There was much celebration earlier this week when HBO said you would soon be able to access the network's programming without having to pay for a TV subscription. One day later, CBS announced a $6 monthly service that will stream most of its live programming, as well as past and current shows, over the Internet.

Analysts have called this the beginning of the great unbundling -- the dawning of an age where we'll be able to pick programming a la carte and choose what we want to watch, rather than having to pay each month for hundreds of channels we don't.

It's "the first crack in the dike," Michael Davies, a co-founder and senior partner at Endeavour Partners, a firm that consults for broadband, media and content companies, told The Huffington Post after HBO's announcement Wednesday. "If HBO will go, then pretty much everybody else will go in due time."

But it will probably be a while yet before people cut the cord en masse so they can hand-pick from the growing number of Internet-delivered offerings. The cable bundle is still tightly bound, and it's far from coming apart completely. Live sports programming, for one thing, remains a huge draw. CBS's new service, which for now is only available in 14 cities, won't offer Thursday and Sunday NFL games.

And depending on what you subscribe to, an unbundled world could wind up being pretty pricey. HBO hasn't announced how much its new service will cost, but The Information, a technology news site, has reported it'll be around $15 a month. Some observers have pointed out that once you add up your Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO and CBS subscriptions, plus whatever additional networks come to offer standalone services (ESPN on its own could cost as much as $30 a month, according to one analysis), you could be paying more per month than it would cost to get a premium cable subscription.

Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw, citing data from Hudson Square Research, reports that it would cost over $100 a month to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, HBO, CBS, the Tour de France, WWE wrestling and three of the four major pro sports leagues. And that's on top of what you're already paying for Internet.

"If you want all the sports, you should just get cable TV," Daniel Ernst, an analyst at Hudson Square Research, told Bloomberg.

But at least you'd have the ability to choose another way to get programming -- and choice is not something consumers have had a lot of when it comes to TV subscriptions. Cable bills have jumped a whopping 97 percent over the last 14 years, and that doesn't include fees, taxes or promotions, according to SNL Kagan, a media researcher.

Blake Lively sure has something to smile about.

The 27-year-old actress is pregnant with her first child with husband Ryan Reynolds. She made the big announcement on her lifestyle website, Preserve, on Oct. 6.

On Friday, she shared another pregnancy photo on the site. In the shot, the blond beauty wears a Sam and Lavi floral blouse and printed skirt. She smiles, looking at the camera, with her two hands placed on her belly.
The photo appears on Lively's site within a post titled "Bringing Up Baby."

"With a new baby on the way there is so much to do!" the post reads. "But before experiencing the joy of 3am screams, seemingly impossible amounts of poop and having a favorite shirt covered in reflux… there are presents to open, onesies to dye, there is cake to serve, advice to be shared and all around celebration to be had."

The post includes pictures from a fall celebration the actress had with other pregnant women.

Jennifer Lopez's abs made an appearance Wednesday in West Hollywood, California. The singer was spotted pulling a tank top over her purple sports bra and black leggings outside the gym. Later that evening, she was photographed heading to dinner in a white midriff-baring ensemble.
In May, Lopez revealed she tried the 22-day vegan diet that Beyonce and Jay Z completed last year.

"I did the vegan 22-day plan and it was really good, and I kept on with it for a few more weeks and now I've incorporated a little bit of fish here and there," she told Ryan Seacrest. "But I've got to tell you, I enjoy it. I enjoy eating that way. I never did and I didn't know how good you can feel when you put healthy stuff in your body. I was so used to just eating the way I grew up."

It would pain me greatly if critics and viewers dismissed "Outlander" for irrelevant, trivial or condescending reasons.

Don't mistake my purpose: I'm not here to tell you "Outlander" is a perfect show. I like it, I loved a couple of episodes, but I outlined some of my issues with it in my original review.

That said, sometimes a show on the margin of the public's attention does something radically different -- even revolutionary -- and it'd be a real shame if the show's non-trendy status prevented people from recognizing the fantastic thing it has done.

"Outlander" has blown up a lot of the received ideas about sex on television -- how it's shot, who it's for, who it's made by and who it's about. The show's Sept. 20 episode, in which the two lead characters get married and have a lot of sex, was nothing short of revolutionary in its depiction of nudity and intimacy, and in its willingness to entertain the female point of view.

I'm not saying other shows haven't done compelling and interesting things with sex on occasion, or even on a regular basis. As Emily Nussbaum tweeted the other day, "we are living in a dirty honest TV wonderland." I agree, and this development is tremendously exciting.

