January 3, 2022

An abusive Christian boarding home operated in the shadows. It also took teens' babies.

On a humid evening in August, Nancy Davis Womac paced anxiously on her front deck. Her hands trembled as she stared at a text message from her firstborn daughter, Melanie Spencer, saying that she was minutes away.

The two had never met.

Forty-three years ago, Womac was pregnant and living in an orphanage when she was sent to the Bethesda Home for Girls on the outskirts of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It was run by Baptist preachers who forced girls to memorize Bible chapters and scrub carpets by hand. Staff members beat the girls with wooden boards if they broke a rule.

Womac said the home’s owners controlled every aspect of her life — from how much toilet paper she was allowed to use to what would happen to her baby once the child was born. In the 1970s and ’80s, Bethesda forced pregnant girls to give up their newborns for adoption to Christian families who paid a $250 “love gift” to the home, according to an NBC News investigation based on court records and interviews. A former judicial officer recently called the facility a “baby selling factory.”

Womac, 16 at the time, fantasized about running away and raising her baby on her own. But the home’s doors were always locked, and she didn’t have a chance.

https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/bethesda-home-girls-stolen-babies/index.html
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The Magdalen Laundries existed here too!

January 3, 2022

Covid surge shuts down baby delivery unit at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, hospital

A South Florida hospital has temporarily shuttered its labor and delivery unit amid an increase in Covid-19 cases causing "critical staffing levels," a spokesperson said.

Pregnant women planning to give birth at Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale will have to seek accommodations elsewhere, the hospital said in a statement Monday to NBC News.

"Due to the COVID-19 surge, Holy Cross Health has reached critical staffing levels in Labor and Delivery. In the best interest of patient safety, the Labor and Delivery unit is on diversion until further notice. The NICU and Post-Partum remain open," the statement said.

"People are out sick due to the surge in Covid cases," Holy Cross spokesperson Christine Walker added in an interview with NBC Miami.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covid-surge-shuts-baby-delivery-unit-fort-lauderdale-florida-hospital-rcna10721
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If I lived there (which I wouldn't, but that's beside the point) I'd be planning a home birth

January 3, 2022

700,000 US Teens Navigate School Without Family Support or Permanent Housing

Luisa, age 19, was fed up with her mom’s demand that she complete all the household cleaning, from scrubbing the toilets, to washing the dishes, to doing the laundry. “I couldn’t take it anymore,” she tells Truthout. “I did not want to be the only one in the house doing chores, so I left. I told my school that I had no place to stay and they sent me to Covenant House where I now share a room with another girl. I’ve been here for three weeks.”

Other residents of the New York City-based Covenant House tell different stories about how they got there. Princess, 18, says she left home because she was constantly being berated, taunted with names like “bitch” and “ho.”

“My family was getting in the way of me being successful,” she says.

Others, like Ruby, were booted out when they became pregnant. “Since coming to Covenant House six months ago, they’ve helped me with food, clothing, diapers for my son and post-natal care,” she says. “They even helped me finish high school.”

https://truthout.org/articles/700000-us-teens-navigate-school-without-family-support-or-permanent-housing/
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We had one for awhile, who had to leave after he knocked his stepdad down the stairs for abusing his mom

January 2, 2022

Whistleblower warns baffling illness affects growing number of young adults in Canadian province

A whistleblower in the Canadian province of New Brunswick has warned that a progressive neurological illness that has baffled experts for more than two years appears to be affecting a growing number of young people and causing swift cognitive decline among some of the afflicted.

Speaking to the Guardian, an employee with Vitalité Health Network, one of the province’s two health authorities, said that suspected cases are growing in number and that young adults with no prior health triggers are developing a catalog of troubling symptoms, including rapid weight loss, insomnia, hallucinations, difficulty thinking and limited mobility.

The official number of cases under investigation, 48, remains unchanged since it was first announced in early spring 2021. But multiple sources say the cluster could now be as many as 150 people, with a backlog of cases involving young people still requiring further assessment.

“I’m truly concerned about these cases because they seem to evolve so fast,” said the source. “I’m worried for them and we owe them some kind of explanation.”

At the same time, at least nine cases have been recorded in which two people in close contact – but without genetic links – have developed symptoms, suggesting that environmental factors may be involved.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/02/neurological-illness-affecting-young-adults-canada
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What is most troubling is that the provincial government appears to be attempting a coverup

January 2, 2022

She Was a Child Bride. He Still Shares Custody of Their Kid

Last year, Ash Pereira called the police in her hometown of Enterprise, Alabama, to report a rape.

The date of the alleged crime was nearly 15 years earlier; the accused, her now ex-husband, Jason Greathouse. Pereira, now 30, was locked in a bitter custody dispute with the man, a former youth pastor who impregnated her when she was 15 and he was 25.

What ensued was shocking to Pereira and many observers: Her ex was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor, did not have to register as a sex offender, and maintains partial custody of their 14-year-old daughter.

Pereira, meanwhile, had to defend herself against accusations that she was an unfit mother and that she was using the statutory rape accusation as a cudgel to get Greathouse to give up his child.

The battle has now pitted mother against daughter, with Pereira claiming her mother was the driving force behind her childhood marriage and her mother claiming Pereira is simply out for blood.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ash-pereira-was-a-child-bride-why-does-her-ex-still-share-custody-of-their-child?ref=home

January 2, 2022

Where have all the truck drivers gone?

The thing Mickey Weaver hears most from prospective truck drivers is that they want to be home every night. The second thing they want is money, but, he says, it’s funny — a lot of people are willing to sacrifice the money to be home daily. But that’s also a big ask. “I can get you money, any way you want it,” Weaver said. “If money’s all you care about and you don’t care where you’re driving or when you’re going out, I got 40 ways from Sunday to hook you up on that.”

