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LAREDO, Tex. — When he was finally caught, Rosalio Reta told detectives here that he had felt a thrill each time he killed. It was like being Superman or James Bond, he said. “I like what I do,” he told the police in a videotaped confession. “I don’t deny it.” ... The young men all paid a heavy price. Jesus Gonzalez III was beaten and knifed to death in a Mexican jail at 23. Mr. Reta, now 19, and his boyhood friend, Gabriel Cardona, 22, are serving what amounts to life sentences in prisons in the United States. Other young...

A teenager who claimed 56 stars were tattooed on her face while she slept has admitted she lied and was awake the whole time. London's Daily Telegraph reported Kimberley Vlaminck, who said she fell asleep after asking for only three stars, lied because her father was "furious."

CHICAGO (CBS) ― "At Myra Bradwell Elementary School, 44 out of 77 students did not pass the eighth grade. A startling number of children are falling through the cracks at one Chicago Public School. More than half of the kids didn't even pass the eighth grade. As CBS 2's Jim Williams reports there is fierce debate about who's to blame. It is a debate that has gone on for years in poor communities: do you blame the schools for the students' poor performance or do you blame their parents?"......

MIAMI (AP) -- A teenager was arrested early Sunday and accused of committing a string of gruesome cat mutilation deaths that had horrified residents of his Miami area community, authorities said. .... Some of the dead cats were missing fur and appeared to have been cut with a sharp, straight instrument, police said. .... Tyler Weinman, 18, was taken into custody early Sunday at a party, police said. Weinman was charged with 19 counts of animal cruelty, 19 counts of improperly disposing of an animal body and four counts of burglary.

Family advocates are outraged by a prom held at Boston City Hall that was open to children apparently as young as 12 featuring crossdressers, homosexual heavy petting, suspected drug use and a leather-clad doorman who teaches sexual bondage classes. Children from middle schools and high schools across Massachusetts on May 9 attended a Youth Pride Day event ending with a prom inside of Boston City Hall sponsored by the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Youth, or BAGLY, a group seated on the Massachusetts Commission for GLBT Youth. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino issued a proclamation welcoming homosexual and...

Indianapolis, IN (LifeNews.com) -- A pro-life group has launched a new social networking web site for teenagers and young adults called Teens for Life. The outreach of Indiana Right to Life is adding the web site to its already-popular quarterly pro-life publication for teens and its concert series that has reached thousands.The new Teens for Life web site, teensforlife.com, bills itself as the world's first social networking site dedicated to raising up a new generation of pro-life teens.The site features an in-depth networking experience for teens that allows them to discuss core issues, exchange ideas, share multimedia, and just...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- A state scientist says a bull shark caught and killed by two teenagers was pregnant with multiple pups. The killing of the 9-foot shark off The St. Petersburg Pier has spurred controversy in the community about hunting declining species for sport. Brent Winner, an associate research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission who performed the necropsy on the shark, said sharks usually birth litters of up to 12 pups. Nineteen-year-old Joshua Lipert and 16-year-old Robert Korkoske displayed the shark in the back of their pickup truck on Wednesday after they spent two hours catching...

Seven months after voters passed Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, the state supreme court ruled on May 26 that the ban is legal. The decision also maintained that the 18,000 same-sex couples who married before the election are still legally married. The decision is expected to be appealed in federal courts. Same-sex couples can legally marry in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and Maine. The decision to uphold the ban on the gay marriage was disappointing, but not unexpected. Since March 5 when the hearings began, the word had been that the odds were not in our favor....

A Saugus High School senior is being held on $7,500 bail today after prosecutors allege he drank 10 beers prom night then crashed his car the next morning killing a 67-year-old woman and injuring her daughter. Jonathan Caruso, 18, pleaded innocent in Lynn District Court today to charges relating to Saturday morning’s tragic crash. Prosecutor Christina Ronan said police arrived to a horrific scene: “Officers could also hear and see a woman crying in pain,” she said. Caruso is charged with motor vehicle homicide by reckless operation, drunken driving and a minor transporting alcohol. The prosecutor requested $20,000 bail, but...

