Nicole Hughes
June 20, 2008 | 12:23 pm EST
Andy Kondrat:
This week students at a St. Louis high school took HIV tests after an infected person told health officials as many as 50 teenagers might have been exposed to the virus.
Officials refused to give details on who the person was or how the students at Normandy High School might have been exposed, but the district is consulting with national AIDS organizations as it tries to minimize the fallout and prevent the infection and misinformation from spreading. “There’s potential for stigma for all students regardless of whether they’re positive or negative,” Normandy School District spokesman Doug Hochstedler said Thursday. “The board wants to be sure all children are fully educated.” -Associated Press
How does HIV possibly spread to 50 students? Were they all getting tattoos in the cafeteria from an infected needle? Unless an infected student had unprotected sex with a student and that student had unprotected sex with another student, and so and so forth. Highschool students are suppose to be worrying about college applications and who to take to prom, not contracting HIV!
This is why I am afraid to have kids.
Educate yourself and your kids about AIDS and HIV prevention, takepart and visit avert.org. AVERT is the world’s most popular AIDS website providing AIDS education and information to people in almost every country in the world.
The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!
Nicole Hughes:
U.S. Media Ignores Link Between Midwest Floods and Global Warming
Top 10 Houseplants for Removing Indoor Air Pollution
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Dubai to Build Rotating Positive Energy Tower
Bioethicist Peter Singer Tackles World Food Shortage
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Jon Popham:
Americacorps Workers Assist Flood Ravaged Town
Australians “Out-Fat” Americans
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Giulia Rozzi:
Oprah Recommends “A New Earth”
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Gina Telaroli:
The New York Times reports, The swollen Mississippi River surged over nearly a dozen levees in the St. Louis area and flooding vast areas of farmland, as the region’s growing crisis pushed corn and soy prices toward record levels. The runaway river claimed one Missouri town late Wednesday night when it broke a levee in Winfield, just outside of St. Louis, leaving a 150-foot hole, deluging the small community and sending a surge of water downstream toward the next levee. Crews of firefighters spent the night evacuating residents, in some cases by boat, as workers fought to contain the river further south.
St. Louis is the next major city in the path of the surging river, which is expected to crest at 40 feet there on Saturday.
takepart and donate to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
Related
Mississippi Surges Over Nearly a Dozen Levees
U.S. Corn Soars to Record as Crop Flooded
Mississippi River threatens more Midwest levees
Americorps disaster response workers are laboring hard to save the flood ravaged town of Clarksville, Missouri. An Americorps team led by Katie Rooney and Kyle Henning has been coordinating volunteer and community liaison efforts out of the City Hall of the small Mississippi River community, population 490.
“I think they are awesome,” Clarksville Alderman Mike Russell, who doubles as the town’s emergency services manager, told MSNBC. “I can literally tell you that if it was not for them running the City Hall end, we would be much worse off.”
Americorps is a Federal National Service program created by President Clinton in 1993. Members specialize in a wide array of domestic issues ranging from environmental programs to literacy initiatives. The Clarksville team was part of a disaster response unit based out of St. Louis, Missouri who had just finished assisting tornado victims in the Southwest portion of the state when they were called to help out with the disastrous Mississippi flooding in Clarksville. Americorps members receive healthcare, a few hundred dollars a month, a modest educational grant and numerous ready to eat meals for their invaluable service to pressing issues confronting the country.
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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is now here to give you the very best of Katie, Nicole, Giulia, Gina and Kerry! If you worry about missing your favorite bloggers’ posts as they push their way down the page each and every week - Never Fear! Check out our most popular posts of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.
Katie:
Woody Guthrie: This Grammy Is Your Grammy / This Grammy Is My Grammy
Rambo Fights for Burma’s Freedom + 5 Steps You Can Take To Help Burma In 5 Minutes
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Nicole:
“Yes We Can” Obama Music Video a Unique Celebrity Endorsement
Top 10 US Grant, Scholarship and Fellowship Awarding Foundations
Ba-Da-Bling Commercials Pulled in New York
“Safe Sex or No Sex” Shirts Get Teens Suspended
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Gina:
10 Internet Videos Featuring Celebrities Advocating For A Cause
Close Up: An Introduction to Iranian Cinema and Cinematic Rainbows
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Kerry:
Sheryl Crow’s Apocalyptic Peak-Oil Song
Solar Powered Soldiers Wear Uniforms with Built-In Batteries
Tori Shoemaker and Cheyenne Bird, two St. Louis-area 9th graders were suspended from their Illinois junior high school for wearing condom-bedecked t-shirts proclaiming “Safe Sex Or No Sex” as a way of protesting their school’s abstinence-only education policy. Jezebel.com reports
Shoemaker, 15, told a local TV station, “We were supporting safe sex, it’s something we believe in and we shouldn’t get suspended. It’s freedom of speech.” The school superintendent, however, found the shirts “inappropriate” and “a distraction at school”. Shoemaker and Bird’s school, Lewis & Clark in Wood River, Illinois, teaches abstinence only to sixth and eighth graders, and Shoemaker thinks that safe-sex education is imperative for teens entering high school. “We’re more mature, we’re going up to the high school, and teenagers are going to do what they do,” Shoemaker explained to a reporter from KMOV TV.
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