by Dawn Kawamoto
July 3, 2008 10:57 AM PDT

A fresh look at Yahoo's search results Thursday by Hitwise Intelligence raises the question of whether Yahoo could survive just fine without its search engine. Such a question is rather important to Yahoo investors, given the Internet search pioneer has given a cold shoulder to Microsoft, which has previously expressed interest in buying Yahoo's search assets.

Yahoo, however, rebuffed the offer, noting in its investor presentation that selling its search assets, including its algorithmic search, would: Jeopardize the Yahoo user experience and make it difficult for Yahoo to maintain search and display volume. But Heather Hopkins, vice president of research for Hitwise, noted in her blog that Yahoo's valuable sites would not necessarily fair poorly without Yahoo's search engine.

Hopkins took Yahoo's top 20 U.S. Internet properties for the month of June and ranked them, based on user traffic. As expected, Yahoo Mail represented a 37.5 percent slice of the traffic pie, followed by the main Yahoo site with 30.6 percent and Yahoo search with 12.l percent. Then Hopkins compared whether these top 20 sites were getting their users by way of a Google search or a Yahoo search.

In all but six of the top 20 sites, more users were coming to Yahoo's top 20 sites by way of a Google search--even to its popular Yahoo Mail and Yahoo.com. Yahoo Answers showed the disparity the most, with 49 percent of its U.S. traffic coming from Google in June, while only 20 percent was from a Yahoo search.

By John Timmer
July 03, 2008 - 12:21PM CT

The Pew Charitable Trusts' Internet and American Life project has been commissioning surveys since the late '90s that provide perhaps the clearest picture of the role of the Internet in the US. Their latest survey is out, and the data once again paint a picture of Internet use that may seem foreign to the readership of a technology site.

When it comes to access, it appears that those who can get and afford broadband already have it, while a substantial population just isn't interested in faster speeds. Meanwhile, a full quarter of the US population doesn't seem interested in getting online at all. The survey (PDF; raw data available) was performed by random dialing in April and May of this year.

Over 2,200 adults responded to at least some of the questions, giving the numbers a margin of error in the two to three percent range. It started by asking whether the respondents were satisfied with the way the country is headed; the responses indicated a record amount of dissatisfaction, which may have influenced the poll by causing people to answer the remaining questions from a jaundiced perspective.

For the most part, many of the answers appeared to be little changed for the last several years. The data for many questions is noisy, in that absolute numbers bounced around within a narrow range that's close to the statistical margin of error; given that, it's not clear that there have been significant trends since 2005 or earlier.

by Tom Krazit
July 3, 2008 12:15 PM PDT

Apple has quietly reduced the price of the flash-memory version of the MacBook Air by $500. Appleinsider tipped us to the new price, which can be found at the online Apple Store.

Before today, you would have paid a $999 premium if you wanted a MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive, but Apple has reduced that premium to $599. It's also now cheaper to upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz, $200 instead of $300, on either the flash model or the one with the standard hard drive.

PC companies have been interested in flash memory hard drives for some time, but it's not clear how well they are selling. Using flash memory instead of moving parts to store data improves the reliability of the system; hard drive failures are one of the most common problems experienced by notebook users.

But it's still very expensive to choose a flash drive over a regular hard drive, and potential customers might not be able to justify spending that extra $999, or even $599. Reliability is important, but so is price, and recent news that flash-memory drives are actually a drain on battery life won't help sell them as an upgrade option.

by Larry Dignan
July 3rd, 2008 @ 5:04 am

Updated: Nvidia said its fiscal second quarter revenue will fall well short of targets because of weak demand, pricing pressure from AMD’s ATI and a faulty graphics processors on older notebook systems.

In an SEC filing, the company said it is offering a driver that keeps fans running to relieve stress on the faulty chips in the field. The company said after the bell Thursday that second quarter revenue is expected to by $875 million to $950 million (statement, Techmeme).

