A team at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, analyzed questionnaires filled out by the parents of more than 4,000 families.

The parents filled out the questionnaires when their children were ages two months, 12 months, 2 years and 4 years. In addition, the researchers collected blood samples from more than 2,500 children at the age of 4 to check for the presence of immunoglobulin E (IgE), which is released by the immune system in response to allergens. High levels of IgE indicate sensitization to allergens.

About 8 percent of the mother smoked throughout their pregnancy, and about 12 percent smoked during part of their pregnancy, but the researchers found no evidence that smoking during pregnancy affected a child's risk of becoming sensitized to certain allergens.

About 20 percent of parents smoked after their baby was born, and about 4 percent of the children were exposed to secondhand smoke from both parents.

Overall, 25 percent of the children had high IgE levels by the time they were 4 years old, with 15 percent allergic to inhaled allergens, 16 percent allergic to food allergens, and 7 percent allergic to both types of allergens.surfboardssurveillanceswitchessynthtable-linenstables

Compared to children of nonsmokers, children exposed to secondhand smoke during early infancy were almost twice as likely to be allergic to inhaled allergens, such as pet dander, and about 50 percent more likely to have food allergies.

The study was published in the journal Thorax.

Sex education in school may encourage teenagers to put off having sexual intercourse, the results of a U.S. government study suggests.

However, the findings do suggest that having some form of sex education helps delay teen sex, according to the researchers, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

In a national survey of more than 2,000 adolescents between 15 and 19 years old, the researchers found that teens who had sex ed in school were more likely to put off sex until at least age 15. Furthermore, boys who received sex ed were less likely to have started having sex at all.

"Sex education seems to be working," lead researcher Dr. Trisha E. Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC, said in a statement.

In particular, she noted, some of the greatest benefits were seen in the teens who may need them the most -- urban, African-American girls. In this group of girls, those who'd received sex education were 91 percent less likely to have had sex before the age of 15.

Overall, male study participants who'd received sex education were 71 percent less likely to have had sex before age 15 than those who'd had no formal sex ed. Among female participants, sex ed reduced those odds by 59 percent.

Male respondents who'd had sex education were also more likely to say they would used birth control the first time they had sex. No similar effect was seen among girls.

There were certain groups of teens who did not seem to benefit from sex education. Girls from rural areas were more likely to have sex, and white and Hispanic girls who eventually dropped out of high school were less likely to delay sex. The reasons are unclear, according to Mueller's team, and the findings may be due to chance because the numbers of study participants in these groups were small.metal-detectorsmetalsmetalworkingmexicanmicrophonesmilitary

Overall, the researchers conclude that "sex education provides youth with the knowledge and skills to make healthy and informed decisions about sex, and this study indicates that sex education is making a difference in the sexual behaviors of American youth."

SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health, January 2008.

Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex, according to the study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"Sex education seems to be working," Trisha Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC who led the study, said in a statement. "It seems to be especially effective for populations that are usually at high risk."

Mueller's team looked at a 2002 national survey of 2,019 teens aged 15 to 19.

They found teen boys who had sex education in school were nearly three times more likely to use birth control the first time they had intercourse. But sex education appeared to have no effect on whether teen girls used birth control, the researchers found.

Black teenage girls who had sex education in school were 91 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

The researchers did not evaluate the content of sex education programs, including whether students were taught about contraception or about abstinence only.

Earlier studies, which relied on data from the 1970s through the 1990s, suggested sex education did little to persuade teens to delay sex.

The researchers said they think the difference may be that sex education in the United States is now more widespread and is being taught at earlier ages.marblesmarkersmascaramassagersmemorabiliamen

"Unlike many previous studies, our results suggest that sex education before first sex protects youth from engaging in sexual intercourse at an early age," they wrote.

Most cases of syphilis are in men, and experts point to more risky sex among gay men as the chief cause for the resurgence. But more cases are being seen among heterosexuals, both men and women, too.

Syphilis was the sexual scourge of the 19th Century, and is believed to have killed artists like poet Charles Baudelaire, composer Robert Schumann, and painter Paul Gauguin. But the widespread use of penicillin in the 1950s all but wiped it out in the Western world.

In the last decade, however, syphilis has unexpectedly returned, driven by risky sexual behavior and outbreaks in major cities across Europe, including London, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin.

• In Britain, syphilis cases have leapt more than tenfold for men and women in the past decade to 3,702 in 2006, according to the Health Protection Agency. Among men in England, the syphilis rate jumped from one per 100,000 in 1997 to nine per 100,000 last year.

• In Germany, the rate among men was fewer than two per 100,000 in 1991; by 2003, it was six per 100,000.

• In France, there were 428 cases in 2003 — almost 16 times the number just three years earlier.

• In the Netherlands, cases doubled from 2000 to 2004. In Amsterdam, up to 31 men per 100,000 were infected, while the rate was much lower in other regions.

Similar trends have been seen in the United States.

In 2000, syphilis infection rates were so low that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention embarked on a plan to eliminate the disease. But about 9,800 cases were reported in 2006.

In Europe, Van de Laar said syphilis' reappearance was so surprising that many doctors initially had trouble diagnosing it.

Though these days it mainly affects urban gay men, experts worry that the disease could also rebound in the general population if stronger efforts to fight it are not taken soon.