Authorities said a 15-year-old boy playing "cops and robbers" with a toy gun was shot and wounded by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who mistook it for the real thing.

A student at a fundamentalist Baptist school that forbids dancing, rock music, hand-holding and kissing will be suspended if he takes his girlfriend to her public high school prom, his principal said. Despite the warning, 17-year-old Tyler Frost, who has never been to a dance before, said he plans to attend Findlay High School's prom Saturday. Frost, a senior at Heritage Christian School in northwest Ohio, agreed to the school's rules when he signed a statement of cooperation at the beginning of the year, principal Tim England said.

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- The Rev. Michael Pfleger has ordered the American flag at St. Sabina Church hung upside-down -- a historic sign of distress -- to symbolize the growing death toll among the city's youngsters. So far this school year, 36 children and teens have been murdered -- more than one a week -- and Pfleger is among a chorus of weary Chicagoans who say the slayings aren't getting the attention they deserve. Had 36 kids died of swine flu this year, "there would be this great influx of resources that say, 'Let's stop this, lets deal with this,'...

Mayor Bloomberg announced in a news conference Sunday morning that the Centers for Disease Control confirmed cases of swine flu in a Queens school. The mayor said St. Francis Preparatory School will be closed on Monday, and asked students, faculty and staff at the school who are feeling flu-like symptoms to stay home for at least 48 hours. Those who are sick are also advised to cover their mouths, wash their hands regularly, and limit their contact with other people in order to limit spreading the illness. Bloomberg also said health officials are looking for cases of swine flu outbreak...

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — By all appearances, it’s your average rock concert at IZOD Center in New Jersey: a basketball arena packed with teenage girls screeching for their heartthrobs, guys head-bobbing to a series of loud bands, greasy fast food around every corner and vendors hawking all kinds of souvenirs. Look closely and you'll see that the kids here are of a different breed. They're wearing t-shirts that read "Work Hard, Pray Hard," and "Faith Rocks." There's also no alcohol — nobody has even tried to sneak any in. This is the Greater New York Battle Cry. These people are...

Ten years ago, Paul Lombardo was teaching at Eastlake Middle School. Like any other teacher, student or administrator who walked into a school on April 20, 1999, Lombardo had no idea that the day's events would forever change how safety was viewed at public schools across the country. That day two students walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., and proceeded to shoot and kill 12 of their classmates and one teacher before killing themselves. "Ten years ago, or even throughout my whole life, if you had told me that was going to happen in my lifetime or that...

LANGLEY PARK, Md. — Class at the youth center had just let out, and a gaggle of teenagers moved toward the door, turning saggy pants and ring tones thrumming with reggaetón hits into adolescent statements of Latino cool. Some had rap sheets, and some had babies. Some had gang tattoos. Most had immigrant parents with menial jobs who survived on sweat and worry. They were children of the Washington suburbs, but the poverty and violence around them rivaled that of urban cores. Jesselyn Bercian paused to rub the belly of a pregnant staff member. “I’m not very happy with my...

Lawmakers there are considering a bill that would make it legal for teenagers 18 and under to exchange explicit photos and videos of themselves – an act that's come to be known by teens as "sexting." Under the current law, teenagers could be prosecuted as sex offenders if they get caught sending graphic sexual images of themselves, even if it was consensual. A state House committee will hear more testimony on it later this week. Do You Think Sexting Should Be Legal For Teens? Leave Your Comments Here!In a recent study, 18 percent of female students nationwide say they've tried...

"Vermont's state legislature is considering a bill that would exclude teenagers engaging in "sexting" from being tried under child pornography laws. Across the country, teens are being charged for allegedly sending suggestive photos of minors via cell phone."

MONTPELIER, Vt. — The Vermont Legislature is considering a bill that would legalize so-called "sexting" between teenagers.

By O’Ryan Johnson | Friday, April 10, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage An 11-year-old Springfield boy, traumatized by school bullies, tied one end of an electrical cord to a support beam and cinched the other around his throat, hanging himself inside a stairwell of his family’s home, police and relatives said. Carl Walker-Hoover left a note for his family in which he apologized, told his mother he loved her and left his video games to his brother, police said. “It’s heart-wrenching,” Springfield police Sgt. John Delaney told the Herald. “It’s not uncommon for a police officer to find a...

