Experts say they make up the fastest-growing population of incarcerated people in the nation. They are often victims themselves, of abuse, poverty, and even the public schools.
According to a Children’s Defense Fund study, an African-American girl born in 2001 has a one-in-17 lifetime risk of going to prison. A white girl born the same year has a one-in-111 chance. - New America Media
Pharmaceutical companies have recently paid out the largest legal settlements in U.S. history - including the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations - for illegally marketing antipsychotic drugs. The payouts totaled more than $5 billion. But the worst costs of the drugs are being borne by the most vulnerable patients: children and teens in psychiatric hospitals, foster care and juvenile prisons, as well as elderly people in nursing homes. They are medicated for conditions for which the drugs haven't been proven safe or effective - in some cases, with death known as a known possible outcome.
Native American children in the United States and Canada have three times the rate of untreated cavities compared to other kids, according to a new policy statement from a pediatricians group that recommends doctors pay more attention to the oral health of those patients.
A survey of 2,633 children aged 2 to 5 born to indigenous populations in the United States, Alaska and Canada found that 68 percent had untreated cavities. In some Canadian indigenous communities, more than 90 percent of children have tooth decay (dental caries).
Who knew a little cocoa powder could create such a ruckus? Several school districts across the country — including the Boulder Valley School District in Louisville, Colo., whose director of nutrition services derided chocolate milk as “soda in drag” — have banned flavored milk, while others have substituted the high-fructose corn syrup frequently found in the ingredient list of flavored milks with regular sugar.
They are vulnerable, abused and, far too often, left to fend for themselves thousands of miles from home. Earlier this month, a petition signed by 735,889 Britons was handed into 10 Downing Street demanding greater protection for the thousands of victims of child trafficking in our towns and cities. But amid a growing furore over the government's failure to prioritise the issue, evidence is mounting that when it comes to looking out for trafficked juveniles, those in a position to act are guilty of culpable negligence.
The highly controversial and potentially lethal anthrax vaccine may be tested on US children if the federal government gets its way. Although adverse event reports related to the vaccine among adult test subjects have included hospitalization, disability and even death, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is exploring the possibility of testing the vaccine on children. | Dprogram.net
Public education’s corporate enemies – Democrat and Republican – now wage open warfare against teachers unions, seeking to strip them of collective bargaining rights. But that’s just the beginning. “The billionaires, and the politicians they have purchased, want nothing less than to destroy teaching as a profession.” In the ideal corporate world, most teachers would have the status of temps.
“Violence isn’t the attractive component in these cartoons, which producers seem to think it is. It’s more other things that are often associated with the violence. It’s possible to have those other components, such as action specifically, in non-violent ways,” says Andrew Weaver, an assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University. read more…
Pharmaceutical companies have recently paid out the largest legal settlements in U.S. history — including the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations — for illegally marketing antipsychotic drugs. The payouts totaled more than $5 billion. But the worst costs of the drugs are being borne by the most vulnerable patients: children and teens in psychiatric hospitals, foster care and juvenile prisons, as well as elderly people in nursing homes. They are medicated for conditions for which the drugs haven't been proven safe or effective — in some cases, with death as a known possible outcome.
Kids and teens who spend a lot of time playing video games or texting on their smartphones may end up with serious wrist and finger pain, a new study suggests. Read More
Youth L.E.A.D. (Leading Environmental Activism through Democracy) is a young “food justice” nonprofit in Miami, Florida that educates and empowers underserved teens as activists through training and service learning projects. We work in urban food deserts where residents have low access to healthy food options. (Image: D.B. Bupeamie, a Youth LEADer who came to the market shut-down protest at Roots in the City Farm, works a farmers market.) Read more…
A diet drug while still in the womb? A UK trial will soon be under way whereby a commonly used diabetes pill will be administered to obese pregnant women up to three times a day in an attempt to prevent overweight mothers from delivering obese babies.
