Los Angeles County health officials said Thursday that at least 16 additional unpublicized cases of HIV have been confirmed in adult film performers.

The newly released data bring the number of HIV cases in porn performers in the last five years to 22, including the case disclosed this week.

In 2004, a porn star named Darren James shut down the entire porn industry for a month after he infected three of his co-stars with HIV. Health advocates are using this new disclosure as an opportunity to push for mandatory condoms in all porn shoots. The porn industry responds, collectively, "No." Although:

Since 2004, 2,378 people who identified themselves as adult film industry performers have tested positive for chlamydia in Los Angeles County. An additional 1,357 tested positive for gonorrhea and 15 for syphilis, according to data released Thursday by the county's health department.

What is porn about if not safety and health?
[LAT]

Much rides on Leno' shoulders. NBC is saving millions by moving Leno's program into the 10 p.m. slot later this year, sparing it from ordering up expensive primetime dramas. It's hoping, too, that Leno will provide a reliable lead-in to the 11 p.m. news hour at NBC's troubled local stations, which have been hit hard by the drought in advertising by car dealerships.

Leno's unexplained ailment — an NBC flack dismissed one rumor of food poisoning — may be minor; his fans will surely wish him a quick recovery. As will executives. When Leno sneezes, the network catches a cold.

A recent union hearing left the actor unscathed, so the producers have pressed on to arbitration, the dates for which were announced Wednesday (June 8 and 9). This prompted the release of a lengthy statement from Piven, explaining that his poisoned sushi is seriously a really, really big major health issue, since he may have nearly had a heart attack, hypothetically, but also because the president said so:

Mr. Piven is looking forward to testifying in Arbitration along with his doctors so that the truth comes out about the very health serious risks caused by Mercury exposure, which the Obama administration has recently described as the world's gravest chemical problem.

It's true: The White House said just that (sans odd Capitalization) when calling for a global mercury-limit treaty last month, according to the Associated Press. Then it specifically mentioned fetuses and children as being at risk.

It's worth noting, though, that there's juuuust enough scientific chatter about fish-based mercury poisoning in adults to make Piven's story plausible, if you ignore his sketchy doctor and past behavior.

Piven's medical records might help settle the question, but the actor demanded the producers sign a confidentiality agreement before they could access them. Which makes sense, because if Piven's M.D.s made house calls, lord only knows what sort of raw meat they saw being devoured.

(Pic: Piven at an Obama fundraiser in Chicago, June 2007. Getty.)

The Entourage star was certainly in tears after the hearing, when he sat for an interview at the offices of the New York Times.

Mr. Piven... twice broke down in tears...

He cried as he described the stress of fearing for his health while pushing himself to continue with the play. "I've never missed a day's work or a rehearsal in my life," Mr. Piven said. "I think there's a reason you've never heard of any problem like this before."

Times writer Patrick Healy also noted that Piven "looked exhausted and often meandered" during his interview. Which, along with the crying, is totally fake-able, especially by, say, an actor. And which could also be symptoms of suddenly-curtailed access to a stimulant.

There's no word yet on the results of tests performed by a doctor other than Piven's sketchy personal M.D., results that had been expected at the hearing, so all we have to go on is the word of Piven and his doctor. The actor also said he was in bed "almost every night" — you can find the known exceptions here.

Certainly the producers were not convinced; their five reps all voted against Piven, while the five Actor's Equity reps voted with him. (Actor's Equity includes both actors and stagehands.) The producers have the option of escalating to more aggressive proceedings. It's not clear if they'll do that , but lead complainant Jeffrey Richards pulled an apparently snarky move on the Times:

Reached by telephone at home after the hearing, Mr. Richards said he was sick and on medication and would have no comment.

This snide joke is actually a nice opening for Piven's PR team. If it trumpets Richard's purported sickness as evidence that illl health regularly prevents hardworking people from doing their jobs, Richards will be in a bind: He either concedes the point or, to dispute it, admits he was lying.

As for Piven's honesty, it's almost irrelevant at this point: If Piven told the truth Thursday, and has been going through hell, he deserves more credit for his acting, specifically for his professional commitment to Speed the Plow. If he lied, duping fellow thespians and a Times reporter, he also deserves more credit for his acting, specifically for being such a convincing con man.

(UPDATE: The Post's sources say Piven was indeed crying during the hearing, as well.)

