How to ensure good nutrition for teenagers and toddlers

Guaranteeing good nutrition for toddlers and teenagers is one of the challenge that parents always confront as all parents want their children to be healthy, as toddlers and teenagers start elementary schools, they go through remarkable physical changes of all kinds, thus their food intake becomes a critical aspect of this growth and development.
Recent research show that nourishing food not only makes a child healthier but also emotionally more stable and it improves school performance. Therefore, it appears that paying attention to our children's diets pays high dividends. Parents should adopt measures to insinuate nutritious foods into the family menus and ensure that nutritious foods is eaten by children and other family members. 

                                        BREAKFAST
A toddlers or teenagers in the classroom whose last meal was dinner the night before has gone about sixteen hours without food, and that child must be hungry, whether he knows it or not. A nutritious breakfast certainly provide energy for several hours until lunch. Traditionally in most schools, teachers schedule heavy' subjects,  such as Mathematics or reading lessons during the morning hours, so it becomes even more important that the child's brain be fueled by giving him or her good, nutritious food. Providing a nutritious breakfast for toddlers and teenagers before sending them off to school, a parents should give a diet that is energy giving, rich in essential vitamins that aids brain function.
A breakfast diet with sliced fresh fruits, or vegetable stew with yam and hard boiled eggs, will be ideal for children of school age.

                                          LUNCH
Parents particularly mothers should get creative and devise a way to pack their children's lunch in a lunchbox or  sack launch that will make youngster be delighted with the launch box and would want to eat his or her launch. When a child gets home from school and  ready to eat anything and everything he or she sees in the refrigerator or kitchen, it shows that the child is always bored with launch box and therefore jettison it.  For school children's lunch, parents should get a couple of plastic containers with lids that say on and fill them with fruit cocktail.
Apple and orange slices certainly qualify on all counts nutritious,  no preparation and  relatively inexpensive. After school snacks should also be provided by parents as children of school age arrive home wanting and needing an immediate energy boost. Parents should post a notice on the refrigerator door  indicating "what is inside" and let the child help him or her self.
Parents should also select a special spot where the child will find either that day's snack or a note telling him or her where to find it.

                                          DINNER
The time honoured, traditional three meals a day breakfast, lunch and dinner seems the best way to ensure s balanced diet for children and adults. However there is no hard and fast rule about the number of time a child or an adult eats. And it is not a matter of life and death if a family member misses dinner. No child has ever starved to death because he or she was playing and forget to come home for a dinner. Parents especially mothers should allow common sense, flexibility and creativity go along way to make the evening meal a pleasant experience which children and every member of the family will look forward to.
Parents can achieve this by making food attractive and interesting. Also, youngsters should be involved in the family menu. Let them suggest foods, familiar and unfamiliar, although, some of their choices may need to be discussed in terms of whether or not they fit into the family budget. Children should be expected to taste every dish that is being prepared. If they don't like it, they don't have to eat anymore. This is an excellent way to expand their food horizons. Parents should occasionally take their children to the market or supermarket for shopping. It is a good place to give them choices. What you do not buy is an important as what you do buy. Always turn off the television set during dinner and other meal time. Make the table a place for good conversation. Avoid exposing your children to fast food as most fast food restaurants serve food that have fat their main calories. Even if the children may sporadically go to a fast food restaurant, parents must ensure that their daily diet is nutritious.

                              FOR NIGERIANS ONLY
FOR DINNER, SEMOVITA, EBA, FUFU AND VEGETABLE OR EGUSI SOUP WILL BE GOOD ENOUGH. RICE AND STEW OR FRIED RICE IS EQUALLY ADVISABLE.

                                     EXTRA TIPS
Dental floss are better than toothpicks, as toothpicks will wear your teeth and could damage your gums. Flossing gives a better result altogether.

TECNO R7

    PHONE FULL SPECIFICATIONS

               • NETWORK
2G Network: GSM 900/1800
3G Network: Yes, HSDPA 2100
4G Network: No
SIM: Dual Mini SIM.