Babies in the womb to be administered with anti-obesity drug
An influential European committee known as the Council of Europe has ruled that cell phones and wireless internet connections pose a risk to human health and should subsequently be banned from schools. The committee concluded that immediate action was necessary to protect the children from the potential dangers, releasing a report that acts as a call to arms. The decision comes after mounting evidence has linked mobile phones, in addition to electromagnetic fields, to a number of harsh health ailments. With such a powerful group calling for bans on harmful electronics, it is highly possible that it will not only become law in the European Union, but across the globe as well.
All Jacked Up, in which I'm one of the main experts interviewed for the film, reveals the utter insanity of the modern food supply and why it's making American kids and teens so sick.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032529_All_Jacked_Up_documentary.html#ixzz1NVraK7oA
A landmark new study out of Canada exposes yet another lie propagated by the biotechnology industry, this time blowing a hole in the false claim that a certain genetic pesticide used in the cultivation of genetically-modified (GM) crops does not end up in the human body upon consumption. Researchers from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Sherbrooke Hospital Centre in Quebec, Can., have proven that Bt toxin, which is used in GM corn and other crops, definitively makes its way into the blood supply, contrary to what Big Bio claims -- and this toxin was found in the bloodstreams of 93 percent of pregnant women tested.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032510_unborn_babies_GMOs.html#ixzz1NVr7Ey8W
When I learned that a school district in NC was having a vaccine' contest for students, I was very concerned. When I learned that it was my school district, I was outraged. The contest was sponsored by the county health department, but having first seen links on the school district superintendent's blog, I wrote to the school district superintendent and the school board. My letter is below. A scan of my original letter is here.
The highly controversial and potentially lethal anthrax vaccine may be tested on US children if the federal government gets its way. Although adverse event reports related to the vaccine among adult test subjects have included hospitalization, disability and even death, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is exploring the possibility of testing the vaccine on children.
Are american children to be used in medical experiments to test anthrax vaccine?
Health freedom champion and civil rights defender Maryanne Godboldo was victimized by an armed attack led by Child Protective Services. CPS officials conspired with local law enforcement to threaten Maryanne with deadly force and kidnap her daughter. And what did Maryanne do to deserve this treatment? She refused to medicate her daughter with psychiatric drugs and, instead, chose to treat her daughter holistically.
Psychiatrists working for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, entrusted with the health of children in state custody, accepted thousands of dollars from drug companies. While earning huge fees as speakers for manufacturers of anti-psychotic pills, the doctors also wrote prescriptions for psychiatric drugs for children in the DJJ system. The Palm Beach Post News broke the story of this medical conflict of interest which one former federal prosecutor calls "truly stunning and troubling."
Psych doctors took money from drug companies to medicate children in juvenile jails
Close to 20% of young adults have high blood pressure, a new government-funded study reports.
High blood pressure (hypertension) was defined as 140/90 millimeters of mercury or higher. - USATODAY.com
African American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says the drivers of problem solving and job creation in the world depend on whether American students demand scientific literacy.
More than 20,000 women a year are having two or more abortions by the age of 25.
A third of all terminations are carried out on patients who have had at least one already.
Last year 189,574 abortions were carried out in England and Wales, 8 per cent more than in 2000, according to Department of Health figures.
A recent study by the Memorial University of Newfoundland shows that children can recall memories from well before the age of two, but forget most of them later.
Canadian researchers studied about 100 young children aged 4 to 13 and found that younger children could remember memories from as early as 18 months.
Essentially, rather than attacking the symptoms of the problem, reformers will see it makes more financial and policy sense to, finally, address the root cause. For example, instead of creating draconian anti-truancy policies, focusing on public-health initiatives that “reduce community levels of diabetes, asthma, lead-paint exposure, and obesity” and boost attendance—which then results in academic gains—is a better solution. - GOOD
The proportion of children and teens in the U.S. who have a developmental disability such as autism has increased 17% since the late 1990s, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Between 1997 and 2008, the number of children with a disability rose from 8.2 million to roughly 10 million, or more than 15% of all kids between the ages of 3 and 17, the researchers found. - CNN.com
SimplyThick, a thickening agent to help manage swallowing difficulties, should not be given to premature infants because it can cause life-threatening necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns.