In 2005, British authorities reported that syphilis was spreading across the entire country, and that more heterosexual men and women were being infected.legolipsticklord-of-the-ringsmagnetsmapsmaps-atlases

"These increases may lead to increases in diagnoses of congenital syphilis over the coming years," said Kate Swan, a spokeswoman for the Health Protection Agency.

Pregnant women with syphilis can pass it on to their babies. Nearly half of all babies infected with syphilis while they are in the womb die shortly before or after birth.

Syphilis is a bacterial disease causing symptoms that include ulcers, sores and rashes. In extreme cases, it can result in dementia or fatally damage the heart, respiratory and central nervous systems. Syphilis is treatable with antibiotics if caught early.

Once there are more than just a few isolated cases, containing the disease is difficult.

Advances made in treating AIDS may have inadvertently boosted syphilis' spread.

"The evidence points to an increase in unsafe sexual behavior since anti-retrovirals for AIDS came along in 1996," said van de Laar.

After decades of being instructed to use condoms and to limit the number of sexual partners, some people are probably suffering from "safe sex fatigue," van de Laar said. The Internet has also allowed people to find sexual partners more easily than before, and some experts link the rise of dating Web sites to the jump in syphilis cases.

For some men, the Internet connections can be especially dangerous.

"Networks of HIV-positive men to find other positive men have sprung up on the Internet," said Jonathan Elford, an AIDS epidemiologist at London's City University.

Some men who have the AIDS virus are seeking condom-free sex with other men who are also HIV-infected. However, they aren't protected against syphilis and other sexually spread diseases. Among gay men who have syphilis in Britain, nearly half have HIV, Elford said.

Amid this resurgence, some officials are now attacking the epidemic online.

Every day, health workers at the Terrence Higgins Trust, Europe's largest AIDS charity, log into chatrooms on a popular British gay dating Web site to spread safe sex messages and answer questions.

"We know that men are arranging hook-ups for sex online," said Mark Thompson, the charity's deputy head of health promotion. "So we decided to tap into cyberspace to try reaching them before unsafe sex might happen."

"We were obviously hoping to find that sex education is effective. We're glad to see the strong associations," said lead author Trisha Mueller, a CDC epidemiologist. She emphasized that in order to be successful, sex education should take place before young people become sexually active.

Mueller's team also learned that teen boys who attended school were almost three times more likely to use contraception if they had attended a sex education program, compared to those who had not.

However, attendance at a sex education class did not seem to impact girls' use of birth control, the survey found.

The survey did not differentiate between programs that emphasized abstinence and those that educated about contraception. Instead, researchers focused only on whether the teens had ever attended any sex education program in a formal setting, such as school or church.

The study was expected to be published in the January issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

According to earlier, 2005 data available from the CDC, 47 percent of high school students said they had already had sex. Of those who were currently involved in a sexual relationship, one-third said they were not using a condom.

Curious about the effectiveness of sexual education on these behaviors, Mueller and colleagues examined data from more than 2,000 teen boys and girls between 15 and 19 years of age who participated in the door-to-door 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.

"Formal sex education is beneficial for youth who are considered to be at-risk," noted Mueller, who cited as an example the 88 percent reduced risk of initiation sex before age 15 among urban black females who had received any sex education. Urban black teen girls who were still in school at the time of the survey had a 91 percent reduced risk of initiation sex before age 15, the survey found.

The research also showed that boys living in single-parent households were more likely to delay sex past age 15 if they had attended a sex education class.

Mueller and her team were interested in teen sexual decision-making before and after the age of 15, because the federal governments' Healthy People 2010 initiative treats 15 as a dividing line. Healthy People 2010 sets a wide array of health goals for states and communities to achieve over the first decade of this century. One of its objectives: to reduce the number of teens under age 15 who are having sex for the first time. kitchen-furniturekitesurfingkniveslaboratory-equipmentlanternslaser-printers

"First and foremost, the report makes clear that the timing of sex education is quite important. That is, providing sex education to young people at an early age seems quite important in helping delay sexual activity," said Bill Albert, deputy director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The researchers said the study could not explain why sex education might have a stronger effect in delaying sex among teen boys and black girls, but Albert offered an explanation.

"It is the case that declines in sexual activity among teen boys, as opposed to girls, and African-American teen girls, as opposed to other racial/ethnic groups, have been much more dramatic over the past decade. This may, in part, explain why the effect of sex education seems stronger. It may also be that concern about HIV/AIDs may be particularly strong among these two groups," said Albert.

However, certain sub-populations of teens deserve further research, said Mueller. The data suggested that both rural, white teen girls and white or Hispanic teen girls who had dropped out of school might be more likely to have sex before age 15 if they had sex education, but Mueller said the number of people in those groups in the study was so small that the results could be a statistical fluke.

"They were kind of opposite findings," said Mueller, who acknowledged that "some subgroups may not benefit from sex ed the same way as the larger group of teens."

This research comes in the wake of data released Dec. 5 by the CDC showing that the annual rate of births to teens has increased for the first time in 14 years. Between 2005 and 2006, the birth rate for girls 15 to 19 rose 3 percent -- from 40.5 births per 1,000 in 2005 to 41.9 per 1,000 in 2006.

Considering both studies, Albert said, "The early wins may have been won. Future efforts may well have to be more intense, focused, and creative if the nation is to make continued progress in reducing teen pregnancy and childbearing. Put another way, yesterday's way of doing business will no longer suffice."

