CITATION Coren, Anna. "How my brother tried to kill me in 'honor attack'." CNN.com International - Breaking, World, Business, Sports, Entertainment and Video News. N.p., 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 6 Apr. 2013. . SUMMARY In Kabul, Afghanistan Gul Meena, a 17- year old girl, is miraculously alive after being almost hacked to death by her brother. When Gul Meena was 12 years old, she was married off to a 60-year-old man who beat her everyday. When she tried to tell her family about the beatings, they hit her and told that she belonged to him. After 5 years of the abuse, Gul ran away with a male Afghani friend despite the forbiddance of the act. Days after she ran away, her older brother found them and hacked her Afghani friend to death with an axe. He then struck Gul 15 times- cutting open her head, until she was presumed dead. A stranger found her and took her to a nearby Medical Center where she had little hope of survival. There are thousands of women in shelters across Afghanistan due to cases like Gul's called 'honor killings'. The UN states that, "4,000 cases of violence against women and girls were reported to the Afghan Ministry of Women between 2010 and 2012".

This article stuck out because the content was so shocking and horrible that I had to read on. I highly recommend watching the video that accompanies the article on the CNN page because seeing and hearing what happened to Gul is so unreal. What women in Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries go through seems so unreal to me because of the gender equality in societies I've been in. I also can't imagine being attack by a family member- let alone your own brother. It's sad what extremes people will go to to preserve 'family honor', and how little Gul's parents cared that she was beaten.

CITATION Perri, Klass. "Endless Barrage of Hard Sell - NYTimes.com." Health and Wellness - Well Blog - NYTimes.com. N.p., 11 Feb. 2013. Web. 12 Feb. 2013. . SUMMARY Studies show that cigarette, alcohol and subtler product placement ads do push children and adolescence significantly towards unhealthy behaviors, and in today's world it's getting more difficult to shield children from the Internet and social media. Adolescence who watch alcohol advertisements are in a sense being sold a product that parents don't want them to be associated with. Food advertisements are also very influential especially over younger kids who in the USA are seeing 12 to 14 food ads on television a day. Research also links childhood obesity to screen time. In an interesting study where children were given two identical burgers where one in a McDonalds wrapping, an overwhelming number said that the burger in the McDonalds wrapper tasted better. It's also proved that children up to the age of 8 don't understand the nature of advertisements, and so the most important and efficient way to decreases the effect of advertisements on kids is to reduce their screen time.

COMMENT I found this article really interesting- especially the McDonald burger test- because what we're learning in health really connects to it. I think it's interesting to see what effects advertisements have on our brains and how little young kids know about the point of advertisements. It makes me think about how much time I spend on electronics and how that might be effecting how I look at products without even knowing it.