15 days after, Haitian girl rescued from rubble

FROM the rubble of a home near the destroyed St. Gerard University in Haiti, a teenage girl was yesterday rescued 15 days after an earthquake devastated the city.
The Associated Press (AP) said that Darlene Etienne was rushed to a French military field hospital and then to the French military hospital ship Sirroco, groaning through an oxygen mask with her eyes open in a lost stare.
Haiti, meanwhile, has appealed to foreign governments and charities to do more to help earthquake victims as rescuers pulled Etienne out of the rubble 15 days after her Port-au-Prince home collapsed around her.  Read more...

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African Youth Bear Brunt of Global Economic Crisis

Young people in Africa are among the groups hurt most by the current economic downturn.  Global financial problems usually have the greatest effect on the most vulnerable sectors of society and, given their limited access to resources, youth are among the vulnerable.

The problem is magnified by the fact that almost two-thirds of Africa’s population is under 25 years old, according to a report by the Africa Commission -- a body created in 2008 that wrapped up its work in 2009.  Read more...

There is a 'youth pill': It's called exercise

By Susan Perry

The longer I’ve been a health writer, the more convinced I've become that exercise is the true fountain of youth.

That belief was reinforced on Monday with the publication of four new articles in the Archives of Internal Medicine linking physical activity with healthier aging.

“The promotion of physical activity may be the most effective prescription that physicians can dispense for the purposes of promoting successful aging,” wrote Jeff Williamson, MD, and Marco Pahor, MD, of the University of Florida’s Institute on Aging, in an editorial that accompanied the studies.  Read more....

Kids Can Browse Porn in App Store Thanks to Tech Glitch

by Amy Hatch

The new operating system for Apple's wildly popular iPhones provides parents with beefed-up controls over what apps their children can purchase online, but a glitch in the software doesn't prevent them from looking for -- and viewing -- racy content, according to technology Web site Ars Technica.

Ars Technica reports that the flaw was discovered by a Scottish educator who develops applications for the iPhone. Apple now allows applications to be rated by age-level, but still allows apps rated 17 and up to be sold. While kids below that age range are prevented from downloading the content -- which Ars Technica calls "soft-core porn" -- they can still look at it.  Read more...

Children More Active When Parents Believe Their Kids Are Good Athletes, Study Shows

by Mark Hyman

A new study finds there isn't a strong link between how physically active parents are and the exercise their children get. Parents do nudge their kids to be active if they believe they have athletic talent, though.

The study appears in the journal Preventive Medicine. Its authors, Stewart Trost and Paul Loprinzi of Oregon State University, relied on data gathered in early childhood education centers in Queensland, Australia. The researchers followed 268 children from 2 to 5 years old. From this group, 156 parents or caregivers were asked about their attitudes and habits regarding physical activity.  Read more...

Teens who drink with parents may still develop alcohol problems

Parents who try to teach responsible drinking by letting their teenagers have alcohol at home may be well intentioned, but they may also be wrong, according to a new study in the latest issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

In a study of 428 Dutch families, researchers found that the more teenagers were allowed to drink at home, the more they drank outside of home as well. What's more, teens who drank under their parents' watch or on their own had an elevated risk of developing alcohol-related problems.  Read more...

Contact: Haske van der Vorst
h.vandervorst@pwo.ru.nl
31-243-612-123
Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

Available at: www.jsad.com/jsad/link/71/105

Lawsuits accuse police in Calif. of failing to protect black youth against racial attacks

JULIANA BARBASSA

The attorneys said Wednesday that the December 2007 fatal shooting of 14-year-old Vernon Eddins in front of his middle school in Union City and another recent incident at a Hayward mall were not isolated incidents, but part of a pattern of violence and persecution of black teenagers by a local Hispanic gang.

Vernon's death is cited in three pending lawsuits — two in federal courts, and one in state court — accusing the police, schools and school officials of failing to stop the attacks and protect the teenagers.

A federal judge with the Northern District of California indicated on Wednesday the plaintiffs may proceed with their attempt to certify a class action for one of the federal suits filed on behalf of 10 youths and their families against the Union City police department and others.  Read more...

Girls Bridge Gender Divide in Math

By NED POTTER

A new study rejects the notion that boys are better than girls in math.

