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Girls hit puberty earlier than ever, and doctors aren't sure why

Girls hit puberty earlier than ever, anddoctors aren't sure why

Claudia and Joe's baby girl has been racing to grow up, almost from the moment she was born. Laila sat up on her own at 5 months old and began talking at 7 months and walking by 8½ months.

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"All of our friends told us to cherish every moment," Claudia says. "When I started planning her first birthday party, I remember crying and wondering where the time had gone."

Even so, Laila's parents never expected their baby to hit puberty at age 6.

They first noticed something different when Laila was 3, and she began to produce the sort of body odor normally associated with adults. Three years later, she grew pubic hair. By age 7, Laila was developing breasts.

Without medical treatment, doctors warned, Laila could begin menstruating by age 8 — an age when many kids are still trying to master a two-wheeler. Laila's parents, from the Los Angeles area, asked USA TODAY not to publish their last name to protect their daughter's privacy.

Doctors say Laila's story is increasingly familiar at a time when girls are maturing faster than ever and, for reasons doctors don't completely understand, hitting puberty younger than any generation in history.

About 15% of American girls now begin puberty by age 7, according to a study of 1,239 girls published last year in Pediatrics. One in 10 white girls begin developing breasts by that age — twice the rate seen in a 1997 study. Among black girls, such as Laila, 23% hit puberty by age 7.

"Over the last 30 years, we've shortened the childhood of girls by about a year and a half," says Sandra Steingraber, author of a 2007 report on early puberty for the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group. "That's not good."

Girls are being catapulted into adolescence long before their brains are ready for the change — a phenomenon that poses serious risks to their health, says Marcia Herman-Giddens, an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

"This is an issue facing the new generation," says Laila's doctor, Pisit "Duke" Pitukcheewanont, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, who treats girls with early puberty. "Many parents don't know what is going on."

Researchers don't completely understand why the age of puberty is falling, Herman-Giddens says. Most agree that several forces are at work, from obesity to hormone-like environmental chemicals. There's no evidence that boys are maturing any earlier, says Paul Kaplowitz, author of Early Puberty in Girls.

But data clearly show that girls once matured much later, probably because poor diets and infectious diseases left them relatively thin, Steingraber says. Girls' lack of body fat may have sent a message to their bodies that they weren't yet ready to carry a pregnancy, she says.

In the 1840s, for example, girls in Scandinavia didn't begin menstruating until age 16 or 17, says Kaplowitz, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children's National Medical Center in Washington. As nutrition and living conditions improved, the age at first menstruation occurred two to three months earlier each decade. By 1900, American girls were getting their periods at age 14.

Though the age at which girls get their first period has continued to fall slowly since then, the age at which girls begin developing breasts has declined much more dramatically.

Early puberty increases girls' odds of depression, drinking, drug use, eating disorders, behavioral problems and attempted suicide, according to the 2007 report. When these girls grow up, they face a higher risk of breast and uterine cancers, likely because they're exposed to estrogen for a longer period of time.

Early puberty isn't the only way that childhood is changing.

In only a generation, children have become less connected to nature and, in many ways, less free, says pediatrician Chris Feudtner of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Today's children rarely, if ever, are permitted to roam wild or play outdoors alone, out of sight of watchful, worried parents. Schools are eliminating recess, even as they install vending machines in school cafeterias.

No one should be surprised, Feudtner says, that this generation of children is heavier, less active and more prone to chronic disease and hormonal changes.

"It's very concerning that girls are continuing to develop earlier and earlier," Herman-Giddens says. "We need to look at our environment and our culture, and what we're doing to our kids."

Maturing too quickly

When Laila's parents took her to a doctor, he had disturbing news.

One of the causes for their daughter's precocious development, they learned, could be a brain tumor.

"That's when you have your sleepless nights," says Laila's father, Joe, an engineer.

Although scans showed that Laila did not have a tumor, tests did find that she was maturing at an alarming rate, with the skeletal development of a child several years older. Yet her early maturation was likely to cut short the total amount of time she spent growing, so Laila — who was tall, athletic and slim — probably would wind up much shorter than many of her friends, her father says.

Doctors told the family that monthly hormone shots could stop her breast development and prevent Laila from getting her period. Typically, girls get their periods at around the same ages that their mothers did. Claudia says she didn't begin menstruating until 12.

Given Laila's fear of needles, the prospect of monthly injections seemed too traumatic, her parents say.

