Ukraine's Unstoppable Export Business "Prostitution"

On a hot Sunday night, a car pulls over in the port of Odessa, southern Ukraine. About 30 girls swarm around it, posing in the glare of its headlights. The driver's window rolls down, and a female pimp — known by the girls, almost lovingly, as a Mamachka — leans inside to negotiate a price. Within a minute, two girls have hopped into the car, and the rest go back to chatting and dragging on their cigarettes. Business is brisk, but the girls look bored. For them, this is basically downtime.

"The real action is in the Emirates, Dubai or Antalya," says Masha, a stick-thin 19-year-old who teeters a little on her heels. "Don't be confused," she says. "Nobody takes us by the hair and drags us onto the ships." She gestures over at the mouth of the port. "Those are like the gates to freedom for a lot of us," she says. "Yeah, like the Statue of Liberty," adds another girl, and the group of them erupts into laughter.

It took less than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union for Odessa to become a hub for the international sex trade. The conditions were just about perfect. The bustling port on the Black Sea was an easy gateway from the poorest parts of Ukraine, Romania and Moldova to western Europe and the Arab states. Organized crime was rampant, Odessa's dirt-poor police were known to be corruptible, and seven decades of living behind the Iron Curtain had created a generation of provincial girls as ignorant of the outside world as they were desperate for its opportunities.

But the prostitutes who pass through Odessa these days do not harbor the naive dreams of their predecessors from the '90s. And so the sex trade through Odessa has hardened in the past few years into something more jaded and much more difficult to stop. "Reporters always come here demanding to see the victims," says Olga Kostyuk, deputy head of the charity Faith, Hope, Love, which provides assistance to Odessa's sex workers. "They want to see the men, the pimps, the manipulators behind all of this. But things are not so simple now."

For one thing, there aren't many pimps left in this city of one million people, at least not the men who engaged in the most vicious forms of sex trafficking. As recently as 2006, their most common method of recruitment was to send scouts into the nearby towns to lure girls back to the port with false promises of work abroad — as a dancer in Paris or a waitress in Dubai — and then force them into prostitution. But most of these modern-day slaves traders are gone — these days, few of the prostitutes who pass through Odessa have been tricked into joining the trade. "Now the typical situation is that an experienced girl gets off the plane from Turkey covered in gold, diamonds and furs, and goes back to her home village," says Svetlana Chernolutskaya, a psychologist who has counseled prostitutes in Odessa for years. "She finds the girls who are in a tough spot, and tells them how much money they can make turning tricks in a foreign country."

The poverty and general hopelessness in many villages of eastern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania now run so deep — especially in the wake of the financial crisis — that the promise of a job as a prostitute abroad is enough to get the vast majority of trafficked women to sign up voluntarily. They follow the Mamachki to foreign resorts or big cities in western Europe, where the prevalence of sex workers from the ex-Soviet Union has earned them a nickname: Natashas. The girls work the streets and hotel lobbies until they get deported or homesick. After a few weeks off in Odessa or wherever they call home, they're shipped out again. The cycle ends when they earn enough to retire or, as more often happens, when they get too old for the job — which in this business can be as young as 26.

The forced prostitution of women through coercion or violence is still a global tragedy (although statistics vary, U.N. and U.S. observers agree that the victims number in the hundreds of thousands each year). But the dozen aid workers and prostitutes TIME spoke to in Odessa said that sex trafficking through the city has moved away from being an industry run on fear to one driven by voluntary, if desperate, participation. Many think this is because the practice of forcing women into prostitution was drawing too much attention from the police and media. But most of them believe it's just down to cynicism setting in. Even in the most isolated backwoods of Eastern Europe, few girls still have illusions about opportunities in the West — about the real Statue of Liberty — "so they take what they can get," says Natalia Savitskaya, a counselor for Faith, Hope, Love.

