Out-of-Whack Body Clocks Keep Teens Sleepy: Study

He could get eight years in prison

(NEWSER) - An Indiana high school senior is facing up to eight years in prison for the egregious felony of… bringing a blowup doll to school. Tyell Morton planted the doll in the girl’s bathroom as a senior prank, but administrators didn’t think it was funny. All they saw on the security camera was a hooded figure take a package into the bathroom and leave without it. Soon, the Indiana State Police bomb squad had been called in to deal with the raunchy inflatable. More»

Adolescents need lots of sleep, have odd body clocks

(NEWSER) - Starting high school classes just 30 minutes later leads to marked improvement in students' moods and even their overall health, CNN reports . Teens need 8½ to 9¼ hours of sleep a night, and biological changes associated with adolescence mean they naturally fall asleep later than younger kids. In a small sample—200 high school students—starting school at 8:30 rather than 8am lowered the number of students who described themselves as "unhappy, depressed, annoyed or irritated," says a new study. More»

Kids warned to dance like grandma's watchin'

(NEWSER) - With some schools having kids sign no-grinding dance contracts and others threatening to turn up the lights and play Burt Bacharach, the crackdown on grinding at school dances is getting more creative. Schools and parents fed up with teens' overtly sexual dance moves are turning to unconventional methods to stop kids from grinding, wearing teeny-tiny skirts, and removing their shirts, MSNBC reports. More»

Say weird stuff, have seizures when you kiss, appear dead, etc.

(NEWSER) - When it came to being cool and hitting it off with girls, Mick LaSalle had it hard as a teen—he had to figure out what width belt to wear and such without the benefit of Twilight as a primer. Herewith, some "empirical data" helpful to 15-year-old boys he gleaned from New Moon and offers in the San Francisco Chronicle :

• "Keep your compliments outlandish:" "You give me everything by breathing" might seem like an odd, even quizzical thing to say, but it's also tres sexy.

Obama prepares to pitch Chitown Olympics as city reels from murder

(NEWSER) - As Barack Obama prepares to make a pitch to hold the Olympics in his hometown, the White House is decrying a "chilling" videotaped beating death of a teenager in the same city. It's one of the most shocking things "you can ever see," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday. Four people have been arrested in the death of honor student Derrion Albert, who was fatally pummeled with wooden planks in the middle of a gang melee outside a city high school last week. More»