Blog for Youth

Children (including daughters) of parents deployed in the military are more than twice as likely to carry a weapon, join a gang, or be involved in fights, according to a new study.

“This study raises serious concerns about an under-recognized consequence of war,” said Sarah Reed, who led the research of military families in Washington state.

From news.yahoo.com:

Last year, nearly 2 million U.S. children had at least one parent serving in the military. Deployment can hurt a family in a variety of ways. There’s stress while that parent is overseas and in danger, as the remaining parent has to shoulder all responsibilities and family roles shift. There can also be challenges after deployed parents’ return, especially if they were physically or psychologically damaged.

The effect of military deployment on kids is an emerging field of research. The new study is considered the first of its kind to focus on those affected by deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s unique in that it looked at a statewide swath of the population in comparing the behavior of kids in military families to children in non-military families.

“Maybe if we make assumptions about children, we may overlook other ways they may be suffering,” said Dr. Gregory Gorman, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

There is a “shocking” association — if only a statistical one — between violence by teenagers and the amount of soda they drank, according to researchers in the United States.

“What we found was that there was a strong relationship between how many soft drinks that these inner-city kids consumed and how violent they were, not only in violence against peers but also violence in dating relationships, against siblings,” said David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

From news.yahoo.com:

Among those who drank one or no cans of soft drink a week, 23 percent carried a gun or a knife; 15 percent perpetrated violence towards a partner; and 35 percent had been violent towards peers.

At the other end of the scale, among those who drank 14 cans a week, 43 percent carried a gun or a knife; 27 percent had been violent towards a partner; and more than 58 percent had been violent towards peers.

Overall, teens who were heavy consumers of sugary fizz were between nine and 15 percentage points likelier to show aggressive behaviour compared with low consumers, even when ethnicity and other confounding factors were taken into account.

The study was published in a British journal, Injury Prevention.

Several wildlife protection groups are suing the federal agency that regulates fishing in U.S. waters and claimed the government isn’t doing enough to protect endangered sea turtles from drowning in shrimp nets.

The lawsuit filed on Thursday in Washington claims the National Marine Fisheries Service violates the Endangered Species Act by letting some shrimpers operate without required turtle excluder devices on their nets and exempting some shrimping from the requirement.

From news.yahoo.com:

The gear is required on many shrimp trawls in federal and state waters, but some kinds of trawls and other nets are exempt under certain conditions. A Louisiana law passed in 1987 makes it illegal for state wildlife agents to enforce turtle excluder device regulations in state waters.

The plaintiffs want a court order requiring all shrimpers to have the devices. The wildlife groups claim that more than 1,400 dead and injured turtles have washed ashore this year.

“Gulf shrimp trawling continues to be a brutal, relentless killer of endangered sea turtles — there’s simply no other way to put it,” said Todd Steiner, executive director of Seaturtles.org. “For generations, industrial shrimping has been the leading cause of sea turtle death — an atrocity that is completely unnecessary, if shrimpers used the low-cost technology that has existed for over two decades.”

“Historically, the shrimp industry has a TED compliance rate of 99 percent. That rate dropped temporary after the BP oil spill,” said a statement from the Southern Shrimp Alliance.

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According to new research, kids can be tougher on obese peers and others with an “undesirable trait” if they believe it’s the child’s own fault.

“If the students think that the child has tried to change, that tends to positively influence how they anticipate interacting with that peer,” study author Mark Barnett, a psychology professor, said in a university news release. “They really liked kids who are successful in overcoming their problem, but they also really liked kids who tried and put effort into changing.”

From in.news.yahoo.com:

The study included 137 third- through eighth-grade students who were asked to respond to statements about six hypothetical boys who were either a poor student or poor athlete, extremely overweight, extremely aggressive, extremely shy, or had symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

The Kansas State University researchers presented the hypothetical boys as real and said the boys had been asked if they were trying to do anything to fix their undesirable trait and whether their attempts had been successful.

The students then rated their attitudes towards the boys. The results showed that the more the students believed the boy was at fault for his undesirable trait, the more they would tease and make fun of him, and the less they would help him if he needed it.

The study is expected to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Genetic Psychology.

The Obama administration has cleared the way for the US Supreme Court to decide in its 2011-12 term the signature healthcare law of the President that requires Americans to buy insurance or face a penalty.

A ruling may come for late June in the middle of the presidential campaign.

From news.yahoo.com:

The Supreme Court has long been expected to have the final word on the legality of the individual mandate, a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. A big uncertainty has been over when the court would decide the issue.

The law’s fate before the nine-member court, closely divided with a conservative majority and four liberals, could come down to two Republican appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, legal experts have said.

The law, adopted by Congress in 2010 after a bruising battle, is expected to be a major political issue in the 2012 elections as Obama seeks another four-year term. All the major Republican presidential candidates oppose it.

The 11th Circuit appeals court, based in Atlanta, ruled by a 2-1 vote last month in favor of 26 states and others who challenged the mandate for exceeding Congress’s power.

According to a survey, the cost of health insurance continues to climb for companies and workers. In 2011, annual family premiums this year grew at a pace triple that of 2010 and outpacing wage increases.

Family premiums in employer-sponsored health plans jumped 9 percent this year and single premiums rose 8 percent, compared with 2010’s 3 percent and 5 percent, according to Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual study.

From news.yahoo.com:

Health insurance, unlike other industrialized countries, is largely provided by employers. Although the latest Census found more Americans losing company-sponsored insurance, almost 170 million Americans were on employer-based plans in 2010.

Kaiser and the Health Research & Educational Trust surveyed 2,088 randomly selected public and private employers large and small earlier this year.

The survey found that, on average, employees are contributing 28 percent, or about $4,129, a year toward employer-sponsored family plans. That is 131 percent more than a decade ago.

Including employers’ contributions, the overall premium has increased 113 percent since 2001 to $15,073 a year.

“We’re probably on a more modest side … but even with a 5 percent increase in a premium (that our workers saw) this year, they didn’t get a 5 percent raise,” said Jeff Franck, a compensation and benefits manager at Altru Health System.

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