Parents: How to Promote a Positive Body Image | Healthy Eating For ...

By: Kids Eat Right

Body image is how we feel about our bodies. Whatever their size or weight, children can develop either a positive or negative view of their bodies. Body image disturbances begin as early as preschool, so parents and other adult role models need to play a pivotal role in promoting a positive body image for children.

Why? Young people with a positive image of themselves feel more comfortable and confident in their ability to succeed. They don?t obsess about calories, food or weight. They have the energy they need to enjoy physical activity.

On the other hand, kids with a negative body image feel more self-conscious, anxious and isolated. They are at greater risk for excessive weight gain and for eating disorders.

You can help prevent these problems. Here are four ways you can give your child the gift of positive body image:

Check Out Your Own Body Image Issues

Parental body image has a powerful influence on how kids feel about their bodies. If you talk about your thighs, your latest diet or your punishing workouts, your children will naturally absorb these negative messages. They will begin to worry about the size of their thighs and think they should be dieting.

Focus on Health Rather Than Weight

For your kid?s sake (and your own sanity), shift your focus from weight to health. Stop obsessing about numbers on the scale and concentrate on delicious nutrition and fun physical activity. Children don?t need to work out; they need to play with family and friends. Children shouldn?t be counting calories or restricting their intake; they need to enjoy regular meals and learn how to make smart, tasty snack choices.

Nutrition and fitness are great goals because they give us energy to do all things that we want to do. Whatever our age or size, we feel better when we take care of our bodies.

Find Physical Activities That Fit

Feeling fit, strong and capable is one aspect of positive body image. All children need regular physical activities that they like. Some kids are natural athletes and enjoy all sports they try. Other kids do better at individual activities, like walking or riding a bike. Some may find their niche in yoga, karate or a hip-hop dance class. It doesn?t matter what kids do for physical fitness; it just matters that they do something.

Watch Out for Bullies

Weight-related teasing is a major basis for bullying. Encourage your school to address the issue and to support nutrition and physical education that promotes health at every size. If you believe your child is being bullied about his or her weight or for any other reason, discuss your concerns directly with the school counselor or administrator.

Bust the Myth of the Perfect Body

Help your child become a savvy media critic by talking with your kids about what they see on television, in magazines and online. Help them understand that the pictures of models they see in ads may have been retouched or otherwise manipulated to appear ?perfect.?

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Walton Family Foundation Invests $21.5 Million In Arkansas Home ...

The Walton Family Foundation announced it invested nearly $21.5 million in initiatives within the foundation?s home region of Arkansas in 2011.

Grants went to programs in northwest Arkansas, throughout the state of Arkansas, and in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta region. These investments were part of more than $500 million in grant making by the foundation in 2011, according to a foundation press release.

?The home region will always have significant meaning to the Walton family and the foundation,? said Rob Brothers, Director of the Walton Family Foundation Home Region Focus Area. ?Our motivation to support programs and projects that build better communities stems from a history of thoughtful giving that continues to be driven by the philanthropic desires of the Walton family.?

The foundation invested in three home region initiatives, seeking to create cultural, educational and economic opportunities. They include:

Arkansas Education Reform ? $8,269,055
The foundation, which has been a long-time supporter of education reform initiatives on a national level, continues to invest in education reform in the state of Arkansas. Programs funded work to improve accountability, transparency, choice and incentives in the state?s schools.

Northwest Arkansas ? $7,849,127
Strong historical significance and family ties influence the foundation?s commitment to enhance the quality of life for residents in Benton and Washington counties of northwest Arkansas. Grants in 2011 supported community, economic and educational initiatives aimed at making the area an even better place to work and raise a family.

Delta Region of Arkansas and Mississippi ? $5,366,917
The foundation has supported the Delta region of Arkansas and Mississippi for more than 20 years. Giving in this region continues to primarily support economic development and community-based strategies that help sustain progress and enhance educational opportunities for children and adults.

For a full list of 2011 home region grantees, click here.

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RUSH Power Windows music review by AtomicCrimsonRush

Overpowering 80s synths create an underwhelming experience.

After 10 glorious studio albums, 5 of which were revered as masterpieces, Rush produce this and the 80s swallow them whole and they spit out an album that really is not great. I love Rush but have to take stock when they produce this type of non-prog radio friendly matter. There is too much mediocrity and forgettable material on this album that mars an otherwise great experience.