Whatever the causes of this change in Odessa's sex trade, it presents a new set of challenges for the people trying to tackle it. Officially, the number of trafficked women who go through the city each year has dropped by more than half since a peak in 2006. But that is not because their numbers are really going down, says Kostyuk of Faith, Hope, Love: "The girls see themselves as victims of fate, but not of deception, so they don't ask for help." Which makes them almost impossible to track.

Last year, Kostyuk's charity responded with a new approach. Instead of patrolling for the sex slaves who used to stumble off the ships in the port, battered and lost, Faith, Hope, Love now tries to provide guidance to drug addicts and runaways who are at risk of turning to prostitution. Still, says Kostyuk, "The trend in trafficking isn't going down, because the more intensely we work to stop them, the better they seem to adapt."

Efforts to stem Odessa's sex trade are further complicated by the semi-official relationship the female pimps enjoy with local law enforcement. Over a traditional Odessan meal of steamed crawfish, a lieutenant colonel in the internal affairs department tells TIME that police offer protection to the Mamachki for a monthly fee. "It's a big feeding trough for a lot of the officers, all very organized, like a local institution," he says. As if to prove the point, two police cars creep by the crowd of girls standing in the port, but don't stop. It seems that until their countries can offer these girls something more than poverty, corruption and disillusion, the export of Natashas will remain one of Odessa's signature trades.

Why Young Italians Are Leaving

It's not the type of advice you would usually expect from the head of an elite university. In an open letter to his son published last November, Pier Luigi Celli, director general of Rome's LUISS University, wrote, "This country, your country, is no longer a place where it's possible to stay with pride ... That's why, with my heart suffering more than ever, my advice is that you, having finished your studies, take the road abroad. Choose to go where they still value loyalty, respect and the recognition of merit and results."

The letter, published in Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, sparked a session of national hand-wringing. Celli, many agreed, had articulated a growing sense in his son's generation that the best hopes for success lie abroad. Commentators point to an accelerating flight of young Italians and worry that the country is losing its most valuable resource. And with reforms made all but impossible by Italy's deep-rooted interests and topsy-turvy politics — a schism in the ruling coalition seemed this summer to threaten Silvio Berlusconi's government once again — many are starting to wonder if the trend can be reversed. "We have a flow outward and almost no flow inward," says Sergio Nava, host of the radio show Young Talent and author of the book and blog The Flight of Talent, which covers the exodus.

The motives of those leaving haven't changed much since the last wave of economic migrants struck out to make their fortunes a century ago. But this time, instead of peasant farmers and manual laborers packing themselves onto steamships bound for New York City, Italy is losing its best and brightest to a decade of economic stagnation, a frozen labor market and an entrenched system of patronage and nepotism. For many of the country's most talented and educated, the land of opportunity is anywhere but home.

Take Luca Vigliero, a 31-year-old architect. After graduating from the University of Genoa in 2006 and failing to find satisfying work at home, he moved abroad, working first for a year at Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam and then accepting a job in Dubai in 2007. In Italy, his résumé had drawn no interest. At Dubai's X Architects, he was quickly promoted. He now supervises a team of seven people. "I'm working on projects for museums, villas, cultural centers, master plans," he says. "I have a career." Escape from Italy has also allowed Vigliero to fast-track his life plans. He and his wife had a son in September; had they remained in Italy, he says they would not have been able to afford children this soon. "All my friends in Italy are not married, they have really basic work, they live with their [parents]," he says. "Here, there's a future. Every year, something happens: new plans, new projects. In Italy, there's no wind. Everything is stopped."

Italy doesn't keep track of how many of its young professionals are seeking their fortunes abroad, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that the number is rising. The number of Italians ages 25 to 39 with college degrees registering with the national government as living abroad every year has risen steadily, from 2,540 in 1999 to about 4,000 in 2008. The research-institute Censis estimates that 11,700 college graduates found work abroad in 2006 — that's one out of every 25 Italians who graduated that year. According to a poll by Bachelor, a Milanese recruitment agency, 33.6% of new graduates feel they need to leave the country to take advantage of their education. A year later, 61.5% feel that they should have done so.