Fifteen years ago, the gender gap was an issue that filled the headlines: By high school, girls were falling 50 points behind boys on the math section of the SAT, the leading college-entrance exam.

But a new study, published in this week's edition of the journal Science, shows the gap has disappeared. Researchers looked at standardized test scores of more than 7 million students, ranging from the second grade to high school junior. Whatever gender differences there once existed between girls and boys in terms of math performance are gone.  Read more…

Big brains for video games

by Alan Boyle

The study, conducted by Erickson and 10 other researchers, appears in the journal Cerebral Cortex. "This is the first time that we've been able to take a real-world task like a video game and show that the size of specific brain regions is predictive of performance and learning rates on this video game," Erickson said in a news release issued today.

The team's findings come amid an increasing reliance on game-based "brain training" as a form of mental calisthenics. "Video games are now being used frequently through educational disciplines to train children and adults, in remedial situations, in business practices to train employees, and they're even being used by the military," Erickson told me.

Past research has shown that expert gamers tend to outperform novices on basic measures of attention and perception. Some studies have suggested that video-game training can help novices bridge the gap - while others indicated that the novices couldn't catch up after more than 20 hours of training.  Read more...

Guide for Parents: The Dangers of Heavy Metals in Children’s Jewelry

By Chairman Tenenbaum

In March 2006, a tragic incident occurred which had a significant impact on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Jarnell Brown, a 4-year old boy from Minneapolis, Minn., swallowed a metal charm that was nearly pure lead. He sadly died four days later. Since 2004, our agency has conducted more than 50 recalls of more than 180 million units of metal jewelry because it contained a hazardous amount of lead. Since August 2009, it has been illegal to produce a piece of children’s metal jewelry with more than 300 parts per million of lead.

Now we hear about cadmium in jewelry. This is unacceptable. Just this week, I sent a clear message warning manufacturers against the use of heavy metals, “especially cadmium,” in a keynote speech that was delivered Tuesday at the APEC Toy Safety Initiative/Dialogue in Hong Kong.

Because of these recent developments, I have a message for parents, grandparents and caregivers: Do not allow young children to be given or to play with cheap metal jewelry, especially when they are unsupervised.  Read more...

How to Prevent Heart Disease in Kids

by Reggie Reyes

Heart disease is a growing epidemic that affects more than 60 million people across North America. It is also known as cardiovascular disease. It comes in several forms such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, angina pectoris (chest pain), heart attacks and strokes.

While heart disease has traditionally been studied in the adult population, recent research suggests that signs of heart disease -- such as high cholesterol -- are being found in kids as early as seven or eight years old. Unless we change our daily lifestyle habits, the future health of our population is in jeopardy. The cost to our health care system is astronomical; so much so that the focus has finally switched to prevention. Once again, regular exercise is at the top of the to-do list.  Read more...

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• 20% US teens have abnormal lipid levels 
• CDC Study Finds One in Five American Youths Have Abnormal Lipid Levels  
• Report: One in five American youths has abnormal lipid levels

New report: Kids spend 7.5 hours per day on 'entertainment media'

By Larry Magid

A new Kaiser Family Foundation study about kids' use of media has some startling implications.

It found that "entertainment media" use among children and teens is up dramatically from five years ago. It also found that about 70 percent of youth say their families have no rules about how much time they can spend with TV, video games or computers.

I have to admit I was a bit disturbed after poring through the 85-page report. But it's important to put this study into a broader context of how kids use media and how kids manage risk.

Kids today spend an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes a day consuming what the report calls "entertainment media." But it gets worse. If you consider that kids are multi-tasking, it's actually closer to 11 hours. That's nearly every minute of every day when kids aren't in school or sleeping.

The report, "Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds," compares data from 2009 to similar studies done in 2004 and 1999.  Read more...

The Violent Side of Video Games

Emily Sohn

Scientists are discovering that playing video and computer games and watching TV and movies can change the way we act, think, and feel. Whether these changes are good or bad has become a subject of intense debate.

Concerns about violence

Violence is one of the biggest concerns, especially as computer graphics and special effects become more realistic. Some parents and teachers blame school shootings and other aggressive behavior on media violence—as seen in TV programs, movies, and video games.  Read more....

