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Wedding Rings

New study shows divorce rates double when people start watching porn

wedding rings computer
© Mischenko83/shutterstockA new study titled "Til Porn Do Us Part" suggests that adding pornography to a marriage doubles the likelihood of divorce.
There's an oft-quoted rule on the internet: "If it exists, there is porn of it." Even if that's an exaggeration, there's no question that men and women have been consuming more sexually explicit content since the world went online. Now, a new study looks at how this consumption might affect marriage in the United States. The study, a working paper presented this week at the 2016 American Sociological Association's annual meeting, suggests that men and women who begin to consume pornography partway through their marriages are more likely to get a divorce than their non - porn-consuming peers.

The study has not been peer reviewed, but it raises "no major methodological flags" and does a good job of considering alternative explanations for the findings, says pornography expert Ana Bridges, a psychologist at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, who was not involved in the work.

Previous studies on porn and marriage have suggested that consuming sexually explicit material isn't good for marital health. But many of these studies have been based on cross-sectional data that give only a snapshot of porn use and marital happiness. Now, researchers have been able to analyze how pornography impacts marriage over multiple years.

The new paper uses data from the 2006 - 2014 General Social Survey, a regular poll that asks thousands of Americans for their opinions on everything from national spending priorities to morality. Because the same people are polled several years in a row, researchers can track how attitudes, behaviors, and lifestyles change over time. To measure pornography use, the survey asked respondents—who also reported their relationship status—whether they had watched an X-rated movie in the past year. "There's no perfect pornography question, but this one comes closest to the kind of question you ask that carries over time," says study author and sociologist Samuel Perry of the University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman. Out of 5698 respondents, 1681 said they had watched an X-rated movie and 373 reported viewing one for the first time during the survey period.

Analyzing the data, Perry and his OU colleague Cyrus Schleifer found that people who started watching porn were more likely to split with their partners during the course of the survey. For men, the chance of divorce went from 5% to 10%. For women, that number jumped from 6% to 18%.

Comment:


Video

Barbaric: Islamic State video appears to show children, including 1 Briton, executing Kurdish captives

daesh isis isil flag
© Ali Hashi/reuters
Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has released a propaganda video that appears to show five children, one of whom is thought to be British, shooting Kurdish prisoners in the back of the head.

The video released on Friday night shows five boys, all aged around 12 to 13, wearing military clothing while standing in a row behind five men who are kneeling in orange jumpsuits.

The child in the middle of the line-up first addresses the camera in Arabic and reportedly says "no one can save the Kurds" including "America, France, Britain and Germany".

The boys then shout Allahu Akbar (God is Great) in unison before drawing pistols and aiming them at the back of the hostages' heads. A caption appearing under each of the boys faces appears to show their country of origin.

Handcuffs

Alabama high school student attacks teacher with stun gun

Alabama high school student
© AL.com / YouTube
An Alabama student pulled a stun gun on a teacher who tried to stop her fighting with another female student. The altercation was caught on camera, and the shocking footage made it to the web. The girl has been arrested and charged with felony assault.

A Mary G. Montgomery High School student, whose name is not being released due to her age, was reportedly having a conflict with another girl when a teacher came to break up their fight, according to the Alabama Media Group.

The student in question attacked him with a stun gun she had on her, Mobile County Sheriff's office said.

Fire

17 dead in huge warehouse fire in Moscow

Moscow warehouse fire
© breaker177 / Instagram
Sixteen people have been confirmed dead since a fire engulfed a warehouse in the northeast of Moscow, the Emergency Ministry said. One of the victims sent to hospital has died there, the Moscow mayor said.

"As the fire was being extinguished, the staff found a room cut off by the fire," the press service of the Emergencies Ministry for the Moscow region told TASS.

"Fire-fighters broke through the wall and found 16 bodies there," it said.

Moscow authorities and law enforcement officials will look into the cause of the blaze, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin promised in a post on Twitter.

"А fire occurred on Altyevskoye highway. Unfortunately, there are a lot of victims. We'll be investigating with the law enforcement bodies."

Megaphone

Palestinians express outrage after Israel clears troops of Gaza war crimes

palestinian home destroyed
© Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / ReutersA Palestinian woman looks on as she stands in front of the ruins of her house, that witnesses said was destroyed by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war last summer, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip
Palestinians are outraged at the decision by the Israeli military to clear its forces of wrongdoing over airstrikes carried out in Gaza in 2014. One activist told RT it's now time international tribunals stepped in to deal with Israel.

The Israeli military on Wednesday closed seven alleged war crimes cases in which its forces were accused of causing civilian deaths. The decision came after an internal investigation in which testimonies from Gaza residents and Israeli officers were collected and compared.

"After reviewing the factual findings and the material collated by the FFA Mechanism (General Staff Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessments), the MAG found that the targeting processes in question accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements," a press release from the IDF Military Advocate General (MAG) reads.

The closed cases include the bombings of a United Nations school and a "European Hospital" in the Gaza strip, as well as three separate airstrikes on residential areas that killed 34 Palestinians.

The biggest loss of life took place in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on August 1, 2014, when 15 members of the Palestinian Zoroub family were killed. The IDF claims the house where the Zoroub family lived was at the time used as a command center by Hamas - the governing authority of the Gaza Strip but considered a terrorist organization by Israel - and that a senior Hamas commander, Nazmi Zoroub, was hiding in the building.

