Children

After years of frustration, allergists meeting in Washington proclaimed a small but significant victory against life-threatening peanut allergies. Five children, long urged to avoid peanuts like the plague, today tote peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in their lunch boxes, blithely share candy with friends and accept snacks at other people's homes without quizzing their hosts on the treats' ingredients. The children appear to have lost their allergies, said Dr.

At 5 weeks old, with a crown of dark hair and big blue eyes, Anastasia Garcia is one of the newest faces of the economic crisis. She was born homeless. "When we are lucky enough to be settled, we will tell her that things were not always as easy as you may think," said Angela Garcia, 26, laying the infant down in a crib at the Broward Outreach Center in Pompano Beach, Fla.

Tyler de Lara, 2, thrashes on a gurney, tangled in his sheet, hospital gown and IV tubing. A white bandage encircles his head and, loosened by his squirming, slips down and covers his eyes. All that shows is a tuft of black hair and his mouth, set in an angry pout. Dr. Akira Ishiyama notes Tyler's grimace and says he's pleased. It means there is no facial nerve damage. Tyler was diagnosed as deaf six months earlier.

Authorities said Thursday that four boys ages 9 to 14 took turns raping an 8-year-old girl for more than 10 minutes after luring her into a shed with chewing gum, and now her family has rejected her for bringing shame on them. "The father told the case worker and an officer in her presence that he didn't want her back," Phoenix Police Sgt. Andy Hill said. "He said, 'Take her, I don't want her.' " The victim is in the care of Child Protective Services, authorities said.

Imagine a horde of children -- 10, actually -- at a local pizzeria. Tomato sauce on faces, clothes and the floor. There's yelping, burping, jumping, and trips to the potty. It's kiddie chaos. Now imagine all these youngsters are yours. For Eric and Betty Hayes, they don't have to try very hard -- it's their life, chronicled in "Table for 12," part of TLC's growing stable of docu-series about big families.

An old childhood disease reared its head in Minnesota last year, infecting five young children and killing one of them, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The outbreak, of a disease known as "Hib" for short, is the latest of several contagious diseases making encore appearances after having been all but vanquished through immunization.

Determined to make the rags-to-riches drama "Slumdog Millionaire" as authentic as possible, director Danny Boyle reworked his film's first act, casting Hindi-speaking children from Mumbai's slums in two lead roles. Now his choice to put the impoverished 7-year-olds into the film has sparked a growing controversy that is threatening to overtake the movie's global goodwill.

Japan, which designates every May 5 as Children's Day, had fewer children to celebrate the holiday for the 28th straight year, underscoring a demographic shift that could eventually wreak havoc on the world's second-largest economy. A government report released this week says the number of children younger than 15 as of April 1 had fallen to about 17 million. Japan's proportion of children -- which has been declining for 35 years -- now stands at just 13% of the country's 128 million people.

When David and Jacki Horwitz read an article in The Times about Lorelei Oliver's struggle to find a good school for her son Kamal Key, their response was immediate: Perhaps, they inquired, there was a fund to which they could contribute to help the 12-year-old, who had been admitted to a prestigious but costly private campus?

Dawn Boldrin took note when a subdued Larry King showed up for her class at E.O. Green Junior High in Oxnard dressed in his school uniform without the flashy boots and makeup. The teacher heard he'd been roughed up the day before by boys put off by his effeminate manner. So, as she walked her eighth-graders to the computer lab on Feb. 12, 2008, she pulled him aside.