           • BODY / DIMENSIONS
Body Size: - Weight: - Keyboard: Touchscreen device Body Colors: White, Black Cover: Plastic.

            • DISPLAY / SCREEN
Screen Type: HD Gorilla glass capacitive touchscreen (Anti-scratch) with 256,000 colors Screen Size: 5.5 inches, 800x1200 pixels resolution, 272 ppi (pixels per inch) density.

• OPERATING SYSTEM OS/MEMORY
Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
Internal Memory: 8GB Card Slot: MicroSD, expandable up to 32GB Processors: 1.5GHz hexa-core CPU, MediaTek MT8389 chipset
RAM: 2GB.

                  • AUDIO
Loudspeaker: Yes
Alert Type: MP3 ringtones, Vibration Audio Port: 3.5mm jack.

             • CONNECTIVITY
2G: GPRS - 85.6kbps, EDGE - 236.8kbps
3G: Downlink - 22.2Mbps, Uplink - 5.76Mbps
4G: no
WiFi: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Mobile HotSpot, WiFi Direct
Bluetooth: Yes, version 3.0
GPS: Yes, A-GPS
NFC: No
USB: MicroUSB port, version 2.0.

                • CAMERA
Primary (Back): 13.0 Mega-pixels, Face and smile detection, 240LM LED flash, 2592x1944 pixel picture quality.
Secondary (Front): 8.0 Mega-pixels, 1600x1200 pixel picture quality. Video Quality: 720pixels at 30 frames per second.

                •BATTERY
Capacity: 2430mAh Li-ion battery Standby: 500 hours Talk time: 8 hours Music play.

                    • SENSORS
Accelerometer, Compass, Proximity, Ambient light sensor

                 • MESSAGING
SMS, MMS, Email, Push Mail, Instant Messaging

                • BROWSER
HTML5
Java: yes

                   • MUSIC PLAYER
Video formats: MP4, MPEG4, H.263, H.264
Music formats: MP3, WAV, eAAC+, AC3, FLACCA.

            • OTHER FEATURE
Predictive Text - Document Viewer - FM Radio - Image viewer - Voice command - Youtube, Whatsapp, Gmail, Calendar, UC Browser, Google talk, Calendar.

Russian Rocket Carrying A $275 Million Telecommunications Satellite Failed and Burned Up Shortly After Launch

Russian rocket carrying a $275 million telecommunications satellite failed and burned up shortly after launch on Friday, the latest in a series of setbacks for Russia’s once-pioneering space industry.

It was the second failure for Russia’s workhorse Proton-M rocket in less than a year, and the second time that it had failed to deliver a European satellite intended to provide advanced telecoms and Internet access to remote parts of Russia, after the last one crashed shortly after launch in 2011.

Friday’s unmanned mission went awry when the engine on the third stage of the Proton-M booster rocket failed, Oleg Ostapenko, head of the Russian space agence  spoke, He said the precise cause was unknown.

The failure occurred at an altitude of 160 km (100 miles), about nine minutes after the early-morning lift-off from the Russian-leased Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan.

The state-run RIA quoted Ostapenko as saying that the rocket and all debris had burned up in the atmosphere: “We can say with certainty that nothing reached Earth.” However, Russian media said some debris may have fallen into the Pacific or been scattered over Siberia and Russia’s Far East.

No casualties or damage were reported on the ground. The lost Express AM4R satellite, worth more than 200 million euros ($275 million), was described by its maker Astrium, a unit of the European aerospace group Airbus AIR.PA, as one of the most powerful satellites built in Europe. Its loss delays a number of commercial projects by three to four years. “It’s a heavy blow, of course. And the thing is that our workhorse rocket  our most powerful and the most-used rocket  has such a bad record,” Ivan Moiseyev, head of the Russian-based Institute of Space Policy think tank, told Kommersant-FM radio. He said the rocket had a 7 percent failure rate, and its unreliability was making it harder forRussia to compete in the multibillion-dollar global satellite launch industry, giving a boost to its European rival Arianespace and the American newcomer SpaceX. “It’s a very unsuccessful picture on the whole and, if you compare it with our main competitors, with Europe, their last accident was 12 years ago,” Moiseyev said. Last July, three navigation satellites worth about $200 million were lost when the Proton-M rocket crashed near the launch pad shortly after take-off. That accident strained relations between Kazakhstan and Russia and led Kazakhstan to temporarily ban Proton launches from Baikonur. State-run Rossiya-24 television said all launches had been suspended from Kazakhstan after Friday’s failure