(Image via)

It's some sort of "plot point" in the film that Bradley Cooper's cheating husband is also lying about having quit smoking. His wife, Jennifer Connelly, (um, spoiler alert?) eventually leaves him. Not because of the cheating, because of the smoking. She writes a note for him that says "I want a divorce" and then tacks it onto a carton of bright yellow American Spirit Lights (mmm...) So though the message is totally anti-smoking, the AMA thinks it's shameful of the film to use an actual brand-name cigarette, and demands to know whether or not Warner Bros. received any product placement monies.

They claim that some 200,000 kids start smoking every year, because they're influenced by characters who smoke, in movies like Frozen River and I've Loved You So Long. Though really, what youths are going to see this thing? Wee scarf-clad Gideon and his bestie Tamara? Lonely Lois and her bucket of popcorn? The kind of teened agers who would go see this film probably should start smoking, at least then they'd seem cool and maybe make some friends.

Really, though, the AMA is right. There's no reason to put brand-name cigarettes in the movie. It adds some verité perhaps. But we are, again, talking about a movie whose thesis is that the unendingly complex communications between people can be boiled down to something like "men are mean, and women are shrill and lonely." So.

Don't go see this movie. It might make you start smoking! (Though, sadly, not in an after-sex kinda way.)

Jackson, 49, who had managed just fine at UCLA Medical Center for 32 years without feeding confidential files to the press, will now do hard time and pay a fine of up to $250,000 for doing exactly that back in 2006. She resigned her position last year before UCLA could fire her, but not before details of Fawcett's cancer diagnosis and treatment could show up in the Enquirer's hallowed pages and a subsequent investigation revealed more than 1,000 breaches of hospital confidentiality since 2003. Another employee, Huping Zhou, was indicted last month for illegally accessing 71 celebs' records, which he kept to himself rather than broker them to the tabloids. Selfish, selfish, selfish!

Meanwhile, Jackson will be sentenced in May, the medical documents are now secure, and the Enquirer's pillars of rectitude appear to have deflected a spray of legal bullets from the feds:

U.S. attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek said that no charges have been filed against the Enquirer or any other publications, but that the role of the media is part of the investigation into the privacy breaches.

"Certainly there is possible culpability at media outlets if we can determine that they were knowingly paying for the illegal access of celebrity files," Mrozek said.

"Knowingly paying for the illegal access of celebrity files"? Never! A stolen Farrah Fawcett biopsy is worth at least $7,500 in this market.

• Former UCLA hospital worker admits selling records [AP]

In each case, the real and fictional teens come from supportive, financially stable families, and seemed to be on track to have an array of future opportunities that a more typical teen mom might lack.

"It's been glorified all over the place," said Evelyn Rodriguez, 34, a New Yorker from a low-income background who gave birth to a son at 15 and now, after more than a decade of juggling jobs and classes, is on the verge of earning a college degree.

"People who don't have the money and great support, they say, 'Oh, wow, they're doing it — it's cool,'" said Rodriguez, referring to Spears and Palin. "But it's not cool. I've been through it. It's a job. I don't appreciate what's going on out there making it seem so beautiful, when it's not."

The panelists went on to agree that the Spears/Palin stories remain missed opportunities for a "serious national discussion of teen motherhood" — and that's not even counting the steep cultural cost of Diablo Cody winning an Oscar and maintaining a blog. We have seen the Third World, and it is us.

• Teen motherhood: Celebrity buzz belies its cost [AP]

There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can't compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks ... to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you - yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.

Color us confused, but does this mean you have to be clinically autistic to actually buy a Denis Leary book? In any case, your move, Ms. McCarthy.

• LEARY'S BRAIN VS. THE AUTISTICS [NYP]

"Anything more than 25 pounds in 12 weeks is really over-stepping the boundaries," said obesity expert Keith Ayoob of the show's promise to help the aspiring models lose as much as 80 pounds in three months.

..."MTV is looking for girls willing to shed the pounds (30-80 lbs), become a model and win $100,000!" reads the casting call announcement on MTV's Web site.

"We are looking for girls with a great attitude, a pretty face and the endurance to sweat off the pounds during a 3 month boot camp style show," the announcement reads.

In other, vaguely related news, Ish Entertainment has announced its plans to shoot a UK version of the upcoming Paris Hilton's New BFF, a reality competition that debuts on MTV next month and stars the stick-thin socialite. We eagerly look forward to a crossover episode where Hilton coaches the wannabe models on their best purging techniques, bestowing on only one lucky girl a murmured, vomit-stained "Loves it."

