chamberlain’s rate (who claimed he slept with over 20,000 women over his life, and bragged about sleeping with 23 women in 10 days).
Athlete friends of mine say that one reason for the condom binge is that many competitors abstain from sex for up to six weeks before the Olympics, supposedly to build maximum testosterone levels and get a competitive advantage. So after their event, more than one champagne cork pops, so to speak.
That’s compounded by the fact that many athletes of this level have committed themselves primarily to sport, so don’t have partners or kids. And therefore are, um, able to hook up after their events (and body parts) are wrapped up.
But it’s more than that, according to Jennifer Matthews, who authored the Whistler Guys’ Study, as part of her graduate work in health promotion studies at the University of Alberta. She followed the sexual encounters of 15 guys aged 19-31 in Whistler, and said certain factors create a nexus for “hook ups.”
There can be a kind of bubble created when young people are in a culture of fitness with its focus on physicality, are away from home and their normal environment, know few people and therefore are constantly in meeting and socializing mode, and are in a celebratory or party atmosphere. That’s all compounded when there is alcohol involved (and who knows what goes on behind the walls of the Athletes Villages?).
The bubble feeling creates a sense that the “normal rules don’t apply,” which can affect the frequency of sexual encounters and the use of protection. In a bubble, can be a sense of “living only for the moment.”
“If you’re not playing by the normal rules, you may be less likely to use a condom,” says Matthews. “You might think, ‘Oh, I usually do, but I got carried away by the moment.’ But STIs don’t make that distinction. As human beings, we make exceptions, but viruses don’t.”
Dr. Reka Gustafson, medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health Authority said in a recent Vancouver Sun article that handing out condoms to athletes is an opportunity to put positive health promotion messages out there, and reinforce the message of controlling sexually transmitted diseases.
Matthews cautions that we can’t necessarily estimate the number of sexual incidents by the number of condoms being handed out. (Who knows, maybe it’s a better souvenir than a country pin?). No studies have been done to track the actual sexual activity by athletes at a Games, or whether athletes take more risks than others.
But because of the likelihood factors, she said there’s a strong likelihood that there’s a lot of activity. She also said it likely varies by sub-culture: that certain sports have different language, behavioral, and even sexual norms.
But even though there’s no proof, and the condom stat is often met with laughter, health officials are probably on the right track. And in addition to the STI issue, it’s probably not a great idea to end up with a baby boom nine months from now, even though those kids would be ridiculously genetically gifted.
But what’s arguably even more fascinating about this story than public health issues, STI rates, hook up rates, or even unwanted pregnancy rates, is why the public is so interested in it.
“People like the story of athletes and sex,” says Matthews. They’re “titillated” by the idea, especially because it all happens behind closed doors.
That plays into the way “media uses sexuality, creating it as mysterious, taboo and exciting. Who doesn’t want a part of that? Sexual imagery in the media is almost exclusively young, fit people,” so “athletes are sexy by definition.”
She thinks people are also interested in sex stories because in general, when it comes to sex people “somehow feel as though they are missing out on something. Sex has been sold to us as this incredible experience, and I think most people’s human, messy, less-than-explosive experiences just can’t live up to those expectations.”
They grab on to stories like the supposed athletes’ sex party because “people want to understand if they are ‘normal’” so information they glean from other people’s stories, becomes the bar they compare themselves to. Whether or not those stories are true.
“It is ironic that we live in such a sexually explicit culture and yet know so little about sexuality.”
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New football stadiums have been built to host World Cup matches