Well, I guess I better focus on the highlights. It certainly begins well with the great rocking 'The Big Money' which has a fantastic melody and there is Lee slappin' de bass. Lifeson is terrific on lead guitar and Peart keeps a consistent tempo that drives it along. The presence of synths is overpowering but it works well enough. The production on the album is treble turned to the max and sounds a bit gutless in the bass department. It is 80s to the max and as a result thins out the heaviness replacing it with crystalline clean textures which is not a good thing for Rush. A bit of dirty guitar would not have harmed the sound but all is restrained and Lee hardly troubles his distortion pedal.

'Marathon' is a wonderful song with an exceptional melody and I love this most of all I think on this album. the lead break is killer and if only they would stick to this formula. I mean we all love hearing Lifeson blaze away on his guitar, don't we? The synths are dominant but here it works beautifully. The chorus is one of the all time great Rush melodies. It has a majestic sound and I can never tire of that uplifting tune. Thank heavens for songs like these which save this album from a very low rating.

'Territories' is another one I have rarely heard but it has a cool drum beat and ethereal synths. It sounds unique on the album, as the music is played differently using subtle variations of instrumental style. Lee sounds very good on vocals. Lifeson's guitars are pitchier and he plays more aggressively especially on the riff leading to the second section. The melody is well executed and overall I really like the song, though is not well known.

Now for the songs that are not so good, and there are too many of them for my comfort. 'Grand Designs' is downright filler material, dull and drenched in synthesizers. There are loud chimes of guitar and it all seems so happy and upbeat and as a result annoying. The Partridge Family were never this happy. 'Manhattan Project' is a forgettable song but at least it rocks, the treble is so thin it hurts my ears though. Man, where is the bass sound, guys? Lee's vocals are overdone and really I would rarely return to this mediocrity.

Rush's overuse of synthesizers on songs like 'Middletown Dreams' and 'Emotion Detector' have not dated well though I am sure in the 80s it blew everyone's socks off. No? Oh well. 'Middletown Dreams' is so crystal clean, sudsy and streamlined you can clean the bathtub with it. The sound screams 80s and the synths are just overpowering throughout. It is little wonder why they don't bother to play this song live anymore, they would clear the building. In all fairness Rush are a product of their time back in the 80s and it is easy to criticise but I only wish they had taken it easy on the radio friendly synth pop. Heck, even Ultravox were darker and heavier than this.

'Emotion Detector' continues in the same vein, synths to the wall and crystal clean pitchiness to blow your ear muffs off. The jangly guitar is relentless but at least the synths are not so demanding. The sound is crisp and happy but at this point I could have done with a distorted blast or a blistering riff, and none are forthcoming; the band are not interested, as they are now sons of the 80s and damn the critics and die hard fans.

'Mystic Rhythms' saves the day with a great closer, not to the standard of the opening tracks but still very good. The electronic percussion makes me take notice of Peart who has been in the background. The melody is better here, the synths are in the background, except for those interminable trumpet blasts. This still has a great feel overall especially the chorus.

"Power Windows" is not the worst Rush album but like "Hold Your Fire", "Roll The Bones" and "Presto" it is among them. Thankfully the 80s would soon be over and Rush would come out the other side with a heavier sound that made them so great in the 70s. 4 decent tracks so it deserves at least 3 stars but of course you would be better off getting hold of any of the previous 10 albums if you want to hear Rush at their absolute best.

AtomicCrimsonRush | 3/5 | 2012-6-5

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Fears of on-ground deaths from Nigeria plane crash

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) ? Emergency workers in Nigeria fought fires and searched for corpses through the night in a neighborhood that an aging American-built airliner plowed into, killing all 153 on board. Rescue officials said Monday they fear many people may have perished on the ground too.

A Nigeria Red Cross report said that 48 bodies had been recovered so far, with more being dug out from the rubble.

The pilots reported engine trouble before the crash. Two years ago, the same Boeing MD-83 had loss of engine power due to a bird strike, according to an aviation database.

On a clear Sunday afternoon, the Dana Air jetliner crashed into businesses and crowded apartment buildings near Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport, the worst air disaster in Nigeria in nearly two decades.

"The fear is that since it happened in a residential area, there may have been many people killed," said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.

The cause of the crash remained unclear. The pilots radioed to the Lagos control tower just before the crash, reporting engine trouble, a military official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to journalists. Rescue workers searched for the aircraft's black box recorders where flight data is stored, said Harold Demuren, the director-general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority.

Demuren said the Nigerian registration number of the plane was 5NRAM. Aviation databases show the plane was exported to Nigeria in early 2009. It was first delivered in 1990 with the U.S. registration number N944AS to Alaska Airlines and it suffered two minor incidents while in the Seattle-based airline's service, according to databases of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Aviation Safety Network. On Nov. 2, 2002, the plane made an emergency diversion due to smoke and electrical smell in the cabin, and on Aug. 20, 2006, the plane was evacuated after landing at Long Beach, California because of smoke in the passenger cabin.

