• In this video, Miss Universe contestants are shown participating in the "Condom Olympics" three days before the pageant on August 23. The event was sponsored by the AIDS prevention group Population Services International, and the women were asked to blow up condoms until they burst, fill them with water, and conduct condom demonstrations. A representative for the group says they were preparing the new Miss Universe to be an Ambassador for Youth AIDS and "Often times, target populations are illiterate or of low literacy and we need to find ways to reach them through engaging activities that don't rely on written materials." Conservative groups are upset that the activities didn't promote abstinence and PSI was founded by pornographer Phil Harvey. • Amber Alerts were created for stranger abductions in which a child is in danger, but LiveScience columnist Benjamin Radford argues that there are too many false alarms. Most abductions are committed by a non-custodial parent or family member and don't qualify for the notification. One study found that of all the Amber Alerts issued in 2004, police had violated protocol by issuing the alert in 70 percent of the cases. • Australian Tegan Leach, 19, is waiting to see if she'll have to stand trial for giving herself an abortion at home. Her boyfriend may be charged with supplying a drug to procure an abortion and both have been charged with procuring an abortion, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years. Police found empty Ukrainian blister packs they say may have contained pills that induce abortion. Abortion laws in Australia vary by state, but they are illegal in Queensland, where she lives, unless the mother's life is in jeopardy. • Iranian MPs have approved the the first female minister in the republic's 30-year history. Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, who will be the health minister, is a hard-line conservative who has proposed introducing gender-segregated health care in Iran in the past. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominated three women for cabinet positions but MPs rejected the other two women he picked to be social security minister and education minister. • A study of 1,000 Iranian high school students suggests family history may determine whether or not teens get severe acne. Of the teens whose parents or siblings had moderate to severe acne, 20 percent had the same problem, compared to only 10 percent of those teen with no family history. • Russia's supreme court has cancelled the retrial of four men accused of being involved in the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006. Prosecutors have been ordered to begin a new investigation into the involvement of the suspected gunman as well as the four men. In the decision the court sided with the journalist's family, who argued a retrial would take attention away from finding who planned the murder. • Primatologists at New York's Stony Brook University have found that pregnant female gorillas continue mating with males to prevent other females from mating with him. "It seems to us that mating is another tactic that females use to compete with each other – in this case to gain favour with another male," said one researcher, who believes this behavior may help explain how humans evolved into a generally monogamous species. • People have continued secretly visiting Neda Agha-Soltan's grave in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery even though Basij paramilitary vigilantes have threatened to harass or arrest mourners. Authorities may have decided to bury her and other opposition martyrs there because the cemetery is large and located an hour outside Tehran, but people have figured out where Neda's grave is and leave flower petals on the site. • Researchers studied 32 women with postpartum depression and found that 17 of the mothers, or 53%, felt suicidal. This group was also felt they were less prepared for motherhood and had greater difficulty responding to their infant's needs than those who were not suicidal. • Australian scientists tested cancerous breast cells and found several strains of HPVs known to have a high risk of initiating cervical cancer. "The finding that high risk HPV is present in a significant number of breast cancers indicates they may have a causal role in many breast cancers," said one researcher. "Confirming a cancer-causing role for HPV in some breast cancers establishes the possibility of preventing some breast cancers by vaccination against HPV. • Dirty Diaries, a collection of 12 short pornographic films shot by a feminist documentary maker Mia Engberg and funded by taxpayers is premiering in Sweden tonight. "Porn has always been made by men for men," said Engberg, "Above all, it's about showing sexuality through a female's perspective. It's not made to please a male audience and it's not made to make money," she added. • A 68-year-old nun was arrested for drunk driving on Long Island, New York on Tuesday after crashing into a tree. She was driving a car that belonged to the church and almost hit a group of children playing on their lawn. Police found a water bottle filled with alcohol in the car and say her blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit. • A 68-year-old Salt Lake City woman who held the Guinness World Record for her long fingernails lost them in February when they broke during a car crash. She says it's much easier to move her hands now without the weight of her fingernails, which measured as long as 2 feet, 11 inches. She's not going to try to grow them out again because it took her 30 years to get them to that length and she doesn't think she'll live that long. •

