A mysterious respiratory virus has been striking children in the Kansas City area.
Children’s Mercy Hospital has confirmed hospitalizing up to 30 kids a day with the virus and the hospital is as full as during the heights of flu season.
One woman whose son was struck by the virus says that he was fine when he went to pre-school on Tuesday but soon had trouble breathing.
“You could see his ribs, and his stomach was pushing out really hard… I thought it was an asthma attack,” Pam Sheldon told Fox Kansas City.
The virus has been identified as Enterovirus-68. The virus had been considered rare until the last few years when it had increased in worldwide appearance. The virus is suspected as the cause of a polio-like disease in California in 2009 and can cause symptoms that mimic asthma to central nervous system attacks.
In some rare cases, the virus can be fatal.
There is no vaccine or anti-viral medication for Enterovirus-68 and the only thing that doctors can do for victims is supportive care such as oxygen.
A documentary released by VICE News shows Islamic terrorists training children to be homicide bombers and killers.
“What do you want to be? A jihadist or to execute a martyrdom operation?” Abdullah Al-Belgian of Belgium asks his young son Abdullah. “A jihadist,” he answers.
“Who do you fight with?” filmmaker Medyan Dairieh asks another child featured in the documentary. “The Islamic State,” the boy answers. “Where are you going after Ramadan?” Dairieh inquires. “To the camp … to have training,” the child replies. “What are you going to do after?” Dairieh asks. “Fight the Russians [and] Americans. The infidels.”
The video has interviews with various terrorist operatives that say children under 15 are sent to what is called “Sharia camp” to be brainwashed with the creeds of the terrorists and extreme Islam. When they turn 16, they are sent to the military camp.
Children taken to the city of Raqqa, Syria are shown dancing and singing for the caliphate celebration after terrorists obtained control of the city.
A Portland, Oregon children’s ministry is coming under fire from a group of citizens who object to kids being told that all human beings are sinners who need salvation through Jesus Christ.
Portland residents are attacking the Portland chapter of Child Evangelism Fellowship over their voluntary summer camps in the area. The CEF teaches children as part of their camps that everyone, including them, are sinners and that because of Jesus Christ our sins can be forgiven.
Some of the “never mention sin” group have started a group called Protect Portland Children to harass parents into not taking their children to CEF events. The group was founded by an anti-Christianist who aims to keep the group from not only speaking to children at camps, but keep the group from having Bible study groups at area schools this fall.
The group says that they’re not saying anything that hasn’t been said for 2,000 years.
“The message of the gospel, teaching of the core Christian tenets of the Christian faith that have been taught for 2,000 years in the Bible is what we’re teaching,” CEF Vice President Moises Esteves said. “There’s nothing new here.”
Five children under 16 have been arrested by the NYPD after a mugging spree in New York’s Central Park.
The five children, including a 12-year-old and 13-year-old, are facing charges of robbery, assault and attempted assault.
The gang attacked a 31-year-old man on Monday morning, beating him with a stick and punching him in the face when he refused to give them all the money in his wallet. The group then attacked two female joggers and stole their iPhones and iPods.
The only suspect named by police was 16-year-old Angel Munoz. Police say that Munoz and one of the 14-year-old assailants turned themselves in to police after discovering they were the subject of a manhunt.
The victims then identified the other suspects from lineups conducted at an NYPD precinct.
A Utah woman is behind bars and facing multiple murder charges after authorities found the bodies of seven babies within a garage at her former home.
In 2011, Meagan Huntsman, 39, moved out of a home in Pleasant Grove, Utah that was owned by her ex-husband’s parents. Her ex-husband went to the home Saturday to begin to clean up in preparation for moving into the home this summer when he found an infant’s body in the home’s garage.
Six more babies were found packed away in boxes in the garage.
According to reports from investigators, it appears at all of the children were full term and born alive between 1996 and 2006. The babies are currently undergoing DNA testing for paternity but it is believed the ex-husband is the father. Authorities say that he apparently had no idea what his then wife had been doing and is not a person of interest in the case.
