Who Are Teens' Sexual Role Models? Turns Out, It's Their Parents

Parents may think their teens aren't listening to them about anything, let alone sex, but new research shows that 45% of them consider their parents — not friends or celebrities — their sexual role models.

The study from the University of Montreal upends conventional wisdom that teens put no stock in what their parents think. More teens relied on parental advice than on guidance from their friends, who influenced just 32% of survey respondents. Even fewer — 15% — cared what celebrities thought.

For lead author Jean-Yves Frappier, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Montreal and president of the Canadian Paediatric Society, the study's findings reinforced his belief that parents need to stay involved in their kids' lives even if they perceive their teens would prefer they get lost.

Even many of Frappier's medical colleagues dismiss parental influence during the teen years as a lost cause. “People are surprised parents are role models,” he says. “But I'm not. Parents are the most important role models for teens.”

That parents matter comes as a big surprise to moms, 78% of whom responded that they believed their children looked to their friends for guidance on sexual behavior. “The mothers think that friends are role models, so that means that the parents kind of quit,” says Frappier, who presented the results at the Canadian Paediatric Society's annual conference last month. “They talk to their teens and the teens turn them away, so they think there's no use. But that is not the case.”

The survey canvassed 1,171 teens between 14 and 17 years old and 1,139 mothers, asking about sources of sexual health information, communication about sexual health, family functioning and sexual activities. Researchers probed attitudes toward love, relationships, dating and contraception, then asked whom teens perceived as their role models on those issues. Teens could choose more than one; although parents and friends garnered the most votes, 15% selected music/movie celebrities and 7% indicated they turned to sports/television celebrities for guidance.

When teens look to their parents for the scoop on sexual health, fewer are sexually active: 17% of boys and 22% of girls who say their parents are role models report sexual activity, versus 40% of boys and 39% of girls who say they're not influenced by their moms and dads.

What might be most significant is the third of teens who report having no role models. They are more likely to be sexually active than those who rely upon their parents but less likely than those who specifically excluded their parents.

The bottom line? Talk about sex with your teens, even if they appear to be tuning you out. The more sexuality is discussed, the less teens are sexually active. That doesn't mean sitting down and announcing a family conclave on Sexuality 101. Take the opportunity to use a newspaper or magazine article or a television show to spark a discussion about values. Teens may roll their eyes and feign annoyance, but they may come back days or weeks later with a related question.

“Parents are more important than they think,” says Frappier. “It's the role of the teen to be autonomous and turn away, but it is the role of the parent to remain a role model.”

By: Bonnie Rochman (time magazine)

The euro and the endgame

Greece's PM Papandreou (left) hopes for a second EU bail-out deal at Thursday's crisis meeting

It has not taken long, but increasingly attention is turning to the endgame of the eurozone crisis.

The scenarios fill the comment columns and seep into conversations, even with EU commissioners.

Everyone seems to accept that "the centre cannot hold, things fall apart". So every idea is in play: a break-up of the eurozone, Greece leaving, fiscal and political union, European bonds, a European treasury etc. It is at last being recognised that papering over and pretending cannot continue.

Firstly, the short term. Greece is in all but name insolvent. The first bail-out delivered in May 2010 did not work. Loans of 110bn euros (£96bn) failed. In the past year Greece's debt mountain has only grown. Its economy has slumped.

European leaders believed they were dealing with a liquidity crisis. They weren't. At its core they faced a sovereign debt crisis. So a second Greek bail-out of 125bn euros is being drawn up.

The funds are available. But that is not the issue. The Germans in particular - but backed by others - have insisted that private investors take some of the pain. Why? Politics.

Avoiding the D-word

The taxpayer, the voters, the people do not see why, once again, they should bail out other countries. It was never supposed to happen. As the Austrian finance minister put it, "you can't leave the profits with the banks and make the taxpayer shoulder the losses".

What has divided officials in the past few weeks is this: how do you get banks and pension funds to take a hit without it being declared a default? For if any rolling over of debt or extending of maturity dates is seen as a default then the fear is that it will spread to other countries and roil Europe's banking system. In one corner have been the Germans, in the other the European Central Bank. The ECB questions why inflicting losses on banks will help.