More information

To find more data about teenagers and sexual decision-making, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After their petition to adopt the baby, Max, was denied in July by another judge, the couple publicly said it had been because Gary Stocklaufer weighed 550 pounds at the time. The 35-year-old underwent gastric bypass surgery for free from a Dallas clinic in August after the publicity and has lost about 200 pounds.

"He seeks to extort a favorable result by his accusations," O'Malley said. "Fortunately, Missouri courts base decisions on the weight of the evidence, not the weight of the litigants."

The judge said he took the unusual step of making his order public because of the publicity surrounding the case. He likened the attention to a "parade that would embarrass P.T. Barnum."

O'Malley said the Stocklaufers took advantage of the confidentiality of court proceedings in adoption cases. "Knowing the other parties could not respond, Mr. Stocklaufer made his physical condition an ersatz issue," he said.

Under Missouri law, it is a felony to bring a child into the state for adoption without getting a court order first. The Stocklaufers failed to do that, O'Malley said, but the judge still agreed to award them temporary custody.

"In spite of their unlawful actions at the start of this process, they did care enough to step forward and are responsible for bringing (the baby) into the state and their home," O'Malley said. He added that the Stocklaufer home has a "loving, close environment."

Max, who has been cared for by a family in Missouri, is to be transferred to the Stocklaufers by Dec. 31.hubsjewelryjewelry-boxesjudaicakaraokekeychains

Cindy Stocklaufer, 34, would not comment on the judge's remarks.

"I'm very excited," Stocklaufer said by phone from her home in Independence. "We're very excited. We're just waiting for him to come home. That's all that matters."

She referred all other questions about the case to the couple's attorney, Gerald McGonagle.

McGonagle, who was not the Stocklaufers' attorney during the first hearing, agreed that the earlier ruling denying custody was "not totally" based on Gary Stocklaufer's weight. He added that the couple never intended to break the law.

McGonagle said Gary Stocklaufer had gone to the media "to bring attention to what he thought was an injustice."

"What I'm concerned about is that the court made what I think is the appropriate decision in the case," the lawyer said.

O'Malley's order is for statutory adoptive custody with a new hearing in six months to finalize the adoption, McGonagle said.

Angie Flores, director of patient relations for the Renaissance Hospital in Dallas, which performed Stocklaufer's surgery, said she is "ecstatic" for the Stocklaufers.

"Everything I saw had to do with his weight," Flores said. "I actually got to see the documents and how they talked about his weight." The documents she was referring to were from the guardian ad ltem in the case, not the court.

The Stocklaufers have been married 15 years and have an 8-year-old son they also adopted.

The study showed that morbidly obese patients — those who average about 100 pounds over their ideal weight — were 44 percent less likely to get a transplant than normal weight patients. Those just slightly less obese were 28 percent less likely to get a transplant, the researchers found.

The results also mean very obese patients are more likely to die; each year about 8 percent of all patients waiting for a transplant die.

The research was based on an analysis of records of 132,353 patients on the national kidney transplant waiting list between 1995 and 2006. The work was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Obesity can be a reason to exclude a potential transplant recipient because of the risk for complications.

However, once someone has been accepted for the waiting list, that patient is supposed to progress to the top as time passes, said Dr. Dorry Segev, the Johns Hopkins University transplant surgeon who led the study.

Segev said he did not believe doctors or transplant staff were consciously choosing slimmer candidates over obese patients. However, he said two factors may be combining to create the bias.

The main insurer for kidney transplants, Medicare, pays a fixed rate regardless of the difficulty of each case, meaning the transplant hospital bears the burden of added costs for complications. And transplant centers with lower survival rates risk losing Medicare funding.

"I don't think any of this is conscious," Segev said. "It would be hard to imagine any of us in our field would deliberately act against the welfare of our patients. That's not what we do, but there are all sorts of subconscious forces that are happening and there's clearly an unintended bias in practice."

Segev's group found the wait to get a transplant increased along with the patient's body mass index, a height-weight formula. Non-obese patients waited on average 39 months, the overweight waited 40 months, the obese waited 42 months, and the severely and morbidly obese, waited 51 and 59 months, respectively, the researchers found.

Transplant centers normally won't give an organ to a patient with a body mass index over 40, which is morbidly obese, said Dr. Benjamin Philosophe, head of transplantation division at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Such patients are at higher risk for a number of complications.

However, Philosophe said he and many doctors "will give them the benefit of the doubt that they will lose the weight and will put them on the list hoping that while they lose that weight they will accumulate waiting time."

Patients who fail to lose weight can be placed on inactive status, Philosophe said.

Also clouding the issue is the fact the database maintained by the United Network for Organ Sharing does not capture all details on patient condition, said Dr. Kenneth Andreoni of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, vice chairman of the UNOS kidney transplantation committee.

For example, whether a candidate has diabetes is simply a yes or no checkoff. The lack of more detail on diabetes and other conditions can make it difficult to draw conclusions, he said.

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The UNOS official noted that obese patients who never would have been referred for a transplant in the past are now put on the waiting list and rules changes have taken effect over the 11 years studied.

A man who weighed 698 pounds died Friday of heart failure after undergoing an operation to remove 80 percent of his stomach in a desperate effort to reduce his weight.