Comment: See: Whitewash: Israeli military clears itself of any wrongdoing in multiple airstrikes that killed Palestinian families during 2014 Gaza slaughter


Ambulance

5yo girl becomes youngest fatality of Philippines government's war on drugs

philippines dea
© Romeo Ranoco / Reuters
A five-year-old girl has become the latest victim of the Philippines' controversial "war on drugs." The campaign, which has left more than 1,900 people dead in just seven weeks, has been slammed by the UN and human rights groups.

Danica May was killed by a gunshot to the head as she sat down to eat lunch with her family on Tuesday in the city of Dagupan, located north of Manila, the Inquirer reported.

It all began when the five-year-old's grandfather, Maximo Garcia, was told last week that he was on a list of alleged drug suspects that someone had passed to police.

His wife Gemma said she was shocked to hear the news, as he was a tricycle driver who had suffered a stroke and never been involved in drugs, the Inquirer newspaper reported.

When the village chief told Garcia to surrender to police, he followed orders rather than risk being shot. Garcia was questioned by authorities and eventually allowed to return to his home.

Comment: The question is, do the killers have anything at all to do with the government?


Megaphone

"Hey ISIS, you suck!" Muslim billboard ad campaign underway

Billboard hey ISIS
© awziyahya / Instagram
Billboards have popped up in Chicago and Phoenix with the blunt message, "Hey ISIS, you suck!" as part of the beginning of what might be a national advertising campaign to combat both Islamophobia and radical Islam. The billboard, which intimates a blackboard shows the chalk-written statement, "Hey ISIS, you suck," signed by "#ActualMuslims."

ISIS is an acronym used to refer to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). The sign references a line of verse in the Quran, which states if a person kills another, it's "as if he had slain mankind entirely." The billboards have appeared so far in a parking lot near Interstate-10 in Phoenix, Arizona and on a highway leading toward Chicago, Illinois' O'Hare International Airport.

The Chicago-based Sound Vision Foundation, an Islamic public relations organization and non-profit, is the innovator of the campaign. "Our neighbors don't realize that Muslims are absolutely opposed to ISIS," Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, Chicagotold CBS News. "ISIS actually kills more Muslims than anyone else."

Imam Mujahid said the attacks in Europe and the US caused his Chicago group to get more pro-active. Young people came up with the blunt slogan, because they wanted to keep the language simple. The billboard has started to catch attention with Muslim groups in 15 other cities, who are reportedly requesting a sign be installed in their area.

"ISIS and Islamophobia are the two sides of the same coin which is hurting Islam, as well as humanity," Imam Mujahid told CBS News. "They are increasing fear, hate, anger which is dividing a beautiful nation.""The KKK was defeated by good Christians, ISIS needs to be defeated by good Muslims," he added.

"Behind this billboard are the common people," Sound Vision Executive Director Mohammad Siddiqi told KPHO. "This is our declaration of independence against ISIS. It's as simple as that."

Comment: A sign of the times.


Ambulance

Over 800 bodies of illegal immigrants still unidentified Arizona morgue

el camino desert
The bodies of as many as 850 illegal alien men, women and children who died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully now lie frozen and unidentified in a morgue in Tucson, Ariz., according to an Arizona medical examiner.

CBP explained in a press release published this week:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released a testimonial video of [Dr. Gregory Hess Pima], a forensic expert in charge of identifying hundreds of anonymous migrant's human remains found in the Arizona desert near the United States/Mexico border.

"Our focus at the Medical Examiner's Office is identifying remains of people that we have found. We still have about 800 to 850 that are unidentified," says the doctor who analyzes bodies and remains in varying stages of decomposition.

Comment: If these immigrants are lucky enough to make it past the border they face even more hurdles to a decent life: slavery in private prisons and disease and over-crowding in Customs and Border detention centers.


Handcuffs

Belgrade police arrest man in connection to Block 45 shooting

Belgrade police
© RTS
The police in Belgrade have arrested a man in connection with a shooting incident that took place on Thursday evening in New Belgrade's Block 45.

The police continued on Friday morning to look for the man who the previous evening hid in an apartment building after the shooting incident.

They eventually had the suspect under arrest, after an operation that lasted 18 hours.

He was apprehended close to the building that was under police blockade the whole night and morning.

As the plainclothes inspectors were arresting him, he shouted, "Call the police!"

B92 has learned unofficially that the suspect was caught as he was trying to run away after jumping from a first floor window.

Earlier, B92 learned that police dogs had found the armed suspect, who was hiding at the time "above the sixth floor." The dogs were following the scent from his car.

The police are yet to announce the identity of the suspect, and whether or not he was the owner of a BMW he was driving as the New Belgrade drama started to unfold last night.

Evil Rays

Hysteria: 10 people injured after shoppers confuse popping balloons with gunshots at Orlando mall

orlando mall
© Erich Jacome / YouTube
Ten people were injured at a mall in Orlando, Florida, after shoppers mistook the sound of popping balloons for gunshots.

Unsuspecting shoppers were startled to hear the sound of six large balloons being popped at Florida Mall on Thursday, fearing a gunman had opened fire.

However, the burst balloons were actually part of an industry standard test required for the inspection of a new hot dog kiosk called Fat Ones. The food stand is owned by former *NSYNC singer Joey Fatone.

"The test consisted of six large balloons popping consecutively, followed by a fire alarm," Deputy Rose Silva, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Sheriff's Office, said in a statement. "This caused people to go into panic mode and run."