What has changed is a recognition that Greece needs some debt relief. Almost every economist believes that at some stage Greece will default. It can be now or later. The debt-to-GDP ratio is heading for 170%. There is no way a country can escape that trap, particularly with an economy in recession. So a way has to be found to write off part of the value of the debts.

So a dozen schemes have been on the table. There is now talk of private investors writing off 25-30% of Greek debt, either through a buy-back or a debt swap. It would need to be voluntary and somehow avoid being declared a default.

The ECB remains opposed, but the view in Germany is that it is unavoidable that investors will have to take a hit, forfeiting some repayments. Politically Chancellor Merkel has made private sector involvement in a second bail-out a condition.

If a solution is found a second Greek bail-out will be launched at a eurozone summit on Thursday. Of course the question will be asked: if Greece gets debt relief why shouldn't other countries? Steps may well be taken to extend the period of the bail-out loans already given to Portugal and the Republic of Ireland - as well as Greece - and reduce the interest rates.

Building confidence

All of this may buy some time, some relief, but it won't address the wider issue: how to convince markets and investors that Europe has a plan to address its debt mountains at a time of low growth.

Take Italy. How will it find the growth to reduce its debt-to-GDP, which currently stands at 120%? Italy stands perilously close to the edge. All it takes is a 2% rise in its borrowing costs for it to struggle to pay its way.

Which is why so many people leap forward to the endgame.

Some say there is a choice. Europe could take a giant leap towards integration and so all debt would become European debt. It could only do this with fiscal union - and that almost certainly would need the backing of political union.

Whatever happens German voters will have to be persuaded that it is in their interest to give more money to Greece. It will be a tough call. There is huge resistance in Germany to the idea of joint eurozone bonds - eurobonds. Jens Weidmann, the head of the German central bank (Bundesbank), said would be unfair to Europe's taxpayers.

Or: Greece is shown the door, offering it a sabbatical from the eurozone, allowing it the flexibility to default and devalue. A couple of other countries may have to follow too, but the core of the eurozone would be protected, and ringfenced. All of these countries could rejoin the single currency later. Nobody pretends it would be easy, but it might be preferable to risking the single currency.

Redefining Europe?

Some are now openly advocating political union as the solution to the crisis. The former EU Commissioner Emma Bonino was refreshingly candid when I met her in Rome last week. She believes that a United States of Europe is the answer. She accepted that political union would have to be put to the voters.

The outcome would be uncertain, although the voters no doubt would be told they were voting to save the European Union.

Of course such a move would deepen the chasm between those in the eurozone and those outside. For countries like Britain it would be an immense opportunity to redefine its relationship with Brussels. Almost certainly if other countries were voting on a new relationship within the EU there would be pressure for Britain to hold a referendum too on what the British people want.

Even though the UK Parliament has just passed the European Union Act 2011, giving the people a referendum lock on further powers going to Brussels, there are still many in the Conservative Party who are looking for an in/out vote.

It could just be - with imaginative leaders - that a more flexible European emerges from the eurozone crisis. So much conflict and argument revolves around those seeking closer integration and those resisting.

In reality both integrationists and pragmatists are all pro-European. Their differences are over the role and influence of the EU and its institutions. If there was fiscal/political union for some countries others could adopt a much looser relationship.

The crisis might just be an opportunity for both integrationists and pragmatists to finally accept there are different, equally valid, visions for Europe that can exist side-by-side.

This is a time when what only recently would have been unimaginable is being debated.

By: bbc News

Egypt Military Aims to Cement Muscular Role in Government

Maj. Gen. Mamdouh Shaheen, left, and Maj. Gen. Mahmoud Hegazy, center, at a news conference last week. (Ed Ou for The New York Times)

CAIRO — The military council governing Egypt is moving to lay down ground rules for a new constitution that would protect and potentially expand its own authority indefinitely, possibly circumscribing the power of future elected officials.