"I'd heard horror stories, about three nurses having to hold down an 8-year-old" to administer the shots, Joe says.

Laila's parents reconsidered after their doctor learned of a newer type of hormone therapy, which is implanted beneath the skin once a year, during minor surgery. Laila, now 9, has since had two of the implants, with no side effects. The family is considering one more implant before allowing nature to take its course. As in most cases of early puberty, doctors have never pinpointed what caused Laila's precocious development.

"She is still our baby," Claudia says. "But to look at her now, and think that she is growing faster than the average, we can't help but to feel like we are being rushed through her primary years."

Why is this happening?

Like Laila's parents, many people wonder: Why is this happening?

While much about early puberty remains a mystery, researchers say that suspects include:

•Obesity. The clearest influence on the age of puberty seems to be obesity, Steingraber says. In general, obese girls are much more likely to develop early than thin ones. And the number of heavy girls is growing, with 30% of children overweight or obese, theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention says.

Obesity raises the levels of key hormones, such as insulin, which helps regulate blood sugar, and leptin, a hormone made in fat cells that helps regulate appetite, Steingraber says. While leptin may not trigger puberty by itself, research suggests that puberty can't start without it.

Scientists aren't yet sure whether insulin — or the body's problems processing it — is a factor in early puberty, Steingraber says.

•Prematurity. Rising rates of prematurity — which have increased 18% since 1990 — may contribute to early puberty, as well.

Babies born early or very small for their gestational age tend to experience "catch-up growth" that can lead them to become overweight, Steingraber says. Children who undergo rapid weight gain tend to become less sensitive to the hormone insulin, putting them at greater risk for diabetes, Steingraber says.

•Genetics. Studies consistently show that black girls in the USA go into puberty earlier than whites, suggesting a possible genetic difference. Yet Steingraber notes that, 100 years ago, black girls actually matured later than whites. And she notes that black girls in Africa enter puberty much later than those in the USA, even when their nutrition and family incomes are comparable.

Kaplowitz notes that black girls in the USA tend to have higher levels of insulin and leptin. He notes that researchers are trying to figure out how problems in the body's response to insulin, which are more common among American blacks, might also affect the start of puberty.

•Environmental chemicals. A variety of chemicals — found in everything from pesticides to flame retardants and perfume — can interfere with the hormone system, Herman-Giddens says. For example, chemicals used to soften plastic, called phthalates, can act like hormones. In a small study of 76 girls in Puerto Rico, researchers found that 68% of girls who went through early puberty had been highly exposed to phthalates, compared with only 3% of girls developing normally.

Steingraber is also concerned about an estrogen-like chemical, called BPA, or bisphenol A, that is found in hard plastics, the linings of metal cans and many other consumer products. Although BPA can cause early puberty in animals, its role in humans isn't as clear. But studies by the CDC show that more than 90% of Americans have BPA in their bodies.

The National Institutes of Health is funding research to answer questions about environmental causes of early puberty and hormonal changes, says Frank Biro, director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Biro and colleagues are testing more than 1,200 girls for their exposure to chemicals such as BPA, phthalates, pesticides and chemical flame retardants. The National Children's Study, also funded by the federal government, will study 100,000 children, from before birth through age 21, looking at a variety of environmental exposures.

•Screen time. There's no evidence that watching sexy TV images can trigger puberty, but spending too much time in front of the screen can harm kids in other ways, such as causing them to gain weight, Steingraber says.

Preliminary research also suggests that screen time may hasten puberty by lowering levels of a critical hormone called melatonin, whose production is regulated by the daily cycles of light and dark, and which appears to keep puberty at bay, Steingraber says.

•Family stress. Family relationships also may play a role in the start of puberty. Preliminary research suggests that girls may be more likely to develop early if they experience more family stress, or if they don't live with their biological fathers, says Julianna Deardorff, a clinical psychologist at the University of California-Berkeley's school of public health.

Support is key

Supporting girls as they go through puberty can help them weather the stress, at any age, says Eleanor Mackey, a child psychologist at Children's National Medical Center in Washington.

Laila's mother says her family's faith has sustained them.

"We're a prayerful family," Claudia says. "Laila is very secure in who she is and all that God has given her. Our job is to be there for her and support her through it all, and to make sure she is healthy and getting all she needs."

While the experience has been frightening at times, Claudia says her daughter has emerged as a more caring person.