#Bring Back our Girls. Nigeria Crisis

The social media rallying cry has generated global attention for nearly 300 girls abducted from their boarding school in Nigeria by Boko Haram militants. But why hasn't more been done to find them? And why did it take so long for the Nigerian government and others to take action? On Friday.

Interviewed Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala live from Abuja, the capital city, where she was attending the World Economic Forum on Africa. Okonjo-Iweala praised business leaders for coming together in support of the missing girls and helping to launch a safe schools initiative.

While she gave her support to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, she expressed outrage over the situation involving the missing girls. "I have a daughter, I have four children.It's unacceptable and unimaginable," she said. Her own mother was kidnapped and released after five days in 2012. Joining Couric in New York was Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote an influential column about the missing girls last Sunday.

The greatest threat to militancy in the long run comes not from drones but from girls with schoolbooks," he wrote. He echoed that sentiment with Couric.

The government is responsible for protecting its students. The biggest treasure isn't oil, it's children." Also interviewed from Abuja was human rights activist Hafsat Abiola, who criticized her government's ineffectual efforts to find the girls. "We don't want to listen to explanations. We want to see results and our girls come home," she said. Abiola knows first hand about the violence that has plagued Nigeria over the years. Her father was elected president of Nigeria in 1993 but was jailed by the military before taking office.

He later died in prison. Abiola's mother was killed during a demonstration for her husband in 1996. As the conversation circled back to the global social media movement, Couric brought in filmmaker and activist Ramaa Mosley, who has played an integral role in spreading #BringBackOurGirls around the world. "I've been seeing it as an SOS to the world," Mosley said. Though the slogan was originally generated in Nigeria, Mosley's initiative to spread the hashtag has been credited with sparking international outrage over the girls' abduction and the slow response by the Nigerian government and the international community. 

Who Are The kidnapper of Nigerian Girls?

What Happened? As many as 300 teenaged girls were abducted from their school in Nigeria on April 15 by the Islamic militant terror organization Boko Haram. The group is based in Nigeria and has carried out attacks on schools before. Some girls managed to escape, but many are believed to have been transported into neighboring Cameroon or Chad.

The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, has said he plans to sell the girls into marriages and sex slavery.

What Is the World Doing to Rescue the Girls?

The President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, has received criticism for waiting weeks to ask for international assistance in helping recover the girls. He now says the government is doing all it can to find them and bring them home alive. A team of U.S. experts has arrived in Nigeria to assist the government there in trying to rescue the girls. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said today the team consisted of law enforcement, intelligence and military experts who will use counter-terrorism efforts in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, Nigerian peace negotiator  that he has proposed a formal negotiation between Nigerian Islamic clerics and Boko Haram that would see the girls returned alive within a week in exchange for insurgents currently imprisoned in Nigeria.
He said the fact that Boko Haram threatened to sell the girls rather than kill them is a positive sign that they'd be open to negotiations.

Could the Kidnapping Have Been Prevented?

Amnesty International said this week that Nigerian security forces failed to act on advance warnings about Boko Haram’s armed raid on the state-run boarding school in Chibok which led to the abduction of more than 240 schoolgirls.

The Nigerian government has also been criticized for its failure to battle Boko Haram in recent years as the terror group has increased its attacks, sophistication, and organization. The U.S. State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received criticism for not designating Boko Haram a terror organization until very recently, in November, 2013, despite earlier attacks. The State Department said Thursday it worried the designation would boost recruiting efforts for the group and was unsure whether Boko Haram posed any threat outside of Nigeria.

Is Anyone Else Trying to Help?

