Ragbag Headliners

Gun-scanning Cameras Could Hit Streets Soon

The NYPD is stepping up their war against illegal guns, with a new tool that could detect weapons on someone as they walk down the street.

But is it violating your right to privacy?

Police, along with the U.S. Department of Defense, are researching new technology in a scanner placed on police vehicles that can detect concealed weapons.

“You could use it at a specific event. You could use it at a shooting-prone location,” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told CBS 2′s Hazel Sanchez on Tuesday.

It’s called Terahertz Imaging Detection. It measures the energy radiating from a body up to 16 feet away, and can detect anything blocking it, like a gun.

The proposal returns us to the old “liberty versus safety” argument (for which ol’ Ben Franklin said those who would give up liberty for safety deserve neither), and has ignited an “uproar on both sides of the privacy issue.”

“I think it’s good. People will be safer and it will be a safer environment,” Jessica Ramos said.

“If it’s going to make us safer as citizens I’m okay with that,” said Lori Sampson of Lake Ronkonkoma.

“I think it’s all about invading people’s lives more and more and more,” Antonio Gabriel said.

“It’s definitely a privacy issue, but it’s for our safety. So it’s just one of those things, a double-edged sword,” added Clarence Moore of Union, N.J.

Police Commissioner Kelly said the scanner would only be used in reasonably suspicious circumstances and could cut down on the number of stop-and-frisks on the street.

“Trust us, we’ll never abuse our power.” When are we going to pass a law against public officials using that line?

But the New York Civil Liberties Union is raising a red flag.

“It’s worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you’re doing nothing wrong,” the NYCLU’s Donna Lieberman said.

“We have involved our attorneys as we go forward with this issue. We think it’s a very positive development,” Kelly said. –American Vision News

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PTC: More Skin Likely ... Unless

A conservative advocacy group is growing more concerned over the amount of skin shown during network prime-time television.

The Parents Television Council is worried about the troubling trend it has been documenting even before releasing its report "The Alarming Family Hour" more than four years ago. Melissa Henson is director of communications and public education for PTC.

"What we have seen so far this season is a fairly noticeable increase in the frequency of depictions of nudity on prime-time broadcast television -- and that's something that used to be unheard of not that long ago," she tells OneNewsNow. "And even though it started creeping into 10:00 p.m. shows, you never would have seen that sort of content, certainly during the family hour. But now you are."

Henson says this could just be the beginning, depending on how the Supreme Court rules on a couple of cases regarding indecency -- a battle that has gone on for decades between the networks and decency advocates.

"The concern, of course, is that if the Supreme Court sides with the networks in these cases, I think we can all expect to see even more of this sort of content in the future," laments the PTC spokeswoman. "And it's going to be increasingly difficult for parents to avoid it when they're watching TV with their kids."

She says it is very telling that more and more TV contracts for actors include nudity clauses. And as PTC points out, the broadcast networks would not be waging the legal battle currently before the Supreme Court for something they do not intend to do.

In a statement earlier this month, PTC president Tim Winter warned that if the high court rules in favor of the networks, "the American people are going to get a rude awakening when broadcast TV become indistinguishable from Cinemax, HBO, or something even more explicit."

PTC maintains a weekly, online "family guide" to prime-time network television indicating which shows may include indecent content unsuitable for children, which shows contain adult-oriented themes/dialogue that may be inappropriate for youngsters, and which shows are family-friendly and promote responsible themes and traditional values. –One News Now

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HPV Study Finds 7% of U.S. Teens, Adults Carry Virus In Mouths

Infection with human papillomavirus heightens the risk of developing cancer of the mouth and throat. The findings indicate that most cases of oral HPV can be traced to oral sex, rather than to kissing or casual contact.

A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years. The evidence makes it clear that oral sex practices play a key role in transmission.

The new data, published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are the first to assess the prevalence of oral HPV infection in the U.S. population. The findings indicate that the virus is not likely to spread through kissing or casual contact and that most cases of oral HPV can be traced to oral sex, which many Americans mistakenly view as a safe practice.

"There is a strong association for sexual behavior, and that has important implications for public health officials who teach sexual education," said Dr. Maura L. Gillison of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, who led the study and presented the findings Thursday at a meeting of head and neck cancer researchers and doctors in Phoenix.

Though herpes, HIV and other diseases can be transmitted via oral sex, the practice is often considered a safer alternative to sexual intercourse. A survey released last year by theU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that about 90% of adults have had oral sex, along with 27% of 15-year-old boys and 23% of 15-year-old girls.

"I don't think people think of oral sex in the same way they do with traditional intercourse," said Fred Wyand, director of the HPV Resource Center at the American Social Health Assn. in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "Sometimes younger people engage in oral sex so they don't have to worry about pregnancy. They may not even make the link between oral sex and STDs."

Suspicion among researchers that the behavior could cause oral cancers by transmitting HPV to the mouth has been mounting over the last decade. Initial studies found that patients with oral cancer were far more likely than healthy controls to have engaged in oral sex. And a 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the more oral sex partners a person has had, the greater their risk of developing throat cancer.