"At first, as we were going to all these doctors, we tried to keep stuff from her," Claudia says. "Eventually, we had to share what was going on. We'd be at Children's Hospital, and she'd see all of these kids in wheelchairs, and ask, 'Mommy, am I sick? Am I going to get sick like that?' I told her no, but said, 'Consider yourself blessed that this is the only thing that you have to go through.' "

Saving Childhood is a week-long series on the changing face of childhood.

By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/story/2011/04/Girls-hit-puberty-earlier-than-ever-and-doctors-arent-sure-why/45989054/1?loc=interstitialskip

More Pupils Are Learning Online, Fueling Debate on Quality

By TRIP GABRIEL The New York Times April 5. 2011

MEMPHIS — Jack London was the subject in Daterrius Hamilton’s online English 3 course. In a high school classroom packed with computers, he read a brief biography of London with single-paragraph excerpts from the author’s works. But the curriculum did not require him, as it had generations of English students, to wade through a tattered copy of “Call of the Wild” or “To Build a Fire.”

Mr. Hamilton, who had failed English 3 in a conventional classroom and was hoping to earn credit online to graduate, was asked a question about the meaning of social Darwinism. He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and e-mailed it to his teacher.

Mr. Hamilton, 18, is among the expanding ranks of students in kindergarten through grade 12 — more than one million in the United States, by one estimate — taking online courses.

Advocates of such courses say they allow schools to offer not only makeup courses, the fastest growing area, but also a richer menu of electives and Advanced Placement classes when there are not enough students to fill a classroom.

But critics say online education is really driven by a desire to spend less on teachers and buildings, especially as state and local budget crises force deep cuts to education. They note that there is no sound research showing that online courses at the K-12 level are comparable to face-to-face learning.

Here in Memphis, in one of the most ambitious online programs of its kind, every student must take an online course to graduate, beginning with current sophomores. Some study online versions of courses taught in classrooms in the same building. Officials for Memphis City Schools say they want to give students skills they will need in college, where online courses are increasingly common, and in the 21st-century workplace.

But it is also true that Memphis is spending only $164 for each student in an online course. Administrators say they have never calculated an apples-to-apples comparison for the cost of online vs. in-person education, but around the country skeptics say online courses are a stealthy way to cut corners.

“It’s a cheap education, not because it benefits the students,” said Karen Aronowitz, president of the teachers’ union in Miami, where 7,000 high school students were assigned to study online in computer labs this year because there were not enough teachers to comply with state class-size caps.

“This is being proposed for even your youngest students,” Ms. Aronowitz said. “Because it’s good for the kids? No. This is all about cheap.”

In Idaho, the state superintendent of education plans to push a requirement that high-school students take four or more online courses, following a bill that passed the Legislature last week to provide every student with a laptop, paid for from a state fund for educators’ salaries.

Chicago and New York City have introduced pilot online learning programs. In New York, Innovation Zone, or iZone, includes online makeup and Advanced Placement courses at 30 high schools, as well as personalized after-school computer drills in math and English for elementary students.

Reza Namin, superintendent of schools in Westbrook, Me., which faces a $6.5 million budget deficit, said he could not justify continuing to pay a Chinese language teacher for only 10 interested students. But he was able to offer Chinese online through the Virtual High School Global Consortium, a nonprofit school based in Massachusetts.

The virtual high school says its list of client schools has grown to 770, up 34 percent in two years, because of local budget cuts.

Nationwide, an estimated 1.03 million students at the K-12 level took an online course in 2007-8, up 47 percent from two years earlier, according to the Sloan Consortium, an advocacy group for online education. About 200,000 students attend online schools full time, often charter schools that appeal to home-schooling families, according to another report.

The growth has come despite a cautionary review of research by the United States Department of Education in 2009. It found benefits in online courses for college students, but it concluded that few rigorous studies had been done at the K-12 level, and policy makers “lack scientific evidence of the effectiveness” of online classes.

The fastest growth has been in makeup courses for students who failed a regular class. Advocates say the courses let students who were bored or left behind learn at their own pace.

But even some proponents of online classes are dubious about makeup courses, also known as credit recovery — or, derisively, click-click credits — which high schools, especially those in high-poverty districts, use to increase graduation rates and avoid federal sanctions.

