The U.S. teen pregnancy rate rose in 2006 for the first time in more than a decade, reversing a long slide, a U.S. think tank reported on Tuesday. The overall teen pregnancy rate was up 3 percent in 2006, with a 4 percent rise in the rate of births and a 1 percent rise in the rate of abortions, according to the report by the Guttmacher Institute.

The United States has higher rates of teen pregnancy, birth and abortion than in other Western industrialized countries.


There were 71 pregnancies per 1,000 U.S. girls aged 15-19. In 2006, 7 percent of all teenage girls got pregnant, according to the report.

Fewer black teenage girls got pregnant, closing a gap with Hispanic teens. But rates among both groups were still significantly higher than for white teens, the report said, and rates went up for all ethnic groups.

“We’re not quite sure yet whether this is just a blip or whether it’s the beginning of a longer upward trend,” Larry Finer, Guttmacher’s director for domestic research, said in a telephone interview.

“It’s interesting to note that this flattening out of the rate and the increase in the rate is happening at the same time that we’ve seen substantial increases in funding for abstinence-only programs,” Finer said.

“We do know that when we saw the big decline in the ’90s, that a lot of that decline was due to improved contraceptive use among teens.”

The abstinence-only programs, backed by many social conservatives who oppose the teaching of contraception methods to teenagers in U.S. schools, received about $1.3 billion in federal funds since the late 1990s.

The Obama administration’s 2010 budget eliminated spending for abstinence-only, shifting funds to pregnancy prevention education that include abstinence along with “medically accurate and age-appropriate” information.

New Mexico led the states with the highest teenage pregnancy rate with nine percent, followed by Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Mississippi.

New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Minnesota and North Dakota had the lowest rates of teen pregnancies.

An Australian tabloid is reporting that Kristen Stewart is pregnant with Robert Pattinson’s baby.

According to Newsweekly, Stewart asked her friend to buy her a pregnancy test last week. The magazine’s source said that Stewart appeared to be “nervous.”

This rumor comes after the latest that the two are dating - a rumor both have denied. Stewart is currently filming ‘The Runaways’ and Pattinson is still working on ‘Remember Me’ in New York City.

FanBolt thinks this news is all gossip that Newsweekly is probably using just to sell magazines. We say don’t believe it until a more creditable source confirms the story.

STORY SOURCE

Sarah Michelle Gellar and her husband Freddie Prinze Jr. are very excited to announce they are expecting their first child this fall, according to Knocked Up Celebs. The couple has been happily married since 2002 and finally decided it was time to grown up and start a family.

celebrity weekly coming out tomorrow will feature an article claiming that Rihanna is pregnant with Chris Brown’s child.

“Zack and Miri Make a Porno” goes roughly the direction you’d expect it to go. Zack and Miri make a porno, for example. Then the two late-20s roommates, played by the supernaturally easygoing Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, discover that having sex on camera in order to pay the rent will change the temperature of whatever room they’re in together. Permanently.

The film, the latest from writer-director Kevin Smith, pushes its R rating pretty hard, though as with most Smith characters this side of Silent Bob, there’s a lot more raunch in the talk — the sheer, voluminous, often hilarious verbosity — than in the action.

Smith will, unfortunately, be going to hell for the inclusion of one outlandishly grotesque sight gag, one the movie (any movie) would’ve been better off without.

Then again, the filmmaker’s entire career has mined the fun, the possibilities and the risks of going too far.

His is an arrested-adolescent sensibility, like that of many who have come along in his wake, notably Judd Apatow and his various guy-centric associates. But Smith can write and, despite his subject and the free-floating, genial skeeziness, “Zack and Miri” has a bright, chipper look to it, thanks to cinematographer Dave Klein, a frequent Smith colleague. Wintertime in Pittsburgh never looked so good.
When Smith wrote the script with Rogen in mind, Rogen wasn’t yet a movie star. Now, coming off “Knocked Up,” “Superbad” and ” Pineapple Express,” the actor is courting overexposure.

Yet I don’t get some folks’ weariness or resistance regarding Rogen. Like Michael Cera, he’s a master of making it look easy. It takes skill to come off like you’re making it up as you go.

Example: At one point in “Zack and Miri,” the longtime pals attend their 10th annual high school reunion, where Zack runs into an old classmate (rumble-voiced Justin Long).

Within a minute or so, Zack learns that his schoolmate is making a fine living in adult entertainments featuring all-male casts. “What, you mean like ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’?” Rogen asks.

The way he handles the two seconds prior to his next line is so deft, you think, ahhh, timing. You can teach a performer a lot, but the correct pause before a deadpan rejoinder is not one of them.

Banks is currently on screens as Laura Bush in “W.,” and while she makes full dramatic sense in that context, she’s on top of her game here.

Her slightly generic good looks are made interesting by her refusal to coast on them, and while I wouldn’t call the role of cheery, foul-mouthed Miri nuanced, Banks and Rogen click together in a way that Rogen and Katherine Heigl in “Knocked Up” did not.

Why do Zack and Miri make the porno? They need the money, and the recent economic belly-flop makes that seem like a plenty viable reason.

They shoot their hard-core version of “Star Wars” at the Starbucksian coffee shop where Zack works with his colleague Delaney, played by Craig Robinson.

Their makeshift porno cast is a mixture of game amateurs and low-budget professionals, one of whom is played by Traci Lords (whose authenticity doesn’t really add to the fun).

Jason Mewes, a Smith alum from way back, plays Lester, and his nude scene in “Zack and Miri” arrives very late in a slightly attenuated comedy.

Between this and ” Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” I wonder: What is it about seeing a guy’s junk in the final minute or so of a movie that seems ill-considered, somehow?

I’ll try to get back to you on that one.