Eideard

The United Nations Monday named Disney character Tinker Bell an “Honorary Ambassador of Green” to help raise children’s environmental awareness.

The announcement came just before a screening at U.N. headquarters in New York of the world premiere of the Walt Disney animated film, “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure.”

“We’re delighted Tinker Bell has agreed to be our Honorary Ambassador of Green,” said Kiyo Akasaka, undersecretary-general for communications and public information. “This beloved animated character can help us inspire kids and their parents to nurture nature and do what they can to take care of the environment.”

Tinker Bell rocks!

Well, they made it almost into the 21st Century. Some rightwing newspapers headlined the story so it sounded like the chance of catching plague had been reduced. Slightly.

Georgia political hacks want Edwards on the state Supreme Court

The Georgia Supreme Court has thrown out a judge’s order that prohibited children in a divorce case from having any contact with their father’s gay and lesbian friends.

The ruling was hailed by gay rights groups who said the decision focuses on the needs of children instead of perpetuating a stigma on the basis of sexual orientation.

The state high court’s decision overturned Fayette County Superior Court Judge Christopher Edwards’ blanket prohibition against exposing the children to their father’s gay partners and friends…

The Fayette County judge’s prohibition “assumes, without evidentiary support, that the children will suffer harm from any such contact,” Justice Robert Benham wrote. But there is no evidence that any member of the gay and lesbian community has engaged in inappropriate conduct in the presence of the children or that the children would be adversely affected by being exposed to members of that community, he said…

Beth Littrell, staff attorney for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in Atlanta, said the visitation order was the most sweeping of its kind she had seen in Georgia.

“Placing a blanket ban on children’s association with gay people not only hurts this father’s relationship with his children, it is blatant discrimination,” Littrell said. “The court has done the right thing today by focusing on the needs of the children instead of perpetuating stigma on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Littrell was pleased the ruling took decisions like this away from “the prejudices of individual judges.”

Take a look at the history of American Supreme Courts sometime and you realize there’s nothing new about a court being characterized as standing in the way of progress for the whole nation. Despicable and foolish.

Home computer-related injuries have increased more than sevenfold, with children hurt most often, data reveal.

Over 78,000 patients were treated for such injuries in US hospitals between 1994 and 2006, and 93% of the trips, bumps and falls occurred in the home.

Over the 13-year study period the injury rate increased by 732%, which is more than double the increase in household computer ownership.

Children under five had the highest injury rate, mainly due to falls after tripping over cables or head injuries from falling monitors.

Similarly, in the UK computer-related accidents in the home sharply increased from around 800 in 1995 to more than 1,800 in 1999 and 2,100 in 2002 – the latest figures available.

A third of the incidents in 2002 involved a child under the age of 15, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa).

Although most result in minor bumps and bruises, some injuries can be more serious. One case in 1998 involved a six-year-old boy who was burned by a fire caused by spilling a drink on a computer.

So, is the problem caused by these critters being purchased and set-up by consumers – who don’t have a clue about safety? Or are the children of the Western World simply becoming klutzier?

I think it’s the former. After all, we’re talking about people who try to pick up lawnmowers to trim the hedge.

Prison officer Walter Schmidt wanted to give his colleagues’ children a taste of what their mums and dads get up to at work while showing them around a Florida jail.

So to make the youngsters’ experience all the more realistic as they toured Franklin Correctional Institution during the lock-up’s ‘Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day’, he decided to zap them with his 50,000-volt stun gun.

The jolt sent at least two of them sprawling to the floor, crying out in pain and clutching at agonising burns on their arms. One child ended up in hospital.

But 37-year-old Schmidt told officials who later fired him that he had only been trying to show the children – whose parents all work at the jail near Tallahassee – what a typical day involves while handling unruly inmates.

‘It wasn’t intended to be malicious, but educational,’ he explained to the St Petersburg Times.

‘The big shock came when I got fired.’

This wasn’t the only Florida “Correctional Facility” where this happened BTW. They’re equal dummies at another prison where the guards had a group of kiddies hold hands in a circle – then zapped one of them, knocking the kids to the ground.

How’s that for show and tell?

When Lisa Garnes received a call from her daughter’s daycare saying that 3-year-old Emma was complaining of back pain, she never dreamt the cause would be a condition often associated with middle aged men: kidney stones.

“They said that Emma was doubled over in pain and saying that her back hurt her,” says Garnes.

Garnes took her to the pediatrician, who suggested it was a urinary tract infection. A half hour later, she called again to tell her doctor that her daughter couldn’t keep anything down. The doctor suggested taking her to the ER.

After a battery of tests, including an ultrasound, the doctor returned with the news: she had kidney stones…

The growing incidence of kidney stones in children can be linked to the modern diet and lifestyle, says Gary Faerber, MD, a urologist at the University of Michigan Health System.

“I am seeing more and more children who have kidney stones,” says Faerber. “It’s a real phenomenon…”

Children today seem to live a lifestyle that puts them at risk of kidney stones, meaning they consume sugar-filled drinks and a fast-food diet that is high in sodium, a known risk factor in the formation of kidney stones, says Faerber.