"He had two heart attacks in 20 minutes, there was nothing we could have done for him," Sandigo said. He said Marroquin's heart and kidneys had begun failing even before the procedure.

Marroquin's family checked him in to the San Juan de Dios Hospital's obesity clinic for treatment after they were told that nothing more could be done for him at a local hospital in his home town of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, southwest of Guatemala City.

BMI is calculated based on height and weight. A healthy BMI ranges between 18.5 and 25. A person with a BMI of 40 -- for example, someone 5 feet 9 inches tall and 270 pounds -- is considered morbidly obese. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three adults is obese.

Bariatric surgery options include gastric bypass and lap band surgeries. Typically, a person must have a BMI of 40, or be at least 100 pounds over their healthy weight, to qualify for these surgeries. People who have a BMI greater than 35 and suffer from a life-threatening illness, such as non-insulin dependent diabetes, sleep apnea or heart disease, can also qualify.

However, researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas published data in the December issue of Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases suggesting that some otherwise healthy overweight people with a BMI lower than 40 may benefit. And they may benefit more from the surgery than people who are morbidly obese, the team added.

The study is gogglesgucciguitars among the first to evaluate the risk-factor relationship between BMI and cardiovascular disease as it relates to bariatric surgery criteria, said study author Dr. Edward Livingston, chairman of GI/endocrine surgery at UT Southwestern.

"Our results show that cardiovascular risk factors do not necessarily worsen with increasing obesity," Livingston said in a prepared statement. "They also support the concept that obesity, by itself, doesn't trigger an adverse cardiovascular risk profile or increased risk of death."

The research team analyzed health data from more than 17,200 adults who had a BMI greater than 20 and had participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination. The researchers assessed their heart disease risk factors with respect to their BMI. They found a subgroup of people whose BMIs were lower than 40 but who had significant heart disease risk factors.

This suggests that some patients who are obese but not morbidly obese could benefit from bariatric surgery, which can help reduce cardiovascular disease, said Livingston.

The research team theorized that some morbidly obese people may be more efficient than moderately overweight people at storing fat in their cells, so it does not have as great an effect on the cardiovascular system.

"As she walked down the steps, she passed out. She was taken immediately to her hotel where a doctor was waiting," Nedanovski told The Associated Press.

He said Minnelli was flown to the United States on Thursday on the advice of her doctors there.

"They decided together with her management that it's best for Liza to go to the U.S. right away," Nedanovski said, adding he did not know what her medical diagnosis was.

"She had felt a bit dizzy before she got up on stage," but decided to proceed with the show anyway, Nedanovski said.

Minnelli's spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg confirmed in a statement that the artist "had complained of dizziness" before the show and "became very ill after the show began."

"As a result, she was unable to finish her performance and was rushed back to her hotel by her manager," Rosenberg said.

She said a doctor examined Minnelli "and in consultation with her New York physician, determined that it would be necessary for the Oscar winning actress and singer to immediately return to New York City to receive further medical evaluation."

In a separate statement, released by concert organizer Svensk Nojesutveckling, Minnelli's manager Gary Labriola said: "We don't yet know what happened, we are all very worried."

Minnelli was performing alongside several Swedish artists in a show called "A Classic Christmas Night." It was the fourth and final show in a series of four concerts in Sweden, Rosenberg said.

Minnelli won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in the 1972 film "Cabaret." She won an Emmy for the 1972 TV special "Liza with a Z." She also won Tony Awards in 1974 and 1978.

 After rising steadily for a quarter century, the rate of obesity in the United States appears to be leveling off, although it remains alarmingly high, a US government report concluded Thursday.

But the CDC report released Thursday entitled "Obesity Among Adults in the US: No Significant Change in 2005-06," found that more than a third of US adults -- some 72 million Americans -- are sufficiently overweight to be classified as obese.

The CDC has said that obesity is one of its top public health priorities, and is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, type 2 diabetes and other ailments.collectiblesguidememorabiliaguidenetworkingecomputersconsumerelectronicscraftsguide

Janet Collins, director of CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, said the US government has undertaken an all-out effort to combat obesity, including in "the nation's schools, community organizations, businesses, medical systems and faith communities, to promote and support healthy eating, physical activity and healthy weight."

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A man who says he was not allowed to adopt a child because he is obese and underwent gastric bypass surgery to lose weight attended a second adoption hearing on Thursday.

But several adoption experts have said the case is considered the first case where a couple seeking to adopt has resorted to surgery in the increasingly prevalent practice of denying parents adoptions because they are obese.

Since undergoing gastric bypass surgery in August, Stocklaufer has shed nearly 200 pounds.

Jackson County Circuit Judge John O'Malley did not rule in the matter after the closed hearing on Thursday, Stocklaufer said. It was unclear when the judge would rule, but more witnesses were expected to testify Friday, Stocklaufer said.

"I'll feel better when we get him home," Stocklaufer said outside the courthouse.

Court officials would not comment, citing confidentiality in adoption cases.

The baby, who was 4 months old when he was removed from the Stocklaufer home, had lived with the Stocklaufers since he was a week old and is related to the Stocklaufers.

Stocklaufer and his wife, Cindy, 34, claimed their plans to adopt Max were denied because of Gary's weight. Instead, Max was given to another couple for possible adoption.

Gloria Hochman, spokeswoman for the National Adoption Center in Philadelphia, said weight problems are becoming more commonly considered by adoption agencies. But she said she didn't know of any agencies with written policies prohibiting adoption by obese people.

