Patrick Schwarzenegger

Patrick Schwarzenegger is only 18 years old, but he’s already following in his famous father’s footsteps in the acting profession. One of his latest projects is a public service announcement to promote Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation and ET went behind the scenes of his photo shoot.
“The overall campaign is like a movement to spread kindness,” Patrick said during a break from shooting. He also said the campaign comes at the right time — with kids returning to school in a process that can be nerve wracking and scary — and described the PSA’s message as “promoting bravery and acceptance.”
Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation has teamed up with Office Depot’s Back-to-School Kindness Campaign — allowing students to purchase gift cards, post-it notes, bracelets and other items containing positive messages. Office Depot gave $1 million to the Born This Way Foundation and is also donating 25 percent of sales from campaign-related products.
Patrick said he was excited to get involved in the campaign with Lady Gaga, whom he admires for her anti-bullying efforts. “She was bullied and obviously some people were cruel and mean to her when she was growing up. But I think the world and society accepted who she was. And now her level of fame and success shows other kids that they can really be who they are.”
from Entertainment Tonight
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A U.S. health panel may soon make HIV testing as standard a practice as checking cholesterol levels, a move that would fundamentally change how the virus is detected and treated.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task force, a government-backed group of clinicians and scientists, is expected to make a new recommendation on HIV screening available for public comment before the end of the year.
Health officials close to the panel, speaking on condition of anonymity, see it making a positive recommendation for routine screening, updating their current position, issued in 2005, which leaves the decision up to doctors.
Under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, passed in 2010, insurers are required to cover preventive services that are recommended by the task force.
“This would be one of those major sea changes … moving away from what has been somewhat the segmentation of HIV – either by population, by geography,” said Michael Kharfen, chief of community outreach for the Washington, D.C., Department of Health. Kharfen, who worked on the frontlines of the HIV epidemic in New York in the 1980s, recalls when the prognosis for the disease was “practically certain you were going to die.
“It still will take culture change for medical providers, but this will be a tremendous leap,” he said.
The HIV/AIDs epidemic remains a significant health challenge in the United States, with an estimated 1.2 million people living with the disease. Of this group, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 20 percent are unaware of their infection.
Nearly 60,000 new cases of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS are reported nationally every year.
The CDC and other prominent groups have already called for routine HIV screening as a way to reach a much broader population and reduce the stigma some associate with showing up at an HIV clinic. But a recommendation from the task force would carry greater weight, as the U.S. health reform law of 2010 will require insurers to cover preventive services it endorses.
Global health officials have also stepped up the call for earlier treatment of people infected with HIV. New studies show that the latest HIV medications not only can extend the lives of patients for decades but are also one of the most potent ways of preventing their sexual partners from contracting the disease. Early treatment of HIV has been reported to cut transmission risk to uninfected partners by 96 percent.
“All healthcare providers have a responsibility to find cases of HIV because we don’t know where they are,” said Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, who directs the United Medical Center, an HIV clinic in Washington. While doctors in the past focused on higher risk groups such as men who have sex with men, she said, “HIV is in the general population now.”
In 2006 the CDC recommended testing everyone between the ages of 13-64 at least once. They have since been joined by professional groups such as the American College of Physicians and the HIV Medicine Association.
The fact that the CDC and the task force came to different conclusions, even in the face of similar evidence, is likely to have stemmed from differences in their respective missions.
“We are looking at public health. The task force may be looking more at clinical care and the integration of prevention services within the clinical setting,” said CDC Executive Director Kevin Fenton.
The task force is charged with weighing the potential harm of a test against its possible benefits. In 2005 the panel was not convinced by the available evidence that widespread screening would have the desired effect of helping prevent new infections by changing the behavior of the patient who tested positive.
“We did not find that evidence at that time compelling enough to say that we were confident that more people would benefit than the people who had HIV detected,” said Dr. Michael LeFevre, co-chair of the task force.
(more…)

NEW YORK – Where there’s a will, there’s a gay.
A dear old dad left behind a final, unthinkable request for his gay son: get married — to a woman.
The edict surfaced in the will of Manhattan businessman Frank Mandelbaum, who specified that none of his money should go to any offspring his son Robert might have if he “not be married to the child’s mother within six months of the child’s birth.”
Frank Mandelbaum, 73, died in 2007, and his will prompted Robert Mandelbaum, a Manhattan Criminal Court Judge, to argue in a court battle over the estate that his longtime partner Jonathan O’Donnell is the only “mother” their 16-month-old son, Cooper, knows.
The couple married shortly after Cooper’s birth via a surrogate, entitling the child to a share in a $180,000 trust set aside for Frank Mandelbaum’s three grandkids, Robert declared.
The Manhattan Surrogate’s Court has yet to approve a settlement to ignore Frank Mandelbaum’s demand as discriminatory and against New York law.
The settlement is the only way to solve the dispute over Cooper, Robert Mandelbaum claims in court papers, because the will “imposes a general restraint on marriage by compelling Robert Mandelbaum . . . to enter into a sham marriage” — which he says violates state law supporting marriage equality.
A law guardian appointed to look out for Cooper’s interests agreed that there are “significant public policy reasons” for ignoring the dead dad’s dictate.
“Requiring a gay man to marry a woman . . . to ensure his child’s bequest is tantamount to expecting him either to live in celibacy, or to engage in extramarital activity with another man, and is therefore contrary to public policy,” Anne Bederka wrote in court papers. “There is no doubt that what [Frank Mandelbaum] has sought to do is induce Robert to marry a woman.”
The child’s birth complicated an already sour dispute over the handling of Frank Mandelbaum’s estate, prompting Mandelbaum’s wife, Ann Freeman, to say in court papers that Robert “alleged that he had a son from a homosexual relationship which he believed should be a beneficiary . . . My husband’s will specifically prohibited such a child from becoming a beneficiary.” Frank Mandelbaum, the founder of ID verification company Intellicheck, was well aware that his son was gay, Robert claimed in court papers, noting that his partner was included in family dinners and vacations.
from The New York Post

Jorn Weisbrodt & Rufus Wainwright

Rufus Wainwright, son of singer-songwriters Loudon Wainwright III and the late Kate McGarrigle, is tying the knot this week with German-born theater producer Jorn Weisbrodt.
The pair, who were engaged in November 2010, will exchange their vows on Thursday afternoon at the Wainwright home in Montauk, Page Six can exclusively reveal.
And Carrie Fisher, best known for playing Princess Leia in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, will take part in the ceremony, which our source says has a guest list of 250, including Yoko Ono.
Following the nuptials, guests will head to a popular local restaurant, where they’ll be treated to a dinner of lobster rolls and Champagne. Then, the crowd will head to Montauk’s Shagwong Restaurant for a reception that’s expected to continue until 4 a.m.
“Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” singer Rufus previously told The Post of the Shagwong: “It’s filthy and smelly and, once again, sexy. It has some of that Montauk funk, which is why we’re all out here.”
Another source tells us the seats will be cleared out of the Shagwong’s dining room to make space for a dance floor, and that Wainwright himself is slated to perform, along with several other artists.
There will be no DJ, only live music, we’re told.
Fittingly, a sign hangs in the restaurant window that says, “Piano player wanted, must have knowledge of opening clams.”
Wainwright and Weisbrodt have been together for more than five years. The couple have a daughter, Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen, with Lorca Cohen, daughter of singer Leonard Cohen.
Wainwright proposed to him in similarly laid-back fashion over an Indian meal at a London restaurant. Their save-the-date came in video form and showed the singer writing the details in the sand with a stick.
from The New York Post
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