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2009 – Students participating in the U.S. Senate Youth Program recently toured government buildings including the Pentagon, met their elected representatives and learned about the foundations of democracy. Air Force Capt. Ladonna Singleton, a communications officer with the 254th Combat Communications Group in Garland, Texas, was the only Air National Guard member who participated as a mentor in the 2009 U.S. Senate Youth Program. The week-long program brought young people together from across the country to learn about the political process. Photo courtesy of Erin Lubin  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. They also became personally...

DALLAS -- This city is considering joining a rising number of others across the country that are imposing criminal penalties on kids who skip school to hang out at the mall or on local street corners. Such juvenile daytime curfews to combat truancy and crime are drawing protests from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and from the parents of homeschooled children who, along with some parents of public-school students, object on grounds that such laws in effect criminalize otherwise law-abiding kids who may have good reasons for not being in school. Daytime-curfew laws have long been popular...

(CNSNews.com) – A federal court in New York on Monday expanded teenagers’ access to Plan B – also known as the morning-after pill or emergency contraception. The court gave the Food and Drug Administration 30 days to make Plan B available over the counter to 17 year olds. Right now, the pill is available over the county only to those 18 years and up. Pro-life groups are dismayed that 17-year-old girls will now have unrestricted access to a drug that can produce abortion by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. But abortion rights groups celebrated the ruling,...

A federal judge on Monday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the Plan B morning-after birth control pill available without prescription to women as young as 17. The judge ruled the agency had improperly bowed to political pressure from the Bush Administration when it set 18 as the age limit in 2006. The F.D.A. has 30 days to comply with the order, in which the judge also urged the agency to consider removing all restrictions on over-the-counter sales of Plan B. The drug consists of two pills that prevent conception if taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse....

WEDNESDAY, March 4 (HealthDay News) -- Many teens today, especially black teens, aren't getting enough of vitamin D, the so-called sunshine vitamin that is essential for cells to function, say researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to many chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, immune system problems and inflammatory diseases. "There is evidence that the levels of vitamin D we have been using in the past may have been too low," said lead researcher Dr. Sandy Saintonge, a fellow in general preventive medicine at Weill Cornell. Vitamin D is measured...

Text-messaging teen driver causes accident with bus, East Grand Rapids police say by The Grand Rapids Press Thursday March 05, 2009, 10:21 AM EAST GRAND RAPIDS -- A 19-year-old East Grand Rapids woman was text-messaging before her car sideswiped a Rapid GO! Bus this morning on Breton Road SE near Englewood Drive, causing a large fuel spill and minor injuries to the bus driver, police said. The woman was ticketed for being the at-fault driver, although the exact citation was not immediately known. The two vehicles were going in opposite directions on Breton Road when they collided just before 6...

DANBURY -- An 18-year-old city resident is in a Massachusetts jail after state police said they found an arsenal in his truck.

Counselor suspended after teens hear Christian music Accused of 'exposing children to unapproved religious activities' A Southern California counselor with nearly two decades of experience with foster children is challenging a decision that she be punished after four teens she took on an approved day-long outing encountered a beach festival – and heard Christian music. The 18-year employee, according to the lawsuit, took four teen girls from the Orangewood Children's Home, which was launched as a private facility but now is owned and run by Orange County. "What happened to this counselor was insane and unjust," said Brad Dacus, president...

(CNN) -- In her first interview since giving birth, the teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said having a child is not "glamorous," and that telling young people to be abstinent is "not realistic at all." Bristol Palin says "everyone should just wait 10 years" to have a baby, rather than when you're young. Bristol Palin says "everyone should just wait 10 years" to have a baby, rather than when you're young. "It's just, like, I'm not living for myself anymore. It's, like, for another person, so it's different," Bristol Palin told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. "And just...

Last night, quite late in the evening, and on the show, the girl who has pledged to sell her virginity for the highest bid, convinced her to not "give it up" if a higher bid - individual or cumulative comes in to top the present $3.7 million offer that has been registered. Having done MANY interviews declining similar offers, Natalie Dylan (not her real name) has agreed to remain a virgin, and give ALL of the proceeds (that she had previously agreed to use towards graduate school) instead--to stopping the horrific practice of child sex trafficking.

