SEBRING — About 400 middle and high school students met regularly to plan activities on spreading the word about the dangers of tobacco and smoking. That was five years ago before a funding cut in 2003 severely curtailed, or at some schools ended the Students Working Against Tobacco (S.W.A.T.) program. With a federal grant to fund it, the Highlands County Health Department proposes to reinstitute the program in the county's high schools. Active S.W.A.T. membership in the county has dropped 70.8 percent since the year 2000, according Donna Noel Stayton, Health Department tobacco prevention specialist. About 28.1 percent of the high school students in Highlands County reported using tobacco within the last 30 days of taking the 2006 Florida Youth Tobacco Survey . ...more

January 22, 2008

On the whole, Americans want their politicians to hew to the political center and govern with a healthy dose of pragmatism. Yet we live in the most bitterly partisan era in memory, when the dominant voices in both parties are more ideological and less willing to compromise, and the politics they practice too often is a mean-spirited, take-no-prisoners enterprise. ...more

December 31, 2007

Worldwide deaths for children younger than 5 dropped to an estimated 9.7 million last year, the lowest worldwide levels since record-keeping began in 1960, the United Nations Children's Fund announced Wednesday. ...more

September 13, 2007