Updated: 2009-12-30 22:01:33
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You can now buy the morning-after pill from a pharmacy without a prescription. But at the moment, pharmacists are able to decline services with which they disagree on moral or religious grounds. A significant number, mainly Christians and Muslims, refuse women the morning-after pill because they believe it is a form of abortion. I can’t [...]
Updated: 2009-12-30 21:59:27
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Among sexually active 13 and 14-year-olds in the UK, 40% say they were drunk when they had intercourse for the first time. And the report to the council’s building stronger communities scrutiny committee points out that Wigan has the eighth highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the North West.
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http://www.wigantoday.net/wigannews/Wigan-top-of-booze-shame.5942477.jp
Updated: 2009-12-30 21:58:21
Swansea’s teenage girls and women have been offered free emergency contraceptives from pharmacies to reduce unwanted pregnancies over the festive period.
Lost inhibitions at Christmas and New Year parties could lead to more women accidentally falling pregnant, health bosses warned.
Girls under 16 will also be able to get the “morning-after pill” for free at 18 city [...]
Updated: 2009-12-30 21:57:41
New research has shown that around 87% of girls between 12 and 18 think their friends are having sex.
According to the study, carried out by teen magazine Sugar, many teenage schoolgirls feel pressured into having sex as a result.
The survey of 985 girls found that almost a third lie about their sex lives, while around [...]
Updated: 2009-12-30 00:59:32
PLANT breeder Bill Angus talks to Teresa Rush about his hopes for the next decade in terms of wheat breeding and how breeders will meet the challenges.
The next 10 years, in wheat breeding terms, will be about achieving a massive boost in production, against a backdrop of increasing environmental constraints.
Nonetheless, the next decade could potentially [...]
Updated: 2009-12-29 16:50:23
Bill Ryerson, President of PMC, appeared on Vermont Public Radio (VPR) today to discuss the recent Drucker Award and the work of PMC. Below is a write up frmo VPR’s website along with a link to listen to the interview.
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A non-profit located in Vermont has been honored for its work making a difference [...]
Updated: 2009-12-28 19:52:36
Violence against women usually occurs when it is considered socially acceptable. People are attempting to use the radio soap operas in developing nations to model positive social change.
Violence against women is a global problem, but its incidence varies widely. It tends to be much higher where it is regarded as a socially acceptable. Though [...]
Updated: 2009-12-27 19:47:57
Congratulations to Alleyne Regis for being named an eco-warrior by Razoo.
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Alleyne Regis uses a unique method to raise awareness of environmental and social issues in the Caribbean: radio soap operas. For three years, Regis produced a radio show for residents of the island of St. Lucia called Changing Tides, a serial drama that used gripping [...]
Updated: 2009-12-26 19:44:45
Many thanks to Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura for this article from The Psychologist. The article describes the work of Population Media Center. Dr. Bandura is a member of PMC’s Program Advisory Board.
“Social cognitive theory goes global”
The Psychologist
June 2009
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk
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Updated: 2009-12-22 17:27:00
Thanks to Jim Carter for this article from Foreign Policy.
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It’s not Twitter or Facebook that’s reinventing the planet. Eighty years after the first commercial broadcast crackled to life, television still rules our world. And let’s hear it for the growing legions of couch potatoes: All those soap operas might be the ticket to a better [...]
Updated: 2009-12-22 17:25:19
Thanks to Alexandra Paul for this story from NPR News.
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Much of the discussion of television in the United States involves talk about falling ratings and cultural damage, but writer and economist Charles Kenny sees many positive benefits of television in the developing world.
It’s not just that television sets are popping up in living rooms [...]
Updated: 2009-12-22 14:16:28
Holiday greetings to you. Below is a document summarizing Population Media Center’s programs by country and the measured effects of these programs.
PMC Progress Report December 2009 (Word doc., 118 KB)
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Updated: 2009-12-21 20:38:16
Thanks to Fred Stanback for this article. We know that having access to mass media is effective in lowering fertility rates, probably not because it results in people not having sex, as the Indian Family Welfare Minister suggests in the article below, but because of people being educated by the information contained in TV [...]
Updated: 2009-12-21 17:00:41
Season’s greeting to all our readers!
Updated: 2009-12-21 16:03:36
*UPDATE: This event has been postponed until January 8th
From the Communications Consortium Media Center.
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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver a major speech Monday, December 21, 2009 to mark the 15th year of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). Secretary Clinton will announce the U.S. Government’s renewed support for and dedication [...]
Updated: 2009-12-20 15:23:11
Thanks to Mark O’Connor for this article from the Canberra times.
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Journalists are a fairly innumerate lot. Many are, bizarrely, quite proud for it.
It is a dangerous state of affairs because it means they swallow virtually any set of figures without question.
Perhaps the only thing more dangerous is when someone in power does the same thing. [...]
Updated: 2009-12-19 08:27:57
Despair is not acceptable, but it may be inevitable. Social democrats are the world’s optimists, knowing human destiny is in our own hands if we have the will to change. Leave pessimism to the world’s conservatives, ever fearful of the future and yearning for a better yesterday. But today optimism feels impossible. The chance of [...]
Updated: 2009-12-18 22:25:41
The European Union plans to cut climate-warming carbon emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels over the next decade. It had said it would deepen those cuts to 30 percent if other rich nations at the U.N. talks take similar steps.
“If we can move from 20 to 30 percent, we want to,” British Environment Minister [...]
Updated: 2009-12-18 22:24:18
Speaking as talks on a global climate deal in Copenhagen ran into disagreements over how to share the burden of emissions cuts, some residents of low-lying coastal Africa said they had more pressing concerns.
“We want the authorities of the world powers to come and rescue the poor people from the sea,” said Diakite Abdullaye, 46, [...]