The company reported first quarter revenue of $1.15 billion and was projecting the second quarter to be a seasonally average one with a revenue decline of about 5 percent to $1.09 billion. Wall Street was expecting second quarter earnings of 34 cents a share.Nvidia cited “end-market weakness around the world, the delayed ramp of a next generation MCP, and price adjustments of our GPU products to respond to competitive products.

” It’s unclear which of those factors contributed the most to the shortfall. Nevertheless, Nvidia’s quarter unraveled dramatically. On May 8, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said: “We have no reason to believe that Q2 will be anything other than seasonal. Seasonal to us means a decline of 5% plus or minus.”

by Elsa Wenzel
July 3, 2008 11:02 AM PDT

A chemical used to make LCD televisions and semiconductors could cause more global warming than coal-fired power plants, a report warns. Nitrogen trifluoride is a "missing greenhouse gas," according to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on June 26.

It's used in chemical vapor deposition for making liquid crystal displays, semiconductors, and synthetic diamonds. Production of the chemical could double to 8,000 metric tons in 2009, atmospheric chemist Michael Prather, who co-wrote the report, told New Scientist. Nitrogen trifluoride's globe-warming effect reportedly could be 17,000 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide.

However, the picture is incomplete because nitrogen trifluoride isn't among the six gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol international climate change agreement. This year alone, its production would release the equivalent of the global-warming emissions from Austria, totaling some 67 million metric tons, New Scientist noted.

And that would amount to more global-warming pollution than all the industrialized world's emissions of perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and of sulfur hexafluoride, which is considered more potent. Kyoto's terms left out nitrogen trifluoride and some dozen other gases, in part because they weren't produced at a scale large enough to cause significant harm.

Publisher's Description:

CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) is a filter pack specifically built for playing anime. It has been assembled by some of the most knowledgeable people in the anime world, and one of the primary design goals is to play as much possible with as little as possible. It attempts to be as unintrusive on your system as possible.

Released: July 2, 2008
Publisher: CCCP-Project
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows 2000/Vista/XP
Uninstaller?: Yes
Skin Support?: No; Supports XP Themes

CleanCenter is a user-friendly utility designed to free up disk space by deleting useless junk files. Each time you use your PC, unwanted files are created that increasingly more space on your hard drives. CleanCenter can find over 48 types of junk files with ease! You will need only 3 steps to do all the works!

Unlike many other programs CleanCenter will let you choose which drive to clean, which file types to search for and whether to delete them or not. You can also select Fail-Safe option to move junk files to the Recycled Bin!

Additionally this wizard will help you clean cookies and the temp folder on your hard drives. It supports all Windows.

Author: Miniwish Software
Date: 2008-07-03
Size: 0.98 MB
License: Shareware $29.95
Requires: Win All
Limitations: 15-day trial, nag screen, scan only.

Publisher's Description:

OpenOffice.org is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite. It is an international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. It establishes the necessary facilities to make this open source technology available to the developer community.

Released: July 3, 2008
Publisher: OpenOffice.org
License: Open Source
OS Support: Windows 2000/2003/9x/XP
Uninstaller?: Yes

NextSensor is an extremely easy to use temperature and voltage monitoring tool with an advanced graphic interface. Provides probing of Vcore, VDIMM, VAGP, VBAT, 5VSB, 3VSB, +12, -12, +5V, -5V, +3.3V sensor lines. Shows the temperature of the Processor, the North Bridge and the Hard Disk on the Tray Bar using separate LED indicators. The program is capable to monitor negative temperatures and three FAN speeds. The current version supports Winbond Super I/O LPC chips only.

Author: Central Brain Identifier
Date: 2008-07-03
Size: 347 KB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All

Publisher's Description:

True Launch Bar is a superior replacement for the standard Quick Launch bar. All functions presented in Quick Launch are also in True Launch Bar. However, the True Launch Bar is fully compatible with Quick Launch because it uses the same folder for shortcuts. But there is one huge difference. True Launch Bar allows you to combine your shortcuts into groups. This feature looks like popup menus. This vastly improves the management of your shortcuts and save working space on your desktop. By using True Launch Bar, you speed up the launching of your applications like never before.