It's not hard to see why. Italy's economic woes have fallen hard on the shoulders of the country's youth. According to figures published in May by the National Institute of Statistics, 30% of Italians ages 30 to 34 still live with their parents, three times as many as in 1983. One in 5 young people ages 15 to 29 has basically dropped out: not studying, not training, not working. "We're condemning an entire generation into a black hole," says Celli.

Jobs for the (Old) Boys

Italians without college education often get by working in the black economy, doing all sorts of jobs, but university graduates — or more generally, those with higher aspirations — have a tougher time finding work that fits their qualifications. The unemployment rate among Italian college graduates ages 25 to 29 is 14%, more than double the rate in the rest of Europe and much higher than that of their less-educated peers.

Italians have a word for the problem: gerontocracy, or rule by the elderly. Too much of the economy is geared toward looking after older Italians. While the country spends relatively little on housing, unemployment and child care — expenditures the young depend upon to launch their careers — it has maintained some of the highest pensions in Europe, in part by ramping up borrowing. This imbalance extends into the private sector, where national guilds and an entrenched culture of seniority have put the better jobs out of reach for the country's young.

Italy has always suffered under a hierarchical system, with the young deferring to authority until it's their time to take the reins. "You are not considered experienced based on your CV, on your ability or according to your skills, but just based on your age," says Federico Soldani, 37, an epidemiologist who left Pisa in 2000 and now works in Washington, D.C., for the Food and Drug Administration. "When you are under 40, you are considered young."

The system worked — to a certain extent — as long as the economy was growing. Patience paid off as jobs opened to whoever was next in line. But with the extended slump, the labor market has seized up. "The queue is not moving forward anymore," says Soldani. Entry to some professions — like the lucrative position of public notary — is so limited that the job has become all but hereditary. In a country where success is built on relationships and seniority, only the friends and children of the elite have a chance to cut the line.

For the rest, it means that jobs are scarce, underpaid and stripped of responsibility. When Filippo Scognamiglio, 29, secretary of the Italian MBA Association NOVA, compared net salaries for the same position at the same multinational in the U.S. and Italy, he found that an Italian with an M.B.A. who chose to stay home would earn just 58% of what they would abroad. "It's easier to be successful in the United States if you have the talent and the desire to put in the effort than it is in my country," he says. As a consequence, Scognamiglio, who graduated from Columbia Business School this year, chose to pay off the Italian company that had sponsored his degree in order to accept a job in the U.S. "It's a 70,000-euro ($90,000) vote [for the prospects of a career abroad]," he says.

But it's not just better pay that attracts Italy's young emigrants: it's also the opportunity to escape dull jobs that involve mainly rote tasks and flattened career trajectories. "If you're young in Italy, you're a problem; in other countries, you're seen as a resource," says Simone Bartolini, 29, a creative copywriter in Sydney. He left Rome in 2007, following a change of management at his advertising firm, when his new boss told him, "We will put sticks in your spokes." He was good to his word. "Every idea was turned down," says Bartolini. "Everything was a no. As soon as I made a mistake, I was under the light." In comparison to Australia, where Bartolini has launched a successful career, Italy simply had no use for his drive. "They need executors," says Bartolini. "They don't need thinkers."

Old Problems, Old Solutions
Young Italians know better than to look to the state to solve their problems: the country's politics is if anything even more stagnant. A long succession of ruling coalitions have been too busy wrestling among themselves to take on entrenched interests. The current regime is a case in point. Prime Minister Berlusconi came to power in 2008 after the previous left-wing government tried to institute a raft of reforms that would have passed without comment in just about any other country: deregulating the country's taxicabs, allowing supermarkets to sell nonprescription drugs, permitting private companies into public transport. The reforms foundered on a series of strikes, setting the government on a path to failure a year and a half later.

