If you haven’t heard about this new, hybrid, staph infection that is going around you need to be aware. Apparently this germ has become resistant to many antibiotics and leads to a very serious infection. So serious that it may kill more people than HIV/AIDS.

The microbe, a strain of a once innocuous staph bacterium that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics, is responsible for more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated.

This little germ is no joke. It can cause a variety of different problems and is spread by casual contact. That is what is scary to me because you know how common a handshake is at work and you don’t know if the hand you just shaked is clean or what it just touched. Howie Mandel, of Deal or No Deal fame, has it right…he doen’t shake hands. He just daps everyone up or gives them a pound. I think I’m going to give my boss a pound tomorrow at work.

MRSA, which is spread by casual contact, rapidly turns minor abscesses and other skin infections into serious health problems, including painful, disfiguring “necrotizing” abscesses that eat away tissue. The infections can often still be treated by lancing and draining sores and quickly administering other antibiotics, such as bactrim. But in some cases the microbe gets into the lungs, causing unusually serious pneumonia, or spreads into bone, vital organs and the bloodstream, triggering life-threatening complications. Those patients must be hospitalized and given intensive care, including intravenous antibiotics such as vancomycin.

This hasn’t really been talked about in the articles I’ve seen but it is really hitting the black community hard (2/3 of the cases). Something like this is just awareness and passing the word. It is not anything to get hysterical about but the word needs to be spread.

In the new study, Fridkin and his colleagues analyzed data collected in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Tennessee, identifying 5,287 cases of invasive MRSA infection and 988 deaths in 2005. The researchers calculated that MRSA was striking 31.8 out of every 100,000 Americans, which translates to 94,360 cases and 18,650 deaths nationwide. In comparison, complications from the AIDS virus killed about 12,500 Americans in 2005.

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They are really struggling at Playboy if their magazine is featuring the ex-mistress of Barry Bonds, who has no other talent except being his ex-mistress. Kim Bell is making her rounds with the different media outlets promoting her “spread” coming out and talking about Barry. But, she is not adding any new information. Everything she is saying on her little media blitz sounds exactly the same as the allegations she has made over the last few years. Bell already said she thinks Bonds used steriods, that Barry promised to buy her house, and that he was verbally abusive. I shouldn’t say everything is old news…she now says he has erectile dysfunction.

I don’t know if what she is saying is true or not but what I do know is true is that she has already written a book, claims he owes her $150k for a house he was paying the note on, and now is posing in Playboy. Ughh. No comment because I don’t want to waste anymore brainpower on this.

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Throughout the interview Bell repeats that she is not a gold digger. “I had a great job,” she says. “I had my own stuff. I come from humble beginnings. I didn’t wear designer clothes. I wasn’t a dress-up kind of girl.”

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The relationship ended acrimoniously with Kimberly claiming Bonds owed her $150,000 for a house she says he promised to purchase for her. In response, Bonds’ attorney says she should not be believed because she is extorting and blackmailing Bonds. Bell denies those allegations and says that in his battle with her, Bonds has even tried to deny knowing her even though she has proven otherwise.

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If you haven’t noticed there is a market for “ugly” people in ads and television. They are actors and models and need representation…so, welcome to the ugly modeling agency.

A unique modelling agency in London shows that you don’t need good looks in order to be a star.

The Ugly Modelling Agency specialises in weird and wonderful characters with faces only a mother could love.

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If I didn’t already have enough reasons to stop using peer-2-peer downloading programs…this may be another. A Minnesota women must pay over $9k per song that she was sharing to “family and friends”.

A woman in Minnesota must face the music after jury found her liable for sharing illegally downloaded songs.

The Recording Industry of America wins its first copyright protection trial.

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