Tests carried out in 1980 and again in 2008 show that the IQ score of an average 14-year-old dropped by more than two points over the period. Among those in the upper half of the intelligence scale, a group that is typically dominated by children from middle class families, performance was even worse, with an average IQ score six points below what it was 28 years ago. The trend marks an abrupt reversal of the so-called "Flynn effect" which has seen IQ scores rise year on year, among all age groups, in most industrialised countries throughout the past century.

LONDON, January 29, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A quarter of UK secondary school teachers have been asked for advice by students on how to obtain an abortion, a recent study has found. 24 percent of secondary school teachers said they had been asked for advice on abortion. 67 percent of those polled said they think information about abortion should be included in the national curriculum on sex education.  The Teachers TV poll of more than 800 teachers and others working in education found that although there was general support for providing students with abortion information, 82 percent believe that discussing...

The news reports seem to vary from day to day. Either condom-based sex education works, or it doesn't. Either abstinence should be the focus, or it shouldn't.But, according to government-supported research at the Heritage Foundation, one thing is clear: Teens who abstain from sex share some characteristics.The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health identified eight personality and behavioral traits that were associated with both abstinence and academic achievement:• Future orientation, with a focus on long-term goals. • Willingness to postpone current pleasures for larger future rewards. • Perseverance, as in the ability to stick to a task or commitment. • A belief that...

Teenaged births up of the first time in 14 years. The highest rate of of out-of-wedlock births ever recorded. Lots of older moms. See link for interesting stats: like, August is the month most babies are born.

Anthony De La Rosa's public MySpace profile might cause employers or college admissions officers to flinch: The 18-year-old listed "weed" among his interests and posted a photo of himself labeled "joint," in which he looks almost ready to smoke one. Still, the Milwaukee resident doesn't regret broadcasting his behavior online. De La Rosa said, "I do not care what anybody thinks about me." Or who sees his page. But a new study co-led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher suggests not all MySpace users realize how public their so-called private lives are - and many made changes when warned about...

You had to look hard amid the four-foot floral sculptures and the Vera Wang originals to see signs of the economy’s collapse at the International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria on Monday night. There was the daughter of the Duchesse de Magenta, Pélagie de Mac Mahon, a willowy 18-year-old with chestnut hair who is a great-great-granddaughter of a 19th-century French president. And there were the two sisters from Hong Kong, daughters of a heart surgeon and a jewelry designer, who stayed not two nights but two weeks at the Waldorf, passing the days on the lookout for designer dresses. Champagne...

The U.S. government spends more than $200 million annually on abstinence-promotion programs, including virginity pledges.The latter approach does not work too well.A new study of a federal survey taken in the 1990s finds that teens who took virginity pledges are just as likely as other teens to have sex before marriage. Importantly, when the pledgers broke their vows they were less likely to use birth control, including condoms.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 31, 2008) — University of Utah researchers have developed an automobile ignition key that prevents teenagers from talking on cell phones or sending text messages while driving.

Why chastity pledges by U.S. teenagers don't always ring true Teenagers who vow to remain virgins until they marry are just as likely to have pre-marital sex as other young people, a study has found. But they are less likely to use birth control when they do sleep with a partner. The idea of abstaining from sex until marriage has gained wider popularity in the U.S. in the last decade. The Jonas Brothers, a three-piece boy band, are among those vowing to wait until they are married.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Dec. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- While today's teens are learning the Three "Rs" of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic in school, new research shows that many are justifying violence to practice a fourth -- Revenge. In a youth culture where violence is often believed to be acceptable, these and other findings not only present disturbing implications for school safety, but for the workplace as well, say experts. A new poll of 750 teens from Junior Achievement and Deloitte and conducted by Opinion Research shows that more than one-in-four teens (27 percent) think behaving violently is sometimes, often or always...

