Every kid goes through a gross-out phase at one point or another, right? There's always one who'll experiment by eating sand, worms, even dog food. But what about bugs?
Cicadas are currently invading Tennesee in a freak occurrence that happens once every 13 years or so. A three-year-old boy named Lance had been having fun playing with the insects for days, before deciding to pop one in and out of his mouth.
In her wisdom, his mom decided to film him licking the cicada and then posted the video on YouTube. She obviously thought it was hilarious that her curious child "tongued" the bug.
"It made sense to get some footage of it before [the cicadas] disappeared," she said, "as he’ll be 16 the next time the cicadas make their way to Nashville!"
But she probably hadn't counted on Lance and the Cicada going viral, with more than 100,000 page views in just a week. Harmless fun? You decide:
"
Mice-infested schools, without playgrounds, adequate books, or gyms. You would expect conditions like these in third world countries, not in Canadian schools.
Yet these are just some of the problems in reserve schools across the country, according to letters written by First Nations children to the United Nations.
“(It’s) not fair when children are crowded in a classroom and it’s not fair that mice eat the snacks,” wrote a student named Angelique. “It’s not fun when cold winds are in the school. It’s not fun at all!”
The report, “Our Dreams Matter Too: First Nations children’s rights, lives and education,” will be released this week in Gatineau and submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child with a view to prompting an investigation into the historic inequities in native education which is the responsibility of the federal government.
The report was put together by Shannen Koostachin and Cindy Blackstock, head of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and Irwin Elman, the Ontario Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth.
Growing up, Koostachin recalled going to school in Attawapiskat in “run-down portables on a site next to a 50,000 litre diesel spill”. Though Koostachin died in June 2010, her efforts have led to accelerated funding of an elementary school being built in her remote, fly-in community.
First Nations kids are funded an average of $2,000 to $3,000 less than non-native kids, sometimes more depending on the province. In some cases, because there are no schools, native kids are sent hundreds of kilometres away to cities like Thunder Bay and Timmins.
In the last decade, seven First Nations teens from remote reserves attending high school in Thunder Bay have mysteriously been found dead in nearby rivers.
“I can tell you that our government has held discussions with the Assembly of First Nations and we look forward to continued progress on important issues such as governance, education and economic development,” said Michelle Yao, director of communications for Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan.
A First Nations-Crown meeting is proposed for next year.
Almost three out of four native teens drop out of high school. With one of the highest suicide rates in the country, most native teenagers live in poverty and isolation.
Would such staggering statistics be tolerated, and largely ignored, in any other Canadian community? Doubtful.
"
Although 25-year-old Sara Ottoson was born without a uterus and is unable to reproduce, her 56-year-old mother, Eva, plans to donate her own womb in the hopes that Sara will be able to conceive.
So effectively Sara will carry a child in the same womb that carried her! Warped as it may sound, it's not the first time the procedure has been carried out. But if it's successful, the operation will be the first mom-to-daughter womb transplant.
The same surgery was performed back in 2000 in Saudi Arabia, but the womb had to be removed because of complications.
Ottosson, a biology teacher, is pragmatic about the whole thing. So is her mother.
“It's just an organ like a kidney or whatever," she said. "[Sara] needs it, I have it. I don't need it anymore. From the start when we realized what her condition was, she has always been talking about adoption. Then this opportunity came along last autumn. So I think there are loads of young women out there, who for one reason or another can't get their own babies and if this could be some way of doing it in the future, why not?”
Once the transplant has taken place, Ottosson will undergo IVF (using her boyfriend's sperm) and then take medication to ensure her body doesn't reject the foreign organ. The baby would be then delivered by C-section at full term. Once it has served its purpose, the womb will be removed.
If the plan fails, Sara Ottosson said she can always adopt.
Printer-friendly version