Now Berlusconi's government is facing a crisis of its own, a power struggle between the Prime Minister and his former ally, Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of Italy's lower house. Fini, who commands a breakaway faction of parliamentarians, has been clashing with Berlusconi over a series of reforms. For now, the two men seem to have put aside their differences — Fini supported the government in a vote of no confidence last month — but tensions between the two are already rising over proposed changes to the criminal-justice system that would free Berlusconi from tax-fraud and corruption trials. In the meantime, Italians are stuck with a government that could collapse at any moment and leaders consumed with positioning themselves for the next election.

Italy's political culture is sclerotic. It has failed to produce young reform-minded leaders like Barack Obama, David Cameron or Nicolas Sarkozy. Berlusconi is 74 years old and serving his third term as Prime Minister, and the country's crop of political players hasn't been updated since the early 1990s, when a series of corruption and Mafia scandals upended the electoral landscape. No wonder young Italians want no part of it.

No Way Home
The Italian exodus wouldn't be so damaging if the departed could be persuaded to return with their foreign experience. And indeed, after years of ignoring the problem, the government has begun to try to do just that. "It's like judo: you transform a risk into a strength," says Guglielmo Vaccaro, a parliamentarian who has promoted a bill that would offer tax breaks to Italians who return after spending at least two years abroad. Vaccaro estimated that the state spends well over $130,000 to provide a young person with a college education, money that can be recouped if its citizens can be persuaded to invest their skills at home.

It's not like the country's young want to stay away: Italians are famously attached to their homeland. Most of the people interviewed for this story said they would love dearly to go home. "Your DNA, your self, everything you breathe, everything you eat is very tied to the city where you're born," says Giovanni Chirichella, 34, a native Milanese who works as a human-resources manager at GE Energy in Houston. "Many Italians across the world, they're basically homesick for the rest of their lives."

But while Italy's young migrants usually set out with the intention of returning with a few years of foreign experience on their résumés, they often find the re-entry more difficult than they imagined. Over the past year, Elena Ianni, 32, a marketing manager at the Royal Bank of Scotland in London, has sent her résumé to the top 100 companies and recruitment agencies in Italy. She spent her Easter break knocking on doors in Milan. Every night, when she gets home from work, she checks the online job listings. In London, where she receives unsolicited calls from headhunters, Ianni has turned down two job offers during the same period. But her country doesn't seem to want her. "I've been told exactly these words," she says. "'You're a young woman, and you won't be taken seriously here.'"

So the country is caught in a vicious circle. The economy will continue to fade as long as it stifles innovation by excluding its young. Meanwhile, every young person driven away is one less voice calling for reform. Silvia Sartori, 31, tried returning to Treviso after working in Asia for four years. After a fruitless year of job-hunting, she went back to China, where she now manages a $3 million European Commission grant for green construction. "It's something in Italy I would never get, unless I was 45 and somebody's daughter or cousin or mistress," she says. "I gave Italy a second chance," she says. "They burned it." Italy may not have many more chances to preserve its most precious resource.

BP Oil Spill Claim Technician Challenges

A technician on Thursday challenged BP's claim about how long it would have taken to install additional numbers of a key device the oil giant had been warned was essential to prevent a severe gas flow problem in its Gulf well that later blew out.

Centralizers make sure the casing is running down the center of the well bore. If the casing is cemented off-center, there is a risk of an imperfect seal that could allow oil and gas to escape.

BP installed only six, against a Halliburton recommendation to install 21

One issue in a federal investigative panel's probe of the rig explosion and massive oil spill that followed is whether BP cut corners to reduce costs. The well project was nearly $60 million over budget at the time the centralizer warning was raised.

Four days before the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP well team leader asserted it would take 10 hours to install the additional 15 centralizers. But technician Daniel Oldfather told the joint U.S. Coast Guard-Bureau of Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement investigative panel it would have taken him only four to eight hours to do the job.