She said courts and agencies probably consider weight when placing children because they are concerned about an adoptive parent's longevity and "the ability of the parent to be able to really parent in a healthy way."classictoysshoesclothingcoinsancientcoinsguidepapermoneyuscoinsworldguide

The Stocklaufer case is a private adoption and does not involve the state Department of Social Services. But Sara Anderson, spokeswoman for the department, said a number of factors, including physical health, are considered in an adoption.

The Stocklaufers, who have been married 15 years and have an 8-year-old son they also adopted, said they were pleased to have the second hearing, and hoped it would result in their gaining custody of the baby.

THURSDAY, Nov. 29 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Association of Children's Museums are teaming up on a program to combat the obesity epidemic among America's children.

Other We Can! communities include Armstrong County, Pa.; Carson City, Nev.; Gary, Ind.; South Bend, Ind.; and Roswell, Ga.

"I am really confident that this partnership among the federal government, the We Can! program, the Association of Children's Museums and civic organizations is ultimately going to lead to healthier children in the United States, healthier families and better health-care outcomes for everybody," acting U.S. Surgeon General Rear Admiral Dr. Steven K. Galson said during an afternoon teleconference.

Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, said childhood obesity has reached "crisis" proportions.

"We are facing a crisis, and we must find ways to change the tide that is facing us and affecting our children," Zerhouni said during the teleconference.

There are more than 12.5 million overweight children and teens in the United States. Galson said obesity is a big contributor to such childhood health problems as high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and asthma.

"Chronic diseases cause seven out of 10 deaths," Galson said. "And the costs are staggering."

Galson noted that portion sizes have increased while life in America has become more sedentary. "Our kids are growing up with unhealthy lifestyles, the consequences of which could be with them for the rest of their lives," he said.

"Reversing this epidemic does not have one answer," he added. "It's going to take a concerted action by all of us. We need to focus our activities on prevention -- on what we can do today."

We Can! can be a model for overcoming the challenges of childhood obesity and overweight, Galson said. "Its partnerships are demonstrating how physical activity and sound lifestyle choices can make a difference and how communities can work together to make those lifestyle choices real," he said.

We Can! is an education program to help children aged 8 to 13 years old to maintain a healthy weight. It's being implemented in more than 450 communities in 44 states.

Zerhouni said getting kids away from the TV and the computer is key to improving their health. Increased activity, better food choices and smaller portions complete the arsenal for fighting the obesity epidemic, he said.

The three new We Can! cities announced Thursday are introducing the program to city employees, community groups, corporate wellness programs, health professionals and schools.

While improvement in childhood obesity is vital, the results may not be seen for decades, Galson said.

"It's a national necessity with profound implications -- we all have a stake in the outcome," he said. "The result may not be apparent for many years, but it's going to be a fitter, healthier, more physically active nation in which the epidemic of childhood obesity slows down."

In addition to the Association of Children's Museums, 40 national and corporate partners are starting We Can! programs in community centers, schools, health-care settings, corporate wellness programs and faith-based organizations, officials said.

A study this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that after increasing for the last 25 years, the prevalence of obesity among adults has not risen in the past few years. Still, 34 percent of Americans aged 20 and older are obese.

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"In view of these alarmingly high rates of obesity in all population groups, [the] CDC has made the prevention of obesity one of its top public health priorities," Janet Collins, director of CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, said in a prepared statement. "We are actively working in partnership with state and local public health agencies, the nation's schools, community organizations, businesses, medical systems and faith communities to promote and support healthy eating, physical activity and healthy weight."

More information

To learn more about the We Can! program, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

 LONDON (Reuters Life!) - More than half of British mothers who died during child birth were overweight, a report found on Tuesday.

In its annual report, "Saving Mothers' Lives: reviewing maternal deaths to make motherhood safer," it found that of the almost 300 women who died during childbirth between 2003 and 2005 from pregnancy-related conditions, more than half were obese. The deaths left 520 children motherless, it added.

Obese pregnant women are more at risk of dying, suffering heart disease, miscarriage, diabetes, infections and blood clots.

Although the death rate has not changed significantly since 2000, it has risen by around 40 percent since 1985/87, the study showed.

It also found that women from poorer backgrounds were up to seven times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications.

About 40 percent of deaths were preventable, it added.

Tuesday's report criticized doctors for failing to identify and manage common medical conditions or potential emergencies outside their immediate area of expertise.

It comes just a few days after the Healthcare Commission found that one in four women giving birth in NHS hospitals were left alone during labor, in clear contravention of official guidelines.

The report said that maternal obesity was now a "major and growing risk factor for maternal death."

It called for more pre-conception counseling and advice for obese woman to help tackle the problem.

CEMACH director, Gwyneth Lewis, said the report "clearly shows the impact that a mother's overall health has on the outcome of her pregnancy."

President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, said maternal obesity puts more pressure on resources.

"Obesity is fast emerging as the public health issue of our generation and its impact on maternity must be taken seriously," he said in a statement.communicationbackpackpurchasebagpurchasedballpurchasesbangle

"Maternity services are already struggling to cope with the increasing birth rate."

(Editing by Stephen Addison and Paul Casciato)

BOSTON (Reuters) - The number of obese children will grow dramatically in the coming years and so will their death rates from heart disease, according to a pair of studies from the United States and Denmark published on Wednesday.