Simply Thick Causes Life-Threatening Necrotizing Enterocolitis In Premature Infants
Developmental disability is on the rise in the U.S. Between 1997 and 2008, the number of school-age children diagnosed with autism, ADHD, or another developmental disability rose by about 17 percent, a new study showed.
That means roughly 15 percent of kids - nearly 10 million - have such a disability. - HealthPop - CBS News
Undercover research in Illinois reveals that dentists are far more willing to provide emergency care to children with private insurance than to kids with public insurance such as Medicaid.
Posing as mothers of a fictional 10-year-old boy with a fractured front tooth, six research assistants phoned 85 dental practices twice, four weeks apart, to determine the impact of insurance status on the practices' decision to schedule an urgent dental appointment. - US News and World Report
He has become a political phenomenon. He is wildly popular among South Africa’s angry black youth, who are increasingly resentful of black unemployment and white wealth. And when the country’s next president is chosen, it is Mr. Malema who is likely to be the kingmaker. Read more…
Four white Philadelphia teachers charge in federal race-bias lawsuits that a black principal suggested they were unfit to teach black students.
A collaboration between GOOD and Column Five Media
On the big screen, actresses Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal are set to start shooting the movie Still I Rise in Pittsburgh. Davis will star as "a middle-class teacher and mother of one child in a story about two strong women who channel their frustration into action and join forces to transform an inner-city school." But real school transformation is rarely the work of one or two individuals, no matter how strong. In reality, if parents or other influential community parties aren't invested, achieving academic goals with students is pretty difficult. School-wide change rarely happens without the close collaboration of an entire community. Still, in movies like Lean on Me or Freedom Writers, we see some superhuman protagonist (or two) saving a school. - GOOD
Two months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan, communities in the affected areas are still struggling to get back to normal. And while nothing will ever be exactly the same again, the process of getting schools up and running and kids back to studying continues to help the process and have a therapeutic effect on students. - GOOD
Young adults who take risks on the roads such as cutting up other drivers or speeding are more likely to experience anxiety and depression, say researchers.
Psychological distress, such as depression and anxiety, has been linked to risky behaviour in adolescents, including having unprotected sex, smoking and binge drinking.
Scientists from Queensland University of Technology, Australia, set out to find if there was a similar link between psychological distress and risk taking among young drivers. | Mail Online
A British mother who admitted on American TV that she gave her eight-year-old daughter Botox injections has had the child taken away by social workers.
Britney Campbell was removed from the care of her mother Kerry after the TV appearance boasting about the beauty treatment sparked outrage across the U.S.
Hundreds of complaints were received when she was featured on the Good Morning America show injecting her daughter with the anti-wrinkle treatment. | Mail Online
Students who enjoy regular pub crawls assuming there will be no consequences are actually putting their long-term memory at risk, scientists warn.
A study has found that binge drinking affects the brain's hippocampus, which plays a key role in learning and memory.
The brain structure is particularly sensitive to the poisonous effect of alcohol no matter what your age.| Mail Online
When 16-year-old Amy Myers launched her campaign to be class president at Cherry Hill East High School in New Jersey, the boys in her sophomore class began teasing her. And that crash course in how aspiring female leaders get judged on the basis of gender led, in a roundabout way, to Myers' challenge to debate Minnesota GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann on the Constitution. - Full Story »
Adolescents bring unique challenges to the table. Many are at the age where speaking out loud about sex is still embarrassing. No matter how many times we reassure them that we will not inform their parents of our discussion, they are wary. And, in extreme situations, you never get to privately interview the teen because the parent refuses to leave the room.
So, when an adolescent arrives in the emergency department with abdominal pain, urinary symptoms or vaginal complaints, it is hard not to suspect and test for sexually transmitted infections, even if they deny ever having sex -- especially since the consequences of missing one of these infections can be life-threatening.