Protesters across Nigeria rallied this weekend to draw attention to the plight of the girls. The Twitter hashtag  "#BringBackOurGirls"   has been trending at various points since the girls were taken, with many users from around the world demanding a swift rescue of the girls. 

Russian patriotism at Victory Day parade, Putin hails all conquering

Thousands of Russian troops marched through Red Square on Friday as Moscow put on a powerful show of patriotism and military might following its annexation of Crimea. As Ukraine's crisis rumbled on with pro-Moscow rebels pushing ahead with independence votes, President Vladimir Putin praised Russian patriotism and loyalty to the state. "This is a holiday when all-conquering patriotic force triumphs, when we all feel especially strongly what it means to be true to the Motherland and how important it is to be able to stand up for its interests, Putin told massed troops to shouts of "Hurrah! Hurrah!" Russia's annual parade celebrating victory over the Nazis held special resonance this year amid the crisis in Ukraine, which has seen Russia annex Crimea and fighting in pro-Moscow areas in the east where separatists are threatening to break away.

Similar Victory Day celebrations were planned for later Friday in Sevastopol, with Russian media reporting that Putin could make a triumphant appearance at the Crimean port. As dozens of helicopters and planes soared in the bright blue sky over Moscow, thousands of troops marched alongside tanks, mobile missile systems and armoured vehicles to the sound of a brass band. In contrast to the display of military hardware on Red Square, Ukraine planned muted Victory Day celebrations in a bid to avoid violence. The head of Kiev's city council banned large scale public gatherings or parades in the capital, fearing that the veterans could be attacked by Russian provocateurs.

Ukraine security strengthened - Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said he fears recent softer comments from Putin are a prelude to provocation. "I am concerned about Vladimir Putin's statement. It caused a bad feeling. They say one thing and do another. After this statement, I asked law enforcement officers to strengthen security measures on May 9, Yatsenyuk told Ukrainian television.

In Wednesday, the Kremlin strongman stunned the world with an abrupt U-turn on Ukraine, calling on pro-Russian separatists in the east to delay independence referendums planned for this weekend and welcoming a May 25 presidential election. But the rebels holed up in more than a dozen towns and cities in eastern Ukraine defied his plea and vowed to press ahead with referendums this Sunday that are bound to stoke tensions.

If Putin does head to Sevastopol, it will be his first visit to Crimea since the Black Sea peninsula was annexed by Moscow in March.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Thursday warned Putin against making the visit, saying it would be a "pity" if he went to the region. The crisis in Ukraine, which kicked off after the ouster of the country's pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych in February, has sunk Russia's relations with the West to their lowest point since the Cold War.

The United States and European Union have imposed a series of sanctions on Putin and his inner circle and EU ministers are to meet on Monday to consider further measures.

Fears of war on Europe's doorstep have been fired by fighting pitting Ukrainian troops against pro-Moscow gunmen in the east of the country, mainly around the town of Slavyansk.
Ukraine has lost 14 troops and three helicopter gunships with 66 servicemen injured in assaults on the rebels.
The fighting has also claimed the lives of more than 30 insurgents. Clashes that resulted in a horrific inferno in the southern port city of Odessa last week claimed another 42 lives, most of them pro-Russian activists, pushing the death toll over the past week to nearly 90.

Fascist' collaborators - The violence has prompted many Western politicians to warn that the country of 46 million people is slipping towards a civil war that would imperil peace in Europe. The Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany has long been a source of great pride throughout the ex-USSR, which lost some 30 million citizens during World War II. But this year's celebrations have exposed the deep divisions between Russia and Ukraine. Ahead of the events, Kiev has cast Russia as an aggressor bent on sowing chaos in Ukraine, while the Kremlin has accused its neighbour's pro-Western authorities of siding with "fascists" and ultra-right groups.

Fuelling tensions is the hugely controversial legacy of the nationalist movement in western Ukraine, which was occupied by the Soviet Union and whose Ukrainian Insurgent Army collaborated with Nazi Germany. Animosity between the two Slavic nations has reached such levels that Ukraine decided to drop the black-and-orange Saint George ribbon, which Russians cherish as a symbol of Victory Day.