Australian Mike Young, a one-day fielding coach, takes local aboriginal children through fielding practice during a children's clinic at the Titjikala community near the Finke desert, southeast of Alice Springs, February 26, 2005. Young accompanied Australia's Jeff Thompson and Dean Jones along with West Indian bowler Courtney Walsh to the outback community to play cricket against a team from Titjikala. Picture taken February 26, 2005. REUTERS/David Callow

Kids and Snow- KASHMIRINDIA, & AFGHANISTAN

Kashmiri children study outside their house on a sunny day after recent heavy snowfall in Batote, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir , 120 km (75 miles) north of Jammu, February 25, 2005. In southern Kashmir, more than 230 people, including dozens of children, died as walls of snow crashed through their houses. Officials say at least 300 are still missing, many feared dead. REUTERS/Amit Gupta

Afghan refugees walk back to their tents through the snow after receiving hunamatarian aid. Afghanistan is suffering its worst winter in a decade, with remote areas isolated by snowdrifts and at least 472 people, many of them children, dying from cold-related diseases, avalanches and accidents(AFP/File/Shah Marai)

Dealing with Quake- IRAN

Two Iranian young boys draw pictures at a Red Crescent camp for local children on the outskirts of Dahouyeh village, 20 km (12.5 miles) from Zarand, February 24, 2005. Aid workers in southeastern Iran , using experience gained in the Bam earthquake 14 months ago, want children affected by Tuesday's quake to release painful memories through play. The tremor, with a 6.4 magnitude, leveled several mountain villages in an area around the town of Zarand, 700 km (440 miles) from Tehran, killing at least 490 people. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi

Life Goes On: Kids on a Beach- SRI LANKA

Sri Lankan children, who lost their family members and homes in the December 26, 2004 tsunami, play at a beach near the Akurala Primary College relief camp in Galle in southern Sri Lanka February 24, 2005. The Asian tsunami swallowed up nearly 40,000 people along Sri Lanka's palm-fringed south, east and northern shores alone. REUTERS/Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi

OPINION / ENTERTAINMENT

Is Instructional Video Game an Oxymoron?

New York Times

http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050204/ZNYT05/502040378/1002/BUSINESS

Hundreds of recent video games reward players for shooting villains, vaporizing monsters or solving puzzles. But only one encourages regular and rigorous hand washing.

That game, Stop Fluin' Around, came not from a major developer but from an alliance of several public interest groups, including the Partnership for Food Safety Education. Free on the Internet, the animated interactive game rewards players for answering questions like "Where can the flu hide?" (The answer to that one: on hands that have not been washed.)

Few would find it as compelling as video game best sellers like Grand Theft Auto or the alien-fighting Halo 2. But thrills are not the point. Stop Fluin' Around, which arrived in December, is one of dozens of instructional online games that public interest organizations, advocacy groups and government agencies say have become the best way to reach a generation of children and teenagers weaned on video games and the Web.

About 81 percent of people age 12 to 17 who regularly use the Internet sometimes play games online, according to a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But because the commercial Web audience monitoring firms like Nielsen/NetRatings or comScore Media Metrix do not measure traffic on nonprofit sites, it is hard to gauge the audience of the instructional games, except anecdotally.

Jillian Eisenberg, a 10-year-old in Manhattan, says that most of her four to five hours a week playing video games are spent on commercial titles like Spider-Man 2, which she plays on her hand-held Game Boy. But once a week or so she plays an online game like Stop Fluin' Around.

As a result, "I wash my hands a lot more than I used to," said Jillian, who has learned that "if you don't wash your hands one time, that could lead to the flu or any other virus." Like what? "Salmonella, I guess."

Riley Pratt, a 17-year-old high school senior in Lake Orion, Mich., said he got a few minutes of entertainment from shooting cigarettes in the Smokeout Cafe. Mostly, though, he said he would rather play Madden football or the driving game Gran Turismo on his PlayStation 2. He said that because he would not smoke, having learned of the dangers at school, the message of Smokeout Cafe did not have much impact on him.

As with any medium aimed at children, there can be controversies. Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency removed an educational game from its Web site that gave players the challenge of putting objects including a starfish, surfboard and car back in their rightful places after being scattered by a tsunami. Critics said such a game - this one had been on the site since 1998 - trivialized the recent disaster in the Indian Ocean.