It's a distinct relief that "Outlander" is not alone. We've now seen two full seasons of the twisted power dynamics that inform those strange, intense hotel-room encounters in "Masters of Sex." "Girls," obviously, has an honest treatment of sex as one of its main goals, and Jill Soloway, partly inspired by Lena Dunham, just unleashed "Transparent," a fantastically complex depiction of all kinds of desires. Thanks in part to streaming options and an expanding array of adventurous creators and networks, shows with sexually unapologetic women suddenly seem to be all over the place: "The Fall," "The Good Wife," "The Americans," "Orphan Black," "New Girl," "You're the Worst" and "Orange Is the New Black" are all part of a seemingly unstoppable wave of shows that treat the sexual activities of their leading ladies with refreshing matter-of-factness and genuine interest.
Even a few years ago, it was not like this. Shows like this cropped up here and there, but they were not thick on the ground.

To overgeneralize, you could say that the post-"Oz," post-"Sopranos" revolution in television was all about what a protagonist could do. The wave of ambitious dramas that crested in the mid- to late-'00s (and still lingers in sizable pockets of the TV landscape) explored the outer limits of the behavior of a complex individual ... as long as that individual was a dude.

The last two or three years have seen a welcome and overdue explosion in who a protagonist could be. "Looking," "Happy Valley," "Borgen," "The Honorable Woman," "The Bridge," "Enlightened," "Broad City," "Top of the Lake," "Sleepy Hollow" and the shows mentioned above -- these and other programs often dominate conversations about adventurous television, and they aren't all that concerned with changing definitions of masculinity, the status anxiety of white guys and all that anti-hero baggage. They often feature diverse ensembles; they're often about how communities and individuals regard each other and change each other. A new set of thematic concerns has joined the big TV party, and that's also exciting. ax

A 18-year-old girl in Batken, Kyrgyzstan went through a hair-raising medical procedure in order to have a nine-pound hairball removed from her stomach.

Ayperi Alekseeva was admitted into a hospital recently after she complained of stomach pains so severe that she was unable to eat anything, or even drink water.

X-rays revealed the hairy blockage and realized they needed to operate quickly.

“It was actually the only alternative, nothing else would solve the problem," surgeon Bahadir Bebezov said, according to News.com.au.
Bebezov said the hairball formed in Alekseeva's stomach because she had a nasty habit of picking up hair from the carpet and eating it and also chewing the tips of her hair.

"In fact her stomach was so badly swollen from hair and bits of wool from the carpet that it literally just oozed out as soon as the wall of the stomach was cut," Bebezov said according to the Telegraph.

After going through the ordeal of major surgery, Alekseeva has promised her hair-eating days are over.

She's not the only person who paid a price for having a bizarre taste in snack foods.

In October, 2012, doctors in Indore, India removed a hair ball weighing nearly four pounds from the stomach and small intestine of a 19-year-old girl.

Like Alekseeva, she too had a taste for hair, but combined it with chalk.

Michael Jones, 55, is in jail awaiting trial for carrying out indecent acts against minors and paying for child prostitution

This disturbing video shows a suspected British paedophile leading an 11-year-old Cambodian girl up to his rented room.

Michael Jones, 55, is currently in jail awaiting trial after being charged with carrying out indecent acts against minors and paying for child prostitution.

Undercover surveillance, given exclusively to MirrorOnline, shows Welshman Jones nonchalantly strolling through the back streets of the country's capital Phnom Penh followed by an 11-year-old girl.

They then climb up a ladder to a rented hotel room.

The girl later told police a man paid her just £3 for sex. She says she has been abused a total of four times.
In other footage, Jones, originally from South Wales, is followed by three half-dressed eight and nine-year-olds from an impoverished local family.

The children follow him to a restaurant where Jones is said to have bought them pizza and ice cream.

Their parents say Jones asked to take them away in exchange for paying their rent.

They refused but allowed him to spend time with the children.

The girls have since alleged he touched them inappropriately.    

Charity campaigners Action Pout Les Enfants (APLE) took the pictures and video after being tipped-of about Jones' alleged activity with underage girls.

He is later filmed being confronted by police who arrested him at a taxi rank in him in front of his 22-year-old Cambodian girlfriend.

Last week, without fanfare or media attention, California became the first state in the nation to adopt a law aiming to protect sex workers from being prosecuted as prostitutes merely because they're carrying condoms. The police practice of targeting for arrest those in possession of multiple condoms undermines critical efforts to help this vulnerable population avoid sexually transmitted diseases, advocates for sex workers argue.

