Chatterbox

California Universities Next on Budget Cut Hit List

vmartir — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:15:04 -0600

After days of protests and the arrests of dozens of angry students, on Thursday the University of California Board of Regents voted to increase tuition fees by 32% next fall.

The university will cost about three times as much as it did a decade ago, making the UC schools among the nation’s higher-priced public universities.

Uproar Over New Guidelines for Mammograms

vmartir — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:01:51 -0600

After being told the opposite for decades, this week women were told less mammograms are better and breast self exams are useless. But not everyone agrees and some breast cancer survivors are lashing out at the new recommendations.

The new guidelines come from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent group of experts convened by the Department of Health and Human Services. The task force reviewed evidence it considers solid and found that:

Shelter Animals Go to Research

vmartir — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:44:01 -0600

Lots of people think that shelter animals that aren’t adopted are euthanized or if they’re in a no-kill shelter, they remain their for their rest of their lives. News is this may not always be true.

Five U.S. states require shelters to send un-adopted animals to research facilities. So if those homeless kitties or doggies aren’t adopted in Minnesota, Oklahoma and Utah, they’re sent to research facilities where they’re often subjected to all sorts of tests. In Iowa and Ohio, un-adopted animals are shipped off only if a research facility makes a request.

Gender-test runner keeps gold

vmartir — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:52:09 -0600

Remember the South African runner, Caster Semenya, whose muscular build fueled questions about her gender? Well, she’s being allowed to keep the gold medal she won in the women's 800-meters at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin in August.

The eighteen-year-old has also been found innocent of any wrongdoing, but the widely anticipated results of gender tests conducted would not be made public.

Global Entrepeneurship Week: We got the inside scoop!

vmartir — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:05:36 -0600

Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 16 to 20, is an initiative to inspire young people around the world to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity.

For one week, millions of young people around the world join a growing movement of entrepreneurial people, to generate new ideas and to seek better ways of doing things.

DoSomething.org had the opportunity to interview, Thom Ruhe, Director or Entrepeneurship about the initiative.

Great American Smoke-out: Kick the butts!

vmartir — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:20:34 -0600

Quitting smoking is no easy feat, but it can be done. And that’s what Great American Smoke-out is all about. The hope is to help smokers quit cigarettes for at least one day, in hopes they will quit forever.

STDs continue to spread

vmartir — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:01:29 -0600

U.S. researchers reported this week that the reluctance to talk about sex and protection has led to an increase in STD infections, especially among vulnerable teens.

Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis infections continue to spread in the United States, according to the latest statistics.

John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the U.S. has among the highest rates of STDs of any developed country in the world.

Hunger in the U.S. hits record high

jsteers — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:55:45 -0600

This winter, more Americans than ever are expected to go hungry, based on a recent trend reported by the US Department of Agriculture.

This year, the amount of families struggling to put food on the table soared to an all time high since the Department of Agriculture began monitoring food insecurity 14 years ago.

13 million more Americans joined the ranks of people classified as food insecure; a number even larger than the most grim projections of increasing hunger in the country during the current economic recession.

Hate crime hits Puerto Rico

vmartir — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:20:47 -0600

Over the weekend the brutalized body of gay teen George Steven Lopez Mercado was found by the side of a road in Puerto Rico.

The 19-year-old who was a well known figure of the gay community in Puerto Rico, was found on an isolated road in the city of Cayey, a mountain town in the central portion of the island.

National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week

vmartir — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:49:57 -0600

The week of November 15th is National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week. Organizations across the country have scheduled events across the country to bring greater understanding of the challenges that homeless individuals, families and children face daily.

How bad is the homelessness problem in the United States?