Insider: Families weigh pros, cons of travel sports’ growing role

The youth sports world has changed dramatically since I grew up in the 1980s and ’90s. All the way through my senior year of high school, I played football, basketball and baseball. Once basketball season was over, you’d put your stuff away and — for the most part, with the exception of some summer leagues and camps and pick-up games — not worry about it again until the next season. If you’re from that generation, or before, you can probably relate. Which makes it so fascinating to me now to…

Read More

Loneliness May Run In Families

Loneliness is linked to poor physical and mental health, and a new study of more than 10,000 people has found that the risk for feeling lonely is at least partially due to genetics. Genetic risk for loneliness is also associated with neuroticism — long-term negative emotional state — and depressive symptoms, said the study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. “For two people with the same number of close friends and family, one might see their social structure as adequate while the other doesn’t,” said lead researcher Abraham Palmer, Professor of…

Read More

Made in Bangla pills help plan families in Assam border district

Contraceptive pills from Bangladesh are being smuggled in large quantity to Assam’s Dhubri district which is located close to the international border. Dhubri, like many other areas in the country which share a border with Bangladesh, has long been a haven for smuggled products including food items, clothes, accessories and medicines. Now, this includes an oral contraceptive pill called ‘sukhi’. Bangladesh, which has a robust family-planning programme, distributes ‘sukhi’ pills for free which have also made their way across the border to Dhubri. “As far as I know, ‘sukhi’ has…

Read More