Politics Daily – The Defense Department investigated only a small percentage out of hundreds of alleged cases of Pentagon employees using government computers to purchase child pornography, according to a Yahoo! News investigation published Friday. The cases came to light during a 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement probe, called Project Flicker, into the use of credit cards and PayPal to buy sexual images of children online. The investigation turned up the names of more than 5,000 individuals who made the porn purchases — some of whom were civilian and military employees of the Defense Department, including a few with the highest available security clearance. Read article
Daily Telegraph – More than half of girls think that young women are turning to drink to relieve their worries, while 81 per cent believe that alcohol abuse is a serious issue.
The pressure to look attractive is the most negative thing about being female, according to 47 per cent of those polled in the annual Girls’ Attitudes Survey, commissioned by Girlguiding UK. Read article
BBC – Some 240 women, girls and babies may have been raped after rebels recently seized a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN says. Officials had previously said they had received reports of 150 rapes in and around the town of Luvungi. The UN mission has been heavily criticised for not doing more to protect the local population as it had peacekeepers based nearby. But it says it was only told of the rapes after the rebels had left. Read article
NY Daily News – A shocking number of young city students are overweight or obese – with about half the youngsters in some zip codes tipping the scales too heavily, a new city report shows. In the largest study of childhood obesity ever conducted in the city, 40% of kindergartners through eighth-graders – more than 250,000 kids – were found to be too heavy. Officials say even though the data seem startling, the rate of obesity in city kids is actually flat-lining, while it’s rising nationwide. Read article
BBC – A doctor in Egypt is being taken to court for carrying out an illegal operation to circumcise young girls. It follows the death of a 13-year-old, from a village in the Nile Delta, in the north of the country. An investigation has raised fears that the practice of female genital mutilation, which was banned two years ago, is still widespread in Eqypt. Yolande Knell reports. Watch Article Video
The Irish Times – VACCINE DEBATE: The arguments for and against the cervical cancer vaccination programme. Read article
The Independent – To most people Portugal’s state-run orphanages seemed like a safe haven for thousands of children who had been robbed of their parents. They were called the Casa Pia, or Houses of the Pious. But for an elite paedophile ring, … [the] orphanages were something entirely different. They were supermarkets stocked with children to abuse. Yesterday, at the conclusion of the longest trial in Portugal’s history, seven defendants were convicted of using the orphanages to rape and abuse scores of teenage boys in a case that has sent shockwaves through the country’s political elite and raised serious concerns over the efficiency of Portugal’s judiciary.
>Read article
NY Times — At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe temper tantrums. Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder. All by the time he was 3. Read article
ScienceDaily — While preterm birth is a known risk factor for cerebral palsy, an examination of data for infants born at term or later finds that compared with delivery at 40 weeks, birth at 37 or 38 weeks or at 42 weeks or later was associated with an increased risk of cerebral palsy, according to a study in the September 1 issue of JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association]. Read article
Daily Mail – TV should be banned for toddlers and severely rationed for other youngsters to protect their health and family life, a leading psychologist will tell MEPs today. Dr Aric Sigman claims that millions of children spending hours slumped in front of TVs and computers is ‘the greatest unacknowledged health scandal of our time’. He says it is linked to ills ranging from obesity and heart disease to poor grades and lack of empathy. Read article
Rassmussen – Vaccinations are common requirements for children all over the country in order to attend public school and college. However, half of American adults (52%) say they are concerned about the safety of vaccinations for children, including 27% who are Very Concerned. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 44% are not concerned about the safety of vaccines for children. But this includes just 13% whoa re Not At All Concerned. Read article
Daily Mail – Under the specter of an autism epidemic sweeping America, Senator Barbara Boxer (CA) convened hearings last week on the “State of Research on Potential Environmental Health Factors with Autism.” (3) The result? Experts agree that the primary explanation for the dramatic increase in autism is toxic environmental exposure and gene-environment interactions. New research shows that even low-dose, multiple toxic and infectious exposures may be a key factor to the onset of autism. Read article
Related article: Autism explosion half explained, half still a mystery