The high school in Salem, N.H., was abuzz last month as a photograph of a topless 15-year-old girl was sent from cellphone to cellphone. School staff intervened, and by the time they met with students in assemblies the next day they had discovered another compromising cellphone photo, this one of an eighth-grade girl. They soon found two more photos of naked or nearly naked girls on students' phones. Two weeks later, a similar incident occurred at nearby Sanborn Regional High School. The photograph in question was of a teenage boy. A report being released today shows that these were not...

Canton (AP) - Canton's school board is being asked to end the policy of allowing police dogs to sniff student lockers and school parking lots for drugs. The American Civil Liberties Union asks for the end to the practice in a letter sent to Superintendent Kevin Case. Drug searches have been a focus of controversy in Canton since a random sweep at middle and high schools in June put classrooms in lockdown and resulted in the arrest of one student. False alerts have led to more than 15 students being pulled out of class to watch police officers search their...

Chicago - Radiologists say they have found a safe and precise method for dealing with what appears to be a growing problem among troubled teens: inserting objects such as pins and paperclips under the skin. Self-embedding disorder is part of a disturbing trend among adolescents - usually girls - who deliberately injure themselves without suicidal intent. "This is not a local phenomenon," said William Shiels II, a radiologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and lead author of a paper on the disorder. Since the disorder was identified two months ago, at least six other hospitals have reported similar...

OMAHA, Nebraska (CNN) -- Nebraska officials said they're concerned about an apparent rush by parents to drop their teenage children off at hospitals before lawmakers change the state's troubled "safe haven" law.

Today's American high school students are far likelier than those in the 1970s to believe they'll make outstanding spouses, parents and workers, new research shows. They're also much more likely to claim they are "A" students with high IQs -- even though other research shows that today's students do less homework than their counterparts did in the 1970s. The findings, published in the November issue of Psychological Science, support the idea that the "self-esteem" movement popular among today's parents and teachers may have gone too far, the study's co-author said. "What this shows is that confidence has crossed over into...

WASHINGTON -- Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children's advocacy group. More than half the states have graduation goals that don't make schools get better, the Education Trust says in a report released Thursday. And dropout rates haven't budged: One in four kids is dropping out of high school. "The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," said Anna Habash, author of the report by Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of minority and...

Nebraska lawmakers are wrestling to remedy unintended consequences of the state's safe-haven law, which was designed to let troubled mothers relinquish babies but instead has spawned a rash of abandoned teenagers. The legislature is considering adding an age limit to the law, which was modeled after other states' safe-haven statutes but is the only one that allows minors of any age. Associated Press Todd Landry, director of Nebraska's Division of Children and Family Services, said all the safe-haven charges "have come into our system, in our opinion, unnecessarily," because they weren't in immediate danger of being harmed. No newborns have...

Never has the selection of a homecoming queen sent so many tears falling so freely. Kristin Pass, an 18-year-old senior with Down syndrome, became Aledo High School's homecoming queen Friday to a joyous standing ovation and the flutter of a thousand tissues on a remarkable night for an amazing young woman. Her grandfather, Dr. David Campbell of Corsicana, escorted her onto the field and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as Kristin joined eight other young women in the Homecoming Court to await the results of the vote, cast by the 360-plus members of Aledo High's senior class.

The statistics on teen sexuality in the United States are troubling. About 7 percent of high school stu­dents report having had sex before the age of 13. By ninth grade, one-third of high school students have engaged in sexual activity, and by 12th grade, two-thirds.[1]  Yet the majority of these teens, 60 percent overall and 67 percent among younger adolescents, regret their first experience and wish they had waited longer.[2] Teen Sexual Activity and OutcomesEarly sexual activity is associated with a host of negative outcomes that can have lasting physical, emotional, social, and economic impacts on the lives of young...

SEPTEMBER 12--A quartet of boys attending a high school football camp were assaulted last month by broomstick-wielding teammates in a violent hazing ritual that could lead to charges against the assailants and the New Mexico squad's coaches. According to police interviews, the attacks were targeted against freshman and sophomore members of the Robertson High School team, which spent four days last month at a pre-season camp in San Miguel County. During the attacks, each of the younger athletes was pinned to the floor of a cabin and had a broomstick jammed over their shorts into their anus, according to reports...