The military announced Tuesday that it planned to adopt a “declaration of basic principles” to govern the drafting of a constitution, and liberals here initially welcomed the move as a concession to their demand for a Bill of Rights-style guarantee of civil liberties that would limit the potential repercussions of an Islamist victory at the polls.

But legal experts enlisted by the military to write the declaration say that it will spell out the armed forces’ role in the civilian government, potentially shielding the defense budget from public or parliamentary scrutiny and protecting the military’s vast economic interests. Proposals under consideration would give the military a broad mandate to intercede in Egyptian politics to protect national unity or the secular character of the state. A top general publicly suggested such a role, according to a report last month in the Egyptian newspaper Al- Masry Al- Youm. The military plans to adopt the document on its own, before any election, referendum or constitution sets up a civilian authority, said Mohamed Nour Farahat, a law professor working on the declaration. That would represent an about-face for a force that, after helping to oust President Hosni Mubarak five months ago, consistently pledged to turn over power to elected officials who would draft a constitution. Though the proposed declaration might protect liberals from an Islamist-dominated constitution, it could also limit democracy by shielding the military from full civilian control.

The military is long accustomed to virtual autonomy. Its budget has never been disclosed to Parliament, and its operations extend into commercial businesses like hotels, consumer electronics, bottled water and car manufacturing.

Some are already criticizing the military’s plans as a usurpation of the democratic process. Ibrahim Dawrish, an Egyptian legal scholar involved in devising a new Turkish constitution to reduce the political role of its armed forces, said the Egyptian military appeared to be emulating its Turkish counterpart. After a 1980 coup, the Turkish military assigned itself a broad role in politics as guarantor of the secular state, and in the process, contributed to years of political turbulence.

“The constitution can’t be monopolized by one institution,” he said. “It is Parliament that makes the constitution, not the other way around.”

Jurists involved in drafting the text say the Egyptian military told them to draw from several competing proposals that are circulating in Cairo. At least one assigns only a narrow, apolitical role to the military as guardian of national sovereignty. But others grant it sweeping authority and independence or a writ to intercede in civilian politics similar to the Turkish model.

Mr. Farahat said he was unsure of the wisdom of granting the armed forces a role in Egyptian politics, but he said he supported shielding the defense budget from public scrutiny as a guarantee of national security and military independence.

Others picked by the governing council to draft the declaration have argued publicly for a broad, Turkish-style role for the Egyptian armed forces in post-revolutionary politics. “The military in Egypt is unlike militaries in other countries where the military is isolated from the political life,” said Tahani el-Gebali, a judge involved in the drafting. “The military’s legacy gives it a special credibility, and hence it is only normal that the military will share some of the responsibility in protecting the constitutional legitimacy and the civil state.”

She said that she would prefer the governing council submit the declaration for up-or-down approval in a referendum, but that if it did not pass as expected, the document would derive its legitimacy from the authority of the governing military council.

The announcement of the declaration is a setback for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group considered Egypt’s best-organized and most formidable political force. It was poised to win a major role in the new Parliament, and thus in the writing of the new constitution. The group has opposed liberal proposals to draft a constitution before parliamentary elections expected this fall or to postpone the elections long enough to let liberals catch up in organizing.

Liberals — most notably Mohamed ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat who is now running for president of Egypt — have advocated a code of agreed-upon universal rights as a compromise in the increasingly bitter debate between Islamists calling for an early election and liberals demanding a constitution first. Mr. ElBaradei, whose own proposal includes a provision that narrowly defines the military’s role guarding national security, said the declaration “really should be put to a referendum so it would have some legitimacy.”

That is especially relevant now, because the military council has come under mounting criticism for its opaque and inaccessible decision-making, occasionally heavy-handed tactics against civilian protesters, continued trials of civilians in military courts and intimidation of journalists who criticize it. Many have grown especially impatient with the pace of legal action against Mr. Mubarak and other former officials.