Latest Changes:

* View icons in subfolders in the Change Icon dialog box
* Improved TLB Components Manager
* Added possibility to write the plugins-separators
* Fixed: bug with the toolbar background color
* Fixed: Impossible to change the text color and font when WindowBlinds theme is active
* Fixed: Some options are not working in the TLB Settings dialog box
* Fixed: crash on tip show over the Weather Forecast plugin
* Fixed: Some typo in the texts

Released: July 2, 2008
Publisher: Tordex
License: Shareware; $19.90 to buy
Limitations: Yes; 30 day timeout
OS Support: Windows (All)
Uninstaller?: Yes
Skin Support?: Yes; Supports XP Themes

by Elinor Mills
July 1, 2008 5:37 PM PDT

We all worry about keeping our online passwords safe from prying eyes. But now our faith in ATM PIN codes is being shaken.

Three people face charges in federal court in New York for allegedly breaking into Citibank's ATM network inside 7-Eleven stores and stealing PIN codes, according to court filings reported on by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The alleged thieves made off with about $2 million between October 2007 until March of this year. Officials believe they remotely broke into the back-end computers that approve cash withdrawals and grabbed the PINs as they were being transmitted from the ATMs to the transaction processing computers, which increasingly use Windows, the report says.

by Elinor Mills
June 30, 2008 3:57 PM PDT

The makers of World of Warcraft are offering players of the online role-playing game an optional layer of security in the form of an electronic token device called Blizzard Authenticator designed to prevent unauthorized access to an account.

The lightweight device, which fits on a keyring, provides a unique, one-time six-digit numeric code that the account holder includes when logging in. It is used in addition to a password and account name. It was offered to attendees at the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide invitational in Paris over the weekend and will be available for $6.50 through Blizzard's online store soon, according to the company.

"It's important to us that World of Warcraft offers a safe and enjoyable game environment," Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, said in a news release distributed last week. "One aspect of that is helping players avoid account compromise, so we're pleased to make this additional layer of security available to them."

World of Warcraft users have had their share of security issues. Last year, hackers were luring players to Web sites and surreptitiously downloading keylogging software onto their Windows computers through vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The software allowed the hackers to hijack the victims' WoW accounts and sell off valuable in-game assets.

by Ryan Naraine
June 30th, 2008 @ 2:10 pm

Apple has shipped another Mac OS X monster update to fix a total of 25 documented vulnerabilities that could lead to arbitrary code execution attacks. With Security Update 2008-004, Apple fixes code execution flaws in Launch Services, SMB File Server, System Configuration, VPN and WebKit.

It also incorporates fixes for six highly critical — and previously disclosed — vulnerabilities in Ruby, the popular open-source scripting language. The update also sees a major Tomcat patch that addresses nine vulnerabilities, the most serious of which may lead to a cross-site scripting attack. Here’s the skinny from Apple’s security bulletin:

Alias Manager (CVE-2008-2308): A memory corruption issue exists in the handling of AFP volume mount information in an alias data structure. Resolving an alias containing maliciously crafted volume mount information may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue only affects Intel-based systems running Mac OS X 10.5.1 or earlier.

CoreTypes (CVE-2008-2309): This update adds .xht and .xhtm files to the system’s list of content types that will be flagged as potentially unsafe under certain circumstances, such as when they are downloaded from a web page. While these content types are not automatically launched, if manually opened they could lead to the execution of a malicious payload.

By Joel Hruska
June 25, 2008 - 06:35PM CT

Stopbadware.org has released its May, 2008 report on badware hosting and the geographical locations from which badware originates. The organization drew its data from Google's "Safe Browsing" initiative, which maintains a database of websites that attempt to phish personal information from users who visit.

