UK: TransTeen Told Go Home 'Change to a Boy' Uses the Law

A transgender teenager banned from taking an exam unless she went home and changed into boys' clothing used UK equality laws to slam the school's bigoted headteacher.

Ashlyn Parram was told she wasn't allowed to take her first GCSE exam at Giles Academy, Boston, Lincolnshire, because she was wearing tights, skirt and a blazer, The Sun reported.

However, after refusing to go home and change into a boy's uniform, the 16-year-old went to the office of headtacher Chris Wall and showed him a copy of the Equality Act 2010, which protects transgender people from discrimination.

She was eventually allowed to sit the paper but was placed away from other students in the hall.

Ashlyn, who has been living openly as a girl at home for two years, told the British tabloid that she has 'never felt so bad about herself' and described how bullies at school spat and hit her in the past.

She said: 'It’s sad people can’t be more open-minded. I’ve lost a lot of friends because of everything I’ve been through. I really didn’t need to lose the support of my teachers.'

Ashlyn has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and is waiting to receive hormone therapy.

According to her mum Miranda, a senior teacher told her daughter that gender dysphoria didn't exist, while another imitated her walk in front of other pupils.

He blasted the school's treatment of Ashlyn as 'appalling' and 'disgusting'.

A school spokesman said: 'Giles Academy is an Ofsted Outstanding school in a caring environment with robust equalities policies. The governing body of the Academy rejects all the allegations.'

Anybody who has also experienced transphobic or homophobic discrimination at school, should contact education watchdog OFSTED here.

  BY MATTHEW JENKIN

Source

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Looks Like Mitt Might be Migrating/ Buying Twitter Followers

 After Mitt Romney's popularity spikes, skeptics suspect social-media shenanigans — but his campaign says it's as puzzled as everyone else.

 

Mitt Romney went from picking up about 5,000 Twitter followers a day to 23,926 on July 20 and 93,054 on July 21. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images 

Mitt Romney recently piled up tens of thousands of new Twitter followers. His roster of fans on the microblogging site is growing so fast, in fact, that suspicious liberal critics are speculating that the GOP presidential candidate's campaign must be buying phony followers to make it look like his popularity is exploding. What's behind Romney's sudden Twitter surge? Here, a brief guide:


Just how fast is Romney gaining followers? 

Before this past weekend, Romney had been picking up followers at a steady, if modest, clip — a rate of 5,000 or 6,000 a day. Then, on Friday, something changed, and suddenly he was adding 1,000 to 4,000 fans an hour. He picked up 23,926 on Friday, 93,054 on Saturday, and 24,285 on Sunday, according to the website 140Elect, which first reported the spike. 140Elect's graph illustrating the explosion, says Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, "looks like a hockey stick."

What happened?
That's the big question. The simplest explanation, Johnson says, is that Team Romney bought fake followers to create the illusion of skyrocketing popularity. It wouldn't be the first instance of such tactics being used in high-stakes politics: A year ago, Newt Gingrich, then seeking the Republican presidential nomination with little momentum, boasted 1.3 million Twitter followers — twice as many as Sarah Palin had. Internet search engine firm PeekYou looked into the matter, however, and concluded that 92 percent of Gingrich’s followers were fake. (As part of its Gingrich investigation, PeekYou bought some followers on eBay to prove it could be done.) A former Gingrich staffer admitted the campaign had bought phony followers.

Why assume that many of Romney's new followers are fake?
His other metrics, including mentions and retweets, stayed consistent or even trended downward while his list of followers ballooned. Many of the newcomers have names that look like random assortments of syllables, and have few, if any, of their own followers. While most Twitter users have followers who aren't real people, the fakes are usually creations of spambots looking to hook unsuspecting people on some scam. PeekYou hasestimated that only 20 percent to 30 percent of other politicians' followers are "real," compared to 35 percent to 60 percent for the average Twitter user.

Did Romney buy followers?
Despite what several liberal bloggers say, Romney's campaign states emphatically that he did not. "We have reached out to Twitter to find out additional information regarding the rapid growth," Zac Moffatt, the Romney campaign's digital director, tells Buzzfeed. Meanwhile, Zach Green at 140Elect is giving Romney the benefit of the doubt: "Personally, I think this is too obvious for the Romney campaign to have done. It's more likely somebody is trying to plant a story to embarrass him." One thing is certain: Romney could use a boost to catch up with President Obama on Twitter. Even after his recent surge, Romney has just 816,680 followers as of early Monday. Obama had nearly 17 million more.

