Children

It was a voice of anguish that pierced a nation. Israeli TV broadcast a father's heartbreak Friday night when a Palestinian doctor living in Gaza made a frantic phone call to a newscaster saying an Israeli tank had shelled his home, killing three of his daughters and injuring other family members. Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who speaks Hebrew, worked as a gynecologist in an Israeli hospital.

It's 30 seconds before his big rodeo ride, and Julian Apodaca looks like he wants to disappear under the wide brim of his white cowboy hat. He's staring down at his boots, tugging at his lower lip, rubbing at his teary eyes. Julian's father, a former junior bull-riding champion, has a hand on each of his 5-year-old son's shoulders. "It's OK, hijo," Vince Apodaca says as somebody plucks the hat off the boy's head and replaces it with a helmet. "Cowboy up, OK?

Nancy and Bryan Lara, ages 10 and 8, knew something was wrong when they saw a tractor surrounded by white clouds near their school bus stop in Caruthers. "I know that clouds are not on the ground, they're in the sky," Bryan said. The children hid behind a row of grapevines, but they could taste the noxious blend of liquid sulfur, gibberellic acid, insecticide and fertilizer as the rig rolled past them, billowing out its chemical cargo. Moments earlier, the mist had enveloped 17-year-old Carina at another stop about two blocks away.

President Obama signed legislation Wednesday to expand publicly funded health insurance for children, marking a historic shift in Washington's political landscape and providing the White House its biggest victory since Obama took office. Less than two years ago, former President George W. Bush blocked similar bills by congressional Democrats, labeling the proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program as a step toward government-run healthcare.

A federal consumer safety agency launched an investigation Thursday into this week's accidental death of an Orange County child caught in a washing machine. Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, said investigators will examine the front-loading washer to determine if the design poses a safety risk.

When they're first born, they're scared of their mom and dad. No sooner had those words left Jim Solomon's mouth than the horrified cries of 35 third-graders crescendoed in unison: "Whaaaat?" "It's because they might eat them," he explained. Parents gobbling up their young was all but unthinkable to 8- and 9-year-olds that February morning. But Solomon, of the Santa Monica Wilderness Fly Fishers, spoke their language.

Pale and struggling to hold back tears, a 28-year-old Sunday school teacher appeared in court for the first time Tuesday to face accusations of kidnapping, raping and killing an 8-year-old Central Valley girl. Melissa Huckaby, who was wearing a red prison jumpsuit with her hands and feet cuffed, appeared disoriented when she was ushered into the packed courtroom and faced a wall of TV camera crews, photographers and reporters.

Once vaccination rates dip below a certain point, outbreaks of childhood diseases can spread quickly. Last year, Hilary Chambers, a San Diego radio host and mother of a baby girl, saw firsthand how fast measles can be passed among children. A 7-year-old boy brought back a case of the disease from Switzerland and infected his two siblings and nine other children at his public charter school and doctors' office.

Washington state investigators say five children 7 to 16 years old have been found dead in a Graham-area home and they may have been killed by their father. Pierce County sheriff's investigators told the News Tribune that the children apparently were homicide victims. Spokesman Ed Troyer said the father, 35, was discovered dead Saturday afternoon in neighboring King County. Deputies were called to check on the welfare of the children at a mobile home park after the father's body was found.

In an unprecedented feat, British surgeons implanted a donor heart in a dying toddler whose own heart was too weak to sustain life, then removed it 10 years later after the girl's own heart had fully recovered. The technique is unlikely to become widespread because of the severe shortage of pediatric donor hearts, but it suggests that better mechanical assist devices that take some or all of the load off a diseased heart could allow time for weakened hearts to heal themselves.