Oldfather, who works for oilfield services firm Weatherford, flew to the rig on April 16 with the 15 centralizers on board, but a pallet of screws and epoxy was missing. He testified that a BP engineer told him when he arrived that the missing materials would be sent out on a boat and arrive later the same day.

Oldfather said the materials never arrived and that he was told the next day the job had been canceled. He said he was never told why and he never raised any objections over any safety concerns because it was BP's decision to make.

BP drilling engineering team leader Gregory Walz testified later Thursday that he ultimately agreed with the decision to run only six centralizers because he believes the risk of a gas flow problem could be resolved by spacing the existing centralizers out and through the use of foam cement.

His statement came even though he had earlier sent an e-mail to well team leader John Guide telling him he could easily arrange for the extra 15 centralizers to be delivered to the rig. And, Walz later asked another colleague to do just that.

He testified that even though the extra centralizers were on the rig, they were not the type he envisioned and therefore he was worried about using them. Walz said engineers made a judgment call about "which risk to take on."

There were assertions by lawyers at the hearing that BP was under pressure to finish the plugging of its Macondo well so that the Deepwater Horizon could be used for another well job in the Gulf. But Walz testified that the Macondo well would get done when it was ready and no one was rushing.

Board members referred to performance evaluations of BP employees that seemed to reward them for being able to reduce costs on projects.

However, Guide testified Thursday that money was not a factor when it came to safety.

"It's a business, yes, so there is a consideration of monetary things," Guide told the panel. "But even though you could phrase it that way, safety was always the No. 1 priority. Safety was never compromised in the operation."

The testimony was part of the panel's fifth session of hearings aimed at determining the cause of the explosion and how regulation, safety and oversight can be improved.

The explosion killed 11 workers and led to more than 200 million gallons of oil spewing from BP PLC's undersea well. BP owned the well and was leasing the rig from owner Transocean Ltd.

Smart Phones : iPhone vs. Android

It's possible to sum up the tech industry's engine of progress in four words: Apple vs. everybody else. That's been true for a quarter-century in the personal-computer realm, where the Apple product in question is the Mac and everybody else consists of Windows PC makers. And now it's happening with smart phones, a product category increasingly defined by intense competition between Apple's iPhone and the gaggle of manufacturers who have embraced Google's Android software.

Unlike the Mac-PC wars, the battle between the iPhone and Android is in its early stages. Both Apple and Google and its hardware partners are trying to dominate the market in exactly the right way: by building the best possible phones. Consumers benefit whether they buy an iPhone or an Android handset from a company such as HTC, Motorola or Samsung.

Android is clearly spurring Apple to step up its already impressive game. Since June, it has given iOS, the software that powers the iPhone, one sweeping overhaul and one smaller but meaningful update. It plans to deliver another fairly significant new version in November, with features like built-in printing capabilities. That's a shift from past Apple practice, which involved cramming nearly every meaningful improvement into one yearly megaupgrade. It's also reminiscent of Android's evolution over the past 12 months, during which Google has released versions 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2.

Apple may be moving more quickly than ever, but it's still uniquely responsible for what Steve Jobs has called "the whole widget." It designs the iPhone hardware, it writes the software, it provides the default services for buying music and movies. Even the central processor inside the iPhone 4 is an Apple product. The result is the smoothest, most consistent experience to be found on any smart phone. It's no coincidence that the one aspect of the phone that it has the least control over — the AT&T network — is the one that provokes the most grumbling among iPhone users.

Ultimately, deciding to buy an iPhone is all about buying into Apple's vision of the one perfect smart phone. Android, by contrast, is about finding the right smart phone for you. Want a phone with a real QWERTY keyboard or a jumbo-size screen? Sorry, iPhone no can do — but Android can. You can even get Android with a slide-out keyboard and a big screen. Or — if you're willing to commit to a two-year contract — one that costs a penny.