Philip Tan, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies educational games, said one concern about online games was that they could oversimplify an issue by reducing a complicated concept into proverbial good guys and bad guys. The Greenpeace game, for example, turns Japanese whalers into the unambiguous, if unexplained, enemy.

But Brian Fitzgerald, the head of the Web unit for Greenpeace, said such games were consistent with Greenpeace's aggressive messages. "We see them as environmental criminals," he said, referring to the villains in the games. In another Greenpeace game, to illustrate the organization's view that the Bush administration is beholden to the oil industry, the president has a Pinocchio nose that players can use to lead him around the screen.

Instead of hitting its audience with loads of information, Mr. Fitzgerald said, Greenpeace is "packaging our environmental messages in a fun format, palatable to a young and Internet-savvy audience."

Other message-game advocates take a similar position. "The only way to get kids interested in hand washing, in our view, is to get them to have fun," said Jerry Bowman, a spokesman for NSF International, a nonprofit group formerly known as the National Sanitation Foundation. NSF helped develop Stop Fluin' Around as part of a larger hygiene-oriented Web site called Scrub Club.

Mr. Bowman said he hoped the site would become the modern equivalent of the classic Saturday morning television cartoon "Schoolhouse Rock," which taught children in the 1970's and 1980's about math. And flu education may be only the beginning.

"I'd like to do one about E. coli," he said. "There's always an E. coli outbreak."

HEADLINES

Children are best :Interview with child actress – INDIA

-Amita Malik, columnist

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=malik%2Fmalik68.txt&writer=malik

Interviews always have their ups and downs, their ego clashes their hang-ups and sometimes, sheer bias. Which is why one finds that sometimes the best interviews are with innocent children. Last week I saw an interview with a little girl of about 10 which gave me unalloyed pleasures. It was Ayesha Kapoor, the little heroine of the film Black, about a girl who is physically challenged by being dumb, deaf and blind and the key stars are Rani Mukherji and Amitabh Bachchan.

But most people agreed that the performances of these two outstanding stars was outshone by that of the little girl who plays the role of the child before she grows up. She has a German mother and an Indian father and I wonder at the director picking her out from a place like Pondicherry, far removed from Mumbai. Which makes Sanjay Leela Bhansali stand out as a director of rare discernment and skill. As a Bengali, I can even forgive him for what he did to Devdas.

To begin with, the little heroine rode up on a horse. Her mother runs a riding school in Pondicherry and Ayesha got off her horse with practiced ease as Nupur Basu of NDTV, as relaxed as usual, asked her some simple questions, unlike some interviewers who try to be patronising with children. I shall only pick out two questions and answers as typical of both Nupur's relaxed approach and the little girl's naturalness and innocence, a combination which made the whole encounter so pleasurable. "How did you get on with Mr Bachchan?" asked Nupur. "Well, in the beginning I called him Amitabhji, because everyone called him that then I got to calling him Mr Bachchan. But in the end I called him Amitabh, because he was so friendly. Even though I had to hit him hard three times and that was difficult." "Would you like to act again in a film?" asked Nupur. The girl patted her horse and replied: "Only if I am allowed to act with him." Such natural charm.

Ayesha Kapoor, right, with Amitabh Bachchan in a scene from Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film ‘Black.

desitalk.newsindia-times.com/ 2005/02/18/infocus19-top.html

ENTERTAINMENT

Black spells magic for special kids – CHANDIGARH, INDIA

300-odd differently-abled from various institutions watch a special show of the movie

Payal Pruthi

Chandigarh, February 26: They sat glued to their seats, in anticipation. Until into this different world of theirs’, the 14-reel, two-hour movie, started weaving Black magic.

Their every feeling was unique and expression poignant. Yet it did not wrench hearts because like Michelle McNally, the protagonist, you were sure Black is not the colour of the bright 300-odd children who today attended the special screening of the Rani Mukherjee and Amitabh Bachchan starrer at Fun Republic. The screening for the differently-abled was organised by Platinum Honda.

For an outsider, it takes time to build trust, but you know you are ready for a relationship as soon as faces light up and flash a smile. And then you hand out a pack of popcorns, T-Shirt and a cap, and try to strike a conversation.

Like the protagonist in the movie, Mahipal, a visually-impaired student of Class VI, wants to become a teacher. For Devi Lal, a Class XI student at the Institute for the Blind, sounds weave magic. ‘‘I can understand everything through sounds and have watched Taal and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai too,’’ says Lal, beaming with pride.

