Border counties have highest poverty rates

Border counties havehighest poverty rates
WASHINGTON -- The Census Bureau says counties along the U.S.-Mexican border and isolated areas across the South and Midwest were among the poorest in the nation in the late 1990s.
The bureau reported Tuesday that more than half the children in two counties lived in poverty in 1999: Starr County, Texas, near the Mexican border, and East Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana. Texas had six of the 10 counties with the nation's highest overall poverty rates, while South Dakota had two. The other two counties were in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Figures released Tuesday are separate from poverty estimates from the 2000 census already announced this year. Though three years old, bureau officials say the latest figures offer a more comprehensive look at poverty at the county level.
Some improvements appeared in the South and rural Appalachia during the 1990s. For instance, Owsley County, Ky., had the highest child poverty rate in 1993 at 65 percent; by 1999, it had fallen to 44.7 percent, the eighth highest rate in the nation.
Part of the improvement can be traced to the region diversifying an economy that had long been based on manufacturing and mining, said Duane DeBruyne, spokesman for the federal Appalachian Regional Commission.
Atheist teen facesexpulsion from Scouts
PORT ORCHARD, Wash. -- Eagle Scout Darrell Lambert has earned 37 merit badges, worked more than 1,000 hours of community service and helps lead a Boy Scout troop in his hometown.
But the 19-year-old has another distinction that may lead to his removal from the Boy Scouts: He's an atheist.
Last week, Lambert was given roughly a week by the Boy Scouts' regional executive to declare belief in a supreme being and comply with Boy Scout policy, or quit the Scouts. The official and Lambert were to talk again this week regarding Lambert's answer, although a definite date hadn't been set by Tuesday.
"We've asked him to search his heart, to confer with family members, to give this great thought," Brad Farmer, the Scout executive of the Chief Seattle Council of the Boy Scouts, told The Sun of Bremerton. "If he says he's an avowed atheist, he does not meet the standards of membership."
On membership applications, Boy Scouts and adult leaders must say they recognize some higher power, not necessarily religious. "Mother Nature would be acceptable," Farmer said.
Parental survey
NEW YORK -- Sixty-one percent of parents rate their generation as "fair" or "poor" at raising children, according to a study that shows parents are struggling in instilling values in their kids.
The findings are part of a nationwide survey of parents conducted by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan think tank. The survey found big gaps between parents' efforts to teach good values to their children and their perceived success in doing so.
While 83 percent said it is "absolutely essential" to teach self-control and self-discipline, only 34 percent said they have succeeded in teaching those values.
Ninety-one percent said it is essential to teach honesty, but only 55 percent said they have succeeded in doing so.
The report also found that 53 percent of parents believe they are doing a worse job than their own parents did.
The study, titled "A Lot Easier Said Than Done," was based on telephone interviews conducted between July 31 and Aug. 15 with a random sample of 1,607 parents or guardians of children aged 5 to 17. The margin of sampling error was 3 percentage points.
Vivid lesson
EULESS, Texas -- An elementary school teacher gave her 3- and 4-year-old pupils an unexpected lesson when she gave birth in her classroom.
Rhonda Schafer was able to get the early development class out of the Bear Creek Elementary School classroom on Monday and then called for the school nurse.
The nurse arrived just in time to help Schafer as she gave birth behind her desk about 2:30 p.m., about five minutes after the first sign of labor. They wrapped the baby girl in a co-worker's sweater, school librarian Cynda Mast said.
The medics arrived in time to cut the cord, Fire Department spokeswoman Christine Cox said. "It was a very nice, quiet environment, if you can imagine that at an elementary school," she said, adding that mother and daughter were in "perfect health."
Earlier that morning, Schafer, who also has two sons, had told Mast that she was due in about a week or whenever the baby was ready.
"I guess she got ready this afternoon," Mast said.
Associated Press