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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending over $100,000 studying disgust, hypothesizing that all bullying behavior begins with feelings of revulsion.Researchers at Columbia University want to see if they can “successfully regulate” disgust emotions in teens in order to stop bullying.“Whether it’s being the victim, being the perpetrator, or having to watch this upsetting cycle of peer rejection and victimization, few adolescents are unaffected by bullying’s harmful impact,” a grant for the project states. “This effect can last long past adolescence, as both being the bully and being the victim are linked to the development of both short- and...

A Google News search at 3 p.m. Eastern Time today for stories published in March about "Eva Carmichael" (in quotes; sorted by date) returned only 11 items. Who is Eva Carmichael? She is a 94 year-old woman who was murdered in Meridian, Mississippi on March 1. Based on the complete lack of press coverage outside of the immediate area, it's reasonable to believe that the nation's journalists don't think, in the popular parlance, that "her life mattered" all that much. And why is that? A March 6 Meridian Star story (HT to NewsBusters commenter "noncom") reported that "Four teenagers have...

Residents of Brattleboro, Vermont, will vote on a ballot item that would let 16- and 17-year-olds vote in local elections. Vermont’s current voting age is 18, and that wouldn’t change for state and federal elections. The proposal by Brattleboro resident Kurt Daims would move the minimum age two years younger for town elections. …

<p>A California Democrat has proposed a bill that would raise the state’s minimum smoking age from 18 to 21 in an effort to keep cigarettes out of the hands of teenagers.</p> <p>State Sen. Ed Hernandez introduced Senate Bill 151, which would make California the first state in the country to raise the minimum smoking age to 21. Similar proposals have previously failed in New Jersey, Utah, Colorado and Maryland.</p>

Hillary Clinton, expecting no major challenge for the Democratic nomination, is strongly considering delaying the formal launch of her presidential campaign until July, three months later than originally planned, top Democrats tell POLITICO. The delay from the original April target would give her more time to develop her message, policy and organization, without the chaos and spotlight of a public campaign. A Democrat familiar with Clinton’s thinking said: “She doesn’t feel under any pressure, and they see no primary challenge on the horizon. If you have the luxury of time, you take it.” Advisers said the biggest reason for the...

Rashana Jackman isn’t old enough to vote in an election, but she could soon have a vote on a city-appointed board that takes influential stands on neighborhood issues. At 17, the Brooklyn high school junior is considering applying to serve on her community board, under a new state law that lets 16- and 17-year-olds join the panels that function as front lines of local government in the nation’s biggest city. The advisory but oft-heeded groups opine on zoning changes and liquor license applications, consult on city budgeting for local projects and serve as conduits for community concerns. “It’s a great...

WASHINGTON - The languorous dog days of August were shattered this week by the tragic, shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in a little town in Missouri. Hundreds of youths are shot and killed each year in our country. More than 100 were gunned down in gangland or drive-by shootings in Chicago alone in just one year. But the death of Michael Brown, who just graduated from high school and hoped to pursue higher education, has seized the nation's attention like no other. The still-murky shooting episode by a Ferguson, Mo. police officer, which raised more questions than answers,...

Teens in the United States are only average when it comes to financial literacy; crushed by Chinese teenagers’ remarkable performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment’s (PISA) first-ever financial literacy assessment. pisa study chart PISA typically surveys an average of 65 countries and economies focusing on mathematics with additional reading, science and problem-solving areas of assessment. On July 9, 2014 PISA released the results of a new financial literacy assessment evaluating 15-year-olds from 18 countries and economies. Among those countries the United States ranked somewhere between 8 and 12; China, 1. But that’s not all, while the U.S. struggles...

Score another one for Chinese teenagers, who leave U.S. kids in their dust when it comes to knowing how to handle money. That's the latest anxiety-producing statistic (for American parents, anyway) to emerge out of a newly released international study of the financial habits of roughly 29,000 teens from countries as far flung as Australia, China, Colombia, France, Israel, Russia, Spain, and the U.S. The goal of this first-ever international study of financial literacy, conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, was to gauge the financial know-how of 15-year-olds worldwide. Many of the teenagers have reached or are...

There was a time not so long ago when the young seemed destined to be liberal forever. Americans in their teens and 20s were to the left of their elders on social issues. They worried more about poverty. They voted strongly Democratic.In retrospect, we refer to this period as the 1960s, and it didn’t last long, let alone forever. Less than a generation after young people were marching for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, they voted overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan.Today, of course, the young are liberal again, and it seems as if they will be forever. They favor...