His warden and teacher S. Pathak says he shares a special bond with these children and every day is a new experience.

HEADLINES

KIDS HELPING KIDS

Teens fast for sake of hungry children- Worldwide

'30 Hour Famine'

By John J. Shaughnessy

[email protected]

February 26, 2005

http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/225224-9936-047.html

• What: Indianapolis youths from several Indianapolis churches will join teenagers around the world in a 30-hour fast to raise money to fight hunger.

• Who: Organized by World Vision, a Christian relief organization that helps children by tackling the causes of poverty.

• When: Fast began Friday afternoon and will end this evening. Next days for "30 Hour Famine" are April 29-30.

• Information and donations: Contact World Vision at (800) 7-FAMINE or at the Web site, www.30hourfamine.org.

Amanda Pisconski laughed nervously when she thought about not eating food for 30 straight hours.

"I can barely go four hours without eating, and to go 30 seems nearly impossible," said Pisconski, 16. "But it's a good idea to help raise money for kids who are starving and dying every day."

The Indianapolis teenager is joining youths from several Indianapolis churches -- and young people around the world -- who are participating this weekend in "30 Hour Famine."

The fasting teens hope to call attention to the more than 29,000 children who die every day from hunger, according to World Vision, an international Christian relief organization dedicated to helping children by tackling the causes of poverty.

Teenagers raised more than $11 million through the "30 Hour Famine" in 2004, World Vision says.

"I didn't know there were that many kids dying every day," Pisconski said. "When we don't see what people go through in other countries, it's hard for us as Americans to realize how blessed we are and how much we have."

Pisconski is one of 16 youths from St. Alban's Episcopal Church doing the fast, which began at 12:30 p.m. Friday and ends today at 6:30 p.m.

Other Indianapolis-area churches involved in the fast include Nora Christian Fellowship, River of Life Church, Avon Community Church of the Nazarene and Chinese Community Church of Indianapolis.

"I'm trying to help," said Ashley McGivern, 12, a member of the St. Alban's youth group. "We're going to see what their life is like every day. We're allowed to drink water and juice, so I think I can get through it."

As they fast, St. Alban's youth members will also work today at the Dayspring Center, a shelter for homeless families.

"We wanted to do something tied to the community," says Vali Pisconski, Amanda's mom and group leader of the St. Alban's youth program. "We're hoping this will help the kids be more open to caring for people."

St. Alban's youth members know that World Vision says it takes $360 to feed a child for a year. So, the teens are hoping to raise $1,080, enough to feed three children for a year, according to Amanda Pisconski.

"My friends at school laughed and said I'm crazy," says Amanda, a sophomore at North Central High School. "But one friend has given me her change after she buys lunch. And two of my friends are going to do it with me. I just want to help some kid live."

HEADLINES

Heart healthy kids become heart healthy adults!

http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=77138

[Health India]: Washington, Feb 24: A new study conduced by researchers at Tulane University suggests that kids with healthy levels of blood sugar, blood pressure, weight and cholesterol are likely to become heart-healthy adults.

"Parents can think of keeping their children healthy as a long- term investment in their lifelong health. We have known for a while that children who are overweight or have high blood pressure are likely to carry those problems into adulthood. This research shows that children who have healthy levels of the health factors that make up metabolic syndrome have a reduced risk of heart disease in adulthood," lead researcher Gerald Berenson said.

Metabolic syndrome, also known as syndrome X, is diagnosed if a patient shows a cluster of symptoms: fat around the waistline, high blood pressure, low levels of HDL "good" cholesterol, high fasting blood sugar levels and high triglycerides.

If a person has three or more of these signs, they are at higher risk of developing diabetes mellitus and heart disease, as well as kidney disease. Prior research results from the Bogalusa Heart Study demonstrated that when risk factors for metabolic syndrome and heart disease are present in childhood, related health problems such as high blood pressure, hardened arteries, heart disease and diabetes are more likely to occur in adulthood.

These results show that the reverse is also true: for the one in 10 children who had very favorable levels of the factors that make up metabolic syndrome, those measures were similarly low in adulthood. (ANI)

HEADLINES

Kids Teaching Kids –Texas, USA

http://www.ktsm.com/story_news.sstg?c=49526ed4317441a1

Kids are drinking alcohol at a younger age than ever before, and a unique program started by local high school students to get kids to say "No" is getting state-wide attention.