• To Get on MTV's Runway, Lose Weight [ABC News]

And then there are Whoppers, whose pleasures we've long conflated with sweet spheres of chocolate-covered humanity but which Zinczenko et. al. have scared us straight into avoiding for the rest of our natural lives:

Whoppers (5 oz. box) 676 calories 24 g fat (20.3 g saturated) 88 g sugars How many malt balls does it take to run up a day's worth of saturated fat? About 70, the number in a theatre-sized box of Whoppers. This candy's a long-standing classic, but so are fat-guy comedians. You want to join that jowly double bill?

The folks at Hershey's are beside themselves, meanwhile, rallying to the defensive with a new slate of pre-movie commercials featuring Fat-Guy Comedy All-Stars like Jeff Garlin, Horatio Sanz and Frank Caliendo — the latter of whose spot reportedly features the rotund impressionist as Zinczenko, taking ill-timed breaks from his mani-pedi to obsessively wolf down a few smooth, life-affirming Whoppers. "This is what being a man is all about," he moans between chews, jowly all the way. OK, we're convinced.

• 6 Worst Things to Eat at the Movies [Yahoo! Health]

But then we were referred over to the blog belonging to Oregonian film critic Shawn Levy, a genuine authority who's neck deep in a Newman biography and recently offered vague confirmation of his own:

I have known for a while that Newman was very ill, probably with cancer, and today the Internet is flooded with the news that it's lung cancer and that it's not good; there aren't very good sources on any of these stories, and nobody has any shocking exclusives, but given what I know I find every word of them credible. ... He's 83, and his next birthday is in January, and we can only hope he'll make it. I suspect I'll be writing an obituary before I hold a copy of my book in my hand.

Well, Shawn, when you put it like that... Though we guess it's not like it could get any sadder, anyway.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Paul Newman Has Cancer: AP Stands By Story Despite Newman's Hedging [AP]
• Going, Gently or Otherwise, into That Good Night [Mad About Movies]

The acclaimed actor is said to have been diagnosed at New York's Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he is currently receiving outpatient treatment and is under a leading New York oncologist's care. One of the few to know about Newman's illness is his Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid costar and good pal, Robert Redford.

Meanwhile, neither the hospital nor Newman's rep has confirmed the reports. We'll hope for the best, shoot a round of 9-ball at lunch in his honor, and pass more word along as it comes in.

• Paul Newman is reportedly very ill with cancer [LAT]

You could check the recently leaked "bibles" of the Church—we don't have time to go through all 600 pages of drug-addled scifi nonsense. But we do know that "people" are not "people," but rather immortal alien spirits called thetans who will indeed live on well after the dead of their shell bodies, so a Scientologist doesn't need to worry about nonsense like cancer. Which could be why they never bothered to remove it from their fancy ship! The Level 8 Operating Thetans on board will live forever anyway.

Of course, without the training courses for OTs available only on the Freewinds, it'll be much harder for celebrities like Cruise and Jenna Elfman to achieve Cleared Theta Clear level, the point at which they become gods capable of creating their own universes.

Scientology Yacht Sealed and Docked in Curacao [IReport]

Wolf declined comment, but we made a few more phone calls around the Swayze camp to see if a cease-and-desist order might be in the works to bring Swayze's likeness — and thus pretty much the entire site — off the Web. Another source close to the situation confirmed it's an option; the person would not say, however, if Swayze's reps had yet contacted the Loughman family, who launched the campaign this morning with a news conference in Indianapolis.

It's a delicate situation, to be sure, and we should know more tomorrow. You know where to find us if you hear anything in the meantime.

PREVIOUSLY: 'Cure Possible For Patrick Swayze' — According To A Fan In Indiana

An Indiana family is hoping for an Easter miracle - in the form of obtaining access to a revolutionary new treatment that holds the potential to cure both Hollywood legend, Patrick Swayze, and their beloved mother and wife from the ravages of pancreatic cancer - one of the most deadly forms of cancer.

On Monday, March 24, 2008 the Loughman family of Indianapolis, IN, will hold a news conference at which they will launch a public relations campaign asking the public to help them secure access of the revolutionary new treatment for pancreatic cancer, TNFerade, for patients including their mother/wife - Connie; Mr. Swayze; and others suffering from the disease. ... As part of their public campaign, the Loughman family has launched the website: CureConnieAndPatrick.com

• CureConnieAndPatrick.com