As of May, Google had recorded some 213,575 individual websites, which StopBadware then mapped to IP addresses. This data was then cross-referenced to determine the IP block's country of origin. One potential flaw in StopBadware's analysis, however, is that it makes no attempt to differentiate between sites that have been infected by malware and those sites deliberately distributing it.

This makes a certain amount of sense—most antivirus software focuses on stopping attacks, not identifying their purpose—but it would've been useful to see what percentage of the websites identified as hosting badware were active distributors. Such information could be directly useful to anyone attempting to attack or block the source of such material.

StopBadware acknowledges further limitations in its own report—Google identifies sites based on common malware traits, and the list of sites itself is limited to sites Google has scanned, and is thus unlikely to be truly comprehensive. Even given these limitations, Stopbadware.org's study reveals that the data rather decisively points in one direction—East.

June 19, 2008
By Gregg Keizer

Just days after fixing a glitch in one of its enterprise patch-distribution tools, Microsoft Corp. said that another of its patching programs has been blocking last week's security updates. According to a Wednesday post to the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) blog, some Windows client systems that rely on the free WSUS have been unable to retrieve the June 10 patches.

"Computers that have Office 2003 or components of Office 2003 installed fail to run a detection against a WSUS server that has the latest Office updates," said Cecilia Cole, a WSUS program manager. "This prevents the computers from receiving any updates from the WSUS server." This is the second time in a week that Microsoft has told customers that its patch software is unable to deploy the newest updates.

Those updates, which plugged 10 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer (IE) and Bluetooth, were released June 10. Last week, the company's security team warned corporate users of System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2007, the successor to System Management Server (SMS) 2003, that clients running SMS 2003 wouldn't obtain the June 10 fixes. The problem, said Microsoft Tuesday when it issued a hotfix, was "additional metadata" associated with Microsoft Office 2003 SP1.

Although Cole also linked the WSUS problem to Office 2003 SP1, she didn't say whether it was the same issue that plagued ConfigMgr. "When computers with products related to Office 2003 communicate with a [WSUS] server, the Web service is unable to process the approvals, resulting in the detection failure," she said in a section of the alert tagged as "Root Cause."

by Garett Rogers
June 29th, 2008 @ 11:27 pm

It’s unknown what kind of money was involved in the deal, but Google has teamed up with the creator of Family Guy to create two minute episodes of a new cartoon called “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy”.

MacFarlane will take a percentage of the profit made by advertising that accompanies the 50 two minute episodes that he plans to distribute only on the internet. The cartoon is to be distributed on the AdSense network, though I’m not completely sure how successful this will end up being.

I am guessing that Google will eventually provide a library of content that people can host on their websites — “Cavalcade” is just the beginning. The viewers, if they click on embedded advertisements in the video, will help the website owner, and content creators, generate revenue.

I guess if the content is entertaining enough, people will watch — but for the same reason Google is having trouble monetizing YouTube, I fear this won’t be a huge success either. According to the New York Times, this deal between Google and MacFarlane is one of the largest ever for AdSense.

by Greg Sandoval
June 20, 2008 11:31 AM PDT

news analysis Netflix, don't take half steps with your digital-delivery service. Give your users what they want, and what they want is the latest hit movies. CEO Reed Hastings and his management team have hit a home run--or at least a solid run-scoring triple--by partnering with Roku, the company behind the Netflix Player.

The $100 device enables customers to stream movies from the Web to their TVs. Most reviewers have applauded the device for its low cost, easy setup, and viewing quality (a good Internet connection means no stalling or long download delays). But a month after the Netflix Player went on sale, I haven't read a single review that hasn't deducted points for the lack of films available with Netflix's streaming service. It's the biggest complaint from device owners I've spoken with.

Mr. Hastings, you've done a good job by setting up your "Watch Now" streaming service with 10,000 catalog titles, but you need to go further. Let customers purchase new releases on a per-video basis if they want. Some might resent being asked to pay in addition to their monthly subscriber fees, but if you explain that Hollywood charges more for new releases, your customers will understand. Give us choice.