Demonstrators have returned to Tahrir Square with increasing frequency to voice their demands, culminating in a weeklong sit-in rivaling the days of the revolution. The military-led government, in turn, has appeared to respond to public demands with repeated concessions — including replacing an interim prime minister with the handpicked choice of the Tahrir protest leaders, arresting Mr. Mubarak and his two sons and releasing jailed activists. Last week, the government offered concessions, removing hundreds of senior police officers accused of killing protesters during the uprising. It also announced “the declaration of basic principles.”

This time, however, the demonstrators refused to budge. On Saturday afternoon, Gen. Tarek Mahdy, a member of the governing council, attempted to speak in Tahrir Square and was chanted off a stage, witnesses said. Many say they have grown increasingly cynical about the military. “They do comply with our demands, but within limits that they put on it themselves,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the organizers of the revolution.

The protests are increasingly taking aim at the military. On Thursday, a coalition of 24 political groups and five presidential contenders endorsed a call by the young leaders of the protests for the military to cede more power to a civilian government now rather than wait for elections.

The military leaders are sounding increasingly exasperated. In a news conference, Major General Mamdouh Shaheen, the council member who reportedly suggested a Turkish-style military role, recalled the military’s support for the revolution and its pivotal decision not to help uphold Mr. Mubarak.

The military would not give up “until there is an elected civil authority,” he said, but “the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces “does not want to stay in power.”

By: David Kirkpatrick (ny times magazine)

In Sierra Leone, New Hope for Children and Pregnant Women

Sven Torfinn for The New York Times

Clinics like this one in Tumbu have been jammed since Sierra Leone ended some fees in 2010

WATERLOO, Sierra Leone — The paramedic’s eyes were bloodshot, his features drawn. Pregnant women jammed into the darkened concrete bunker, just as they had yesterday and would tomorrow. The increase in patients had been fivefold, or tenfold. The exhausted paramedic had lost count in a blur of uninterrupted examinations and deliveries.

The word was out: it was no longer necessary to give birth at home and risk losing a baby or dying in childbirth. Hadiatou Kamara, 18, waited in the crowd. She had already lost a baby boy and girl. “They both died,” she said quietly.

Now, for her third pregnancy, she was at this rural health clinic outside Freetown, the capital. The Sierra Leone government has eliminated fees for pregnant women and children, and Ms. Kamara, like thousands of women in a country where surgery has been performed by the light of cellphones and flashlights, could afford trained medical staff to oversee her pregnancy for the first time.

At the Waterloo Community Health Center here, the women were spilling out the door, as they have consistently since the fees were lifted last year.

Sierra Leone is at the vanguard of a revolution — heavily subsidized for now by international donors — that appears to be substantially lessening health dangers here in one of the riskiest countries in the world for pregnant women and small children.

Country after country in sub-Saharan Africa has waived medical fees in recent years, particularly for women and children, and while experts acknowledge that many more people are getting care, they caution that it is still too early to declare that the efforts have measurably improved health on the continent.

In Sierra Leone, though, it seems clear that lives are being saved, providing an early and concrete lesson about the impact of making health care free for the very poor and vulnerable.

By waiving the requirement for payments — which sometimes amount to hundreds of dollars and clearly represent the main barrier to using health facilities — the government here appears to have sharply cut into mortality rates for pregnant women and deaths from malaria for small children.

The results in Sierra Leone have been “nothing short of spectacular,” said Robert Yates, a senior health economist in Britain’s Department for International Development, which is paying for almost 40 percent of the $35 million program, with most of the rest coming from donors like the World Bank. Since waiving the fees, Sierra Leone has seen a 214 percent increase in the number of children under 5 getting care at health facilities, a 61 percent decrease in mortality rates in difficult pregnancy cases at health clinics, and an 85 percent drop in the malaria fatality rate for children treated in hospitals, according to figures Mr. Yates supplied.

“We have signs that there are positive results,” said Vijay Pillai, the World Bank country manager in Sierra Leone.

In recent years, Zambia, Burundi, Niger, Liberia, Kenya, Senegal, Lesotho, Sudan and Ghana have gone to some form of free care, particularly for pregnant women and young children, Mr. Yates noted two years ago in the health journal The Lancet. Rwanda has been offering nominal rates for health insurance for over a decade, and after fees were dropped in Burundi in 2006, average monthly births in health facilities rose by 61 percent and Caesarean sections went up by 80 percent, he found.

