Sex, drugs and cigarettes aren't in high demand among US teenagers these days, as fewer young people choose to engage in "risky behavior" compared to youth a decade or two ago, a government survey reveals.

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) polled 16,000 American students aged 12 and older at 125 schools across the country as a part of the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) that the agency has conducted every two years since 1991.

It appears that nowadays, teenagers are smoking less, not as many use illegal drugs or drink alcohol and fewer have sexual relations.


"Current cigarette smoking is at an all-time low, which is great news. However, it's troubling to see that students are engaging in new risk behaviors, such as using e-cigarettes," said CDC Director Tom Frieden.

Teens may soon have their first sexual encounters with specially-designed robotic dolls, an expert has claimed. He warns the trend could ruin human relationships.

Professor Noel Sharkey, professor of robotics at Sheffield University, told the Cheltenham Science Festival on Thursday that the rise of the love machines could have terrible consequences for humanity.

"It's not a problem having sex with a machine," Sharkey argued. "But what if it's your first time, your first relationship?

"What do you think of the opposite sex then? What do you think a man or a woman is?"

Sharkey warned that the robots "will get in the way of real life, stopping people forming relationships with normal people."

Sanare, Lara, Venezuela.

For 32 years I have called Venezuela home. Its mountains have given me beauty, its barrios have given me music, its struggles have given me purpose, and its people have given me love.

Its Bolivarian Revolution gave me hope. How could I not feel hope when most of my neighbors - ages 2 to 70, were studying, right in our little potato-growing town in the mountains of western Venezuela. How could I not be hopeful when 18 neighbor families received new homes to replace their unhealthy, crowded living spaces?

How could I not be grateful when my partner received life-saving emergency surgery? Or when my blind friend Chuy had his sight restored. Both for free.

But today, this is what I see from my porch: neighbors digging frantically in barren, already-harvested potato fields, hoping to find a few overlooked little spuds. Rastreando they call it. It is an act of desperation to find any food source to keep the kids from crying, because for months, the shelves of the stores have been bare.

How did this happen? That is the question that I bolt awake to every morning. As I watch Juan Carlos claw the fields for potatoes; as I embrace a tearful Chichila - up and waiting in line since 2 am, searching, unsuccessfully, to buy food for her large family; as I see the pounds shed before my eyes from 10-year-old Fabiola. I am glad that my mangos are ripening now. They take some of the empty glare from Fabi's eyes.

Girls as young as 12 wear shorts underneath their school skirts to prevent sexual harassment, which includes boys groping them in the playground and exposing their underwear, MPs have heard.

The "sexual harassment epidemic" has been "normalized" in UK schools and has reached "breaking point," the Women and Equalities Committee was told on Tuesday.

According to the Guardian, one girl told the committee: "I have seen a couple of cases in my school when boys attempt to offend and humiliate girls.

"They use sexual phrases. They are really humiliating and can create psychological issues for the girl and make her feel unsafe and uncomfortable."

Sophie Bennett from campaign group UK Feminista told MPs her organization "had heard from girls who tell us you don't leave school as a girl without being called a slut, that to wear shorts under your skirt to prevent boys revealing your underwear in the playground is just normal behavior."

Others told the committee some schools had told girls to "just wear trousers" to stop boys from groping them.

Durham University's Dr Fiona Vera-Grey, whose research has centered on sexual violence against women, told the Independent: "We are at breaking point with this; there is a massive problem with sexual attacks on school property as well as a wider attitudinal problem that must be addressed.

"This is absolutely not meant to provoke a moral panic, but we are seeing something new here, with boys attempting to prove their masculinity to their peers by treating girls in an overtly inappropriate way and making derogatory comments."

Responding to a 911 call, Henry County police arrived at the wrong house on Wednesday and shot an innocent homeowner in the neck. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) is investigating the incident due to the fact that the Henry County police shot a man who had committed no crime and who had no involvement with the initial 911 call.

According to the GBI, a 911 dispatcher received a call reporting gunshots and a woman screaming for help at 11:54 p.m. on Tuesday. Unable to obtain an exact address, the 911 operator dispatched three Henry County cops who arrived at the wrong house around 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

Hearing his dogs barking around 1:30 a.m., William Powell, 63, grabbed his gun and went outside to check their safety. According to his mother-in-law, Geraldine Huey, 85, Powell had gone outside to investigate a possible intruder.

Potential jurors in Santa Clara County are apparently refusing to serve in the courtroom of the judge who handed down a six-month sentence to a former Stanford University student convicted of sexual assault.

KPIX 5 reporter Len Ramirez confirmed Thursday that 20 jurors refused to serve in Judge Aaron Persky's courtroom on Wednesday, citing the judge as a hardship.

The prospective jurors were there for an unrelated misdemeanor case involving a woman accused of receiving stolen goods.

Persky has faced intense scrutiny for sentencing Brock Turner to six months for sexually assaulting a woman outside a fraternity house. An attorney for the public defender's office said Persky and his family have been receiving threatening phone calls. A recall effort has also been launched against the judge.