"Why would anyone feel alienated by this?" said Michael Pachter, a financial analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. "You can't get a better deal elsewhere. Netflix would be essentially giving you Apple TV without charging you for the Apple box." This is an important comparison because Apple has already begun offering new releases for rent via iTunes.

June 23, 2008

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — George Carlin, the dean of counterculture comedians whose biting insights on life and language were immortalized in his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine, died of heart failure Sunday. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press. Carlin's jokes constantly pushed accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" -- all of which are more or taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail -- and typically unapologetic on his release. A Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying the language was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

by Greg Sandoval
June 18, 2008 1:01 PM PDT

For a long time, I've said that YouTube could become the Web's supreme ruler of short-form and long-form video should it ever offer feature films and TV shows. The Web's top video-sharing site now appears to be preparing to make such a move. YouTube has begun experimenting with delivering longer videos than the typical 10-minute clips allowed on the site, Fortune magazine reported Wednesday.

On YouTube now are several full-length documentaries and TV shows. (See one of those videos, Howard Buttelman, Daredevil Stuntman, embedded below.) The question is whether Google is making the move too late. Long-form content would mark the latest attempt to help Google cash in on YouTube's massive audience. Two years after acquiring YouTube for $1.65 billion Google still hasn't figured out a way to profit from the site, CEO Eric Schmidt has said several times recently.

Google hasn't yet responded to my inquiries on the Fortune report. While Schmidt has declined to detail why the company is struggling to squeeze profits from YouTube, some of the site's shortcomings as a money maker are obvious. YouTube has become a massive video-hosting service, where people post clips of baby's first steps, a sleeping puppy, or the family picnic. Most don't attract mass audiences. Nevertheless, Google still has to pay the bandwidth costs.

Each minute, more than 10 hours of video are posted to YouTube, which "is now the majority of outbound bandwidth" for Google, Schmidt said last week in an interview with The New Yorker. "We had to retool the network." Bandwidth costs are likely less of a worry than the advertising issues. If YouTube hasn't become a cash cow after three years as the Web's top supplier of short-form, homemade clips, perhaps its time to conclude advertisers just don't like user-generated content--or at least they don't like it enough.

by Zack Whittaker
June 18th, 2008 @ 4:09 pm

This seems to fit quite nicely with my “illegal music sharing/copying” post a couple of days ago. Back on the 22nd April 2008, Microsoft gave all those who downloaded music through MSN Music the two fingers, when it announced:

As of August 31st, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers.

MSN Music died a cruel, miserable death in 2006, but those who downloaded music through the service were still allowed to move the files to a new computer, and download a new licence to allow it to play - but timebombing the music until the MSN Music site finally gets cremated… probably 2010-2011, so you’ve got a good while yet. However, Microsoft have double backed on their previous announcement, and announced they’ll continue, past the original 31st August 2008 deadline. From an anonymous source, the email reads:

On April 22, Microsoft notified you that as of August 31st, 2008, we would be changing the level of support for music purchased from MSN Music, and while your existing purchased music would continue to play, you would no longer be able to authorize new PCs and devices to play that music.

By John Rogers
July 3, 2008

Larry Harmon, who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a show business staple that delighted children for more than a half-century, died Thursday of congestive heart failure.

He was 83. His publicist, Jerry Digney, told The Associated Press he died at his home. Although not the original Bozo, Harmon portrayed the popular clown in countless appearances and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations around the country.

The stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos. "You might say, in a way, I was cloning BTC (Bozo the Clown) before anybody else out there got around to cloning DNA," Harmon told the AP in a 1996 interview. "Bozo is a combination of the wonderful wisdom of the adult and the childlike ways in all of us," Harmon said.

Pinto Colvig, who also provided the voice for Walt Disney's Goofy, was the first Bozo the Clown, a character created by writer-producer Alan W. Livingston for a series of children's records in 1946. Livingston said he came up with the name Bozo after polling several people at Capitol Records.