Bobbie Egan, spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines, said she had no information on the aircraft that may have been used several years ago by the airline and referred calls to Alaska's corporate communications office, which was not yet open.

On April 19, 2010, the made an emergency landing at Lagos due to loss of engine power after a bird strike following takeoff, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

The aircraft appeared to have come down Sunday on its belly onto the dense neighborhood that sits along the typical approach path taken by aircraft heading into Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport. The plane tore through roofs, sheared a mango tree and rammed into a woodworking studio, a printing press and at least two apartment buildings before stopping. The plane was heading to Lagos from Abuja, the capital, when it went down.

A white, noxious cloud rose from the crash site that burned onlookers' eye. Pieces of the plane were scattered around the muddy ground.

While local residents helped carry fire hoses to the crash site, the major challenges of life in oil-rich Nigeria quickly became apparent as there wasn't any water to put out the flames more than three hours later. Some young men carried plastic buckets of water to the fire. Fire trucks, from the very few that are stationed in Lagos state with a population of 17.5 million, couldn't carry enough water. Officials commandeered water trucks from nearby construction sites, but narrow, crowded roads prevented them from reaching the crash site.

The dead included at least four Chinese citizens, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported late Sunday, citing Chinese diplomats in Nigeria. Officials at the Chinese embassy in Nigeria could not be reached for comment by the AP. Two of the crash victims were Lebanese, according to state-run Lebanon's National News Agency. The NNA identified them as Nadim Chediac, an architect who has a Lebanese father and Nigerian mother, and Roger Awwad, an investor.

Nigeria, home to more than 160 million people, has a history of major aviation disasters, though in recent years there hasn't been a crash. In August 2010, the U.S. announced it had given Nigeria the Federal Aviation Administration's Category 1 status, its top safety rating that allows the West African nation's domestic carriers to fly directly to the U.S.

But many travelers remain leery of some airlines. The country is beset by government corruption and mismanagement.

On Saturday night, a Nigerian Boeing 727 cargo airliner crashed in Accra, the capital of Ghana, slamming into a bus and killing 10 people. The plane belonged to Lagos-based Allied Air Cargo.

Lagos-based Dana Air has five aircraft in its fleet and runs both regional and domestic flights. It has announced on its website that all Monday flights have been canceled. Local media reported a similar Dana flight in May made an emergency landing at the Lagos airport after having a hydraulic problem.

At the crash site Monday, police with cadaver dogs searched for bodies inside the wreckage. Overnight officials brought in a large crane from a local construction company to lift pieces of debris away. They also brought blow torches to cut through what remains of the plane. The debris still smoldered Monday morning. Some wore masks to try and protect themselves from the stench of the dead.

They used the crane from the construction site to lift the tail of the aircraft. The metal shrieked as it lifted skyward and was dropped down. Investigators then climbed ladders to begin to look at its tail.

Nigeria has tried to redeem its aviation image in recent years, saying it now has full radar coverage of the entire country. However, in a nation where the state-run electricity company is in tatters, the power grid and diesel generators sometimes both fail at airports, making radar screens go blank.

Sunday's crash appeared to be the worst since September 1992, when a military transport plane crashed into a swamp shortly after takeoff from Lagos. All 163 army soldiers, relatives and crew members on board were killed.

___

AP reporter Slobodan Lekic in Brussels and Robert Seavey in Phoenix contributed to this report.

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap.

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Study ranks grade level of congressional speaking skills | TheGazette

?

Rep. Dave Loebsack

Rep. Dave Loebsack and Sen. Tom Harkin may be at opposite ends of Iowa?s congressional delegation in a recent study on speaking skills, but they agree on a common bottom line: Sound bites don?t equal job performance.

?A recent study by the Sunlight Foundation, an open-government advocacy group based in Washington, ranked all 535 members of Congress by the grade level of their floor speeches and any other written material they enter into the Congressional Record.

Among Iowa?s delegation, Loebsack ranked the highest; Harkin, the lowest.

The study found the average congressional speech was at a grade level of 10.6, still above the average for most Americans, which is between the eighth and ninth grade reading levels, but down from a high of 11.5 in 2005.

Sen. Tom Harkin

Harkin came in slightly lower than the current average ? the study said he spoke at a grade level of 10.08, or that of a high school sophomore. Loebsack was determined to speak at a grade level of 12.24, or a senior.