Sources: 140Elect, Buzzfeed, Little Green Footballs, TIME

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Hunk Dean Geyer is Been Added to Glee

Despite Glee keeping its post grads thanks to a tricky plotline involving a few artist hopefuls heading to New York to make their dreams come true, Glee has quite a few spots open in its exclusive club. Due to this, Fox has been scouring for talent that has singing skills and looks young enough to be able to portray a high school or college student onscreen. Now, they’ve settled on two actors to fulfill a couple of these roles.

Today, Fox has announced the network has added South African actor Dean Geyer and New York-born actor Jacob Artist for two very different roles on the hit musical show. Geyer, who often rolls with a little too much scruff to be a believable high school student will portray Brody Weston, an older college student who gets a little smitten with Lea Michelle’s character, Rachel. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Artist will take on the role of Puck’s younger brother, Jake, who tries to audition for the Glee club, but has a little trouble overcoming his attitude. 

The casting news comes just a week after the Glee cast and crew visited Comic Con, where producers Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy spoke out about the characters learning to grow up and engage in more adult behavior during Season 4. I’m sure there will still be plenty of high school drama and shenanigans to get into, but I wouldn’t put it past Glee to give some new ideas a go as well. Adding Geyer, especially, should ensure a bit of an older tone to the cast, but we will have to wait and see if more “adult” behavior translates well into musical episodes.
cinemablend.com
Glee will return Thursday, Sept. 13 at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.

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Aging with HIV and NO body is Prepared

By Genevieve Edwards

Terrence Higgins Trust 

People with HIV are living into old age - something that was inconceivable a few years ago. But while longer lives are of course welcome, it brings new challenges.

It is 16 years since delegates at the World Aids Conference in Vancouver heard the seismic news that drugs to control HIV had been developed.

After more than a decade of lives lost to HIV, here at last was hope for the future.

Hailed as the medical miracle of our lifetime, these early HIV drugs got people off their death beds and back to lives changed, but not ended, by an incurable virus.

The drugs were hard task-masters - people had to take handfuls of pills and the side effects were debilitating.

But they kept thousands of people alive in countries that could afford to make the drugs available.

Side effects

As 25,000 people gather in Washington for the 19th World Aids Conference, they will be discussing an issue those Vancouver delegates hardly dared dream of: the challenge of ageing with HIV.

As one man put it: "We are the first generation to get to their 50s and nobody is prepared for that.

"We are just going into the dark and nobody knows what we are going to be doing in 10 years."

Continue reading the main story

“

Start Quote

I fear that if I need to be cared for, the carer would be as ill-informed and prejudiced about HIV as the general public”

HIV patient

Modern HIV drugs are much easier to take, but the effects of living long-term with HIV and the side-effects of treatments are becoming clearer.

Put simply, a 60-year-old with HIV is like a 70-year-old without it.

Alice, in her 50s, described the problem. "I take strong medication and I feel blank and dizzy sometimes. It is not easy to walk and do the shopping, carrying heavy bags."

Older people with HIV have twice as many age-related health conditions as their HIV negative peers.

High blood pressure, kidney and liver problems and arthritis are common, so a focus on diet and exercise is particularly important.

It is clear, too, that there is work to be done to bring health and social care services up to speed with the needs of older people with HIV.

Research carried out by Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) and Age UK repeatedly found stories of discrimination, ignorance and poor clinical treatment in general health services.

There was the 80-year-old who could not get home help because staff refused to enter her house, a woman who heard her HIV status being discussed in a GP's reception in front of other patients, and a man ridiculed and embarrassed by a dentist for having HIV.

Amplified worries

And what of residential services? The first openly gay people are heading towards care homes, many of them worried about homophobia and HIV prejudice.

As one man put it, "I fear that if I need to be cared for, the carer would be as ill-informed and prejudiced about HIV as the general public."

The drugs are life-saving, but the challenge of ageing well with HIV is considerable.

Experts say that services for older people must properly take HIV into account. In the US, they have begun to bring HIV clinicians, geriatricians and other physicians together to share expertise and improve practice.

So with the right support, it's possible to live a healthy life into old age with HIV.

But equally important is the financial support to do so, and for many, that's a huge concern.

Those diagnosed at the start of the epidemic may have been forced to give up work due to ill health, and many stopped making provision for their pension because they did not expect to live that long.

Worries about money and increasing ill health and feelings of loneliness or isolation are common for older people with HIV, again amplified versions of those their HIV negative peers report.

There will be the usual debates in Washington about how best to prevent HIV from spreading, about whether a cure is a reasonable ambition, and how to support the millions of people with HIV around the world to live long and healthy lives.