The Danish study, which tracked more than one quarter of a million school children in Copenhagen from 1930 to 1976, found that overweight children grew up to have more heart problems, particularly the boys.

The heavier they were as youngsters, particularly entering their teens, the greater the risk.

For example, a 13-year-old boy who was 25 pounds (11.2 kg) above the average weight was found to be 33 percent more likely than a child of normal weight to have a heart attack or some other problem caused by coronary heart disease (CHD) by age 60.

The finding "suggests that more children than ever before are facing increased risks of CHD in adulthood," said the team led by Jennifer Baker of the Center for Health and Society in Copenhagen.

About 17 percent of boys and 16 percent of girls now in the United States -- more than 9 million total -- are overweight.

The second study reported that out of this group, 25 percent of the boys now are obese, and that number is expected to increase to 30 to 37 percent by 2020, when they turn 35.

For females in that group, 32 percent of whom now are obese, the ratio will rise to 34 to 44 percent, according to that research team, led by Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California, San Francisco.

That will lead to more heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure at a younger age, and even aggressive treatment will not be able to stem the trend, they reported.

By 2035, the prevalence of heart disease will have increased by 5 to 16 percent, they estimated.

"Barring a major advance in the treatment of either excessive weight gain itself or its associated alterations in blood pressure, lipid levels and glucose metabolism, current adolescent overweight will have a substantial effect on public health far into the future," they concluded.

"My colleagues and I have predicted that pediatric obesity may shorten life expectancy in the United States by 2 to 5 years by mid-century -- an effect equal to that of all cancers combined," said Ludwig.sellartistbetrayasianmerchandiseataricommodityattrstoreautoshoppeaviatia

He also warned that "without effective intervention, the costs of obesity might well become catastrophic, arising not only from escalating medical expenses but also from diminished worker productivity caused by physical and psychological disabilities."

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Overweight children and adolescents are more likely to be overweight or obese adults and more likely to suffer early heart disease and death, two new studies conclude.

The second, based on a computer model, found that overweight adolescents are more likely to end up with heart disease and even dying in early adulthood.

"Teenage and childhood weight does matter," said Dr. Thomas R. Kimball, a pediatric cardiologist with Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. "This is not a problem of middle-aged adults. This is a problem that we have to face as a society in our children."

"When you see a shift at this level across the entire population, it really suggests that this is a major public health problem and requires intervention that really needs to be reinforced at every level of policy makers, every level of institutions," said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, lead author of the computer modeling study.

"This is more than just a problem of overweight adolescents and their parents. It's a problem that requires really a concerted effort at federal, state, local policy levels to reinforce the availability of healthy foods for kids and the availability of physical activity. We really want to prevent obesity before it starts," said Bibbins-Domingo, who is assistant professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics and the Robert Wood Johnson Harold Amos Medical Faculty Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco.

Both studies are published in the Dec. 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The overweight and obesity crisis is reaching epidemic proportions around the world. In the United States, federal statistics estimate that 9 million adolescents (17 percent of the population) are overweight and 80 percent of overweight adolescents grow up to be obese adults. Childhood obesity rates have tripled since 1970.

Worldwide, children are becoming heavier at younger and younger ages. In the United States, 19 percent of kids between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight.

Being overweight or obese puts you at risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other ills.

The first study looked at a group of almost 277,000 Danish children -- all schoolchildren in Copenhagen -- from 1930 to 1976.

Out of that initial group, more than 10,200 men and 4,300 women were identified whose childhood body-mass index (BMI) data were available and who had received a diagnosis of coronary heart disease (CHD) or died of CHD as adults.

Boys with a higher BMI at 7 to 13 years of age and girls with a higher BMI from 10 to 13 years of age had a higher risk of a heart disease event in adulthood, the researchers found.

The authors used as an example a 13-year-old boy who weighs 11.2 kilograms (24.6 pounds) more than average boy his age. He now has a 33 percent increase in the probability of having a coronary event before he turns 60, the Danish team said.

"It's scary," Kimball said. "We knew that if you're an overweight kid, you're at a higher risk to be an overweight adult. This study goes a step further. It's proving that you have an increased risk of cardiovascular events as early as 25 years of age."

The second study projected the number of overweight adults based on the number of overweight adolescents in 2000.

Using a computer model, it predicted that up to 37 percent of men and 44 percent of women will be obese when these people -- now teenagers -- turn 35 in 2020.

This could result in up to 5,000 additional deaths from heart disease and 45,000 heart attacks, cardiac arrests and related events by 2035 among this group of young adults. It would raise the death toll from obesity-related coronary heart disease by 19 percent.eshopartsaleankinfoapperelshopinfoarombuyitemarrowinformationglass

 "To some extent, we're not surprised. We know it's not good to be overweight at any age but we were really struck by the magnitude of this increase," said Bibbins-Domingo. "We're modeling a young adult population 35 to 50 years. These are people who should be working and raising families, not worrying about heart disease, and we're suggesting more will be hospitalized for heart attacks, will need chronic medication to manage high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and many more will actually die before the age of 50."

More information

To learn more about the government's We Can! Program regarding childhood obesity, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

"Today's adolescents are the young adults of tomorrow, young adults who would ordinarily be working, raising their families, and not worried about heart disease until they are much older," said Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, assistant professor in medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at University of California at San Francisco.

