The racy anti-smoking ads show reluctant male and female teens with their heads held to a man’s crotch and a cigarette in their mouths.

“Smoking is being a slave to tobacco,” the ads read.

Smoldering feminist and family organizations have lashed the campaign for using images of underage sex to sell a message, and some critics plan to file complaints with the French advertising watchdog agency.

But the ad agency behind the posters insist that only a shock campaign can reach the young teens whose cigarette consumption has zoomed 66% in a few years.

“The message here is that tobacco is a form of submission. In the popular imagination, oral sex is the perfect symbol of submission,” said a company spokesman.

The racy anti-tobacco ads will be shown in newspapers, bars and clubs.

And that’s the latest from Action News about the Racy French Anti-Smoking Ad.

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Teenager Lydia Ward was attacked after stepping on a “big, gray, slippery thing” while wading in waist-high water off the southern city of Invercargill, New Zealand.

The shark wrapped its jaws around her waist and bit her, but let go after she whacked it with the boogie board on its snout, she told the New Zealand Herald.

Fiona Ward, Lydia’s mother said, “She’s a really cool-headed little girl. There was no screaming or anything, or hysterics. She just came up to the car, she looked a bit shaky, and she said, ‘oh, I’ve just been attacked by a shark. And I was like, ‘What?’”

L:ydia added, “I showed Dad and he didn’t really believe me but then I showed him my wetsuit with all the blood coming out and he believed me.”

The teenaged girl managed to escape serious injury, but was treated in a local hospital for two of the deeper puncture wounds.

She has no plans to return to the ocean any time soon.

“It sort of put me off the beach, but I’m still fine with rivers and lakes,” Lydia said. “I’ll stick to them now.”

And that’s the latest at Action News about Girl Fights Off Shark Attack.

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The director of an institute that supplied monkeys to the Soviet space program in the ’80s says the facility is in talks with Russia’s Cosmonautics Academy over supplying animals for a simulated Mars mission.

A real mission could follow with a robot on board to look after the monkey, he says.

The robot would feed and clean up after the monkey during the 520-day round trip.

“Technicians have told us that it’s not difficult to build such a robot,” the institute’s director tells AFP. “The hard part is teaching the monkey to live with the robot.”

And that’s the latest from Action News on Russia To Send Monkey To Mars.

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www.Parade.com/nyc is offering one lucky winner a trip to New York City for a two night stay at the Carlton Hotel, dinner at Fresco by Scotto, and a special evening to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular including a meet and greet with the Rockettes!

The winner of this fabulous prize from Parade.com/nyc will also receive $1000 in spending money to make the trip to New York a dream come true.

The sweepstakes is open to all legal residents age 13 or older at the time of entry. The contest ends on November 13, 2009. The winner will be chosen from a random drawing on November 16, 2009.

10 runners up in this sweepstakes will win an autographed copy of Highest Duty, the book written by Capt. Chesley Sully Sullenberger, New York’s own hero pilot.

You can enter once per day to increase your chances of winning so hurry to enter with www-Parade.com/nyc.

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“Last week the number of visits to doctors for flu in mainland France was estimated at 52,300, which is to say 83 cases per 100,000 inhabitants,” said the National Institute for Health and Medical Research.

The threshold for declaring an epidemic is 80 cases per 100,000.

“We will have to see the same figures for a second week to confirm that the threshold has been passed and confirm the start of an epidemic in France,” Dr Thierry Blanchon told AFP.

Not all the cases have been confirmed as flu, and not all are the new A(H1N1) virus, a global pandemic which the World Health Organisation says has killed 2,837 people around the world since it emerged in April.

Inserm said it was hard to be sure to what extent the extra consultations — there were 45,500 more visits to the doctor last week than in the same period last year — were linked to swine flu panic rather than actual cases.

If confirmed, an official health warning could be issued next week.

Paris authorities for the first time shut down for seven days a primary school in the French capital after three suspected swine flu cases were reported in one class on Wednesday.

There have also been school and class closures in the Paris region and in the southern Aude and Lot regions and in Ariege, in the southwest.

In all, 19 people have died in France from the H1N1 virus but only three on the mainland. There have been seven confirmed deaths from swine flu in New Caledonia, six in Polynesia and three in the Indian Ocean island of Reunion.

And that’s the latest news on the possible swine flu epidemic in France.

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The Jet Blue All You Can Jet offer allows you to travel as much as you want, anywhere you want for a month for only $599.

JetBlue is offering their All You Can Fly pass between September 8 and October 8, 2009 to 57 destinations but you must purchase your All You Can Fly pass by August 21, 2009 (or while supplies last).

Under the new JetBlue program, you must book your flight three days prior to departure and the All You Can Fly pass offers available seats only.

To purchase your Jet Blue All You Can Jet pass, you will need a TrueBlue membership, but joining is free so you’ve got nothing to lose and plenty to gain.

Where will you go with your Jet Blue All You Can Jet?

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