?The rest of the delegation: Rep. Bruce Braley, Democrat, at 12.10; Rep. Tom Latham, Republican, at 11.83; Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican, at 11.40; Rep. Leonard Boswell, Democrat, at 10.16; and Rep. Steve King, Republican, at 10.14.

?Joe Hand, a spokesman for Loebsack, said his boss likewise simply tries to keep it simple and stay focused.

?When Dave speaks on the floor, his only goal is to rise above the sound bites that the chattering class in Washington is so fond of, and clearly communicate with Iowans,? Hand told The Gazette.

?Harkin?s office said he prefers to be judged on his performance, not the length of his sentences.

Sen. Chuck Grassley

?Senator Harkin expects his constituents to judge him on the basis of the policies he fights for: The economy, the state of the middle class, access to quality health care and education, and his effectiveness on behalf of Iowa,? said spokeswoman Kate Cyrul Frischmann. ?It has been that test ? not an obscure study on sentence length ? that has been the basis of his career.?

The study used a system called the Flesch-Kincaid test that basically awards higher levels to speeches with longer words and sentences. That system has been criticized by some as too rewarding of long-windedness and too unappreciative of brevity and simplicity. Sometimes, critics say, less is more.

Overall, the study found the congressmen who spoke at the highest grade levels were Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., at 16.01, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., at 14.94, Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-Pa., at 14.19, Rep. Thomas Petri, R-Wis., at 14.19 and Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, at 14.18.

?

The bottom five were Rep. John Mulvaney, R-S.C., at 7.95, Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga., at 8.02, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., at 8.04, Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., at 8.09 and Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., at 8.13.

?

Rep. Bruce Braley

For context, the study also reported the grade-level writing of some of the most iconic pieces of writing and speaking in American history: The Constitution (17.8), the Federalist Papers (17.1), the Declaration of Independence (15.1), the Gettysburg Address (11.2), and Martin Luther King?s ?I Have a Dream? speech (9.4).

Among other interesting findings, the study found that more moderate members of Congress tend to have higher grade-levels of their speeches, while the more extreme members generally speak at the lower levels. Also, before 2005 Republicans on average spoke at a higher grade level, but since 2005 the Democrats have generally had higher levels, according to the study.

The study is not new ? the Sunlight Foundation has been doing it for years. Its author is Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation and an adjunct professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California.

Drutman told The Gazette that the last three elections have been ?wave? elections that have brought large numbers of new members from either party, so Congress has seen an influx in recent years of younger, less-experienced speakers who tend to have lower grade-level scores.

Meanwhile, he said more senior members of Congress have likely been influenced by the rise of social media, such as Twitter and YouTube, in which brevity is necessary.

?It?s the rise of Congress by talking points,? Drutman said. ?On one hand, it?s the dumbing-down of Congress. On the other hand, it shows Congress is becoming more plain-spoken.?

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VP Joe Biden's daughter marries doctor

WILMINGTON, Del. ?? Vice President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley married a Pennsylvania doctor at a ceremony in Delaware, the vice president's office announced late Saturday.

A news release from Biden's office says 30-year-old Ashley Blazer Biden was married Saturday to Dr. Howard David Krein in Wilmington.

She is a social worker for the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families. He is a New Jersey native and a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, according to The News-Journal of Wilmington.

The newspaper reported that the couple was exchanging vows at the same church where she was baptized, St. Joseph on the Brandywine, in a joint Jewish-Catholic ceremony. It was being followed by a reception at the Biden residence in Greenville. The guest list numbered about 200.

1. 2. Drew Barrymore Weds Will Kopelman
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Video: Historic White House weddings (on this page)

Vice President Biden and his wife Jill issued a statement saying the couple's close family and friends attended the private ceremony.

"We're happy to welcome Howard into our family, and we wish them all the best in their new life together," the statement says.

Jill Biden told The News-Journal in an interview before the ceremony that Krein's plans to ask the vice president for his daughter's hand in marriage were delayed when his train to Washington broke down. He finally got there at 1 a.m.

"He asked for Ashley's hand and of course Joe said yes," Jill Biden told the newspaper.

The bride and groom were introduced in late 2010 by Biden's son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden. Krein proposed about a year later, at sunset on a cliff at California's Big Sur.

Slideshow: A look at US Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

Jill Biden said the couple are passionate about helping the less-privileged, and that Krein spends two weeks a year in Belize performing reconstructive surgery on children with facial deformities.

"Howard is the perfect guy," Jill Biden said. "He's perfect for Ashley."

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Check for restrictions at: http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp

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