Children missing in Haiti aftermath

A number of children have reportedly gone missing from hospitals in earthquake-struck Haiti, raising fears of trafficking abroad for adoption.

An adviser to the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) on Friday claimed the body had documented about 15 disappearances since the earthquake struck last week.

"We have documented let's say around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals and not with their own family at the time," said Jean Luc Legrand, a Unicef adviser.  Read more...

Related articles

• UN: Children in Haiti at Risk of Being Trafficked Voice of America

• Haiti earthquake: aid agencies fear child trafficking The Guardian

Minority teen boys smoke more when they perceive discrimination; girls do not

The perception of discrimination increases the amount teenage minority boys smoke but does not increase the amount teenage minority girls smoke, according to a new study from the Indiana University School of Medicine.
This study, to be published in the March 2010 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, has been posted by the journal under "First Look" at http://ajph.aphapublications.org/first_look.shtml.  Read more...


Contact: Cindy Fox Aisen
caisen@iupui.edu
317-274-7722
Indiana University School of Medicine

Unemployment among black youths soars, IPPR report says

Almost 50% of black people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, compared with 20% of young white people of the same age, a think tank has said.

The left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research says unemployment among black people rose from 35% in March 2008 to 48% in November 2009.

It rose from 12% to 20% among young white people during the same period.

The IPPR's report comes on the day the latest official unemployment figures are due to be published.  Read more...

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• Half of young black people out of work

• Almost half of young black people are jobless, says study ...

• Recession leaves half of UK's young black people unemployed ...

Volunteers offer art experience to young inmates

By Sharon Noguchi

Van Dyck is one of four teachers who volunteer with Heart of Chaos, a program offering evening crafts, collage and calligraphy classes to the county's youngest inmates. In just one hour a week with young people accused or convicted of crimes ranging from drug possession to murder, the teachers hope to provide a few moments' escape, or perhaps inspire a different way of thinking.

"I can give them a couple of moments to realize they have potential, that they are not their crime," said Michael Denning, 30, who teaches collage and a type of meditative doodling, often using repetitive lines, called Zentangles. A former drug addict who's been clean for almost six years, Denning said he believes art has the potential to rescue people from self-made prisons of drugs and gangs.  Read more...

Latino and Black Youth March Proudly Together in Long Beach to Honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Sponsored by Narconon International and the National Alliance for Faith and Justice, youths carried a banner promoting peace between their races. Media in southern Los Angeles County have often reported conflict between Latinos and Blacks, but today 35 youths carried a banner in the Long Beach Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade on 16 January specifically to promote peace and to show that the majority of youth want peace and are willing to do something to make peace between the races come true.  Read more...

Related article

• California Youth Counter Reports of Intercultural Violence with Dr. King's Message of Peace

For more information about Narconon drug education and community awareness events, visit www.narconon.org/community-activities/ or you can reach us at 323-962-2404.

Youth step up in immigration debate

By Christi Parsons

The Immigrant Youth Justice League, made up of about 15 Chicago-area students, is part of a wave of younger immigrant activists around the U.S. using more aggressive, in-your-face tactics to seek legal status as part of a volatile national debate that has stalled in Congress in recent years. They see an expected renewal of the debate this year as a last, best stand.

The students whose activism was born during massive immigrant marches in Chicago and elsewhere years ago, have been behind several smaller recent battles, bouncing between Facebook campaigns and old-school organizing with equal ease.  Read more...

Chinese youth delegation arrives in Vietnam for friendship meeting

A 100-member Chinese youth delegation arrived here on Sunday for the tenth China-Vietnam youth friendship meeting.

    At the opening ceremony of the meeting, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Vietnam Nguyen Dac Vinh said the tenth meeting between Vietnamese and Chinese youth is of greater significance in the context that the two countries are embracing the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, which is to fall on Jan. 18. Read more...

Youth Poised for Action

Steven Culbertson President and Chief Executive Officer of Youth Service America

Sometimes we forget.

Those of us in the national service field and nonprofit sector spend a lot of time preparing for big events. As an MLK Day grantee from the Corporation for National and Community Service, the staff at Youth Service America and I have been working with schools and organizations across the United States to launch a Semester of Service, problem solving of both intensity and duration, starting on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service.

