Man in India Marries Dog As Atonement

NEW DELHI (AP) - A man in southern India married a female dog in a traditional Hindu ceremony as an attempt to atone for stoning two other dogs to death - an act he believes cursed him - a newspaper reported Tuesday.

P. Selvakumar married the sari-draped former stray named Selvi, chosen by family members and then bathed and clothed for the ceremony Sunday at a Hindu temple in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the Hindustan Times newspaper said.

Selvakumar, 33, told the paper he had been suffering since he stoned two dogs to death and hung their bodies from a tree 15 years ago.

"After that my legs and hands got paralyzed and I lost hearing in one ear," he said in the report.

The paper said an astrologer had told Selvakumar the wedding was the only way he could cure the maladies. It did not say whether his situation had improved.

Deeply superstitious people in rural India sometimes organize weddings to dogs and other animals, believing it can ward off certain curses.

The paper showed a picture of Selvakumar sitting next to the dog, which was wearing an orange sari and a flower garland.

The paper said the groom and his family then had a feast, while the dog got a bun.

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Team Dating Is All The Rage

Donell Roberson, like nearly 30 million other U.S. subscribers to services like Match.com or eHarmony.com, had spent hours viewing online profiles and exchanging e-mail messages before setting up dates.

By the time the 33-year-old Los Angeles resident actually met the women, though, the pressure to enjoy himself was too intense. And there were dates who looked nothing like their photos.

"I don't have enough time as it is," said Roberson, a medical sales account executive. "I'd get moody after spending all of that time e-mailing someone, and then not have fun on the date."

Then he heard of TeamDating.com, a new site that puts groups of friends together. "This sounded fun," he said.

Like Roberson, other singles frustrated with typical online dating services increasingly are turning to alternative "socializing" sites that send couples out on double or triple dates to relieve the tensions of going out in pairs. The main dating sites, responding to the shift, are also finding new strategies to keep customers coming back for more.

Frustrated singles have turned to online dating services in greater numbers every year since the trend took off in 2001, when the U.S. market exceeded $100 million.

During its peak growth in 2002 and 2003, the online dating market grew by more than 70 percent each year, reaching around $500 million, according to Jupiter Research, a market research firm. But growth has slowed to about 7 percent for these sites, while socializing sites like TeamDating.com or Meetup.com are growing more quickly.

The new low-key sites, most aimed at people older than 30, allow individuals to join group activities or socials based on hobbies or interests. Other more loosely organized non-commercial social-networking sites such as MySpace have also become extremely popular, especially among 15- to 34-year-olds.

Although the main dating sites haven't figured out an alternative to pairs dating, the sites are more aggressively courting singles with free trials and new sites designed to take some of the work out of the hunt. Match.com recently introduced Chemistry.com. Like eHarmony.com, it matches customers based on personality profiles.

After taking a 30-minute test designed to determine hormone levels and other factors, clients receive their personality type, with labels like "builder" or "explorer." If they're satisfied with the profile, Chemistry.com then sends the client five matches who can be accepted or rejected. If a customer rejects a match, Chemistry.com sends another. Once the customer receives an appealing match, he or she can send a "hello" message or an e-mail message to that person.

But the service might be missing the point for some customers. The concept sounded promising to Mike Wallace, a 36-year-old IT project manager in Washington. Though he subscribed to Match.com several months ago, he said he didn't feel very comfortable with writing his profile and putting himself online for anyone to see. He rarely checked the site and never e-mailed any women.

But when Match.com e-mailed him an offer to try Chemistry.com for free three months ago, he decided to try it. "The personality profile was what was so cool about it," Wallace said. "And as far as the profile they gave me after I took the test: dead on."

However, in the three months he's been using the service, Wallace hasn't gone on a single date. The women who e-mailed that they had received his profile as a match didn't interest him; one was in North Carolina. And the few matches he contacted haven't responded to his e-mail messages.

Will he keep trying? Probably for a while, he said. He said he realized meeting someone would take time, and admits he hasn't put much effort into it, checking for matches weekly at most.

Ray Doustdar, 33, had the same feeling when he and a friend thought up TeamDating a year and a half ago. With a busy job as a corporate consultant and several friends moving away or getting married, Doustdar's social circle was dwindling. He had tried Match.com and Yahoo personals, but felt as if he was spending too much time online.

So six months ago, he and a friend launched TeamDating, where teams of friends register to meet with other groups for dinner, drinks, a movie or a ballgame. Membership -- primarily of 25- to 35-year-olds -- didn't start to grow until about three months ago. Doustdar says it now has 7,500 members.

For now, the site's free to subscribers; he and his partner hope to keep it that way by generating revenue through advertising.

Roberson's team now is off the site because he has started seeing a woman he met on a team happy hour.

"It's just like going out any other night with a group of my guy friends," Roberson said. "But we don't have to sit in the bar trying to hit on people."

Indystar.Com

Teens are sucking and licking

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - During the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of teenagers and young adults engaging in oral sex and, less commonly, having anal intercourse, according to data from STD clinics in Baltimore, Maryland.

The finding is not all that surprising, Dr. Emily Erbelding from Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore told Reuters Health.

She explained that "a few national surveys conducted recently have suggested that oral sex may be a behavior that teenagers are increasingly participating in. For example, in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, most teenagers reported having oral sex and many had not had intercourse."

She presented the current study findings Tuesday in Jacksonville, Florida at the 2006 National STD Prevention Conference sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In examining the 1994 medical records of 2,598 12- to 25-year olds, and the 2004 medical records of 6,438 subjects of the same age, attending STD clinics in Baltimore, Erbelding and colleagues found that over the 10-year period the prevalence of self-reported oral sex in the previous 90 days doubled among males (from 16 percent to 32 percent) and more than doubled among females (from 14 percent to 38 percent).

There was also an increase in rectal sex among young women, "but it was a lot less common than oral sex," Erbelding said. Among young women, the prevalence of self-reported anal sex over the period rose from 3 percent to 5.5 percent.

There may be a general feeling out there that oral sex is safer than intercourse, Erbelding said, and it probably is for some diseases.

However, Erbelding emphasized that oral and anal sex may result in the transmission of STDs that will not be detected in urine tests. "A urine test is not going to pick up gonorrhea or Chlamydia that might have been acquired through rectal or oral sex, with gonorrhea being the more significant infection for oral sex."

Therefore, "clinicians need to routinely ask their adolescent and young adult patients about the full range of sexual behaviors and educate young people in general about what the relative risks are for different types of STDs for various sexual behaviors," Erbelding said.

(Reuters Health)

Love Bugs Threaten Florida Traffic

Motorists traveling in the interior parts of Florida this holiday weekend are being warned of swarming lovebugs that can impair visibility worse than smog or wildfire smoke, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

The lovebugs, which have been blanketing certain Florida roads, are spattering on vehicle windshields and making it difficult for drivers to see.

"Swarming love bugs spattered on a vehicle's windshield can cause the same impairment to visibility as smog or smoke from wildfires," said Sgt. Jorge Delahoz, public information officer for Florida Highway Patrol Troop K.

FHP officers report lines at windshield washers on Florida's Turnpike have been "exceptionally" long this week in Ft. Pierce, Ft. Drum and Canoe Creek.

Delahoz said the Turnpike is offering a free service to its customers, but warns that if the lines become too long and begin to affect traffic safety on the mainline roadway, they may be forced to shut down the washers intermittently through the heaviest travel periods.

FHP is encouraging motorists to make sure washer fluid reservoirs on their vehicles are topped off before traveling. Motorists should also carry a nylon scrubber or brush.