The case gained worldwide attention after the victim's emotional court statement addressing her attacker was posted online.

Outrage over the case was also stoked by statements issued in Turner's defense by his father and one of his childhood friends.

The sentencing hearing began with a surprise. Timothy Runnels, a 32-year-old former Independence, Missouri, police officer, sat at a large, rectangular defense table inside Courtroom 8B at the Charles Evans Whittaker Federal Courthouse in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, late last month. He was waiting to learn his fate after pleading guilty to a federal crime he committed almost two years ago, on September 14, 2014. Judge Dean Whipple had not yet watched the government's key piece of evidence — a dashboard video — because he wanted to do so with attorneys present to make arguments. Today the video, which had never been played in any public setting, would be played in open court. Even the victim, 18-year-old Bryce Masters, had seen it only once.

As the video opens we see a gray Pontiac enter the frame, and Bryce's dad, Matt, put his hand on his son's knee. His mom, Stacy, folded her arms, clutching a tissue. Tears began to form in both his parents' eyes, anticipating what everyone else in the room was about to see. Unfazed, Bryce leaned his 6-foot-1-inch frame forward, his eyes focused on the makeshift projector. He knew this piece of evidence absolved him of any wrongdoing.

In the video, Runnels pulls Bryce over and approaches the car. He tells Bryce to get out but doesn't give a reason. Bryce repeatedly asks if he is under arrest. Runnels says, "You're under arrest. Get your ass out of the car," and attempts to pull him out by force. He then tases Bryce for 23 seconds, handcuffs him, drags the boy's body behind the car, and deliberately drops him face first onto the asphalt road. Runnels may not have known it at the time, but Bryce was going into cardiac arrest. When the loud thud of the drop boomed throughout the courtroom, gasps echoed out. One woman looked down and covered her eyes with her hand. A man said, "Oh, my god." A police officer with the Kansas City Police Department quickly brought his fist to his mouth, turned to the man next to him, and whispered, "Jesus." Even those sitting behind the defendant — a few friends, his wife, his family — gasped, as if the recording revealed a truth about Runnels they had never considered.

This week, the United States Department of Education (DOE) released a collection of survey data from all 95,000 public schools in America. According to the DOE, the 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) is a survey of all public schools and school districts in the United States. The CRDC measures student access to courses, programs, instructional and other staff, and resources — as well as school climate factors, such as student discipline and bullying and harassment — that impact education equity and opportunity for students.

The trove of data highlights a frightening state of affairs in which public schools now find themselves.

Widespread reports continue to pour in from all over the nation of "glitches" with the food stamp system. It is eight days into the month and large numbers of people still have not received their benefits, and in other instances it is being reported that EBT cards are simply not working correctly. So what in the world is going on here? On downdetector.com there are scores of reports of problems with the EBT system from people all over the nation. Could this simply be another example of government incompetence, or is something else at work here?

I had heard some rumblings about this over the past few days, but I had not really taken them seriously until I read an article from highly respected author Ray Gano...

It interesting over the weekend I got several emails telling me about cell phones being down, internet being down, and get this, EBT cards not working and having no money associated to them.

This is a concern because when the US Government has payment failures, then there is possibly something happening that the press is not telling you about.

Now, we know that computers have problems and that states, counties and cities run on computers. But what is interesting is that since the beginning of 2016, The US government has had over 2,700 reports on downdetector.com showing that they have been late loading the money onto these EBT cards.

Folks, we are now going on 8 days where the Government has not paid the EBT payments so that people have food.

Since a Pentagon official reported two months ago that some dozen former Guantánamo detainees were responsible for the deaths of Americans overseas, the Obama administration has not been forthcoming on the locations or names of those involved.

The disclosure was first made in March by senior Pentagon official Paul Lewis, who oversees Guantánamo issues at the Defense Department, before Congressional lawmakers. Since then, the Obama administration and Lewis have failed to provide further details on the specifics of those attacks or the names of those allegedly involved.

The Washington Post, however, learned from current and former US officials that all of the detainees that were implicated in the attacks were released during the Bush administration. They also discovered that most of the incidents were directed at military personnel, with the dead including one American civilian, a female aid worker who died in Afghanistan in 2008.

Another official told the Post that nine of the detainees are "now dead or in foreign government custody." "Because many of these incidents were large-scale firefights in a war zone, we cannot always distinguish whether Americans were killed by the former detainees or by others in the same fight," the official told the Post.

The accusation comes at a politically sensitive time for the Obama administration, which is ostensibly trying to fulfill a 2008 campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison by transferring many of the detainees to third-party countries. Those that are still considered the greatest threat to the US would be transferred to a US location under Obama's plan. Obama has argued that keeping detainees at Guantánamo only supports terrorist efforts in recruiting soldiers. Just under 700 detainees have been released from Guantánamo since the prison opened in 2002, while 80 inmates remain.