More and more young female teens are becoming infected with HIV, say researchers who have found teens are not getting accurate health sex education, wrote The Toronto Sun Nov. 30. Sarah Flicker, a professor in York’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, recently completed the Toronto Teen Survey, which involved 1,200 youth aged 13 to 18 across 100 communities.
"The preliminary findings of the survey found there has been a shift in terms of who is impacted by HIV in Canada and young women are at increased risk through heterosexual activity, which is something we didn't see 10 years ago," Flicker said. "Toronto has increasingly diversified (and) public-health planners are at a loss as to how to reach out to diverse youth."
Flicker said she's frustrated by the fact that HIV is a preventable disease. "We often think of HIV as an individual problem where a person is making a choice and we have to think of it as a communal problem and think about the social and economic conditions which allow for the spread of HIV," Flicker said.
Community writer cites York prof’s study
The Pembina Institute highlighted our neighbour of 30,000 citizens, Stratford, as the second most liveable city of the 27 Ontario municipalities studied, wrote community guest columnist Dan Glen-Graham in The Record (Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo) Nov. 30. One of the key winning elements of Stratford is the vitality of its downtown, which "leads to a cascading set of benefits."
According to Mark Winfield, a professor in York’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, there is a good mixture of "good fortune, good leadership, good planning and a history of strong civic engagement at play." This includes a clear brand of heritage architecture that has been preserved and the fourth highest per capita percentage of parkland in the study. Winfield notes "it makes more sense to mix things up so people can walk or bike to work or access recreation, school, shopping or whatever."
Schreiber set to ask court to delay extradition order
The federal government, after much uproar, said it will not challenge Karlheinz Schreiber's request to delay his extradition until an appeal is heard by the Supreme Court of Canada, wrote CBC News online Nov. 30. But Patrick Monahan, dean of York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, said the federal government's intervention may not have been needed.
"In the normal course of events, one would think that a stay would be granted to the Court of Appeal's decision until the matter is dealt with by the Supreme Court of Canada," he told CBC News.
Monahan said even if the Supreme Court decides to consider the case in an expedited manner, it could still take judges months to reach a decision. In the meantime, Schreiber will likely be freed on bail.
No more checking in atom hockey
Hockey Canada voted down a motion at its semi-annual meeting in Calgary on the weekend that would have seen bodychecking introduced at the atom level (ages 9 and 10) nationwide, wrote The Beacon-Herald (Stratford) Nov. 29. The vote means bodychecking will be allowed starting at age 11 (minor peewee) for all minor hockey in Canada starting next year.
The Ontario Hockey Federation believes that introducing bodychecking at an earlier age reduced the risk of injury as players got older, and some studies support that claim. Other studies indicated just the opposite was true. A York University study released in 2006 found that children who started bodychecking earlier had high rates of injury and continued to have higher rates than those who started checking at an older age. That study, like some others, suggested bodychecking should begin at age 14.
The OHF is the largest of the 13 Hockey Canada branches and one of three operating in Ontario, wrote the Beacon-Herald. It registers 40 per cent of Hockey Canada's membership base.