Source: The Independent >> Read full article and comment
By Helen William, PA

Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

David Conn

• Initiative aims to involve all school-age children in sports
• First of 3,000 planned clubs will open in the autumn

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Ben Bradshaw is to reveal plans for 3,000 new after-school sports clubs. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw, will tomorrow announce £6m funding for 3,000 after-school sports clubs intended to be open across the UK by spring next year. The aim of the clubs, which will be funded by Bradshaw’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department of Health and Sport England, will be to involve all school-age children in sports regardless of their innate athletic ability.

With £3.38m of the funding coming from the DCMS, the initiative is being linked to the 2012 Olympics, paying for equipment and coaching in the Olympic sports of badminton, fencing, handball, table tennis and volleyball, and wheelchair sports basketball and boccia (similar to bowls) played at the Paralympics.

The DoH is contributing £1.5m of the overall funding package and the clubs will be run under the “Change 4 Life” banner, the DoH’s educational campaign to encourage children and adults to eat more healthily and be more physically active. The programme’s other £1m has been allocated by Sport England, whose lottery funding is now targeted to sports governing bodies rather than to encouraging general participation in physical activity… Continue reading

Source: Reuters >> Read full articles and comment

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who had radiation to the abdomen in childhood to treat cancer may experience excessive bleeding after giving birth, new study findings suggest.

The study evaluated pregnancy and birth outcomes in 40 women who were 30 years old on average and had been treated when about 7 years old for cancers of the blood, kidney, bone, and other locations.

Twenty-eight of the women were pregnant with their first child, eight with their second, and the rest were on their third, fourth or fifth pregnancies.

In general, these women had outcomes similar to more than 9000 women who never had cancer, Dr. Sharon Lie Fong, at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and her colleagues found.

However, the six women previously treated with abdominal radiation appear to be the exception.

Although just two of the six bled severely after childbirth, percentage-wise this represents a higher rate (33 percent) of severe bleeding cases relative to that seen in the general population where just 5 percent bled after childbirth.

The researchers urge health care providers to be aware of this risk when treating women cancer survivors during pregnancy, particularly since this finding “has not been reported so far in childhood cancer survivors,” Lie Fong’s team notes in the journal Human Reproduction.

Notably, the women’s very young age at cancer treatment — about 7 years old on average — did not seem to prevent harmful effects of radiation to their small, pre-puberty uteruses… Continue reading

Source: Reuters >> Read full article and comment

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pregnant women with rheumatoid arthritis may have increased risks of high blood pressure, having an underweight baby or needing a cesarean section, a new study suggests.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) arises when the immune system mistakenly attacks tissue in the joints, leading to inflammation, pain and progressive joint damage. The disease is more common in women than men, and frequently develops during the childbearing years.

So far, studies have come to conflicting findings as to the potential effects of RA on pregnancy. Some, for example, have found that women with RA have higher risks of preterm delivery and having an underweight newborn, while others have found no such link.

For the new study, researchers used records from Taiwan’s national health system to compare 1,912 new mothers with RA with 9,560 new mothers without the disease.

They found that women with RA had a two-fold higher risk of pre-eclampsia — a potentially dangerous condition, marked by high blood pressure and protein in the urine, that develops in the second or third trimester… Continue reading

Source: Reuters >> Read full article and comment

By Karina Ioffee

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lara Lewis used to be a stressed-out single mother whose teaching job left her little time for her young daughter, but now she works from home, selling an estimated $120,000 a year worth of jewelry online.

The 37-year-old from State College, Pennsylvania, is one of an estimated 5.1 million stay-at-home U.S. mothers, many of whom juggle child-rearing and generating an income. A growing number are starting their own businesses.

The Small Business Administration says the number of self-employed women around the country jumped by 10 percent from 2000 to 2006, to 5.3 million.

For Lewis, an online marketplace called Etsy provided a place to sell her estate-style and faux vintage pieces. The website, www.etsy.com, lets craft makers set up their own virtual shops. It currently has more than 4.2 million users.

“It’s wonderful to be able to call my own shots,” Lewis said. “I can work at night, so if I want to do something with my family, I can.”

Launched in 2005, the Brooklyn, New York-based Etsy now has more than 400,000 sellers, most of whom are women, and posted more than $180 million in sales last year. Nearly 70 percent of sellers are college-educated.

“You have this generation of women who understand the value of staying at home to raise their children, but they also want to contribute to the household income and have a creative outlet,” said Megan Auman, a Pennsylvania-based designer who started Crafting an MBA,www.craftmba.com, a blog aimed at helping artisans market their products online. “It’s another path to financial security.”