Untreated sexually transmitted infections can lead to scarring, causing infertility long before a teenage girl even considers conceiving a child, or ectopic pregnancy -- a life-threatening emergency where the pregnancy is growing outside of the uterus. The infections themselves can worsen, forming pus in the abdomen or spreading to the rest of the body, causing major illness.
Taking Legal Action
On May 5, dozens of members of Friends and Family Members of Youth Incarcerated at Walnut Grove -- an organization founded by McIntosh -- held a news conference to announce the delivery of petitions to Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps, calling on him to cancel the system's contract with the GEO Group, the Florida company that runs the facility. (Epps said in an email to The Root that he could not comment because of pending litigation. Pablo Paez, a spokesman for GEO Group, also declined to comment via email.)
Rapper, M-Bone from the group Cali Swag District, died of gunshot wounds today. | News One
Convenience stores are filled with energy-boosting products; it seems some companies would be happy if we never slept a wink.
But now there's a movement in the opposite direction: products with names such as Simmer, Unwind and Lazy Cakes. That last one, Lazy Cakes, is a particularly hot seller. NPR
For Immediate Release Contact: Yumy Odom, Founder
Phone: 267.536.9847
Mobile: 908.334.1793
The Region’s First Black Comic Book Convention Celebrates 10 Years of Promoting Art, Literacy & Creativity!
Annual convention celebrates the Black experience in comic books and posthumously awards the creators of the first independent Black comic book!
*** Famed Cartoonist Ray Billingsley, Creator of the Curtis comic strip, Black Jack Creator Alex Simmons, and Kidz of the King Creator Reggie Byers to appear***
PHILADELPHIA, May 20 & 21, 2011—The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC, Inc.), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and Philadelphia’s premiere Black comic book convention, dedicates this 10th annual convention to highlighting breakthroughs in the comic book and sci-fi industry. ECBACC, Inc. kicks off the two-day convention on Friday evening, May 20, 2011, from 6:30p.m. - 9p.m. with its annual FREE reception and awards ceremony at the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) located at 701 Arch St.
On Friday evening, May 20, 2011 from 6:30p.m. – 9p.m., the Glyph Comics Awards will recognize the best in comics made by, for, and about Black people from the preceding calendar year. The Award is named for the blog Glyphs: The Language of the Black Comics Community started in 2005 by comic book journalist Rich Watson as a means to provide news and commentary on comics with Black themes, as well as tangential topics in the fields of Black science fiction, fantasy and animation.
While it is not exclusive to Black creators, the GCA does strive to honor those who have made the greatest contributions to the comic book medium in terms of both critical and commercial impact. The goal of the GCA is to encourage more diverse and high quality work across the board and to inspire new creators to add their voices to the field.
The Convention culminates on Saturday, May 21, 2011, from 10a.m. – 7p.m., at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Center City located at 1800 Market St. with a day of networking, panel discussions, a comic book marketplace and adult and youth workshops. Admission for Saturday is $15 for teens and adults; FREE for youth 12 and under.
―ECBACC is the region’s first bona fide ‘Black Comic Book Convention’ and offers workshops and activities dedicated to promoting literacy, achievement and professionalism. The great thing about this is that the ECBACC was founded in Philadelphia, the city of many of the nation’s firsts --- the first White House, zoo, library, museum --- and the very first independent Black comic book: All-Negro Comics created by brothers Orrin C. Evans and George Evans, Jr. in 1947,‖ said Yumy Odom, Founder and President of ECBACC, Inc., and a self-described archivist of the Africentric comic book tradition who has been using comic books as educational tools since 1982. The Evans brothers will be the posthumous recipients of the ECBACC Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award! This marks the 10th year for this unique, informative and enlightening conference that connects comic book creators to their fans from across the country, providing a venue for them to network and dissect, examine, discuss and explore the images in comic books and sci-fi.
The ECBACC Kids’ Corner returns this year, featuring myriad youth activities. The KC will be open to all young people who attend the convention. The KC will run from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., offering children a chance to learn how to take their own ideas and create superheroes and comic books. The KC "kick back zone" will provide free comic books to read throughout the day.