Most of American Families Rely on Working Wife

In the upcoming movie Made In Dagenham, current Brit eccentric darling Sally Hawkins plays Rita O'Grady, a factory worker and mother of two, who inspires 187 women machinists at Ford's Dagenham plant in England to go out on strike, and brings the car company's biggest factory in Europe to a standstill. Their actions eventually lead to Britain's Equal Pay Act of 1970.

Not all the workers at the Ford plant — or even the union, or even her family — support her. One of the other factory workers publicly opines that women don't need to make as much as their husbands, because men are the primary income-generators. (Not his exact phrase.) Appositely, just as the film arrives in cinemas, it transpires that wives are actually pretty close to winning as much of the family bread as husbands.

According to a new report from the Carsey Institute, a public policy think tank at the University of New Hampshire, working wives contributed 47% of total family earnings in 2009, a 2% jump over the year before and the largest single increase in the last 15 years. Families reliance on working wives' paychecks has been increasing for several years, but this is a sharp uptick. Between 1995 to 2007, by way of contrast, the slice of the household bacon wives brought home grew only 4%.

This increase is not, alas, because of raises in women's wages relative to men's, which remain at about 83% for people doing the same level job. It's because of greater unemployment among husbands. "Almost half of the total increase over the past 15 years occurred during the Great Recession," the report says.

And it has hit this recession's type of victims — those who work in manufacturing or construction — particularly hard. Among black families and those where the husband has less education, wives are now actually the primary breadwinners, bringing home 55% and 58%, respectively, of the family revenues.

All of this can make things pretty tricky for working families. First, studies (and Sen. Harry Reid) find that men take unemployment, and loss of earning power, much harder than women do. Secondly, more mothers are working than before. (Employed mothers bring home 43% of the household income, an even sharper uptick over the years before.) And women, even those who have full time jobs, still do the bulk of the work around the home. Into this stress-stew, let's throw those old brainteasers: work-family conflict, lack of affordable childcare, lack of paid family medical leave, inflexible schedules.

Spicy celebrity scandals - have a look

Batten down the hatches -- it's 10/10/10, a day of some sort of reckoning, because humans enjoy these kinds of mathematical patterns, yes? (That said, those who pay attention to such things might surmise that the new moon of 10/7/10 was probably a more auspicious date, in terms of big-picture life shakeups. But we digress.)

It's a time to take 10 and look back on a year that brought us the "breakup" of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the lurrrrve patterns of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the brain bleeds of Bret Michaels, the upskirt photography and "Hannah Montana"-ditching and gay-man grinding and envelope-pushing of an "OMG I'm almost 18 now!" Miley Cyrus, and nationwide auditions for "Glee," which if nothing else revealed an insane lack of reading comprehension among the youth of America.

And don't forget the deaths of Corey Haim, Andrew Koenig and "Deadliest Catch" Capt. Phil Harris, and the arrest of Jake Harris.

But moving forward, we present 10 spicy celebrity scandals and sagas from the first 10 months of 2010. It's enough to leep you talking about for at least 10 minutes -- or you can chat about a different story with 10 different people.

10. Artie Lange, Howard Stern's sidekick, attempted suicide in January by stabbing himself nine times, only to be rescued in time when his mom stopped by to bring him food. He's recovered now, playing his first club standup date Sept. 26, coincidentally one day after the accidental prescription drug overdose of comic Greg Giraldo, on whom the plug was pulled Sept. 29.

9. Casey Johnson, heiress to the Johnson & Johnson fortune and "fiancee" of Tila Tequila, was found dead on Jan. 4. Johnson's death was ruled to be the result of natural causes including not attending to her diabetes, but Tequila worked it for all it was worth. Oh yeah, Miss Tila's trying to get a sex tape with an old boyfriend pulled from the market now, but the judge pretty much laughed at her.

8. Michael Blosil, a.k.a. Michael Bryan, son of Marie Osmond, killed himself in February by jumping from the heights of his apartment building in downtown L.A. The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising student left a note for a friend before jumping, and his mother canceled a number of Las Vegas shows as she coped with his death. Very sad stuff.