"Our study suggests that more of these young adults will have heart disease when they are 30-35 years old, resulting in more hospitalizations, medical procedures, need for chronic medications, missed work days and shortened life expectancy."

Using computer modeling, the researchers projected that up to 37 percent of men and 44 percent of women who will be 35 in the year 2020 will be obese, based on the numbers of teenagers who were overweight in 2000.

These young adults are expected to have more heart attacks, more chronic chest pain and more premature deaths before they reach age 50 than previous generations.

The researchers said the lifestyle-driven disaster could increase the number of people with heart disease 16 percent over today's levels by 2035. That's an additional 100,000 cases.

The increase in obesity-related heart disease deaths could shoot up by as much as 19 percent, according to the projections in the study published Wednesday.

"We must recall that we all tend to gain weight as we age, so overweight in adolescents means even higher weights later on," said Lee Goldman, senior author of the paper and dean of Columbia University Medical Center in New York.buyshopgoacousticshopairfindpurfhottoolebuyalphaonlineampwareanim

"Although the general findings of our analysis are not surprising, we were struck by the sheer magnitude of the impact of adolescent obesity and, as a result, how important it is as a public health priority."

Some nine million US adolescents are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Childhood obesity rates have tripled since the 1970s, and studies show that 80 percent of overweight adolescents become obese adults.

The findings also suggested that aggressive drug treatment would reduce but not eliminate the projected cardiac complications.

HOUSTON - A pair of spacewalking astronauts wired the international space station's newest room on Saturday, crossing the last major task off their to-do list before the next shuttle mission early next month.

Harmony will serve as a docking port for a new European laboratory named Columbus. The shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to deliver the lab in two weeks. A Japanese lab set to be delivered early next year also will dock to the school bus-sized module.

Flight controllers on the ground were checking all of Harmony's systems Saturday to make sure the module would be ready to accommodate the new lab.

"It looks good so far," Mission Control told the astronauts as they floated back into the hatch at the end of the spacewalk.

Flight director Derek Hassmann said Harmony's cooling and power systems were up and running, as were its computers. He said it is an "amazing accomplishment" that the station crew got all their work done so quickly with no major mechanical hiccups.

"It's become routine but it's uniformsguide not nearly as easy as this crew and this team makes it look," Hassmann said.

Much of Saturday's work involved lugging a second 18 1/2-foot, 300-pound tray holding fluid lines to Harmony and bolting it down. The lines carry ammonia, a coolant. The astronauts moved and installed another fluid tray on Tuesday.

"Don't rush," Whitson told Tani as they struggled to move the bulky tray. They took turns handling the equipment, with one astronaut passing it to the other and then crawling forward for another hand-off.

"Cool, I can feel the ammonia rushing in," Tani commented after he hooked up one of the fluid lines.

Tani also spent about an hour inspecting a jammed joint that is needed to turn one of the space station's two sets of huge solar wings. The gear has been experiencing electrical current spikes and must be repaired over the coming months to continue station construction.

Last month, Tani found steel shavings inside the joint while spacewalking during Discovery's visit. He found similar debris on Saturday.

Guided by an engineer on the ground, Tani tennisguide and Whitson took digital pictures of the joint's inner workings and described the debris and damage they could see. Most of the shavings were concentrated in one area, Tani said, and nearly everything else was covered with a fine dust.

The area of the joint that Tani uncovered will remain exposed so astronauts can shoot video of it later.

The space station's three residents have been working almost nonstop since Discovery's departure on Nov. 5. This was their third spacewalk and the last planned before Atlantis arrives.

The American spacewalkers' toolsguide Russian crewmate, Yuri Malenchenko, remained in the station during Saturday's outing.

Atlantis is scheduled to blast off on Dec. 6.

"The full success of our country's first lunar exploration mission is helping to turn the Chinese nation's 1,000-year old dream of reaching the moon a reality," Wen said.

State television showed the orbiter broadcasting into space transportationguide "The East is Red," the Communist Party's old anthem to a rising China, when Wen visited. The revolutionary tune was also broadcast by China's first satellite in 1970.

The picture on the Xinhua Web site (www.xinhuanet.com) showed a patch of grey moon surface splotched with craters.

Even as hundreds of millions of Chinese struggle in rural hardship, the ruling Communist Party is committed to clambering into the select ranks of global space powers, and Chang'e 1's journey has been accompanied by a stream of patriotic propaganda.

In 2003, China became only the third country to put a man into space using its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States. It then sent two astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI rocket in October 2005.

China plans to launch its third manned rocket, Shenzhou VII, into space in October 2008 and may send an astronaut on a space walk, a Shanghai paper said.

But a space official downplayed plans to put a man on the moon.

"There are no plans at the moment to send anyone on to the moon. I've heard of foreign reports which say China will put a man on the moon by 2020, but I don't know of such a plan," said Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration.

"Please don't give us any more pressure. But I'm confident one day we'll put an astronaut on the moon," he told a news conference.

The official China Daily newspaper said triathlonguide last month China planned to put a man on the moon "within 15 years."

Wen said the probe's success showed the world that "the Chinese people have the will, confidence and ability to constantly compose fine new chapters as we scale the peaks of modern science and technology."

"The Chinese nation is fully able to stand tall among the world's ranks of advanced nations."

