I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
If you’re among the nearly half a million people who’ve seen “Jackie” claim on You Tube that she purposely slept with as many men and women in Detroit as she could in order to spread HIV, now comes the news that the viral video was a hoax.
The video, which was posted on Mediatakeout.com (“The most visited urban website in the world”), included the woman’s chilling claim that she had infected more than 500 people since contracting HIV in 1998. But according to a Detroit News story published about an hour ago, the woman’s online performance — naming names and cursing her supposed victims — was purely an exercise in acting.
Not to mention an exercise in duping national media outlets like UPI and others.
Looking dead into the camera, the woman made the following statement:
I’m pretty upset, so I set out to destroy the world because they haven’t came up with a cure for this shit, and now I have to suffer.
According to the Detroit Police, the 23-year-old woman said she was simply attempting to increase awareness about HIV and AIDS. She told the newspaper that she has tested negative for HIV.
By the way, some of the coverage incorrectly suggested that it’s a felony to infect another person with HIV in Michigan. Not true. It is a felony not to disclose one’s HIV status before engaging in sex. Furthermore, state law doesn’t require that a person be infected to secure a prosecution. But ultimately, attempted murder and actual murder charges can be levied in such cases. That is, a real one, not a fake one.
By the way, the larger issues swirling around such HIV prosecutions — and how even the specter of terrorism charges have been raised in some — is a topic Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood has pursued with a vengeance last year.
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