Brothers At Arms 013 06-04-15 Bullying and Other Issues

But a new study puts the damage in perspective in an alarming new way. Kids who are taunted or excluded by their peers suffer more long-term emotional fallout in adulthood than do kids who were abused by grown-ups.

The study looked at previous data covering more than 5,000 parents and kids from two studies going back to the early 1990s. The data included interviews with parents about their own mistreatment of their kids, as well as reports from kids about their experiences being bullied by other children.

Once considered a teenage rite of passage, bullying is now the subject of hundreds of state laws and a rallying cry for pundits, parents and celebrities.

Coming up with a workable plan to stop bullying has proven difficult. The approaches are all over the map. For instance, Illinois requires schools to do social-emotional learning exercises to prevent bullying. During the exercises, students describe their emotions during a stressful event or recognize the emotional reactions to stress.

The criminal side of these laws is generating controversy in Florida. Two young central Florida teens are facing felony aggravated stalking charges for bullying a 12-year-old classmate, Rebecca Sedwick, who committed suicide. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the bullying crossed the line from teen meanness into criminal harassment.

Sedwick received text messages and online messages from the two teens telling her to kill herself and that she should “drink bleach and die.” Sedwick was also physically attacked by the two girls, according to the sheriff’s department.

Congress approved sweeping changes Tuesday to surveillance laws enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks, eliminating the National Security Agency’s disputed bulk phone-records collection program and replacing it with a more restrictive measure to keep the records in phone companies’ hands.

Two days after Congress let the phone-records and several other anti-terror programs expire, the Senate’s 67-32 vote sent the legislation to President Barack Obama, who said he would sign it promptly.

“It protects civil liberties and our national security,” Obama said on Twitter. The bill signing could happen late Tuesday or early Wednesday, but officials said it could take at least several days to restart the collection.-

Experts say retailers across the country should take a closer look at their dress policies following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 8-1 ruling in favor of a Muslim woman who sued Abercrombie & Fitch when the retailer failed to hire her because she wore a religious headscarf.

The 48-year-old, who was jailed yesterday for a minimum of 16 years, had been released less than a year earlier after serving nearly 30 years for killing Melinda Croft in 1986.