[Muenster, Germany; August 17. Images via Getty]

Gorilla mother named 'Gana' carries her young baby on her back in their enclosure at a zoo in the western German city of Muenster on August 17, 2009. The baby named Claudia was born on August 2, 2009 at the zoo. Gorillas are listed as an endangered species due to hunting and destruction of their natural habitats. AFP PHOTO DDP / HENNING KAISER ***GERMANY OUT*** (Photo credit should read HENNING KAISER/AFP/Getty Images)

Gorilla mother named 'Gana' holds her young baby in their enclosure at the zoo in the western German city of Muenster on August 17, 2009. The baby named Claudia was born on August 2, 2009 at the zoo. Gorillas are listed as an endangered species due to hunting and destruction of their natural habitats. AFP PHOTO DDP / HENNING KAISER ***GERMANY OUT*** (Photo credit should read HENNING KAISER/AFP/Getty Images)

A study at Zoo Atlanta found that female gorillas solicited more sex on days when males were boning other mates. They did so even when they were pregnant or lactating and couldn't possibly conceive, meaning they were probably "offering sex" just to keep the males away from other partners. The article headline calls this behavior "unproductive sex," but it sounds productive to us, if it helps females win the ongoing game of The Bachelor that is life in the gorilla pit. Also amusing is the caption to the accompanying photo [above]: "A female gorilla (left) sends a "come hither" look to the silverback male." Now we'll know what it looks like if a female gorilla ever hits on us.

Anyway, this news of gorilla competition comes just a little over a year after the first wild (and we do mean wild) sighting of gorillas having missionary sex — while the female's daughter looked on. Gorillas: Just Like Us!

Jealous Female Gorillas Solicit Unproductive Sex [New Scientist]

• Michelle Obama says that the family's new puppy, Bo, is "kind of crazy," and really likes to chew on people's feet. • For the first time since they were donated almost a year ago, Emory University is planning to unveil Alice Walker's literary archives. • The University of California, Davis has launched a new program, titled "One Health", which will help save the world's remaining 740 mountain gorillas by not only caring for the gorillas, but also the people and animals the inhabit the surrounding community. • Joe Shuster, the creator of Superman, made most of his money drawing racy, bondage themed images for an obscure series of magazines called Nights Of Horror. • Philip Markoff, aka the "Craigslist Killer," has been put on suicide watch after corrections officers found shoelace marks on his neck. • The Philippine Court of Appeals has overturned the 2006 rape conviction of a U.S. Marine. The decision is final, and leftist groups are outraged. • The BBC put Google's new Similar Images tool to the test, to find out whether it actually brought back, well, similar images. The verdict: sometimes, but the Renee Zellweger/John Prescott comparison is not very flattering. • A fertility doctor who claims to have implanted cloned human embryos into several woman is being denounced by experts in the field as an "unscrupulous publicity hound." • The Public Health Commission in Wales has changed the national policy on sex change operations, making them more easily available to transgender individuals. • Two frat brothers from a New Hampshire college are facing misdemeanor charges after they branded pledges with a WWII bayonet. • Feministing takes the New York Times to task for its recent review of "17 Again," Zac Efron's new, possibly sexist, movie. • This is the funniest story I've read today: a woman dressed as Princess Leia was pulled over for drunk driving because both she and her husband (dressed as Luke Skywalker, natch) were too embarrassed to walk home in costume. • Henrietta Hughes, the woman who asked Obama for help and a house during one of his town meetings, is now jobless and is may soon be homeless again. • This quirky British couple got married in full-on Shrek costumes. Fairytale wedding indeed. •  Click here to learn about some weird medical mythology, like vagina dentata and sperm gone bad. • In what was probably a very good move, Apple yanked the "Baby Shaker" iPhone app from their store. • In efforts to prevent childhood obesity, ice cream trucks in Britain have been banned from parking outside schools. •  Students in Alaska have been suspended for cruelly taunting and frightening a moose so much that it suffered a fatal injury. • Andrea Wachner hated high school, so instead of attending her 10 year reunion, she sent a stripper in her place. Watch the whole thing on video here. • A new study has found that people who drink a glass of 100% juice each day are more likely to be thin than those who do not. • A 25-year-old woman from San Antonio has plead guilty to arranging the sale of her 5-year-old daughter for sex. She had also planned to sell her 10-month-old daughter into sex slavery, but fortunately, neither child was actually sold. • Massachusetts officials are conducting a DNA search on the body of the "Craigslist Killer" victim to determine whether to add rape to the charges leveled against Philip Markoff. • The women behind the Pink Chadi Campaign have organized another protest, called "One Night Stand". •  Scientists from the University of South Dakota have invented a wall paint that kills germs and bacteria. • Sad news: the Australian government has authorized the killing of thousand baby kangaroos that have been forced by drought into residential areas. •