It depends on the availability of treatment, certainly.

But in reality, the drugs are not the end of the story. 

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Another Company Parts With Chick Fil-a {Jim Henson Co}

The Jim Henson Company, currently headed by Lisa Henson, daughter of the late Jim, has formally announced that they will be severing all financial relationships they have with Chick-Fil-A, which is presumably a relief to the hundreds of chickens under the employ of the Henson Co.

Ok, jokes aside, this is actually a firm and explicit stance against Chick-Fil-A’s anti-marriage equality stance, with Henson likely brought to the tipping point by the confident admission of Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy, that as far as funding organizations that have lobbied not just against marriage rights for gay and bisexual people but also against legislation that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity goes, his company is guilty as charged.

Said Cathy in an interview with the Baptist Press last Monday: “Well, guilty as charged… We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit.” It was discovered in early 2011 that Chick-Fil-A had given more than $8 million to at least two charities that had, among other things, campaigned against Proposition 8 in Californian, against anti-discrimination legislation in Pennsylvania, and supported other like-minded lobbying organizations such as Focus on the Family and Eagle Forum.

Said the Jim Henson Company on their Facebook last Friday: “The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors.  Lisa Henson, our CEO is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage and has directed us to donate the payment we received from Chick-Fil-A to GLAAD.” According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Company is in the midst of an arrangement for Henson-branded puppet kits to be given out with child meals at Chick-Fil-A.

The donation is a good touch, especially because I’m surprised to learn that this is actually the second time Henson has partnered with Chick-Fil-A since the news broke last year that the company was financially backing anti-gay rights organizations. There’s certainly a difference between a company that has seen pushback (on college campuses and the entire city of Boston, for example) since its political leanings were discovered and un-apologized-for but that may not have acted on them again in a mere year and a half, and a company whose president has come out and stated unequivocally that he intends to continue such practices. One of those differences appears to be whether or not the Muppets will give you the time of day. And while I feel like I’m betraying my inner child by pointing at imperfections in the Jim Henson Company, it really should have been the case for both situations.

(via The Hollywood Reporter)

Boston Kicks Out Chick fil-a Click    
By the way White Castle and Waffle House are as bad or worse than  Chick fil-a











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Gunman in Colorado Addicted to Video Games

Lack of romance: The local police chief hinted that

 James Holmes, seen here during his days as a camp

 counselor, may have broken up with someone shortly 

before the shooting

The gunman who allegedly killed 12 people during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado was due to be kicked out of his apartment and may have broken up with a girlfriend in the days before his shooting spree, it has emerged.

James Holmes, 24, had dropped out of the University of Colorado weeks before the attack and was nearing the end of his grace period for staying at the institution's accommodation. 

Aurora police chief Daniel Oates also hinted that Holmes had recently gone through a break up and that authorities were investigating the claim.

The new details may give some insight into what pushed Holmes over the edge.

A former classmate from the University of Colorado suggested another cause for the killings, describing Holmes as someone who had lost touch with reality after becoming 'obsessed' with video games.

The classmate told the Daily Mail: 'James was obsessed with computer games and was always playing role-playing games. 

'I can’t remember which one but it was something like World of Warcraft, one of those where you compete against people on the internet. 

'He did not have much of a life apart from that and doing his work. James seemed like he wanted to be in the game and be one of the characters.

'It seemed that being online was more important to him than real life. He must have lost his sense of reality, how else can you shoot dozens of people you don’t know?'

It is also believed that Holmes was due to be evicted from his apartment. The 24-year-old, who is now in police custody, pulled out of the university weeks before the deadly attack.

Neighbours told TMZ anyone living in the block had to be enrolled at the university otherwise you had 30 days to evacuate. 

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Transexuals in Bangkok in Danger of Getting/Transmitting HIV

(BANGKOK) From a cafe near the go-go bars of a Bangkok red light district where she campaigns for safe sex, Gigi gives an unvarnished view of how she joined Thailand's growing ranks of transgender people with HIV.

Sex work and injecting drugs left the 40-year-old vulnerable to the disease, which she was diagnosed with six years ago.

"Some men used condoms... some didn't. Sometimes the condom broke," she says without rancour of her time turning tricks in Pattaya -- one of the centres of Thailand's flourishing sex industry and home to 3,000 transgenders in tourist season.

Soft spoken and slight with a dusting of make-up over her wan face, Gigi cuts an image far from the caricature of the bawdy "Katoey", as Thailand's estimated 180,000 transgenders -- or "ladyboys" -- are known.