We offered grants and training and technical assistance and promotional materials. We busted our guts, shouting the message that youth have a desire to be engaged in their communities; that they have innovative ideas about creating positive change; that they can be the leaders of today not tomorrow; and that there's no reason that children and youth have to wait until they grow up before they contribute in a meaningful way.  Read more...

FDA Concerned Over BPA (bisphenol-A)

By DENISE GRADY

In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008.

The agency said Friday that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of [boy] fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans.  Read more...

Why the US Owes Haiti Billions – The Briefest History

by Bill Quigley

Why does the US owe Haiti Billions? Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, stated his foreign policy view as the "Pottery Barn rule." That is - "if you break it, you own it."

The US has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. Not charity. We owe Haiti as a matter of justice. Reparations. And not the $100 million promised by President Obama either - that is Powerball money. The US owes Haiti Billions - with a big B.

The US has worked for centuries to break Haiti. The US has used Haiti like a plantation. The US helped bleed the country economically since it freed itself, repeatedly invaded the country militarily, supported dictators who abused the people, used the country as a dumping ground for our own economic advantage, ruined their roads and agriculture, and toppled popularly elected officials. The US has even used Haiti like the old plantation owner and slipped over there repeatedly for sexual recreation.  Read more...

Teenagers ‘only use 800 different words a day’

Although, according to recent surveys, they know an average of 40,000 words, they tend to favour a “teenspeak” used in text messages, on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and in internet chat rooms like MSN.

One poll, commissioned by Tesco, revealed that while children had the vocabulary to be articulate, the top 20 words they used – including the Vicky Pollard lexicon of “yeah”, “no” and “but” – accounted for about a third of all the words they used.  Read more...

WELCOME TO PRISON-PRONE AMERICA

by Carolyn Bennett

"American primary and secondary schools fail to educate because that is not their function, Dmitry Orlov writes. "Their function is to institutionalize children at an early age." In due course inmates of the U.S. education enterprise "will go on to other institutions - jails, psychiatric hospitals, the military."

"… There is a reason why jails, hospitals and schools are often architecturally indistinguishable: they are but different parts of the same system, representing different phases of the institutionalization life cycle."

What of higher learning?

Those "who learn obedience while retaining some semblance of sanity [enter] U.S. colleges and universities [that] fail to produce graduates who have adequate general knowledge, good command of their native language [Illiteracy in the United States is abnormally high for a developed nation], and the ability to acquire specialized knowledge without any further institutional assistance."  Read more...

The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s

By Brad Stone

My 2-year-old daughter surprised me recently with two words: “Daddy’s book.” She was holding my Kindle electronic reader.

Here is a child only beginning to talk, revealing that the seeds of the next generation gap have already been planted. She has identified the Kindle as a substitute for words printed on physical pages. I own the device and am still not completely sold on the idea.

My daughter’s worldview and life will be shaped in very deliberate ways by technologies like the Kindle and the new magical high-tech gadgets coming out this year — Google’s Nexus One phone and Apple’s impending tablet among them. She’ll know nothing other than a world with digital books, Skype video chats with faraway relatives, and toddler-friendly video games on the iPhone. She’ll see the world a lot differently from her parents.  Read more...

Report: More Black Children Living in Poverty

By: Michael H. Cottman

More African-American children are living in poverty, many black kids still do not have access to quality health care, and a disproportionately high rate of black teenagers are having babies, according to a new report by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics.  Read more…

No Future Exists for Black Children Who Cannot Read

By Phillip Jackson

To know the future of Black America in 15 to 20 years, one need only look at the dismal academic performance of 3rd- and 4th- grade Black students today. The 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress Report reveals that only 16% of African-American 4th- grade students in Illinois read at a proficient level or above. Unfortunately, Black students throughout the rest of the country do not fare much better.  Read more…

Nearly 60 percent of black children can't swim

New study underlies efforts to prevent drowning, boost sports participation

Nearly 60 percent of African-American children cannot swim, almost twice the figure for white children, according to a first-of-its-kind survey which USA Swimming hopes will strengthen its efforts to lower minority drowning rates and draw more blacks into the sport.  Read more…

Photo by: Daniel Johnson