Weaver, who’s based in Arkansas, runs We Hire Truckers and Truck Jobs 4 U, which, if you couldn’t guess from the names, recruit truck drivers to open positions. He started this work a little before the pandemic; in March 2020, hiring slowed down a bit, but last fall it began to skyrocket again. Now, there is no shortage of open jobs. “I’ve got more jobs than I’ve got drivers,” he said.

The United States is experiencing a shortage of more than 80,000 truck drivers, according to an estimate from the American Trucking Associations. The ATA also estimates that about 72 percent of America’s freight transport moves by trucks, which shows just how dependent consumers are on the drivers who deliver turkeys to stores or gas to pumps or the Christmas presents to you order to your doorsteps.

This is not just an American problem. Trucks haul comparable amounts of freight in places like the European Union and China, and countries and regions around the world are experiencing driver shortages. The International Road Transport Union documented shortages in a survey of 800 transport companies in more than 20 countries; according to the survey, about 20 percent of positions went unfilled in Eurasia last year.

This is also not a new problem. Analysts and industry groups have warned of truck driver shortages for years, around the globe. But supply chain disruptions during the pandemic and surges in demand in places like the US have made this slow-rolling crisis much more acute.

https://www.vox.com/22841783/truck-drivers-shortage-supply-chain-pandemic

January 2, 2022

Is the Western way of raising kids weird?

"Is he in his own room yet?" is a question new parents often field once they emerge from the haze of life with a newborn. But sleeping apart from our babies is a relatively recent development – and not one that extends around the globe. In other cultures sharing a room, and sometimes a bed, with your baby is the norm.

This isn’t the only aspect of new parenthood that Westerners do differently. From napping on a schedule and sleep training to pushing our children around in strollers, what we might think of as standard parenting practices are often anything but.

Parents in the US and UK are advised to have their babies sleep in the same room as them for at least the first six months, but many view this as a brief stopover on their way to a dedicated nursery.

In most other societies around the world, babies stick with their parents longer. A 2016 review that looked at research on children sharing not just a room but a bed with one or more of their parents found a high prevalence in many Asian countries: over 70% in India and Indonesia, for example, and over 80% in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Research on bedsharing rates in countries across Africa is patchy, but where it does exist suggests the practice is near-universal.

Debmita Dutta, a doctor and parenting consultant in Bangalore, India, says that despite Western influences, bedsharing remains a strong tradition in India – even in households where children have their own rooms. "A family of four has three bedrooms, one each for each child and for the parents, and then you would find both the children in the parent's bed," she says. "It's that common."

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210222-the-unusual-ways-western-parents-raise-children

January 2, 2022

Major fire at South African parliament in Cape Town

A large fire has severely damaged the Houses of Parliament in the South African city of Cape Town.

Video footage showed a plume of black smoke filling the sky, with huge flames coming out from the roof of the building.

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the scene and called it a "terrible and devastating event".

A 51-year-old man was being held and questioned by the authorities, police said.

The blaze, which began shortly after 06:00 local time (04:00 GMT), came the day after Archbishop Desmond Tutu's state funeral at St George's Cathedral, near parliament.

Mr Ramaphosa said news of the fire was a "terrible setback to what we were basking in yesterday" and added that Archbishop Tutu would also have been devastated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59850904

January 1, 2022

Rare turtles keep washing up on Cape Cod. "Turtle movers" fly them to Texas.

Sea turtles appear to fly as they swim beneath ocean waves. With long, gray-green flippers that move like slow wingbeats, they glide through the water as birds do through the sky. Actually flying through the air, though, at 10,000 feet above the ground, the reptiles seem anything but graceful.

Inside the airplane, 120 sea turtles, 118 of which are juvenile Kemp’s ridleys (Lepidochelys kempii), shift uncomfortably among beach towels inside stacked Chiquita banana boxes, their crusty eyes and curved pearlescent beaks peeking through slot handles. The windowless metal cabin vibrates with the sound of propellers as the pilots work to keep the plane aloft and the internal air temperature at a turtle-friendly 22 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit). It’s December 2020, and outside, the cold air above New England slowly gives way to balmier southern temperatures. The pilots are taking the turtles on a 2,900-kilometer (1,800-mile) trip from Massachusetts to Texas’s Gulf Coast.

Eight hours later, they’re nearly there. “We’re coming into Corpus Christi,” says Mike Looby, a pilot with a sea turtle rescue organization called Turtles Fly Too, as airport runways come into view among the sprawling buildings below. Looby and co-pilot Bill Gisler, both from Ohio, will visit four different locations in Texas to offload the animals. This is the largest number of turtles the organization has transported to date.

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22832643/turtle-strandings-rescue-endangered-cape-cod-texas

January 1, 2022

ARFID: 'My son's not a picky eater; he's scared of food'

Crisps, dry crackers and plain pasta may not be the most exciting foods but they are often the staples relied upon by children with a little-known eating disorder.

Nine-year-old Otto from Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, has the condition ARFID, which stands for avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, meaning he avoids many different foods.

Otto says he would like to try new things, but often feels scared.

"It sometimes feels like food is inedible," he says.

"I feel like I'm either going to gag or throw up. I'm not familiar with the taste and that just makes my body feel like 'oh my gosh, this isn't like something you've had before...what is it? what is it?'.

"Then my body tries to get rid of it, which makes me gag."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-59688396
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I had never heard of this, but thinking back, I remember a little boy in the daycare where I worked who may have had it.