Free Republic

HAVRE DE GRACE, Md. — When they called her name, she could not move. Sgt. Leana Nishimura intended to walk up proudly, shake the dignitaries' hands and accept their honors for her service in Iraq — a special coin, a lapel pin, a glass-encased U.S. flag. But her son clung to her leg. He cried and held tight...T.J. was 9, her oldest child, and although eight months had passed since she had returned from the war zone, he was still upset by anything that reminded him of her deployment... The faraway move to live with his grandmother. The months that...

WASHINGTON — Here's a crazy idea: After all our ambitious child-rearing with Discovery toys, Suzuki piano lessons, conflict-avoidance classes, 4 a.m. swim practices, SAT prep classes, driver education and summer flights to study folk music in the Republic of Georgia, we might have done as well (and saved a lot of money) by just sending our kids to church, temple or mosque. Late last year, a commission convened by Dartmouth Medical School, among others, studied years of research on kids and concluded young people who are religious are better off in significant ways than their secular peers. They are less...

Medics wonder why bird flu hits children most January 20 2004 at 10:39AM By Christina Toh-Pantin Hanoi - Four of the five people killed in Vietnam by an outbreak of bird flu were children, and the other the mother of one of the young victims, but experts don't know why the young seem to be more at risk. At Hanoi's paediatric hospital, the front line in the country's battle against avian flu, doctors wearing goggles and gowns monitor nine children, all suffering from a respiratory illnesses that doctors fear could be bird flu. The World Health Organisation says there has...