7. Gary Coleman died May 28 at age 42 after a fall. Despite speculation of foul play involving his ex-wife Shannon Price, who had the medical authority to pull the plug and did so, the "Diff'rent Strokes" actor's death was ruled accidental in October and police closed their investigation. Still, a year in which Coleman's penis and his poor health grabbed headlines was one for the books.

6. Tiger Woods -- what a dog. His trouble started around Thanksgiving 2009, but continued into 2010 with mistresses revealing themselves left and right -- quaking in your boots, Brett Favre? -- and his divorce from wife Elin Nordegren being finalized in August. Meanwhile, alleged mistress No. 1 Rachel Uchitel is heading back to school, with a pricey apartment in New York City that she can't wait to rent out.

5. Paris Hilton and drugs? Who'd'a thunk it? The heiress was popped for cocaine possession after she and boyfriend Cy Waits were pulled over Aug. 27 on the Vegas Strip after cops smelled pot smoke wafting from their Escalade. Paris pleaded guilty to possession and obstruction of justice -- yeah, it was her purse after all -- and was sentenced to year of probation, with a no-questions-asked year in jail promised if she messed that up. Her immediate trip to Japan after the trial was cut short when immigration officials at Narita airport said no to letting the recent convict into the country to see her fans and pitch her products.

4. Charlie Sheen was arrested on Christmas Day 2009 on domestic violence charges related to threatening wife Brooke Mueller with a knife, and death -- but the interesting parts of the case came in 2010 when he avoided jail time, community theater time and nonsmoking time as he negotiated his way out of trouble, finally bagging his get-out-of-jail-free card in August. And yeah, Charlie got a raise on "Two and a Half Men," cementing his per-episode take in the seven figures. Sometimes it feels good to be a gangster?

3. It's a banner year when the Lindsay Lohan circus comes in at No. 3. LiLo messed up terms of her probation on two 2007 DUI charges, partied in Cannes until she couldn't get a ticket home to see the judge on time, then was sent to jail and rehab as punishment. It apparently didn't stick, as she blew a couple of court-mandated drug tests while on parole and was summoned back to Beverly Hills court to face a new judge. Having made bail, she's now in rehab (for the fifth time) at the Betty Ford Clinic, awaiting the fate that will come Oct. 22 when she's back in court.

2. Mel, Mel, Mel. Whether you're Team Mel Gibson -- think Jodie Foster and Whoopi Goldberg -- or Team Oksana Grigorieva, the angry, profanity-filled rants from the Oscar winner couldn't help but poke a stick at any latent PTSD cases in the gossip-following audience earlier this year. That said, is she the gold digger and he the victim? Or is he a real-life Mad Max? Only time -- and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department -- will tell, as domestic violence and extortion allegations travel through the legal system.

1. Sandra Bullock. Stop and pay homage to the coolest woman ever, who won the best actress Academy Award for "The Blind Side," only to be dashed against the rocks of scandal a little over a week later when her husband was revealed to be a tattooed-lady-loving two-timer. Or three-timer. Or maybe-more-timer. We're so happy she chose the most fabulous dress of all time to wear to the Oscars, because it would appear repeatedly for months afterward as a generation of strong women metaphorically carried her on their shoulders, cheering as she pulled off a no-nonsense divorce and oh-so-secret adoption, making us wish "if only" we had her strength and her classy, devoted network of friends.

Celebrity birthday on October 2010

Oct. 11: Actress Joan Cusak is 48. Guitarist Scott Johnson of Gin Blossoms is 48. Actor Sean Patrick Flanery is 45. Actor Luke Perry is 44. Actor Trevor Donovan is 32. Actress Michelle Trachtenberg is 25.

Oct. 12: Actor Hugh Jackman is 42. Fiddler Martie Maguire of the Dixie Chicks is 41. Actor Kirk Cameron is 40.