By Tim Shipman and Philip Sherwell
June 30, 2008 @ 8:16 AM

Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president's future campaign role is a "sticking point" in peace talks with Mrs Clinton's aides.

The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence. A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support.

A second source said that the former president has kept his distance because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election. Mr Clinton last week issued a tepid statement, through a spokesman, in which he said he "is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States ".

Mr Obama was more effusive at his unity event with Mrs Clinton on Friday, speaking fondly of the absent former president, who attended Nelson Mandela's birthday celebrations in London instead. The candidate told the crowd: "I know how much we need both Bill and Hillary Clinton as a party. They have done so much great work. We need them badly."

June 30, 2008

A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) biologist pulled off a daring rescue off the Panhandle -- that of a bear. Officials say a 375-pound male black bear was seen roaming a residential neighborhood, evidently in search of food, near Alligator Point, some 40 miles south of Tallahassee.

The bear was hit with a tranquilizer dart, but he managed to bolt into the Gulf of Mexico before the drugs took effect. At that point, FWC biologist Adam Warwick jumped in to keep the bear, who was some 25 yards offshore, from drowning. He managed to get the bear to shore, and then a backhoe operator helped load the animal onto a truck.

The bear was relocated to Osceola National Forest near Lake City, Fla. On The Early Show Monday, Warwick told co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez he wasn't worried about the bear injuring him as much as a sting ray stinging him. "I just wanted to try to get in front of him and keep him from swimming out there and drowning," Warwick says. The bear, he continued, "started to swim, started to make the four-mile swim across the harbor.

And so, I looked at (a colleague) and I said, 'I've got to go out there and stop him.' So, I took off my shirt and shoes, jumped in the water and swam in the direction to head him off and keep him from going into deeper water. Once I did that, I got in front of him, tried to create some splashing and some commotion and tried to get him to go back into shore. But he wasn't having any of that.

By John Timmer
June 27, 2008 - 02:13PM CT

As we noted last month, a number of states have been considering laws that, under the guise of "academic freedom," single out evolution for special criticism. Most of them haven't made it out of the state legislatures, and one that did was promptly vetoed.

But the last of these bills under consideration, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), was enacted by the signature of Governor Bobby Jindal yesterday. The bill would allow local school boards to approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories, allowing poorly-informed board members to stick their communities with Dover-sized legal fees.

The text of the LSEA suggests that it's intended to foster critical thinking, calling on the state Board of Education to "assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories."

Unfortunately, it's remarkably selective in its suggestion of topics that need critical thinking, as it cites scientific subjects "including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." Oddly, the last item on the list is not the subject of any scientific theory; the remainder are notable for being topics that are the focus of frequent political controversies rather than scientific ones.

June 19, 2008

A Massachusetts high school is facing a pregnancy boom with 17 girls entering summer vacation expecting babies in what some have called a pregnancy pact. Officials at Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Mass., are investigating whether half of the teens made a pact to get pregnant during the school year, Time.com reported.

Officials said that beginning last fall a large group of girls started asking the school clinic for pregnancy tests, the site said. "Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," principal Joseph Sullivan told Time.com. The pregnancy rate at the 1,200-student school is four times higher than the previous year, and officials were shocked to learn that men in their 20s had fathered some of the babies, Time.com said.

"We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," Sullivan told Time.com. The Gloucester baby boom is forcing this city of 30,000 to grapple with the question of providing easier access to birth control, something this largely Catholic enclave is slow to embrace, the site said. Nurse practitioner Kim Daly administered 150 pregnancy tests to students by May, prompting her and the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, to lobby for the prescription of contraceptives regardless of parental consent.

That move drew the ire of Mayor Carolyn Kirk, whose public outcry against the pair led to their resignations last month. "It is very clear that the board [at Northeast Health System of Beverly, which manages the clinic] is not in favor and will not support contraception in the school," Orr told the Boston Globe. "There is an epidemic of teen pregnancy at the school."