Huntsman is facing six counts of murder and authorities have not said why it was six cases and not seven considering that seven babies had been found in the home She also reportedly moved out of the house in 2011 leaving behind her 18-year-old daughter to care for her two remaining teen daughters.
A pregnant South Carolina woman attempted to kill herself and her three children by driving her minivan into the Atlantic Ocean.
Now police officials are saying that 31-year-old Ebony Wilkerson talked about demons before she drove away from the home according to her sister who called police. Daytona Beach stopped Wilkerson but she appeared lucid and didn’t qualify to be held under the state’s mental health act.
“The children were in the back seat, they were buckled in and were not in distress. Although the sergeant said she looked like she had some mental illness, she did not fit the criteria for going into custody under the Baker Act,” Police Chief Mike Chitwood told Fox News.
Two hours later, Wilkerson drove herself and her three children, ages 10, 9 and 3, into the ocean. Bystanders, police and lifeguards pulled the children from the van as it began to sink.
The children are in the custody of state welfare authorities.
Doctors are calling a “miracle” a maintenance worker’s discovery of a baby in a trash dumpster.
Carlos Michel said that he thought he was hearing the sound of an animal dying in a dumpster at the Reverse at Windmill Lakes apartment complex. He decided to investigate and discovered a newborn boy, with the umbilical cord still attached, inside a plastic garbage bag.
Michel immediately checked for breath sounds and found the child was still alive. He placed him inside his heated truck and warmed the boy until he began to react like a normal baby. He kept him safe until emergency personnel arrived on the scene.
Doctors say he saved the child’s life.
Police investigators found a 16-year-old woman in a nearby apartment who admitted bagging up the baby and throwing it in the dumpster. Police gave no details why the teen abandoned her baby in that manner but said she was taken to a local hospital.
Child Protective Services will care for the baby. The Harris County District Attorney’s office has not said if they will be filing charges against the mother.
An surprise terror attack on a school just before dawn has left at least 29 children dead.
Nigerian military spokesman said Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram targeted the school before dawn so they could kill as many children as possible before they realized they were under attack.
A teacher in the school told reporters that the terrorists set fire to a boy’s dormitory and then stood by any window that did not have bars in front of it to slit the throats of any student who tried to escape the flames.
Spokesman Abdullahi Bego said he could not tell why the school was left unprotected by government troops and that the state’s Governor would ask the federal government why they were not there. Students and teachers quickly abandoned another school in the state after military troops withdrew their protection Monday.
A new study has shown that parents who pay little attention to their children are more likely to have children who become internet addicts.
A study of young adults showed the parents labeled as tough or demanding along with showing little affection were also those most connected to children with personality traits that made it difficult for them to interact with other humans.
“In short, good parenting, including parental warmth and affection, that is caring and protective parents, has been associated with lower risk for Internet addiction,” Argyroula E. Kalaitzaki of the Technological Education Institute (TEI) of Crete in Heraklion told Yahoo news, “whereas bad parenting, including parental control and intrusion, that is authoritarian and neglectful parents, has been associated with higher risk for addiction.”
Internet addiction is still considered a fairly new psychological diagnosis and scientists have not fully agreed on a definition for addiction.
“Parents that identify their children to have some symptoms of addiction, like excessive time spent online or need to spend increasingly longer periods online, inadequate sleep and fatigue, apathy, nervousness, or irritability when offline, impairments in relationships and schoolwork or employment, should contact a health care professional as soon as possible,” Kalaitzaki said.
A new report in the New York Times says that homeless children in New York City have reached the highest level since the Great Depression.
The report shows a pattern in New York of rents rising while low-income wages such as jobs with fast food restaurants have stagnated making it impossible for many one-parent families to be able to afford a place to live.
However, at least two-thirds of the homeless children in New York do not have a working parent in their family and many of those children have parents addicted to drugs or alcohol.
The waiting list for public housing in the city has close to 250,000 people according to the Times report. The number of poor in the city has risen to the level that almost half of those in the city are living at or below the poverty line.
New York is not the only city dealing with a problem concerning homeless children. The United States is has the second highest rate of child poverty in any developed nation, behind only Romania.