But other Asian powers have also announced plans to make a stake on the moon. And fears of potential military rivalry in space with the United States have mounted since China blew up one of its own weather satellites using a ground-based missile in January.

Japan plans to launch its first mission to land a spacecraft on the moon in the next decade, a feat so far achieved only by the former Soviet Union and the United States.

The Chang'e 1, named after a legendary Chinese goddess who flew to the moon, blasted off on a Long March 3A carrier rocket on October 24 from the southwestern province of Sichuan.

The earthquake, which hit at 12:02 am (1602 GMT), occurred 44 kilometres (27 miles) west of Raba and 349 kilometres (217 miles) east of Denpasar, Bali, at a depth of 30 kilometres (19 miles), the USGS said.

"The hospital is treating 17 injured people, most of them wounded from collapsing walls," said Suriyani, an official at the general hospital in Dompu district on Sumbawa.

"Of these two people were seriously injured, with open wounds to the head and broken bones," she told AFP.

Local Metro TV reported that a five-year-old boy had died, but Suriyani said that although she had heard a report of the death no body had arrived at the hospital and she could not confirm the fatality.

She said those injured had come from Monta village, about five kilometres from the hospital.

The quake and an aftershock of 5.0-magnitude that struck just over an hour later caused panic at a hospital in Raba town, about 50 kilometres from Dompu. Its 300 patients were evacuated twice but there were no reports of casualties in the area, a worker said.

"All the patients in the hospital rushed to the opentoysguide  air outside, they felt the quake quite strongly," Nining told AFP.

"There was panic but I have heard no reports of damage," she added.

The Indonesian meteorological agency said a tsunami warning was issued, though for technical reasons it was not sent as usual by text message to media.

"There were some problems with the technical equipment and the quake was read as being on land, when actually is was undersea. The threat has already been lifted," agency official Ali Imron told AFP.

Earlier another official had told AFP no warning was issued.

The quake was felt on the nearby islands of Lombok and Bali.

"I felt the shake for almost one minute," east Lombok resident Hariono told the radio station, which also said the quake was felt in South Sulawesi.

The Indonesian archipelago sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where continental plates meet and cause frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the earthquake-triggered tradingcards Asian tsunami in December 2004, which killed 168,000 people in Aceh province alone.

By 4:00 pm local time (0000 GMT), the fire was 70 percent contained, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said, with the blaze expected to be fully contained by late Monday. Most evacuation orders had been lifted, allowing residents to return to their homes, officials said.

The fire department said 53 homes glasswareskin -- including dozens of multi-million dollar properties -- 27 outbuildings and 14 vehicles had been lost while a further 34 homes had been damaged in the 4,720-acre (1,910-hectare) blaze.

Seven firefighters suffered injuries while tackling the fire, which was probably caused by "human activity," fire officials said.

Arson investigators were focusing on a ridge near the origin of the fire which is notorious for late-night parties that often feature bonfires.

"They have found no natural source of ignition so consequently it was started by human means," Fire Chief Michael Freeman told reporters.

Around 1,700 firefighters were deployed throughout Saturday, backed by 23 aircraft including water-dropping helicopters and a DC-10 which pummeled the infernos with flame retardant.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told reporters Sunday that officials would do all they could to help victims of the fire.

"We lost 53 homes -- that's the latest update ... pole  gloves which is very sad," Schwarzenegger said. "We want to get those people back on their feet as soon as possible."

Last month a devastating fire destroyed 4,565 acres (1,847 hectares), six homes, two businesses and a church in Malibu.

The October blaze was one of a series of state-wide infernos that left eight people dead, destroyed 2,000 homes, displaced 640,000 people and caused more than one billion dollars in damage.

Malibu, around 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Los Angeles, is home to celebrities such as Sting, Jennifer Aniston, Mel Gibson, Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Cher and Richard Gere.

Local media reports said actors Matthew McConaughey and Minnie Driver were among those forced to evacuate Saturday's fire while Red Hot Chili Peppers bass guitarist Flea's home was destroyed by the flames.

A text message from the rock star said his 10.5-million-dollar mansion had "burnt to a crisp," The Los Angeles Times said.

Saturday's fire is the most destructive to hit Malibu since the 1993 fires which tore through the area. Three people were killed and around 400 homes were gutted gloves  mittens by the flames, the worst in the city's history.

The latest fire comes after a year of record-low rainfalls in the Los Angeles area, with just 8.15 centimeters (3.2 inches) of rain between January 1 and June 30 -- a fifth of the average rainfall and the lowest since records began 130 years ago.

CERRO PRIETO, Mexico - President Felipe Calderon unveiled a sweeping plan Sunday to curb logging and protect millions of monarch butterflies that migrate to the mountains of central Mexico each winter, covering trees and bushes and attracting visitors from around the world.

Calderon said it would help boost tourism and support the economy in an impoverished area where illegal logging runs rampant.

"It is possible to take care of the environment and at the same time promote development," the president said.

The new initiative is part of ongoing efforts to protect the butterflies, which are a huge tourist attraction and the pride of Mexico. In some areas, officials can even be found standing guard along highways and slowing cars that might accidentally hit a butterfly flying across the road.

The plan also meshes nicely with one of Calderon's main policy planks: protecting the environment and combatting global warming. He has drawn up a national anti-global warming plan and committed to plant some 250 million trees in 2007.