“I think many people see online courses as being a way of being able to remove a pain point, and that is, how are they going to increase their graduation rate?” said Liz Pape, president of the Virtual High School Global Consortium. If credit recovery were working, she said, the need for remedial classes in college would be declining — but the opposite is true.

In Memphis, Mr. Hamilton’s school, Sheffield High, once qualified as a “dropout factory” with a graduation rate below 60 percent.

Now the class of 2011 is on target to graduate 86 percent of its students, said Elvin Bell, the school’s “graduation coach,” an increase attributable in part to a longer school day and online credit recovery.

Sixty-one students are in the courses this semester, including Mr. Hamilton, whose average in English 3 is below passing. Melony Smith, his online teacher, said she had not immediately recognized that his answer on the Jack London assignment was copied from the Web, but she said plagiarism was a problem for many students.

Students’ strong desire to pass, she added, meant most were diligent about the work. “A lot of my students send me messages and say, ‘I really need this class to graduate, and I will do anything; please call me because I don’t understand something,’ ” Ms. Smith said.

The district has bought software for 54 online courses, including Algebra 1, Biology and United States History, from the Florida Virtual School, a large state-run online school.

Memphis supplies its own teachers, mostly classroom teachers who supplement their incomes by contracting to work 10 hours a week with 150 students online. That is one-fourth of the time they would devote to teaching the same students face-to-face.

But administrators insisted that their chief motive was to enhance student learning, not save money in a year when the 108,000-student district is braced for cuts of $100 million and hundreds of jobs.

“What the online environment does is continue to provide rich offerings and delivery systems to our students with these resource challenges,” said Irving Hamer, the deputy superintendent.

Like other education debates, this one divides along ideological lines. K-12 online learning is championed by conservative-leaning policy groups that favor broadening school choice, including Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, which has called on states to provide all students with “Internet access devices” and remove bans on for-profit virtual schools.

Teachers’ unions and others say much of the push for online courses, like vouchers and charter schools, is intended to channel taxpayers’ money into the private sector.

“What they want is to substitute technology for teachers,” said Alex Molnar, professor of education policy at Arizona State University.

In Idaho, Gov. C. L. Otter and the elected superintendent of public instruction, Tom Luna, both Republicans, promoted giving students laptops and requiring online courses.

The State Legislature, pressed by critics who said the online mandate would cost teachers jobs, rejected it, but Mr. Luna said in an interview that he would propose it this summer through the state board of education, which supports him.

“I have no doubt we’ll get a robust rule through them,” he said. Four online courses is “going to be the starting number.”

Online courses are part of a package of sweeping changes, including merit pay and ending tenure, which Idaho lawmakers approved, that Mr. Luna said would improve education.

“We can educate more students at a higher level with limited resources, and online technology and courses play a big part in that,” he said.

Sherri Wood, president of the Idaho Education Association, the teachers’ union, strongly disagreed. She said Mr. Luna’s 2010 re-election campaign had received more than $50,000 in contributions from online education companies like K-12 Inc., a Virginia-based operator of online charter schools that received $12.8 million from Idaho last year.

“It’s about getting a piece of the money that goes to public schools,” Ms. Wood said. “The big corporations want to make money off the backs of our children.”

Mr. Luna replied that political contributors have never had an inside track in winning education contracts.

Expert: Parents Need to Help End Bullying

Days after an anti-bullying YouTube video of a Westport student went viral, risk management expert S. David Bernstein educated Westport parents about the issue.

Bullying often takes place in the schools, but one expert says it’s vital that parents help eradicate name calling, vicious gossip and violence by taking action at home.

“Our mission as caring adult should be to help children navigate the often very treacherous waters of childhood and to help them get to other side, to adulthood, as unscathed as possible,” said S. David Bernstein.

On Tuesday night, Bernstein, an expert in risk management, spoke to a crowd of parents at the Conservative Synagogue. At the end of his presentation, he played the viral YouTube videothat originated in Westport

First, he talked about Ryan Halligan, a Vermont teen who committed “bullycide” after suffering nonstop harassment.

“It’s pretty bad when there’s an actual word now for bullying a kid into suicide,” said Bernstein. “It says something about our society.”

Bernstein is the president of Forensic Consultants, a company focused on risk management and threat assessment. If an employer is worried that a worker might be dangerous, people like Bernstein are called. He’s worked in schools with bullying problems, consulted with the FBI and trained with the United States Secret Service.

He said that schools can sometimes be dismissive of claims of bullying, leading to hopelessness for the victim.

