Login
Ladera Ranch Erupts as Cancer Bosses Release New Figures on Extremely Rare Cluster Striking Kids
Parents in a wealthy California community say newly released state cancer figures have only fueled fears that years of pesticide spraying could be linked to a cluster of rare childhood cancers. Families in Orange County’s Ladera Ranch have spent months pushing officials to investigate whether environmental factors played a role in an alarming number of Ewing sarcoma diagnoses among local children.
Health officials say no link has been established, but residents argue the latest data has only raised more questions. The California Cancer Registry confirmed there were fewer than 11 cases of Ewing sarcoma in Ladera Ranch during a 10-year period ending in 2021. But for many parents, the numbers are already outdated.
The data does not include several diagnoses reported after 2021, including 17-year-old Brody Matteson, who died in March 2026 after battling the rare bone and soft tissue cancer. “Has that number grown?” Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley asked CBS. “If it has grown, has it grown to a significant incident that it would be a cause for alarm. We need answers so that we can plan. So that we can protect the public health.”
Too Much Screen Time May Trigger Lasting Brain Delays, Top Health Official Warns
As screens compete for families’ attention, children’s development is paying the price, top federal health officials warn. Early and excessive screen time can trigger severe neurocognitive delays in young children, impacting attention spans, memory and language skills, according to Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos, interim surgeon general and principal deputy assistant secretary of health.
“Parents are now fighting for attention from the screens,” Haridopolos told Fox News Digital. To help parents combat screen addiction, the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office has released a targeted framework known as “the 5 Ds.”
This Is the Way Out of Our Ultraprocessed Dystopia
When Bryce Martinez started feeling an aching around his heart, he thought it might be an asthma attack. But at the school nurse’s office, his blood pressure was found to be so high that he was rushed to the emergency room. There, doctors diagnosed him with Type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease. Bryce, then 16, was bewildered. He’d developed obesity early in childhood, but until that chest pain, had no other sign anything was wrong with his health. He hadn’t even realized kids could get Type 2 diabetes.
Back home, he searched online for information about his illnesses, devouring news articles and videos. He learned that American children live in dysfunctional food environments, where the least healthy options tend to be the most affordable and accessible. That as parents took on more working hours, there was less time for cooking than in previous generations.
That food companies filled the gap with convenient, ultraprocessed food, containing industrially manipulated ingredients that you wouldn’t find in home cooking. That these foods are often full of salt, sugar, fat and additives. Bryce was shocked that regulators didn’t vet all food additives for health and safety, and that companies could slap healthy labels on nutrient-bankrupt junk. Junk, Bryce realized, was a lot of the food he grew up on in Pennsylvania.
Kids Born During COVID Lockdown Show Executive Function Concern at Age 4
Among children born during the first COVID lockdown in England, caregiver-reported executive function at the age of 4 years emerged as the notable area of concern, despite language, motor skills, and non-verbal reasoning generally meeting or exceeding age-based expectations. Compared with non-verbal reasoning ability, expressive language, executive function, and motor skills remained relatively weaker.
Researchers conducted a cross-sectional observational study to evaluate language, executive function, motor skills, and non-verbal reasoning in 4-year-old children born during the initial COVID lockdown in England (March 23, 2020, to June 23, 2020).
The study included 205 children (58.5% boys) who underwent standardised assessments between May 2024 and June 2025; of these, 180 were assessed remotely and 25 were assessed in person using identical protocols.
Direct assessments measured expressive and receptive language, expressive and receptive vocabulary, and non-verbal reasoning, and caregivers completed validated questionnaires assessing executive function and motor skills of children..
Popular School Cafeteria Meals Need an Update to Meet Healthy Food Standards, Researchers Say
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Spicy chicken wings, tacos, pizza, sausage biscuits and breakfast smoothies offered by school cafeterias must be reinvented, lest they vanish from the menu, a new study says.
These items all contain loads of added sugar and salt that won’t fly under new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) limits set to take effect in fall 2027, researchers reported recently in the journal Nutrition Reviews.
“School meals are designed to meet nutrition standards, and for many children, they are among the most balanced meals they eat,” said senior researcher Aleshia Hall-Campbell, executive director of the Institute of Child Nutrition at the University of Mississippi.
“But because students may eat school breakfast and lunch many times each week, the nutrition quality of those meals matters,” she said in a news release. “Reducing added sugars and sodium is not about blaming school meals. It is about using school meals as an opportunity to support children’s health while still serving foods students enjoy.” For the new study, researchers compared current cafeteria fare against USDA requirements to reduce sodium and sugar in school meals by the start of the 2027-28 school year.
Discord and Meta Accused of Giving Predators ‘Unfettered Access’ to a Teen Girl and Failing to Stop the Abuse
A woman alleges child abuse rings found her on Discord and Instagram as a teen, then blackmailed her into sending them nude and self-harm photos that they shared across the internet — leaving her with mental and physical scars.
Now she’s suing both tech companies in a case her lawyers hope will be a “watershed moment” for holding social media sites accountable, as the FBI warns parents about a rising network of online extortion groups targeting kids.
The anonymous plaintiff made the allegations in a previously unreported lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court in April.
