education

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Mexican Lawmakers Ban Junk Food in Schools, Require Physical Education
MEXICO CITY – The lower house of Congress approved two reform measures banning the sale of junk food in schools and making physical education classes mandatory in Mexico, where 30 percent of children are obese.

A majority of lawmakers voted during a regular session Tuesday to approve the changes, acknowledging that childhood obesity tripled in Mexico in the past 20 years and federal and state officials must take action to deal with the situation.

Schools will be required to provide 30 minutes of physical education time every day to help students lose weight.

Some 70 percent of adults in Mexico, according to official figures, are overweight, while 70 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 11, or some 4.5 million minors, are overweight. Some 40 percent of Mexicans, according to the 2006 National Health Survey, are obese.

The percentage of Mexico’s population classified as overweight or obese has tripled since 1980. “Childhood obesity has become a social problem and a serious health problem,” lawmakers said.  read more »

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Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, “bobby” & Ted Kennedy, was appointed by President Roosevelt in 1934 to be the 1st chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission. By 1935 Kennedy had helped to restore the economy. He said, “An organized functioning society requires a planned economy. The more complex the society the greater the demand for planning”, prudence, and responsible regulation. “Planned action is imperative, or else capitalism and the American scheme of life will be in serious jeopardy.” Bobby described his father’s mentality, “We were to try harder than anyone else, we might not be the best, and none of us were, but we were to make the effort to be the best.” Kennedy family, through strict and loving disciplines, has become legendary.

The Kennedy Patriarchs  read more »

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When Einstein was born, his mother worried that his head was too large and his grandmother exclaimed that he was "much too fat." A few years later, when Einstein was four or five, he had his first scientific experience: his father showed him a pocket compass and the young boy marveled at the fact that regardless of where the compass was turned, the needle always pointed north. The needle's invariable northward swing, guided by an invisible force, profoundly impressed the child. The compass convinced him that there had to be "something behind things, something deeply hidden."

Einstein's formal education began at age six, when he enrolled in the Petersschule on Blumen- strasse, a Catholic elementary school in Munich. Since his parents were not practicing Jews, they cared more about the school's academic standards than its religious affiliation. Einstein did well in school, but he was a quiet child and kept his distance from his peers. He was uncomfortable with the principle of absolute obedience and the military drills that dominated the school's atmosphere.  read more »

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MIT's Solar Electric Vehicle Team, the oldest such student team in the country, has just finished construction of its latest high-tech car and unveiled it to the public this Friday. "It drives beautifully," said George Hansel, a freshman physics major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the team. "It's fun to drive and quite a spectacle." With six square meters of monocrystalline silicon solar cells and improved electronic systems and design, the car can run all day on a sunny day at a steady cruising speed of 55 mph. The car will be competing in October in the World Solar Challenge race across Australia, and in preparation for that the team plans to drive the car across the United States over the summer. About a dozen team members are expected to go to Australia for the race, although only four will drive the solar car in the competition.

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Sometimes the most interesting movie for children isn’t necessarily a children’s movie. That seeming contradiction lies at the heart of the New York International Children’s Film Festival, which this Friday begins three weekends of screenings, filmmaker visits and voting, culminating in a juvenile version of the Oscars: a prize ceremony and reception on March 15. While the festival’s 100 films from 30 countries offer plenty of animation and fantasy, they also delve into real-world conflicts that affect children’s lives. “With a great many of these films, the filmmaker would say, ‘That’s not a kids’ movie,’ ” Eric Beckman, who founded the festival in 1997 with his wife, Emily Shapiro, said in an interview.

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BELÉM, Brazil, Jan 27 (IPS) - A human banner made up of more than 1,000 people, seen and photographed from the air, sent the message "SOS Amazon" to the world, in the first action taken by indigenous people hours before the opening in northern Brazil on Tuesday of the 2009 World Social Forum (WSF).

The mass message reflects "our concern about global warming, whose impact we will be the first to feel, although we, the peoples of the Amazon, have protected and cared for the forests," Francisco Avelino Batista, an Apurinán Indian from the Purus river valley in the Brazilian Amazon, told IPS.

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