Jennifer Pogue, the mother of two Bedford Middle School students, said that while the schools play a role in preventing bullying, it’s ultimately up to the parents.

“We as parents need to stick up for our children, teach other children to be empathetic…and to address the parents [of bullies],” Pogue said. “It’s very easy to blame the schools, but by the time it gets to that, it’s really too late. It’s out of our control. Everyone has to work together.”

The talk was originally scheduled for February, but the snow pushed it back. According to Jamie Klein-Zoref, director of the synagogue’s preschool, the timing was fortuitous with the recent release of anti-bullying video made by Alye Pollack, a 13-year-old Bedford Middle School student.

“We know [the subject of bullying] is very relevant and as a community, we like to offer education,” said Klein-Zoref.

Bernstein told parents that it’s a myth that bullying toughen kids up, although he’s interviewed people who believe that.

"I’ve actually heard parents say that when it was brought to their attention their child was a bully that ‘they should be thanking my kid because it’s stress inoculation’,” Bernstein said.

He said the typical charecteristics of a bully are:

They requently have above average social skills that they use to manipulate with.
They usually need an audience or it’s “no fun.”
Typically know what they’re doing is wrong.
They have limited empathy.
Might see victimization as a game.
Often need to be in control.
Can become lifelong bullies if there’s no intervention.

He also said that even prestigious private schools are not immune from bullying.

By Anthony Karge | Email the author | 5:30am for westport.patch.com

Bullying: ‘Not a Normal Part of Growing Up’

By James Lomusico for westportnow.com

With news of 13-year-old Westporter Alye Pollack’s YouTube video about bullying going viral, almost 100 persons turned out tonight at Westport’s Conservative Synagogue to hear a clinical forensic psychologist examine the roots of bullying, its tragic toll, misconceptions and ways to combat it.

Titled “Bullying, Cyber-bullying and Sexting: What Every Parent Should Know,” S. David Bernstein’s talk took specific aim at cyber-bullying.

Citing recent WestportNow stories on Pollack, Bernstein, principal of Norwalk-based Forensic Consultants, LLC, called cyber-bullying the most insidious.

“The problem with cyber-bullying is that it’s anonymous,” he said. “With traditional bullying, you know who your bully is. With cyber-bullying it could be someone you think of as a friend.”

Charles Boklan, a former consultant to the Secret Service who now works at Forensic Consultants, agreed.

“It’s much worse than it was years ago,” said Boklan. “Today it’s much more vicious.”

Marcie Bratman, synagogue administrator, said a talk had originally been planned to focus on preschool students, but recent developments made the synagogue decide to expand it to all aspects of bullying.“Bullying has far reaching consequences,” said Bernstein.

He cited the story of a young boy who hung himself after being cyber-bullied by a girl he liked, a suicide Bernstien dubbed “bullycide.”

“What does a forensic psychologist have to do with bullying?” he asked. “Dangerous risk assessments.”

There are those whose anguish makes them determined not only to take their own lives, but others, too, he said.

“Eighty percent of rampage shooters have had histories of being bullied,” he said, pointing to the perpetrators at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School.

And the bullies?

“After high school and after college, where do they go?“asked Bernstien. “The workplace. You can wind up working for a bully.”

He described bullying as a psychopathy where one needs to wrest power from another, usually in the presence of others for approval.

The bystanders, Bernstein said, can be culpable for either encouraging the bully, or for not decrying his or her actions.

Bernstein sees bullying rooted in the fact individuals are not taught empathy by their parents, something exacerbated by a popular culture that encourages people to be hard toward others.

Examples, he agreed, are reality TV shows that vote people off the island, exile weakest links, banish chefs or denigrate “American Idol” contestants. They are all forms of bullying.

Combating it will not be easy, Bernstein pointed out. It can only be confronted by victims—some of whom may show symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder—taking a stand.

Passivity, he said, only encourages further bullying.

Another approach, he said, is to dispel common myths about bullying, such as the victim brought it on himself, that it is a rite of passage or that children who bully will eventually grow out of it. They do not, said Bernstein.

“It’s not a normal part of growing up,” he said about being victimized.

At the end of his talk Bernstein played the video by Alye Pollack, someone who did not remain passive and netted positive results.