Thursday, February 24, 2005 —

A study released shows that alcohol education for kids has to start earlier than you might think. One local school is teaming up with the city to make sure their program gets the local attention it deserves.

"We're right next to the border and most of our teenagers have been drinking since they were young" says Fernie Gutierrez, a junior at Parkland High School, and he wants to change that. He is teaching kids about the dangers of underage drinking through a program tailor made for elementary school students.

"If you want an age group like us teenagers not to drink, you need to teach than five years before so that they can have the knowledge and way of thinking that it's wrong." says another student teacher Marla Lerma.

Parkland students teach at several schools, each once a week. Parkland has been a test site for the state, and recently added classes in Spanish. So far the program is showing positive results.

Program director Lawrence Vanley says that the "overall goal is to try and get the program into every high school so that they can teach every elementary school."

They recently asked the City Council to help spread the program across the city. Mayor Joe Wardy offered their help saying "what ever we can do to help you."

The program, Protecting You, Protecting Me, has received a number of grants in the past. Parkland is hoping the city can help them take advantage of free training from the program headquarters, so more high- schoolers in El Paso can get trained as teachers.

HEADLINES

KIDS OVERCOMING ODDS

Acehnese children paint happier pictures of life - INDONESIA

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post/Banda Aceh

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailnational.asp?fileid=20050226.D07&irec=7

Laughing and shouting at each other, dozens of children rushed out of their temporary shelter in Lambaro refugee camp just outside Banda Aceh and ran to a general purpose building nearby to take part in a drawing and coloring event organized by a number of volunteers groups from Jakarta and Banda Aceh.

"I want some crayons and paper, please. I haven't got any," cried latecomer Rahma, 6, enthusiastically while trying to catch her breath.

She grabbed the crayon and the piece of paper handed to her, and directly joined the other children sitting in a semicircle facing two psychologists, who gave them advice about how to draw and color in pictures.

"I like red and black. What colors do you like?" she asked a boy beside her, who also appeared keen to get started on his drawing and coloring as quickly as possible.

Rahma is one of thousands of children who have lost homes and relatives to the Dec. 26 tsunami. She still has her mother but lost her father in the disaster. She and her mother have been in Lambaro camp since last week.

Rahma and her mother, like hundreds of other families in Lambaro camp, are struggling to cope with all the difficulties they face.

"We must help the refugees, especially mothers and their children, to get through this difficult phase. Basically, what we want to do is to restore the smiles to the children's faces. Like all other children, they need to be able to play," said Mulia Muslim of Dua Rajawali Perkasa, a volunteer psychologist who coordinates healing program activities in Lambaro camp.

Together with the Indonesia Survey Institute (LSI), the Jakarta Psychology Association and the NAD Psychology Association, Dua Rajawali Perkasa, a private psychology foundation, has recruited many students as volunteers to help out in the camp.

Mulia said that they were trying to condition the children to share with others so that solidarity among the refugees in the camp could be instilled right from the very beginning.

"They come from different areas and backgrounds, and now they have to live together in a strange place like this. Sooner or later, conflict is inevitable. That's why they have to be able to share with each other. For instance, we teach children that they can get other colored crayons by exchanging theirs with those of other children," she said.

The volunteers also have a unique way of helping the tsunami victims cope with the trauma. In a museum in Banda Aceh, several volunteers from different non-governmental organizations have jointly staged an exhibition of around 300 paintings painted by child victims of the tsunami who are living temporarily in persentren (Islamic boarding schools) throughout the province.

"It is very important that the child victims express what their feelings are inside, and what they can remember from the tragedy as part of the healing process," said Abdel Salam of UK-based Islamic Relief, a sponsor of the exhibition.

All of the 300 paintings, 50 of which will be exhibited in Europe and America some time in March, show a common theme -- how the tsunami wrecked their homes and washed away all their belongings.

One of the paintings is a picture of a snake-like tsunami that seems set to swallow up people and buildings.

"I just draw what I can remember. I keep remembering how the water took away my mother," said one of the artists, Idawati, 12, who is now living temporarily in a pesentren in Banda Aceh.

Help also came from international NGO World Vision, which said it was looking after some 1,000 children at its child friendly spaces (CFS) in five locations in Banda Aceh, Aceh Besar, Aceh Jaya, Aceh Barat and Aceh Barat Daya.

"CFS provides places for children where they can engage in their routine activities like they used to, and be active in the post-tsunami trauma phase," said the organization in a press release.