And, there's more!
We first told you about Britney Campbell of San Francisco in March -- she's the eight-year-old aspiring pageant queen already dabbling in Botox and virgin waxes, courtesy of her mom, Kerry. The pair appeared on Thursday's "Good Morning America" to talk about the extreme beauty regimen with Lara Spencer.- StyleList
Another area of concern is the continued over-representation of Indigenous juveniles in detention in Australia. The AIC's Juveniles in Detention in Australia Monitoring Program emerged following the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC 1991), which recommended the ongoing monitoring of rates of Indigenous juveniles in detention.
As described above, however, the over-representation of Indigenous juveniles has increased steadily since data began to be collected. It is important to note that over-representation ratios, used to demonstrate Indigenous over-representation, reflect rates of Indigenous juveniles in detention relative to rates of non-Indigenous juveniles in detention. This means that a high over-representation rate ratio may be due to an unusually high number of Indigenous juveniles in detention relative to non-Indigenous juveniles, or an unusually low number of non-Indigenous juveniles in detention relative to Indigenous juveniles (Taylor 2009). Read more…
Robbins followed seven self-described outsiders at public and private high schools for a year and concluded that what makes kids popular—conformity, aggression, visibility, and influence—won't make them happy or successful after they graduate. She distinguishes between perceived popularity, when peers say someone is at the top of the social hierarchy, and actual popularity, when peers report actually liking someone. Her book focuses on the former, a state that Robbins says tends to evaporate outside of the high school gate. - Yahoo! News
Babies who are breastfed are less likely to have behavioural problems by the age of five than those given formula milk, according to new research.
The question of whether breastfeeding has a long-term impact on behaviour has been investigated before, but the studies have usually been small-scale and inconsistent in their findings. The Guardian
One out of every 38 children in South Korea may have autism, a surprisingly high number based on a new research approach that suggests autism is a global problem that is significantly under-diagnosed, researchers said on Monday.
The estimate, which translates into 2.64 percent of children, is far higher than the estimated 1 percent rate seen in studies in the United States and Europe. - FoxNews.com
In a study of 7,000 households, black middle-class children whose parents lost their jobs were three times more likely to postpone plans for college. Instead, some of these children entered the workforce in order to financially support the household, observed Ariel Kalil, the study author and developmental psychologist at the University of Chicago.
Only 7 percent of eighth graders could correctly identify the three branches of government on the civics portion of the 2010 National Assessment of Education Progress test to satisfy the grading standard of "complete." A further 10 percent of the sample group -- 9,600 eighth graders from 470 schools -- received a score of “acceptable” on the question, which asked students to fill out the chart describing the three branches' relationship to one another.
If you’ve ever wondered whether the solution to a cash-strapped low-performing urban school district’s financial and education woes is the wholesale privatization of the public school system, you’re about to get your answer. Detroit, which is caught up in a state that has turned on its public workers, is auctioning off its public schools.
The city is taking applications as part of its Renaissance 2012 plan to put 45 public schools up for charter school takeover, and yesterday, the Detroit Free Press reported its gotten 18 charter school companies eyeing some 50 schools.
Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" and the First Lady's Let's Move are noble initiatives drawing attention to childhood obesity, but their results can be hard to quantify. - GOOD
In the first study of its kind, researchers have found that boys who inhale second-hand tobacco smoke at home may experience significant levels of raised blood pressure.
In later life the study revealed that this could lead to high blood pressure, or hypertension, and an increased risk of heart disease.
However, in girls, passive smoking appeared to be associated with a lowering of blood pressure.| Mail Online
Scientists have finally confirmed what grandma knew all along: babies really do wake up taller right after they sleep.
Findings from the first study of its kind measuring the link between daily growth and sleep show the two are inextricably linked.
Scientists have linked increased sleep and changes in sleep patterns in babies to increased body length for the first time.
The research paves the way to a better understanding of newborns and allows parents to predict when their baby is going to grow. | Mail Online