Westport native tells English paper she was sexually assaulted by Libyan forces

Westport native tells English paper she was sexually assaulted by Libyan forces - Sexually assaulted and told 'You'll die tonight'... but spared as she's American: Female
journalist's horror at
the hands of Gaddafi's men

WESTPORT -- Westport native Lynsey Addario, one of four Times journalists released Monday by Libyan forces tells the Daily Mail of England that she was sexually assaulted while being held by pro-Gaddafi forces.

In story posted to the newspaper's website Addario said she was 'punched in the face' and 'threatened with being decapitated and shot'.

Addario spells out for the paper how she was repeatedly groped by her captures for a 48 hour period.

'There was a lot of groping,' she told the paper. 'Every man who came in contact with us basically felt every inch of my body short of what was under my clothes.'

A female war photographer from the New York Times revealed tonight how she was repeatedly sexually assaulted during her nightmare hostage ordeal in Libya.

Lynsey Addario was one of four Times journalists have now been released after being held captive by pro-Gaddafi forces.

During their six-day detainment, the Americans were beaten and threatened with being decapitated and shot.

Miss Addario, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, gave a harrowing account of her brutal treatment at the hands of their Libyan captors in an interview given just hours after her release.

After she and her colleagues were hauled out of a car at a checkpoint near the eastern city of Ajdabiya, one of the Libyans punched her in the face and laughed at her.

‘Then I started crying and he was laughing more,’ she told the Times.

One man grabbed her breasts – the start of a pattern of sexual harassment she endured over the ensuing 48 hours.

‘There was a lot of groping,’ she said. ‘Every man who came in contact with us basically felt every inch of my body short of what was under my clothes.’

As she was being driven away from Ajdabiya, she said another of her captors stroked her head and told her repeatedly that she was going to be killed.

‘He was caressing my head in this sick way, this tender way, saying, "You’re going to die tonight. You’re going to die tonight",‘ she added.

Miss Addario was with Anthony Shadid, the paper’s Beirut bureau chief, photographer Tyler Hicks and reporter and videographer Stephen Farrell when they were seized while leaving the scene of fighting between rebels and Libyan government forces because they decided it had become too dangerous.

Their driver inadvertently drove into a checkpoint manned by troops loyal to the Libyan dictator.

‘I was yelling to the driver, "Keep driving! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!",' said Mr Hicks. ‘I knew that the consequences of being stopped would be very bad.’

As they were being forced out of their gold-coloured sedan, rebels opened fire sending them sprawling for safety.

‘You could see the bullets hitting the dirt,’ said Mr Shadid.

The soldiers forced them all to lie on the ground and they feared they were going to be murdered there and then.

‘I heard in Arabic, "Shoot them",’ said Mr Shadid. ‘And we all thought it was over.’ But then they heard another soldier say: ‘No, they’re Americans. We can’t shoot them.’

The fate of the car driver, Mohamed Shaglouf, is unknown.

The prisoners were tied up using wire, an electrical cord, a scarf and even a pair of laces and bundled into a car that drove them away from the city.

Each time they stopped at a checkpoint, soldiers would punch them or hit them with rifle butts, according to the Times report.

The first night they spent in the back of the vehicle and for the second they were put in a dirty cell with a bottle to urinate in and a jug of water to drink.

On the third day, they were blindfolded and put on a plane to Tripoli, where they were held in reasonable comfort in a safe house until their eventual release this morning.

After Libyan demands for a U.S. diplomat to be sent to Tripoli to collect the journalist was rebuffed, the Turkish Embassy was allowed to act as an intermediary.

Even then there was an agonizing last minute hitch when the planned release on Sunday was postponed because of the coalition bombing.

After the four were safely out of Libya, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, said he was ‘overjoyed’ at the news.

‘Because of the volatile situation in Libya, we’ve kept our enthusiasm and comments in check until they were out of the country, but now feels like a moment for celebration,’ he wrote in a note to the newsroom.

‘We’re particularly indebted to the government of Turkey, which intervened on our behalf to oversee the release of our journalists and bring them to Tunisia,’ Mr Keller added.

‘We were also assisted throughout the week by diplomats from the United States and United Kingdom.’

Thirteen journalists are still said to be either missing in Libya or in government custody.

They include four from the Al Jazeera Arab TV network, two from Agence France-Presse news agency and a photographer from Getty Images. Six Libyan journalists are also unaccounted for.

Last month, South African journalist Lara Logan, Chief Foreign Correspondent for CBS, was also sexually abused while covering scenes of celebration in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Miss Logan was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault before being saved by a group of women and Egyptian soldiers.