HEADLINES

Kids with Cameras: Translating Poverty into Photography – KOLKATTA, BENGAL, INDIA

CNN .com

[Edited for News for Kidz™ readers]

New York photojournalist Zana Briksi, intrigued by India, makes a film about children in difficult situations.

While the filmgoer is initially drawn into the vibrant colors, sounds and chaos of India, the story really begins when Briksi gives each of the children a point-and-shoot camera and teaches them how to take shots of the grim world in which they live.

The children on a field trip to see the ocean for the first time in their lives.

The children, on the lowest rank of the pecking order and often ill-treated, are drawn to the rare companionship she offers inside the maze of alleyways of this town formerly known as Calcutta.

"They didn't quite understand what I was doing there, but they were fascinated by me and my camera," says London-born but New York-based co-director Briksi, on the Web site of the group she helped found, Kids with Cameras.

And so it is this way we are drawn not only into their world but also into how they view their world.

"I want to show in pictures how people live in this city. I want to put across the behavior of man," says 13-year-old Gour, who dislikes his environment and wants to use photography to change it.

The children become transformed by the art of the camera. Likewise, the viewer is transformed not only by the beauty and explosions of color their pictures show of Bengali life, but by the possibility they may escape their mother's fate.

"When I have a camera in my hands I feel happy. I feel like I am learning something ... I can be someone," says 14-year-old Suchitra, who likes to take pictures of life on her rooftop.

It is through their photos and their interviews that the feisty, brutally candid, courageous and wickedly funny characters emerge and we are drawn into the beauty and dignity they find in their stigmatized and dire existence.

"We went to the beach to take pictures. I had never seen the ocean before. I was amazed,!" says 10-year-old Manik, who lives in a small room with his sister Shanti, and loves to fly kites while their mother is downstairs "working."

Kochi, 10, a shy and sweet girl who worries that she "might become like them" uses her camera to take pictures of her family, animals, gardens, and parks: "I feel shy taking pictures outside. People taunt us. They say, 'Where did they bring those cameras from?'"

Charismatic and restless 11-year-old painter Avijit is the most promising of them all, producing stunning photos with great light and composition.

HEADLINES

KIDS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Students to vote for a Coke boycott at unions - SCOTLAND

ALAN RODEN

http://news.scotsman.com/education.cfm?id=209092005

STUDENTS are set to ban Coca-Cola from shops and bars at Edinburgh University over alleged human rights abuses at an overseas factory.

The Edinburgh University Students’ Association is next month expected to back a proposed boycott of the giant drinks firm.

Eleven other universities worldwide - including four in England - have already introduced similar boycotts.

A global campaign was launched amid allegations that Colombian workers who attempted to unionize one of the firm’s factories were tortured, and another activist was murdered outside the plant’s gates.

Coca-Cola officials today branded claims that the company was connected to the crimes as "outrageous".

But Patrick Hannon, who established Edinburgh University’s Boycott Coca-Cola Society, described the company’s human rights record as "very worrying".

He also criticised Coca-Cola’s use of public water resources in India, which are allegedly taken at the expense of local people.

Student Adam Ramsay, a committee member of the Boycott Coca-Cola Society, said: "We hope EUSA will work with other universities around the world to use our huge purchasing power to put pressure on Coca-Cola to give basic morality the same priority as it gives profit ."

David Smith, EUSA’s vice-president of services, said Coca-Cola currently has an exclusive contract with the student union, which ensures bars and shops can sell only the company’s Fanta and Lilt brands and no alternatives.

Lauren Branston, head of strategic communications for Coca-Cola Great Britain, said: "We are listening to people’s concerns and we are aware of the motion at Edinburgh University. Whilst it is important that people have the opportunity to discuss these sorts of issues, these specific allegations aren’t true. The Colombian trade union, Sinaltrainbec, has even gone on record as such.

"For our own part we are really willing to talk to university unions in Scotland, who want to talk to us about the issue."

FUN AND LEARNING

Kids try pioneer life in Jacksonville- FLORIDA, USA

By BUFFY POLLOCK
for the Mail Tribune

February 26, 2005

http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2005/0226/local/stories/05local.htm

JACKSONVILLE — Fourth-graders from Jackson County spent their school day Friday immersed in local history.