Oct. 13: Actress Melinda Dillon is 71. Musician Paul Simon is 69. Keyboardist Robert Lamm of Chicago is 66. Singer Sammy Hagar is 63. Singer-actress Marie Osmond is 51. Actress Kate Walsh is 43. Country singer Rhett Akins is 41. Actor Sacha Baron Cohen is 39. Singer Ashanti is 30.

Oct. 14: Actor Roger Moore is 83. Singer Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues is 64. Singer Karyn White is 45. Actor Jon Seda is 40. Country singer Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks is 36. Singer Usher is 32.

Oct. 15: Singer Barry McGuire is 75. Actor Larry Miller is 57. TV chef Emeril Lagasse is 51. "Trading Spaces" host Paige Davis is 41. Actor Vincent Martella ("Everybody Hates Chris") is 18.

Oct. 16: Actress Angela Lansbury is 85. Actress Suzanne Somers is 64. Guitarist Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead is 63. Actor Randy Vasquez ("JAG") is 49. Bassist Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is 48. Singer Wendy Wilson (Wilson Phillips) is 41. Singer-songwriter John Mayer is 33. Actor Jeremy Jackson ("Baywatch") is 30.

NFL football schedule - October 10, 2010

NFL Games Week 5 TV Schedule / NFL Football games TV Coverage Channels Week 5 October 10, 2010.The NFL will provide us again exciting and suspenseful games in the week 5 as it features the teams from the AFC and the NFC. New York Giants will battle up the surprising Houston Texans team. Can the Giants use the pass rush defense that confused Jay Cutler of the Bears last week?

Chicago Bears have the opportunity to bounce back against the struggling Carolina Panthers with 0-4 record. However, they will do this without Cutler who suffered concussion in the game against Giants. Though the big game is the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs vs the Indianapolis Colts which again was defeated last week. Are the Chiefs for real? This game will be a litmus test for them.

New Orleans Saints will be traveling to Arizona to meet the Cardinals in this all important game. Saints still are on top of their game and they will continue to file up wins today. Green Bay Packers will be tested also against the Washington Redskins. How good are the Packers playing on the road? We will find out today. Furthermore, the Tennessee Titans will meet the Dallas Cowboys who are rested well to have the power to win.

As for all the NFL Games Week 5 TV Schedule October 10, 2010, you can check it all below:

Jacksonville Jaguars (2-2) vs Buffalo Bills (0-4)
Ralph Wilson Stadium, 1:00 PM CBS

Denver Broncos (2-2) vs Baltimore Ravens (3-1)
M&T Bank Stadium, 1:00 PM CBS

Kansas City Chiefs (3-0) vs Indianapolis Colts (2-2)
Lucas Oil Stadium, 1:00 PM CBS

Green Bay Packers (3-1) vs Washington Redskins (2-2)
FedEx Field, 1:00 PM FOX

St. Louis Rams (2-2) vs Detroit Lions (0-4)
Ford Field, 1:00 PM FOX

Chicago Bears (3-1) vs Carolina Panthers (0-4)
Bank of America Stadium, 1:00 PM FOX

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-1) vs Cincinnati Bengals (2-2)
Paul Brown Stadium, 1:00 PM FOX

Atlanta Falcons (3-1) vs Cleveland Browns (1-3)
Cleveland Browns Stadium, 1:00 PM FOX

New York Giants (2-2) vs Houston Texans (3-1)
Reliant Stadium, 1:00 PM FOX

New Orleans Saints (3-1) vs Arizona Cardinals (2-2)
University of Phoenix Stadium, 4:05 PM FOX

Tennessee Titans (2-2) vs Dallas Cowboys (1-2)
Cowboys Stadium, 4:15 PM CBS

San Diego Chargers (2-2) vs Oakland Raiders (1-3)
Oakland Coliseum, 4:15 PM CBS

Philadelphia Eagles (2-2) vs San Francisco 49ers (0-4)
Candlestick Park, 8:20 PM NBC