• Men's Health and Women's Health magazines have named Salt Lake City the healthiest city for women. • Operation Santa was (perhaps temporarily) shut down after a registered sex offender in Washington tried to partake in the "adopting" of Santa letters. • Mice revenge! A fire at a Canadian Humane Society that killed two kitties may have been caused by mice chewing on electrical wires. • Watch out "friends:" a CA Supreme Court ruled that a paralyzed woman can sue a buddy who helped pull the woman out of a car following an accident. • A Pennsylvania man was sentenced on Wednesday for calling a bomb threat on a high school to get his girlfriend out of class early. • The Pakistani government will commemorate the first anniversary of Benazir Bhutto's assassination with a limited 10-rupee coin. • Awesome: women who live in New York City live longer on average than New York men. • A woman in Boulder, Colorado who ran naked in the streets with a pumpkin on her head on Halloween escaped sex-offender status by accepting a plea deal on Thursday. • Heavy metal is making a quiet comeback in Egypt. • The Chessington Zoo in London had to issue an apology to guests after it fed its gorillas Brussels sprouts, which induce strong farts in the animals. • A new study reports that men who were sexually abused in childhood are ten times more likely to contemplate suicide. • Marie Douglas-David, a Swedish countess in the middle of divorce from United Technologies Chairman George David, claims she has $53,000 of weekly expenses (and this is after she has scaled back) that she wants her soon-to-be-ex-husband to cover. • Illinois officials discovered 69 rabbits in a one-bedroom apartment during a recent eviction. • In New York, a young store clerk returned a granny's discarded $1 million-winning lottery ticket after she asked him to throw it away. • A new study claims that the older a father is when his child is born, the more likely that child will have autism, lower IQs and/or poor social abilities. • A recent study says that dumber Scottish soldiers were more likely to survive WWII than their more intelligent counterparts. • The first British baby to be genetically screened and cleared from the breast cancer gene will be born next week. • A special online promotion from Sony BMG Music Entertainment allows users to sing a duet with Elvis. • For men who love literary ladies, poetry and garter belts there is now the Poetry Brothel in NYC. • Sam Davies, a British yachtswoman, left her solo round-the-world race to rescue a badly injured French competitor who was stuck at sea. • A man in China held his girlfriend out of a third-story window and then held her hostage at knifepoint until police overtook him. •

How come when polled about cross-nursing, some women found it "disgusting" or weird? Just so we're clear: Humans drinking human milk is "weird," but humans drinking animal milk is not; and tigers drinking dog milk is adorable. How did we come up with these conclusions?

Meanwhile, the latest reports out of China are that melamine use is "rampant" there. The European Union will now test all imported goods from China containing more than 15% milk powder, according to the Wall Street Journal. All products originating from China for infants and young children containing any percentage of milk will be banned.

It's weird that this natural thing, the first substance most of us receive as nourishment after we are born, has been coopted by industry and tainted. See what happens when you screw with Mother Nature?

EU Restricts Chinese Milk Imports [WSJ]
Now The Apes Fall Victim To China Toxic Milk Scandal As Officials Admit Cover-Up During Olympics [Daily Mail]
Melamine Use "Rampant" In China Feed Business [Reuters]
Now Two Gorillas Suspected Of Milk-Powder Poisoning [Reuters]
Earlier: I Scream You Scream
Breastfeeding A Friend's Baby: Bonding? Or A Blurring Of Boundaries?