Real Change News | Just Heard

March 3, 2010
Vol: 17 No: 10

Just Heard

Just Heard - News round-up

by: Nicholas Rapp , Contributing Writer

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News round-up

The most unhealthy county in the nation is Orangeburg, South Carolina, according to a new report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin. The report found that the key factors in determining a person’s ill health, later on in life, are obesity, unemployment and childhood poverty. Researchers counted 32 percent of all local children in poverty, reports the Orangeburg Times and Democrat. … University of Ulster geologist John McClosky said March 1 that “earthquakes aren’t killing people, poverty is.” The lack of earthquake-safe buildings and medical care are the cause of far more deaths than the actual events. The recent earthquake in Chile was many times more powerful than the one which hit Haiti on Jan. 12, but it killed far fewer people, says McClosky, because of the country’s more stable economy and infrastructure. “More and more of the world’s population is living in marginal situations,” McClosky told the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail, “where no thought at all is given to the nature of buildings in relation to earthquake threats.”… The rate of homeless youths attending public schools has risen in conjunction with the crash of the economy. In New York the situation is extreme, with the New York City Department of Homeless Services counting 15,495 families with children living in shelters as of Feb. 26, according to the Columbia University Spectator.

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