… Continue Reading article >>   

Source:  BBC News >> Read full article and comment

The Taiwanese authorities are offering a cash prize for a new slogan to boost the island’s falling birth rate.

The interior ministry said that it wanted a creative slogan that would make people want to have babies.

It said the best submission would receive a prize of one million Taiwanese dollars ($31,250, £20,763).

Taiwan has already tried a number of measures to increase its birth rate, which is at a record low and still falling.

Last year, Taiwan’s birth-rate stood at 1.0 births per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

In 2009, the number of births fell by 3.7% from the previous year to 191,310.

“We are seeking a creative slogan that would appeal to the public and make everybody want to have children,” an interior ministry statement said.

Last month, the authorities announced plans to help finance fertility treatment for young couples struggling to get pregnant, in another effort to arrest the decline in births.

Taiwan is not the only country in the region trying to tackle this issue, amid fears that falling birth rates will cause social and economic problems… Continue Reading

Source: BBC News >> Read full article and comment

The number of UK children calling the national helpline Childline because they feel lonely has risen sharply.

From April 2008 to March 2009, 5,525 children called the helpline due to loneliness, sadness or isolation, compared to 1,853 five years earlier.

A further 4,399 children were counselled about loneliness as an additional problem, bringing the total to 9,924 - 6% of calls to the helpline.

Counsellors say changes within families and society could be behind the rise.

Analysis of calls by the NSPCC, which merged with Childline in 2006, found family relationship problems, school problems and bullying were the most common issues that came up alongside issues of loneliness.

The report said many of the children counselled in relation to loneliness lacked a network of social relationships or group of friends.

“This indicates that it may be the inability of children to relate to people around them that is the problem, rather than the absence of people,” it said.

The analysis found one in six loneliness calls were from a child aged 11 or younger.

And girls were more likely to call with issues of loneliness - 6,835 girls and 3,089 boys were counselled.

The report said while loneliness can be part of growing up, it could affect some children in a “debilitating and devastating” way… Continue reading

Source: Times >> Read full article and comment
March 15, 2010

It started, like so many things in my life, over a cocktail.

Last year, while in Chicago attending BlogHer for the Times, I started talking to Sian of mummytips.co.uk. For two days we’d been attending sessions at the biggest conference for female bloggers - learning about everything from finding our blogging tribe to writing about illness (not a dry eye in the house). It was invigorating, exciting and edifying and we realised we needed something like that. British mummy bloggers are at a slightly different stage. In general the UK has come later to blogging than the US but we’re also learning and incorporating the new tricks of the trade faster. (I’m always meeting new bloggers who not only blog but also Tweet, Stumbleupon and Facebook.)

Cue the entrance of Susanna, founder of British Mummy Bloggers (www.amodernmother.com), a handful of meetings in a hotel lobby and CyberMummy was born.

It’s a British conference devoted to mummy bloggers and the things you want to talk about: good writing, video blogging, getting paid. Plus there’s an end-of-day keynote featuring the best posts from attendees (you can nominate your own), biscuits, lunch and wine… Continue reading

Source: Telegraph >> Read full article and comment>

As many as 85 per cent of teachers have reported the use of CCTV in their schools and one-in-10 said cameras had even been placed in toilets. Photo: PA

Surveillance cameras are now installed in most UK schools, despite little warning given to parents or pupils, it was claimed.

As many as 85 per cent of teachers have reported the use of CCTV in their schools and one-in-10 said cameras had even been placed in toilets.

According to the study, some schools are also using other techniques such as fingerprinting, metal detectors, electronic identity cards, eye scanners and facial recognition systems.

Research funded by Salford University said that schools were increasingly becoming a “hotbed for surveillance practices” in the UK as children were subjected to checks for often mundane reasons such as borrowing a book from a library or paying for lunch.

But Dr Emmeline Taylor, the report’s author, also suggested many schools were collecting CCTV images illegally by failing to inform pupils and visitors that they were being monitored under the Data Protection Act.

She also said the effectiveness of CCTV remained “extremely dubious”.

“Surveillance has burgeoned in UK schools without too much concern or commotion,” she said

“Not only are UK pupils subjected to surveillance rivalling that in airports and prisons, but the law apparently protecting our civil liberties is so impotent that it offers nothing by way of protection.

“It is a common misconception that the processing of all personal data must take place on the basis of consent. The dearth of concrete legislation permits ever more invasive surveillance practices to be introduced in schools.” .. Continue reading