“The sedentary lifestyle we’re starting to see in the younger age group and the pediatric group is also a risk factor because we know that obesity increases the risk of forming kidney stones,” he adds…

“The main takeaway is to get your child to stay away from sugar filled drinks, sodas, colas and go to something natural like plain old water,” he says.

RTFA. Pay attention to what your kids are consuming.

Let me say that again. Pay attention to what your kids are consuming. For crying out loud – pay attention to your own nutrition and your whole family’s diet. Even when money is hard to come by, veggies and water are easier to come by than sugar and sloth.

Injuries involving overturned televisions, shelves and other household items are on the rise, raising questions about whether enough is being done to make them safer.

After looking at information about furniture tip-over injuries for an 18-year period, the researchers said they had found a 40 percent increase. On average, they said, more than 14,000 Americans a year are injured. The researchers…looked at injuries involving 12 types of furniture, including desks, dressers and cabinets. The study appears in the journal Clinical Pediatrics.

Most of the injuries were to children 6 and younger, and the most common involved televisions, which are sometimes placed on furniture not intended to hold them.

In many cases, children pulled furniture onto themselves, perhaps when they were reaching for something. In other injuries, the furniture fell because children bumped into it or were climbing it.

Although the researchers suggested several solutions to the question of child safety and furniture which may topple over onto the little angels – when they pull on it, my answer is relatively simple. Don’t let the little bastards go anywhere they might do injury to themselves. Or others.

I mean – If you’re safe, you must be happy. Right?

A Queens couple made crime a family affair when they brought two small children along while burglarizing homes.

Alleged getaway driver Erika Santa, 23, had a loaded gun and her daughters, Genesis Jiminez, 4, and Brianna Lantigua, 5 months, in the car when cops caught her Monday. Santa waited in a van with the kids as Brianna’s father, Hugo Lantigua, 22, and pal Pedro Camillo, 19, broke into a home on 83rd St. Monday, police said.

Two cops, on the lookout for a blond getaway driver in a van following a rash of break-ins, spotted Santa and moved in. Sgt. Joseph Tarsio and Officer Brett Huzar nabbed Lantigua and Camillo as they carried out jewelry, cash and electronics, police said.

Police found Brianna buckled in a car seat and Genesis bouncing free in the back. The gun was in a dashboard compartment.

Genesis told cops “Mommy and Mommy’s boyfriend come home with money every day,” a police source said.

Creeps!

Daylife/Getty Images

A five-eyed monster under the bed isn’t what worries most kids. Experts say young people fear a lot of what’s in the news — from kidnappings to murders to salmonella.

A study on more than 1,000 children and adolescents in grades 2 through 12 found that some of the 20 most common fears include “terrorist attacks,” “having to fight in a war,” “drive-by shootings,” “tornadoes/hurricanes” and “drowning/swimming in deep water,” based on self-reports of how scary each of 98 events or concepts seems.

Study author Joy Burnham…collected data from November 2001 to April 2004 in 23 schools in two southeastern states. The most common fears closely aligned with those found in previous studies on youth, and the pattern of findings has persisted in studies on fear for the past 30 years, she said.

By 8 years old, children know the difference between fantasy and reality, so they are more likely to be frightened by televised news coverage of events such as kidnappings, murders and terrorism, said Joanne Cantor, professor of at University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved with the study. Before age 8, they express fears of fictional scenarios and characters but also worry about hurricanes and drowning, she said…

Read the rest of this entry »

One more ultra-conservative charlatan
Daylife/Getty Images

Pope Benedict has ordered an investigation of an influential Roman Catholic priestly order whose founder was discovered to be a sexual molester and to have had at least one child with a mistress.

The Legionaries of Christ announced the inspection, known in Church language as an “Apostolic Visitation,” this week.

Hey, it only took 68 years for someone to notice.

The conservative Legionaries, have been shaken over the past several years by a string of scandals tied to their founder, Father Marcial Maciel, who died last year at the age of 87…

While running an order of priests who take vows of celibacy, he had a mistress with whom he fathered at least one child.

In 2006, Pope Benedict told Maciel to retire to a life of “prayer and penitence” after accusations that he had molested boy and men seminarians decades earlier.

The order had denied the molestation charges for years but the Vatican moved against Maciel after new evidence emerged. At the time, the sanctions against Maciel made him one of the most prominent persons to be disciplined for sexual abuse.

As often as we accuse our politicians of hypocrisy, the Christian churches must have invented it. They certainly have perfected the practice.

Live television is hardly the most convenient setting in which to be reminded of the age-old proverb that only children and fools speak the truth.

So the father who nicknamed his child’s toy monkey after Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, must have been mortified to have his private joke cruelly exposed when the youngster took part in one of the country’s most popular TV phone-ins.

The embarrassing disclosure was made on Amoo Pourang (Uncle Pourang), a programme watched by millions of Iranian children three times a week on state TV. It came when the unsuspecting presenter, Dariush Farziayi, asked the name of the toy animal his young caller had been given as a reward for good behaviour.

“Well, my father calls him Ahmadinejad,” the child replied.

Now the father’s discomfort has spread to the programme-makers after the state broadcaster, IRIB, responded by withdrawing it from viewing schedules.

The final episode will be screened next week after a successful seven-year run.

Har!