But her recollection of life after her diagnosis is still shocking.

"I had sex with lots of partners," she says. "I thought I was going to die soon... so I wanted to be happy."

Antiretroviral drugs have so far spared Gigi the worst of the sickness, allowing her to leave prostitution to work as an activist, dispensing condoms and safe sex advice to young transgenders in the Thai capital.

It is, health campaigners say, an increasingly important job.

Gigi's work often takes her to red light districts such as Patpong, an area notorious for its raunchy nightlife, where dozens of transgender prostitutes flit among the sprawl of sex shows, pick-up bars and massage parlours.

Infection rates among transgenders are thought to be on the up, as high-risk lifestyles, including prostitution and drug use, and a lack of targeted healthcare take their toll on one of the kingdom's most marginalised groups.

Truvada, a breakthrough HIV prevention pill approved by US regulators this month, is likely to prove too expensive for most Thais at risk of infection when it eventually hits the market.

Around 530,000 Thais overall are estimated to be living with HIV, according to a United Nations AIDS study from 2010.

Pushed to the margins

There are no nationwide HIV statistics specific to the "third sex", reflecting what activists say is their position on the fringes of society, but local surveys indicate the illness is rife.

Eleven per cent of transgenders surveyed in Chonburi -- the province containing Pattaya -- had HIV, soaring to 20 per cent among those aged 29 or over, local government figures released this year found.

It chimes with a stark regional view given by a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report published in May.

That study said HIV prevalence rates among transgenders across the Asia-Pacific could be as high as 49 per cent -- albeit from scattered and often small-scale research -- a frequency that "far exceeds the general population".

Sex work, drugs and stigma collude with a lack of healthcare to push many of the region's third sex population to the "social, economic and legal" margins, the study added.

Thailand-based activists say things are getting worse as young transgenders edge into sex work and fail to undergo regular testing -- a quarter of 300 transgenders questioned in Pattaya in 2009 had never taken an HIV test.

"It's not a passing trend... if things go on unaddressed the problem is going to become a lot more severe," says Alex Duke of PSI, a global health organisation which led that survey and also runs clinics tailored to transgenders.

Chaotic lifestyles compound the challenges of HIV diagnosis and treatment, he explains, with many among the community focused on making money to support themselves or undergo expensive hormone treatment and sex-change surgery.

"HIV is also just one of a whole range of risks transgender people encounter every day," he adds, referring in particular to the threat of violence against sex workers.

"Sex work is the only way to make money"

Infection rates are intertwined with the wider issue of discrimination, according to transgender researcher and activist Prempreeda Pramoj Na Ayutthaya, who says health services, education and job opportunities routinely fail to reach the community.

While Thailand's famously permissive attitude affords a cultural space to the third sex, the law still refuses to recognise their new sexual identity, rooting discrimination in the kingdom's bureaucracy.

"Nobody will hit a transgender person in the street or abuse them, but it is still hard to get a decent job," Prempreeda explains.

"Many transgender people find that sex work is the only way to make a small amount of money and maintain their identity."

Travails begin early, with transgenders often rejected by their families and schools, decimating their employment prospects later on.

The result, she says, is social immobility and high numbers of transgenders working in prostitution or cabarets, which sometimes blur the lines between entertainment and sex work.

Duke says he encounters a dearth of "long-term aspiration or sense of consequence" among many transgenders, and worryingly his group has found rising HIV rates among younger people, suggesting risky behaviour is intensifying.

One solution is to direct resources specifically at transgenders in an effort to diagnose and treat those with HIV, prevent new infections and build a more detailed picture of how the illness is hitting the community.

But responsibility also falls on the community to make sexual health a priority, something it is increasingly well organised to do.

As she prizes open a tin box and heaps her daily prescription of pills into a palm, Gigi says her community is ready to address the problem as long as services recognise their unique gender identity.

"There are a lot of young people in trouble like I was," she says. "But we can help them. Just treat us like people."

- AFP/wm 

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PennState Fined 60 Millions by NCAA for Sex Abuse

 

Penn State U. wass fined for its inaction relating to systemic, unchecked child abuse. The $60 million, a figure equal to the team’s annual revenue, “will be placed into an endowment for programs that work to prevent child sexual abuse and assist victims,” The New York Timesreports. Additionally, P.S.U. will retroactively forfeit a bunch of victories and will be banned from bowl play for four years. According to the N.C.A.A. president, the penalty—which Penn State’s administration just agreed to accept—is “greater than any other seen in N.C.A.A. history.”
The Times reports, the N.C.A.A. “stopped short of forcing the university to shut down the football team for a season or more, the so-called death penalty. Still, the penalties are serious enough that it is expected to take Penn State’s football program, one of the most successful in the country, years before it will be able to return to the sport’s top echelon.”