Most oral HPV infections are harmless, and oral cancers are still relatively uncommon. But given the new information, doctors should encourage their patients to use protection during oral sex, Dr. Hans Schlecht, assistant professor of medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study.

"It's something people are not comfortable talking about, but it is protective," he said in an interview. "If you are going to be intimate with someone, there are some adult conversations you need to have."

HPV is best known as the cause of cervical cancer, which kills 4,220 women in the U.S. each year, according to the National Cancer Institute. The virus can also cause vulvar, anal, penile and various head and neck cancers. A study published in October in the Journal of Clinical Oncology traced more than 70% of new cases of oral cancers to HPV infection, putting it ahead of tobacco use as the leading cause of such cancers.

If present trends continue, HPV will cause more cases of oral cancers than cervical cancer by 2020, according to the October study.

HPV infection is common — an estimated 80% of Americans have contracted the virus, Gillison said. It usually produces no symptoms and is typically cleared from the body through natural processes.

But persistent infections can cause cancer. Vaccines are now available for children and young adults to prevent cervical and anal cancers caused by the most troublesome HPV strains.

To get a handle on HPV's role in oral cancers, Gillison and her colleagues analyzed data from 5,579 people ages 14 to 69 who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2009 and 2010. The survey includes a detailed questionnaire and a physical examination, including the first large-scale use of a 30-second oral rinse from which researchers were able to extract cells to test for HPV infection. The test, which can detect the virus in the mouth as accurately as in the cervix, was 10 years in the making.

Gillison's team found that the overall prevalence of oral HPV was 6.9% — far less than the rate of genital HPV infection in reproductive-age women, which can be as high as 42% among women in their 20s.

The infection rate varied substantially among different groups. For instance, 10.1% of men in the study had oral HPV, compared with 3.6% of women. The reason for the difference is unknown but it could have to do with oral sex practices, Gillison said.

Among people who had more than 20 sexual partners, the prevalence of oral HPV was 20%. But the researchers found it in fewer than 1% of people who said they were virgins and in fewer than 4% of people who said they had never performed oral sex.

Researchers also noted age differences: Those in their early 60s had the highest prevalence at 11.4%. That's in marked contrast to cervical HPV infection, which is most common among women in their early 20s.

It's unclear why the prevalence of oral HPV peaks much later in life, Gillison said. One possibility is that the immune system weakens with age, making people more vulnerable to latent infections. Another theory is that study participants in their 60s grew up during an era of sexual permissiveness that preceded public health messages about safe sex.

"People who came of age during the sexual revolution may have had more sexual partners than other age groups, such as groups that came of age during the HIV epidemic," Gillison said.

The study also linked heavy smoking to oral infection. It's possible that smoking weakens the body's immune response, making it easier for an infection to persist.

The most common high-risk HPV strain, HPV-16, infected 1% of the participants. That strain raises the risk of oral cancer fiftyfold and accounts for most cases of squamous cell cancers of the mouth and pharynx. Squamous cell cancers, which arise in the mucous membranes that line the mouth and throat, are diagnosed in 2.6 per 100,000 people and are the most common type of oropharyngeal cancer.

Even with only 1% of people infected by HPV-16, that still translates to "hundreds of thousands of people" who will contract the virus and be unable to clear it, Schlecht said.

It's unclear whether the HPV vaccine will protect against oral cancers. That question that could take years to answer, experts said.

In the meantime, the new data should give parents more to think about as they consider whether to vaccinate their children — especially their sons, Gillison said. HPV vaccination is recommended for females ages 9 to 26 and males ages 9 to 21.

"Some parents may have felt that the risk of HPV infection wasn't relevant to them," she said. "But this study shows 1 in 10 boys has an infection that can lead to a cancer." -Los Angeles Times

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Expert: Newt Understands Islam 'Very Well'

A U.S.-born Israeli author and expert on the Middle East is praising presidential candidate Newt Gingrich for continuing to tell the truth about sharia law.

As previously reported on OneNewsNow, Gingrich recently took heat for saying that the Palestinians are "an invented people." Now, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is blasting the former House speaker for saying he would only hire Muslims to his administration if they renounced the use of Islamic sharia law as a tool for the U.S. government. CAIR is calling Gingrich "one of the nation's worst promoters of anti-Muslim bigotry."

But David Rubin, the former mayor of the Israeli city of Shiloh and author of The Islamic Tsunami: Israel and America in the Age of Obama, again thinks the presidential hopeful is right on.

"Sharia law is a threat to the United States of America and to Western civilization," he contends. "Sharia law says that women are allowed to be beaten by their husbands. It's also Islamic law that says that jihad holy war against all non-Muslims is a virtue and an obligation on every Muslim that needs to be adhered to. So, Newt Gingrich understands very well the Islamic civilization."

Rubin believes Gingrich has demonstrated boldness by speaking out about sharia, which by definition is intolerant and anti-American. –One News Now