News Briefs

Playboy decides to put it all back on

Where once Marilyn Monroe, Pamela Anderson and Naomi Campbell lolled in the nude, future centerfolds will be bikini-clad, and more, Playboy has announced. The magazine that got famous for showcasing naked women is giving up nudity.

What’s to blame, of course, is the Internet.

“You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free,” Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders told The New York Times. “And so it’s just passe at this juncture.”

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, 89, agreed to the idea. When a redesign of the magazine launches in March 2016, it will feature models who are covered up instead of fully nude.

Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!

  • Catch the latest on University of Illinois news, sports, and more. Delivered every weekday.
  • Stay up to date on all things Illini sports. Delivered every Monday.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Thank you for subscribing!

Hefner launched Playboy in 1953 celebrating naked women and high-end bachelor living. The magazine scandalized and titillated in the middle of a culturally conservative decade, and helped Americans to imagine guilt-free premarital sex, affairs and the freedom that arrived in the ’60s.

Playboy reached its peak in 1975, with 5.6 million subscribers.

—Los Angeles Times

———

Trump to host ‘Saturday Night Live’ in return to NBC

LOS ANGELES — Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump will host NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” on Nov. 7, months after the network dropped the billionaire businessman for remarks he made about Mexican immigrants.

It’s the second time he’s hosted the program, the network said Tuesday in a statement. Trump previously anchored NBC’s live comedy show on April 3, 2004.

Trump’s return marks an ironic turn for Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, which cut its ties to the executive after he derided Mexican immigrants as rapists. The annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, joint ventures with Trump, were dropped from the network in the wake of those comments and Trump ended his participation in another program, “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

—Bloomberg News

———

Planned Parenthood stops taking reimbursement for fetal tissue procurements

Planned Parenthood said it will stop taking reimbursements for procuring fetal tissue used in medical research, a step to defuse the political maelstrom that includes a campaign by congressional Republicans to end federal funding for the group.

In a letter released on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards wrote that the group and its affiliates would no longer accept money to pay for costs associated with procuring fetal tissue from abortions. The letter was addressed to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, which runs many major research programs.

The latest move follows the release of a series of videos by anti-abortion activists who argue that Planned Parenthood officials sought to profit from their program to supply fetal tissue from abortions to researchers. Planned Parenthood argued the videos were deceptive in their editing and denied seeking any improper payments beyond money legally paid to reimburse costs.