Blog for Youth | Teen Behaviour | News and Articles | Motivational Blog

Losing a job may be one of the worst days in any one’s life but thousands of unemployed people will be considering June 1 as particularly bleak.

As of June 1, people who lose their jobs after June 1 aren’t eligible for any subsidy (subsidized 65% of COBRA premiums for laid-off workers for up to 15 months) that were previously granted under the economic stimulus bill signed into law in February 2009.

From USAtoday.com:

COBRA allows departing workers to continue their former employers’ group insurance, but ordinarily, workers have to pay the entire premium, plus an administrative cost.

A Treasury study released last month found that up to a third of eligible unemployed workers signed up for subsidized COBRA.

The easiest way to get health insurance is to find a job with group coverage, but in this economy, that’s a tall order. How to stay covered:

Maintain COBRA coverage for as long as possible. While the COBRA subsidy expires after 15 months, COBRA is available for 18 months. The difference, of course, is that your premiums will skyrocket. Families USA, an advocacy group, estimates that the average family pays $1,107 a month for unsubsidized COBRA premiums.

Still, if you can scrape together enough money to pay the premiums for a month or two, you’ll buy some time to explore other coverage options, says Phil Lebherz, executive director for the Foundation for Health Coverage Education, a non-profit supported by insurance companies.

Carrie McLean, consumer specialist for eHealthInsurance, said that a licensed insurance agent can still help the unemployed explore the possible options.

If you are looking to lose those extra kilos under the belt or preparing for a bodybuilding competition, this YouTube video is a must-see for you. This video on health and fitness will help you find the truth about fitness and bodybuilding in no time so that you can make the most out of available options.

Blame it on stress or hectic schedules, most of us do not find to emphasize upon high standards of health and fitness.

We tend to follow sedentary lifestyle, knowingly or unknowingly, and the worst part is that most of us think that we cannot be affected by any health complication despite the fact that no one on this earth is safe from health complications.

From Timesofindia.indiatimes.com:

Breakfast is a ‘must’

Start your morning with some breakfast, be it a piece of fruit or a whole wheat bread. Put oatmeal into a thermos of hot water, and you could even let it sit overnight. In the morning, you shall have hot cooked oatmeal ready to eat. Similarly, a hard boiled egg can be eaten. This will prevent your body from going into starvation mode. Eating breakfast everyday will also help increase your metabolic rate.

Five meals a day

Have at least five meals a day in which three can be the main meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner, while other two meals can consist of foods which are handy and nutritious at the same time. Eating frequently prevents hunger pangs, provides consistent energy, and maintains metabolism efficiency. Grab healthy foods such as fruits that are high in fibre like apple, watermelon, muskmelon, orange, sweet lime, papaya and peaches.

Ask for healthy food

Some people’s work demands frequenting restaurants for dinner. Always watch out for hidden fats. Creamy soups, white breads, flaky pastries and mayonnaise-based salad dressings add unnecessary fats to the food. Try consuming broths instead of creamy soups. Instead of mayonnaise dressing, use variety of condiments and flavouring agents such as lemon, vinegar, herbs, onion and garlic to improve the palatability of your salad. Remember, a gram of fat contains more than twice as many calories as a gram of protein or carbohydrate. Ask for grilled, baked, boiled or broiled food rather than fried foods.

By following these abovementioned tips, we can easily stay healthy and fit. These tips can also help us grow better as a person and professional besides helping us realize our long-cherished dreams.

When it comes to improving the levels of testosterone in aim to build solid muscles, muscle building supplements can help to a significant extent. In this YouTube video, you will find that it is easy to raise the level of testosterone and promote maximum body growth with Testolean.

More and more young girls and women are visiting the abortion clinics and using contraceptive pills than ever. Despite such measures, the world is still witnessing increases in the number of HIV and STD affected patients.

The reason is obvious – people, at times, forget to use common sense when moving to the next level of relationships. Though sex is an important part of a man-woman (in love) relationship, protection should be used unless things are beyond any doubts.

From Successandyouth.com:

Believe it or not, a big majority of the youth population is engaging in sexual acts to “show-off” that they are not aliens. Living in a society, we appear desperate or wrong with our acts when it comes to making the biggest decisions of our life. We again want to reiterate that there is nothing wrong with sex but only if it is planned and mutually agreeable between partners, both of whom must be mature enough to understand the pros and cons of a sexual relationship and protect each other from bad name, unplanned pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases.

If you are about to move to the next level of relationship with your partner then it is highly recommended that at least one of you practice birth control habits. For this, you have options as varying as birth control patch, birth control ring, cervical cap, condoms, and emergency contraception. Before we read any further, it is important to note here that none of these birth control methods are fool-proof and pregnancy may still happen even if you made use of any of the methods.

In short, it is better to play safe and still move onto the next level of relationship rather than cursing it and playing the blame games.

According to a new study on teen behavior and goals conducted in Spain, teenaged boys usually prefer the anti-social route to stay close to popularity while their female counterparts are keener towards academics and education.