The mother-of-two needed hospital treatment on her return to the US.

U.S. nuclear plants may lack sufficient safeguards

By the CNN Wire Staff

March 14, 2011 10:43 a.m. EDT

Washington (CNN) -- Any plans to build a nuclear power plant in an area of the United States prone to earthquakes should be reconsidered in light of the damage to Japanese reactors by last week's earthquake and tsunami, Democratic Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts told CNN on Monday.

"We just have to call a time out and examine whether or not those safety features necessary in the future are built into new nuclear power plants in our country," said Markey, who sits on the House committee overseeing nuclear power.

"Any plant that is being considered for a seismically vulnerable area in the United States should be reconsidered right now," Markey said, adding that the Japanese earthquake registering 8.9 in magnitude was "a hundred times greater in intensity" than the level that U.S. plants are built to withstand.

He also called for ensuring that backup systems for U.S. nuclear plants include sufficient cooling fluids for shutting down reactors, and for the government to distribute radiation-blocking potassium iodide to people living within a 20-mile radius of a nuclear plant.

In response, Tony Pietrangelo of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technology industry, told CNN that U.S. plants are "designed to withstand the most severe seismic events or earthquakes, as well as tsunamis where applicable, and flooding."

"We have rules to deal with station blackout, which is what they are experiencing in Japan," Pietrangelo said, referring to power loss at nuclear plants that affected the function of backup response systems. It was the "one-two" punch of the earthquake and tsunami that caused the problem, as the Japanese reactors withstood the shaking without significant problem, he said.

U.S. plants, Pietrangelo said, "are designed for the seismic events in their area."

"The West Coast plants are designed to higher standards than the Central and Eastern United States," he said. "It is based on a historical look at what has happened in those areas, what soil or rock they sit in. They are very robust. I think, as we have seen in Japan, despite the magnitude of that earthquake, they hold up quite well."

To Markey, though, the problem is that "it's impossible to totally predict all of the different kinds of events which can unfold in these types of circumstances."

"Let's be honest," he added, "none of the experts can be 100% certain what magnitude of an earthquake that can hit."

On Sunday, a Senate proponent of nuclear energy also called for a temporary halt in building new nuclear power plants in the United States until the situation in Japan can be examined.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who sits with the Democratic caucus, said on the CBS program "Face the Nation" that the United States should "put the brakes on right now until we understand the ramifications of what's happening in Japan."

While noting he continues to support the development of nuclear power, Lieberman said more details are needed on the damage and resulting radiation leaks in Japan.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, another nuclear energy proponent, deferred from offering a final opinion in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," but indicated no change in his thinking.

"I don't think right after a major environmental catastrophe is a very good time to be making American domestic policy," McConnell said. Pressed again, he added: "We ought not to make American and domestic policy based upon an event that happened in Japan."

The United States has 104 non-military nuclear reactors operating at 65 plants across the country. In addition, there are dozens of reactors, weapons labs and other nuclear facilities associated with national defense.

Most of the civilian plants are located near major population centers. They currently supply about 20% of the nation's power.

A new nuclear plant has not been commissioned since the Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979, although dozens that were under construction at the time have come on line.

More recently, increased electricity use, a desire to generate homegrown energy and concern over global warming have made carbon-free nuclear power more attractive.

The government has set aside $18 billion for new nuclear plants, and Obama wants to spend an additional $36 billion.

Federal regulators are reviewing 20 applications to build new nuclear plants, and several existing facilities have applied to extend their operating licenses.

Perhaps the most vulnerable U.S. plants are the two built on California's Pacific coast near the San Andreas fault.

Those plants were built to withstand a magnitude 7.5 earthquake, said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert at the Institute for Policy studies and a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy.

The San Francisco quake of 1906 measured 8.3, said Alvarez, while Friday's Japanese quake was a massive 8.9.

"I don't think we should renew those operating licenses," he said.

Spokesmen for the utilities that own the California plants, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, said Sunday the plants are designed to meet the maximum quake projected for their immediate vicinity, which is not thought to exceed a magnitude of 6.5.

According to Pietrangelo of the Nuclear Energy Institute, every two years U.S. nuclear plants undergo emergency planning exercises run by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"We are the gold standard of emergency planning, and other industries have learned from what we do on our stations," Pietrangelo said.

The Lisa Wexler Show

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