ScienceDaily — A new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) epidemiologists has found that women who took over-the-counter decongestants during their pregnancies are less likely to give birth prematurely. Read article
The Guardian – The British government has ordered an urgent inquiry into the disappearance of an injured Iraqi child who has not been seen since being placed in the care of UK military medics in 2003. In one of the most bewildering episodes of the Iraq occupation, Memmon Salam al-Maliki, an 11-year-old boy, disappeared within days of being taken to a British base after he was wounded while playing with unexploded munitions. Although his injuries appeared not to be life-threatening, his family have not seen him since. Read Article
Daily Mail – Three babies have died at one of Britain’s leading neonatal units after being found to be carrying superbugs resistant to common antibiotics. The outbreak, at University College Hospital in London, affected 15 babies over six weeks, officials have confirmed. Read article
Related article: WHO calls for monitoring of new superbug
NPR – New research about a steep drop in circumcisions made headlines this past week. According to one federal researcher, circumcision rates in U.S. hospitals slid from 56 percent in 2006 to fewer than a third of boys born last year. Doctors caution that those numbers aren’t definitive — for instance, they don’t include circumcisions not covered by insurance policies or circumcisions performed in religious settings. Read article
Daily Mail – Family rights campaigners have called for a change in the law after it was revealed that girls as young as 12 can be given the cervical cancer vaccine without their parents’ consent. Doctors and nurses have been told they are under no legal obligation to seek the permission of the parent or guardian. Read article
PhysOrg.com – Eastern parts of India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh are ravaged by encephalitis each year as malnourished children succumb to the virus which is transmitted by mosquitoes from pigs to humans but this is one of the worst outbreaks, officials said.
The deaths of four more children on Saturday pushed the toll to 215, with hundreds sick, some two to a bed, in hospitals in Gorakhpur, a deeply neglected area of 14 million people, regional health officer U.K. Srivastava told AFP by telephone from Gorakhpur. Read article
Sify – The government Friday denied that Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines were responsible for the reported deaths from Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. ‘In Andhra Pradesh among 14,091 vaccinated girls, five deaths have been reported whereas in Gujarat two deaths were reported among 10,686 girls,’ Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. Read article
WeeklyBlitz – Vaccine programmes grind to a halt in India once more, when four children died after they received the measles vaccination in Lucknow. The four children were reported to have fainted soon after they were vaccinated and witnesses reported seeing the children’s eyes roll back as they began to have seizures. The Indian Express stated in their article 4 children die within minutes of vaccination. Read article
Times of India – A day after four children died in Mohanlalganj during an immunization drive, a team from Union ministry of health and family welfare, headed by deputy commissioner, immunisation, Dr Ajay Kheda, inspected the community health centre, even as an FIR was lodged on Sunday against the health team which administered the vaccine to the four children who died. The officials have been booked for culpable homicide. Read article
PhysOrg.com – Mothers who did not breastfeed their children have significantly higher rates of type 2 diabetes later in life than moms who breastfed, report University of Pittsburgh researchers in a study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Medicine. “Diet and exercise are widely known to impact the risk of type 2 diabetes, but few people realize that breastfeeding also reduces mothers’ risk of developing the disease later in life by decreasing maternal belly fat.” Read article
Alaska Star – A new partnership between the Anchorage School District and the U.S. Army Alaska will add a military presence to local schools. But rather than keeping the peace, these warriors will be serving as math or reading tutors, helping out in the computer lab or maybe firing a few dodge balls. Read Article
PressTV – Children of third world countries and nations in transition have become ‘laboratory rats’ for the US’ clinical tests for new drugs, an Indian newspaper says. Under US’ 1997 legislation called the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision, intended to speed up development of new drugs for American kids, the trials were carried out in countries such as Uganda and India, The Times of India reported. Read article
NY Times — Sunita Laxman Jadhav is a door-to-door saleswoman who sells waiting. She sweeps along muddy village lanes in her nurse’s white sari, calling on newly married couples with an unblushing proposition: Wait two years before getting pregnant, and the government will thank you. It also will pay you. Ms. Jadhav explained that the district government would pay 5,000 rupees, or about $106, if the couple waited to have children. Waiting, she promised, would allow them time to finish their schooling or to save money. Read article