The advocates applauded California's legislation as a step in the right direction, but they said the measure as written doesn’t go far enough.

"It's great that the California Legislature has contemplated this issue and taken it seriously," Sienna Baskin, managing director of the New York-based Sex Worker Project at the Urban Justice Center, told The Huffington Post. "That said, I do think a more comprehensive bill would be more effective."

The California legislation, which Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed into law on Sept. 19, requires a court to state explicitly that the presence of condoms is relevant to the individual case before prosecutors can use them as evidence of prostitution. The original bill, authored by California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would have banned the use of condoms entirely as evidence of prostitution, but it didn’t have the votes to pass.
"Right now, there’s no process, and condoms are admitted into court even when they aren’t actual evidence," Wendy Hill, Ammiano’s senior legislative assistant, said to HuffPost. "There are very few cases [against sex workers] in which an actual condom is listed as a valid piece of evidence."

A report released by Human Rights Watch in 2012 looked at prostitution cases in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington. It found that in all four cities, police officers frequently seized condoms from sex workers and used them as justification for arrest. "The practice makes sex workers and transgender women reluctant to carry condoms for fear of arrest, causes them to engage in sex without protection, and puts them at risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases," stated the 112-page report, published in advance of that year's International AIDS Conference.

Advocates for sex workers hope the additional legal requirement under California’s new law will act as a deterrent against specifically targeting those sex workers who carry condoms. "We believe that the process of having to seek a court’s permission on a repeated basis will ultimately prove too burdensome for many district attorneys to pursue," Whitney Engeran-Cordova, senior director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s public health division, said in a statement. "As a result, sex workers, prostitutes and others may now possess more than one condom without the current -- and rational -- fear of incriminating themselves."

Shilpa Shetty and her husband Raj Kundra met with an accident. Fortunately, they escape unhurt. While coming back from Jalandhar, Shilpa and Raj narrowly escape the mishap. The couple went to Jalandhat to address some promotional event.
The accident took place when the other car tried to overtake Shilpa’s car at the venue and at the last minute major clash was averted. They were all saved because of skills of Shilpa’s driver. The rash driver almost hit Shilpa's car. The scene turned worse when Shilpa and Raj’s bodyguard got down to thrash the rash driver.

The incident was reported to the police station.  Restless and frightened Shilpa said that due to the blessings of Maa Durga their lives were saved. a

Two Florida women hope that by selling a pin-up calendar featuring naked female farmers and strategically placed produce, they can raise enough money for a down payment on some new land.

That's the pitch behind an Indiegogo campaign from Ten-Speed Greens Urban Farm. The company's owners, Claire Mitchell and Danielle Krasniqi, are currently farm-less; the landlord of their previous farm wanted to build homes there instead. So the ladies and their friends decided to strip down -- tastefully -- and rally folks to donate to their cause.

There was a time when Ten Speed Greens Urban Farm, in Tallahassee, totally cranked. With only a six-person staff, it produced about 90 pounds of salad greens -- arugula, red mustard, kale, broccoli shoots and more -- every week for restaurants, local markets and their community-supported agriculture program. The farm produced more than a ton of tomatoes in its first year.

But they were just renting their land. Now, Krasniqi and Mitchell have decided they wanted a more permanent arrangement. "We wanted it to be an urban farm," Krasniqi told The Huffington Post, "but land is more expensive in the city." Being close enough to the city to deliver their produce by bike is important to them (hence their name, Ten-Speed Greens), so they started brainstorming ways to fund the dream.
According to their Indiegogo page, they "looked around one day and realized, 'All our friends are babes! Let's put them in a calendar with our vegetables, and raise money for our future urban farm.'"

Their "Farmer Tans Calendar" will feature 12 months of women wearing nothing but fruits, vegetables and their farmer tans.

The photos were snapped by a volunteer at the farm who is also a professional photographer, Jess Drawhorn.

"For most of the photos, not only were we completely naked but we were at the farm on a busy street without a lot of personal coverage," Krasniqi (Miss January and November) said. "It resulted in a lot of funny moments because people like to stop by randomly to see if we’re open. We’d be in the tomatoes and someone would say, 'Hello?' So there was a lot of laughter in every single shoot that we did."

Krasniqi said she's already thinking about next year's calendar. "I'm also a massage therapist, so I love bodies and the human figure. I think celebrating that and being able to celebrate it with the other job that I love so much, farming, is awesome." Next year, she says, she wants to do a "work-oriented calendar, so tools, tractors, that kind of aspect." And, of course, naked ladies.