Objective of the study was to examine how goals of teenagers were structured and what is the relationship between these goals and anti-social behavior.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

‘Girls placed more importance on goals related to education and family aspects, while boys set targets that were more anti-social,’ explains Laura Lopez Romero, who co-authored the study with Estrella Romero.

‘Anti-social goals are to deceive, steal or bypass rules and laws. It allows them to achieve social recognition, establish an identity and antisocial reputation, which gives them a certain level of popularity,’ says Romero, University of Santiago de Compostela (USC).

The study was based on questionnaires handed out to a sample of 487 participants, aged between 12 and 18 years, which included 233 boys and 254 girls.

The students had to state the importance they place on each goal, using a scale of six options.

‘Then we analysed the young people’s involvement in anti-social behaviour,’ the expert points out.

The researchers also studied the role of gender in the relationship between goals and antisocial behaviour, said an USC release.

The study was published in the Spanish Journal of Psychology.

Today, the world will be cherishing one of the most adored sports in the most beautiful country in the world; yes it is the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa where 32 teams will fight for the top prize. In this YouTube video, you will be enthralled by the official theme song of FIFA World Cup 2010.

In countries like India where arranged marriages are still prevalent, a big population of prospective brides and grooms are not given the chance to know each other better.

However, things can be made easy if you (as one of the partners) can take some time out to ask some questions and get honest answers for them.

From in.yfittopostblog.com:

For the sake of money:

1. What is his/her monthly in-hand income?

2. Any personal loans that he/she is paying off?

3. On a home loan? How many more years does he/she have to pay off the installments?

4. Is he/she okay if you have a separate bank account?

Okay so far? Moving on. What about the following career issues?

5. How many jobs has he/she switched till date? Any particular reasons for doing so?

6. If he/she gets a job overseas, will he/she take it? What if it doesn’t offer a family status?

Now comes the tricky part. Could these health queries make or break a marriage?

7. Will he/she take an HIV test with your family doctor?

… and these behavioural pointers:

8. Does he/she get violent when angry?

Here’s another tricky part, sexual preferences. Not THAT necessary, but useful, nonetheless:

9. Is he/she into deviant sexual practices?

And last but not the least, these social queries will give you a better idea about your future life with him/her:

10. Are the both of you going to live with the parents or separately?

Answers to these questions are not just for a prospective groom but also for a prospective bride since it is important for both prospective partners to know as much as they can about each other.

With the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa presently being the subject of interest, more and more celebrities such as Shakira are making their presence on the world stage.

The World Cup offered a great stage for celebrities and others to discuss and bring to public notice the need to provide all a happy childhood and access to a good education.

From in.sports.yahoo.com:

Shakira danced with school children in Soweto. Juanes debuted a single. Akon launched a clothing line.

And even a few celebrities with more than one name showed up for the World Cup.

The tournament that kicked off in Johannesburg on June 11, being held for the first time in Africa, is the biggest event on the calendar of the world’s most popular sport. It has drawn hundreds of thousands to South Africa and attracted an even bigger television audience. If you were in the business of being famous, would you miss it?

Some celebrities came to work. The main events were an opening ceremony June 11 with American singer R. Kelly, and a June 10 concert featuring Shakira, the Black Eyed Peas and Alicia Keys. That was the night Colombian rocker Juanes, in a multicolored warm-up jacket, debuted his newest single, “Yerbatero”.

Fellow Colombian Shakira was among the stars who combined work with philanthropy. She spent hours at a school in the famous Johannesburg township of Soweto, where she traded some dance steps with students and spoke with them about the importance of education.

“I wish that every kid in the world has a happy childhood and access to a good education,” she said.

Singer Akon was also there to attend the opening game and promote his Konfidence Foundation, which supports education, sports, and health projects in his native Senegal.

During the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. conference in Las Vegas, Youth Radio received an award for investigative journalism.

The award was for a series aired on NPR’s “All Things Considered” titled, “In the Kennel: Uncovering a Navy Unit’s Culture of Abuse.”

From Contracostatimes.com:

Youth Radio received an award over the weekend for investigative journalism at the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. conference in Las Vegas. The award was for a series aired on NPR’s “All Things Considered” titled, “In the Kennel: Uncovering a Navy Unit’s Culture of Abuse.”

The Youth Radio team told the story of an American sailor’s abuse by his chief. The sailor had been hogtied in a chair, left in a kennel spread with feces and forced to simulate sex acts on videotape. They revealed more than 90 incidents of hazing, sex solicitation and embezzlement, uncovering widespread psychological, sexual and physical abuses across the unit, a pattern which had been investigated but dropped.

Their report resulted in a thorough examination of the conduct of commissioned officers in the Bahrain chain of command, the forced retirement of the unit’s chief and a review of the Navy’s response to complaints.

The supervising team responsible for this project was Youth Radio producers Ellin O’Leary, Charlie Foster, Rachel Krantz, Nishat Kurwa and Lissa Soep along with NPR reporters Tom Bowman, Graham Smith and Chris Turpin.