Former football coach Joe Paterno near Beaver Stadium on Sunday in State College, Pa., and took it to an undisclosed location.

Penn State will learned its fate at 8 this morning, and the NCAA will break new ground in the process.

 There was no hearing before the infractions committee, no opportunity for Penn State to present its case.

Unusual misdeeds — probably the most despicable in college sports history — call for unprecedented measures.

The sex abuse crimes of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, which according to a report by former FBI agent Louis Freeh were covered up for more than a decade by head coach Joe Paterno and university administrators, were shocking enough to make NCAA bypass regular procedures.

The 22-member Division I board of directors, university chancellors and presidents, gave Emmert the authority to act, and the punishment announced today is expected to deliver a resounding message.

An NCAA source told CBS on Sunday that the punitive measures are “unprecedented.”

The death penalty — shutting down the football program — was unlikely. It’s been applied only once in the past three decades, when Southern Methodist University’s program was shut down for two years in 1987 for repeated offenses.

But the behavior at Penn State is unlike anything the NCAA has addressed. Emmert said last week he had “never seen anything as egregious as this.”

Two weeks ago, the Freeh report concluded that Paterno and other officials had covered up Sandusky’s crimes to protect the football brand and the university’s image. In June, Sandusky was found guilty of 45 counts related to sexual abuse of boys over a 15-year period. According to the Freeh report, Sandusky’s behavior was known to Paterno and others for more than a decade.

Freeh was hired by Penn State’s board of trustees, and his eight-month inquiry produced a 267-page report that concluded, “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”

 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/22/3717478/as-abuse-victims-were-diminished.html#storylink=cpy

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War on Drugs Hampering the Cure at Hand for AIDS

AIDS and the war on drugs

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The tools to end AIDS already exist, say doctors attending the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.

"We don't have a cure yet, but the tools in the tool box to control this epidemic are essentially at our fingertips," Dr. Evan Wood, lead researcher at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said in an interview with CBC News Network on Monday.

"We need the political will to look at some of the political strategies that are hobbling this effort — and I include in that the war on drugs — and to start employing these strategies that really can bring about an end of AIDS."

Wood, fellow B.C.-based doctor Julio Montaner, British billionaire Richard Branson and the former presidents of Brazil and Colombia called on world leaders to show leadership in ending AIDS by ending the war on drugs.

"One of the messages coming out of the conference is how putting energy into drug law enforcement and engaging in this cat-and-mouse game with drug addicts really contributes to the spread of HIV and does not reduce availability or use of drugs."

Wood argued that people addicted to intravenous drugs are driven underground to evade police and won't get tested for HIV. If they object to treatment or it it’s interrupted, then often their viral load will go up and they will spread the infection, he said.

Each patient with AIDS costs the Canadian taxpayer about $500,000 in medical costs, Wood estimated.

Also at the conference on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it's possible to virtually eliminate HIV-infected births, and to that end she announced $80 million US in new funding.

In total, Clinton announced more than $150 million US in funding to expand access to new drug treatments and voluntary male circumcision.

"This is a fight we can win. We've already come so far, too far to stop now," Clinton said. "HIV may be with us into the future until we finally achieve a cure, a vaccine. But the disease that HIV causes need not be with us."

An estimated eight million people in lower-income countries receive antiretroviral drugs, which the UN aims to raise to 15 million by 2015.

A leading U.S. AIDS scientist agreed with Wood, telling the conference that even though there is no vaccine against AIDS, "there is no excuse, scientifically, to say we cannot … turn the tide."

"We want to get to the end of AIDS," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. But "a lot of people, a lot of countries, a lot of regions have a lot to do."

The approaches Fauci mentioned include using treatment as prevention to curb the spread of the virus and also male circumcision.

Ottawa's approach

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq's office defended the government's approach to fighting AIDS.

"Our government is committed to addressing HIV/AIDS in Canada and is providing record amounts of funding to support research, vaccine development, public awareness, prevention, treatment, and support," the Health Ministry said in a statement to The Canadian Press.

At the Summit of the Americas in April, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters: "I think what everyone believes and agrees with, and to be frank myself, is that the current approach is not working, but it is not clear what we should do."

More than 20,000 people, including scientists, people living with HIV and policy-makers, are attending the meeting, which ends on Friday