The United States on Wednesday called on both Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to "show restraint" as Israel tightened their grip on Hamas hunting for three kidnapped teenagers, AFP reports. "We recognize this is an incredibly sensitive and difficult circumstance on the ground, and we feel all sides should exercise restraint," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. Israeli troops have pressed their biggest arrest operation in years, imposing a tight lockdown on huge swathes of Judea and Samaria in the hunt for the three boys kidnapped six days ago. So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for...

Most Americans love to reminisce about their first paying job, whether it was scooping ice cream, babysitting, or working behind a retail counter. It was rarely glamorous, but earning that first paycheck was a point of pride and marked a milestone in a teenager's life. By the time Andrew Sum entered his teenage years, he'd already held a job delivering newspapers. Now as an economist, one of his chief concerns is the state of the labor market for today's teenagers. The employment rates for teenagers, ages 16 to 19, plummeted from 45 percent in 2000 to just 26 percent in...

Two Detroit teenagers were arrested Saturday in an attack on a suburban man who was brutally beaten by a mob after accidentally striking a boy with his pickup truck. Steve Utash remained in critical condition Saturday. Utash is white; Detroit is more than 80 percent black.

Ho-hum, a mob of 200 teenagers rampages through the downtown of an American city, assaulting and hospitalizing people and robbing stores. The mayor calls for calm. And nobody outside that local media market, where it cannot be ignored, hears a thing about it. Now why would that be? Could it possibly be because surveillance video from a convenience store that was robbed shows all the miscreants were black? The Right Scoop brings us news of the insurrection which gripped Louisville over the weekend:

A New Jersey teenager claiming that her mother and father tossed her out of their home and cut her off financially is suing them for immediate support, current private-school fees and future college tuition. The parents, meanwhile, say that daughter Rachel Canning, 18, moved out voluntarily after refusing to abide by their rules. “We love our child and miss her. This is terrible. It’s killing me and my wife,” Rachel's father, Sean Canning, a town administrator and retired police officer, tells the Daily Record. “We have a child we want home. We’re not Draconian and now we’re getting hauled into...

**SNIP** Many of the teenagers surveyed said they were suffering from irritability or angriness (40 percent), nervousness or anxiety (36 percent) or depression and sadness (33 percent) because of their stress. Sturgill told USA Today she sometimes skips meals because of high levels of stress. “Our study this year gives us a window in looking at how early these patterns might begin," clinical psychologist Norman Anderson, the APA’s CEO told USA Today. "The patterns of stress we see in adults seem to be occurring as early as the adolescent years — stress-related behaviors such as lack of sleep, lack of...

Brazil's Teenage Flashmobs Are A Lot More Serious Than They Sound The Wire Brian Feldman, The Wire Jan. 20, 2014, 7:43 AM Over the past week, flashmobs have been occurring all over Brazil as a form of protest, drawing thousands of participants and sometimes turning violent. The rolezhinos—"gatherings of predominantly poor, black youths who party in malls usually occupied by mostly wealthy, white consumers"—have been so effective in garnering attention that even the country's president is paying attention. The protests, according to The New York Times, "involve large numbers of dark-skinned teenagers" and cast an eye on public space in...

At a time when sexually transmitted diseases are infecting millions of teenagers it has been reported that doctors don’t bother asking them about their sex life. If a doctor does not bring it up during a physical examination neither does the teenager.

I was asked by the Young Adult group in my parish to address some ads on our local buses and subway trains here in Washington. The members of the Young adult group found the ads offensive and troubling, especially since they were aimed at kids. The ads are posted by the American “Humanist” Association (AHA) and are indeed aimed at kids and teenagers. The focus of the message is “Kids without God: You’re not the only one.” I have altered the ad at the upper right of this post to avoid listing its website but as you can see God...

Five teenagers were arrested when a 600-person brawl broke out in a Florida movie theater's parking lot on Christmas night. Described by police as a "melee," the fight occurred around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday outside the Hollywood River City 14 movie theater in Jacksonville when a group tried to storm the theater's doors without purchasing tickets, police said. Several had rushed an off-duty police officer working as a security guard. The officer "administered pepper spray to disperse the group, locked the doors and called for backup, following protocol," said Lauri-Ellen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Soon after...