Lauren Allen, a fourth-grader at Little Butte Elementary School, simulates carrying 30 pounds of water as part of learning the hardships of pioneer times without plumbing. Students are taking part in the 20th Children’s Heritage Fair.
Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell

They panned for gold, wandered through a century-old graveyard and had a sit-down session with early pioneer Peter Britt, who was anxious to talk of his love for gardening and photography.

What began in 1985 as a two-day educational event for a few bus loads of area students reached its 20th anniversary this year.

The four-week long Children’s Heritage Fair, sponsored by the Southern Oregon Historical Society, kicked off Wednesday and runs Wednesdays through Fridays through March 18.

With some 2,000 fourth-graders from Jackson and Josephine counties, the event has become somewhat of a rite of passage and a supplement for required fourth-grade Oregon history curriculum.

Students are treated to a hands-on look at early pioneer life through special programming at the society’s two museums, the Jacksonville Cemetery and the U.S. Hotel.

This year, organizers spiffed up a gold-panning station with the chance to cash in at the Beekman Bank and appointed living history characters to represent Britt and Julia Beekman.

Longtime fourth-grade teacher Mike Ritchie, who has been attending the event each year since it began, said the event was a one-of-a-kind lesson in local history for students.

"I think it’s great any time you can get kids to where they can use their hands when they’re learning," Ritchie said.

"The festival really keys in on the hardships of the pioneers and the kids really get a piece of the heritage here. … We live in such a fast-paced society and this kind of brings you back to square one."

Fourth-grader Jacob Wimmer spent his day visiting the final resting place of pioneers long gone, hearing of the Beekman family’s struggles on the Oregon Trail and panning for gold nuggets, which he cashed in at the newly opened Beekman Bank branch of the children’s museum.

"What I really liked was the gold panning," the 9-year-old said.

Of life before Nintendo and cable TV, he figured out that kids today might not have things so rough.

"It wasn’t really too easy back then because they had to do a lot of work," said the boy. "And they had a lot of planning and stuff to do to be able to survive the trip to get to Oregon."

HEADLINES

EDITORIAL

What Happens When CARU Cries Foul – NewYork, USA

Caroline E. Mayer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55211-2005Feb26_2.html

Sunday, February 27, 2005; Page F06

Here are some recent ads questioned by the Children's Advertising Review Unit, [CARU] a group founded by three advertising industry associations and the Council of Better Business Bureaus, and what action, if any, was taken because of CARU's concern.

TV commercial at issue: A 2004 "Got Milk?" spot showing a teenager in a convenience store looking around furtively, scratching off the bar code on a bottle of chocolate milk so the clerk will have to shake the chocolate up while trying, in vain, to scan the bottle.

CARU's concern: The boy's behavior is inappropriate and antisocial and should not be aired on shows watched by a large number of children under 12.

Advertiser's position: The milk processor industry said the ad was designed for children over 12 and doesn't come under CARU's purview.

Outcome: The milk processors declined to remove the ad from the shows in question.

_____________

Magazine ad at issue: A 2003 Bagel Bites sweepstakes contest telling kids: "The more you scarf, the better your chances."

CARU's concern: The message could be viewed as encouraging kids to eat excessive amounts of snack foods.

Advertiser's position: H.J. Heinz Co., the maker of Bagel Bites, said the promotion was aimed at kids over 12 so CARU guidelines didn't apply.

Outcome: To work with CARU, Heinz agreed to eliminate the line.

Television commercial at issue: A 2003 Eggo Waffles ad featuring a boy bullying a frog puppet to stop the puppet from eating his waffle.

CARU's concern: The boy's activities -- pushing the frog under the table, tying him up, shoving his legs over his head -- were inappropriate for children to see.

Advertiser's position: Kellogg Co., maker of Eggo, said it believed children would recognize the ad's humor and understand the antics were just good-natured jostling over a waffle.

Outcome: To work with CARU, Kellogg discontinued the ad.

______________

Television commercial at issue: A 2003 promotion showing a bottle of Sunny D Citrus Punch breaking out of a concrete block. Liquid, with large pieces of fruit, subsequently bursts from the bottle, as a voice says, "It's the power of the sun."

CARU's concern: Children would think drinking Sunny D would give them great strength and that the product contained large amounts of fruit when it contained only 5 percent juice.

Advertiser's position: Procter & Gamble Co., maker of Sunny D, disagreed with CARU's interpretation.

Outcome: P&G changed its ad to "Taste the power of the sun" and added a line noting it was "5 percent juice."

__________________

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