“It’s absolutely common sense that if we increase the consumption of the services,” improvements in health follow, he said. “It’s blindingly obvious. We know these medicines work.”

Still, the hurdles loom large. Here in Sierra Leone, the health minister, Zainab Bangura, says her country needs 54 gynecologists but has only 4. Likewise, she says, there are only two pediatricians in a nation of over five million people. “We lost 10 years” to civil war, Ms. Bangura said of the impetus behind increasing access to health care. “We needed to embark on a drastic measure.”

But donors will not finance the program forever, and the hope is that revenues from the mining of diamonds and minerals, shaky for now, will replace them. Beyond that, Unicef recently discovered that drugs equivalent in value to 14 percent of what it had donated were missing. The agency has demanded an investigation.

Given how recent, untested and strained some of the efforts to provide free health care are, some researchers are reluctant to make an automatic correlation between better access and better health. The outcomes are “not very straightforward,” said Sophie Witter, a senior research fellow at the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, who has studied the elimination of fees in Africa.

Lucy Gilson, a professor of Health Policy and Systems at the University of Cape Town, agreed: “I wouldn’t be prepared to say specifically it’s had x or y in terms of health outcomes.”

But Sierra Leone, still scarred by a brutal decade-long civil war — men whose limbs were chopped off by rebels play soccer, using their prosthetic ones on a beach in the capital — hovered at or near the bottom in maternal and infant mortality tables.

It had nowhere to go but up, which may be why there appears to have been an immediate benefit from the lifting of fees. The nihilistic rebels of the Revolutionary United Front deliberately took aim at health care facilities, as symbols of government authority.

“This was about stopping it from being the worst place in the world,” said Dominic O’Neill, a British official who until recently headed the Department for International Development’s office in Sierra Leone. “It’s an emergency response to what was a humanitarian crisis. It was about stopping people dying.”

Although the worn-out community health officer here in Waterloo, Jimmy Jajua, complained that demand was so high he had “no time to go off duty,” he noted that maternal deaths had dropped “drastically” now that his rudimentary clinic, still without electricity, charged no fees.

Women at the clinics said they felt safer, having traded risky home births for at least some medical care.

On a recent morning at Freetown’s main maternity hospital, about 80 women crowded into the prenatal examination waiting room, filling benches that doctors said had been sparsely populated in the past. Most of the women raised their hands when a nurse asked how many had been able to come to the hospital simply because the fees had been eliminated. The mood was upbeat. In unison they sang, “We are the pregnant women, and we are saying good morning.”

Up in the spartan wards of the 1920s hospital, with its whitewashed walls and rolling metal-frame cots, there was little nostalgia for home births. “They don’t take proper care of you at home,” said Fatamatou Touray, 39, who had previously lost three children.

And doctors said that while they were swamped, the more patients they saw, the bigger the difference they made.

“I’m the only surgical hand here, seven days a week, and nights as well,” said Dr. Ibrahim Bundu, chief medical officer at the hospital in Makeni, northeast of Freetown. “It’s only patriotism that keeps me going.”

As the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose foundation, the Africa Governance Initiative, has helped set up the program, said, “For many in Sierra Leone, this is literally the first time they’ve had something like this.”

By: Adam Nossister (Ny Times magazine)

Tunisia protests: Boy shot dead in Sidi Bouzid

Many Tunisians are growing disillusioned with the pace of change since Ben Ali left

A 14-year-old boy has been killed during protests in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, police say.

He was killed by a stray bullet after police broke up the protests overnight, the official Tap news agency reports.

Police chief Samir al-Meliti said the security forces opened fire after protesters threw petrol bombs. There were reports of rioting in other parts of Tunisia on Sunday, including Tunis.

Sidi Bouzid is where Tunisia's revolution began last December.

Local street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest at being harassed by local officials.

This led to nationwide protests, which forced longtime leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee in January.

Six months on, many Tunisians are growing frustrated at the lack of progress under the new government, correspondents say.

Police fired tear gas in the capital, Tunis, on Friday at protesters calling for the resignation of ministers.

The government has blamed the latest violent protests on Islamist extremists.

Elections are due in October.

By BBC News

Japan's women stun USA in World Cup final

Japan's players are set to return home as heroes after coming from behind twice to win on penalties [Getty]

Against all the odds, Japan announced themselves to the world as a new force in women's football by defeating the USA in the World Cup final on Sunday.

The exciting final in front of a sell-out crowd in Frankfurt was a great showcase for the women's game with the Americans and Japanese battling their way into a penalty shootout.

With the score tied at 2-2 after added time, Japan went on to win the shootout 3-1 when Saki Kumagai slotted the final shot high past goalkeeper Hope Solo.

While the Americans lashed out from the spot the Japanese showed a calm that has been one of their trademarks throughout the tournament.

Japan's passing skills and teamwork has led to people comparing the team to Barcelona and they lived up to this praise in the final stages of the match.

Although it certainly was not easy.

Japan survived an early onslaught from the United States and then had to twice come from behind to ensure it was a penalty shootout that would decide the victors on the day.

Never giving up

Japan were outplayed in the first 20 minutes and it looked like the United States would soon be adding another World Cup trophy to their 1991 and 1999 wins.

However, it wasn't until the 69th minute that Alex Morgan put the US ahead with a stunning solo effort, stylishly directing the ball into the net.

Against the run of play, Japan scored a goal out of nothing in the 81st minute when American defenders Rachel Buehler and Alex Krieger failed to clear a ball, allowing star Japan player Aya Miyama to sneak in and slot home from close range past Solo.

Japan came back into the game late in regulation time, but the Americans kept hustling and pressuring and it finally paid off when Alex Morgan sent a pinpoint cross to the towering Wambach in the 104th minute.

The forward didn't even have to lift a foot to send her header past goalkeeper Ayumi Kaihori from six yards.

The goal gave Wambach four for the tournament, and it looked good enough for the title. She had scored in the last minute of extra time with a header against Brazil, setting up the shootout win in the quarter-finals, and a goal against France in the semi-finals.

But in this thrilling final it turned out there was much more to come.

With three minutes of extra time left, 32-year-old Japan captain Homare Sawa flicked a corner through a jumble of players and past Solo to equalise and set up the shootout.

After coming so far in a tournament they were never expected to feature heavily in, it seemed destined to be that Japan would walk away as champions.

As well as fighting to become the first Asian nation to win the women's tournament the team were also fighting to bring some joy to their earthquake-striken nation.

"We ran and ran. We were exhausted but we kept running," said Sawa, the top scorer in the tournament with five goals.

"Not one of the players gave up,'' coach Norio Sasaki said.

It was a fairy tale victory for Japan who have been spurned on in the tournament by the devastation caused to their country by the March earthquake and tsunami.

Japan coach Norio Sasaki had shown the players photos of the damage to heighten their focus and determination before they met the hosts Germany in the quarter-finals.

It did the trick then, and it seemed to have focused Japan on producing performances that would lift their supporters back at home.

The Japanese team have been fighting for much more than a trophy, they have been playing for pride and hope.

And after defeating the well-fancied hosts Germany and the USA - a superpower in women's football - they will deservedly return back to Japan as heroes.

By, agencies (aljazeera.com)

Syrian Activists: Many Killed in 24 Hours

A wounded Syrian man rests in a medical tent in a regugee camp in Hatay Province, Turkey, June 15, 2011 (Osman Orsal / Reuters)

(BEIRUT) — Syrian activists say up to 30 people have been killed in the past 24 hours as tensions between supporters and opponents of President Bashar Assad's exploded into violence.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday the killings started over the weekend after three regime supporters were found dead in Homs, their bodies mutilated.

The observatory and a Syrian activist in Homs put the death toll at 30 and said they have the names of the victims. Another activist in Homs said he's not certain if the death toll was as high as 30. He suggested the real number may be about half.

The activists in Homs spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

By Associated Press (for Times magazine)