North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not undergo surgery or any other medical procedure, a South Korean official has said amid continued speculation about his health.

SCOTLAND'S capital is coming to terms with the "heart-breaking" news that its summer festivals will not go ahead this year - costing the city hundreds of millions of pounds.

"If we are serious about planting churches among the least reached as how we do mission, we must always be willing to question, reconsider and reform our paradigms," says Shaun Rossi.

If you need a last-minute gift, you can grab a $50 Apple iTunes gift card for $42.50. Plus, you can save $250 on the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 and $100 on the iRobot Roomba 675.

The popular Roomba 675 is just $199 today, the 8-inch Amazon Fire HD 8 is only $50, and the 2TB Crucial MX500 2.5-inch SSD is back on sale for $200.

The 10.2-inch Apple iPad with 128GB of storage is $100 off, a 65-inch Vizio 4K TV is $500 off and includes a $250 Dell gift card, and you can score the first discount on Echo Buds.

THE UK Government is “actively looking at” quarantining people arriving from abroad as criticism mounts over the country dragging its feet compared to other parts of the world.

A national union for principals is campaigning to increase its membership, drafting in part off the momentum created by the surge in educator activism over the past two years.

SCOTLAND’S Economy Secretary has penned a letter to the UK Government venting her frustration at being given “insufficient time” to consider workplace safety proposals.

A three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a proposed plan that would have paid certain student-athletes as much as $5,000 annually in deferred compensation.

The schedule for the UEFA Regions' Cup finals in Turkey has been confirmed, with host team Istanbul taking on Ukraine's Ingulec in their opening game, while former winners Castilla y León meet Olomouc.

Small but beautiful, the UEFA Regions' Cup kicks off in Turkey at the weekend; get the inside line on the world's top amateur tournament and the contenders for the 2017 crown.

Teams from the Czech Republic, France, Slovakia, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Poland and Russia are in the finals.

The UEFA Regions' Cup finals draw was held during half-time of Bayern v Liverpool.

Effective management approaches are not skills principals typically learn through the traditional pathways of education. To fill the gap, they are turning to business programs and publications.

I'm amazed at how reliant this younger generation is on their smartphones. I think it's weird, but you can use that generation's screen addiction to your benefit.

The film is the first from the James Patterson book series about a middle school student dealing with school rules that don't always make sense.

For three decades now, the artist and playwright John Byrne has been sitting regularly for photographer David Eustace, the Glasgow-born photographer who left school at 16 and joined first the navy and then the prison service before settling on a career behind a camera.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are at work on competing proposals to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Use our interactive explorer to take a deeper dive into each proposal.

The current system for accrediting schools of education isn't working, argue two former senior U.S. Department of Education officials. They think school districts and philanthropists can help.

Clinical trials in children with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are challenging. To date, no work has been published that permits clinical investigators to estimate the number and compositional features of sites from which to recruit children with severe TBI into clinical trials.

Children with severe TBI are infrequent. Less than 5% of all US hospitals discharged more than 78% of severe TBI cases. To maximize enrollment efficiency for future clinical trials, attention has to be paid to selecting appropriate hospital sites. (Read the full article)

Candidate genes involved in thrombophilia, inflammation, and preterm birth have previously been associated with cerebral palsy. Most studies to date have included small cohorts, did not allow for multiple testing, and require replication.

This study of children with cerebral palsy and their mothers did not confirm previously reported candidate gene associations. Prothrombin gene mutation was associated with hemiplegia in children born at term to mothers with a reported infection during pregnancy. (Read the full article)

Asian Americans have a reduced risk of cerebral palsy (CP) compared with whites. Whether this is true for all Asian ethnic subgroups is unknown. Differences in sociodemographic factors may explain disparities in CP prevalence between Asians and whites.

East Asian, Filipino, Indian, Pacific Islander, and Southeast Asian children were 13% to 38% less likely to have CP than white children. Differences in maternal age and education, gender, and birth weight did not explain these differences in CP rates. (Read the full article)

The rapidly rising prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents over the past 4 decades is a significant public health concern. Experts urge pediatric health care providers to provide routine obesity screening and counseling.

We provide the first nationally representative estimates of the rate of screening and counseling for adolescent obesity by pediatric health professionals. We also examine how socioeconomic factors and access to health care affect whether adolescents receive these services. (Read the full article)

Prevalence estimates for neurologic and neurodevelopmental disorders in children vary widely, and there is uncertainty as to what extent the individual disorders overlap. Most previous prevalence studies have been based on survey data and not on specialist-confirmed diagnoses.

This study used nationwide register data to determine the proportions of Norwegian children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy and to study how the disorders overlap. All diagnoses were specialist-confirmed. (Read the full article)

Adherence to Pediatric Advanced Life Support resuscitation guidelines for children with sepsis is low; however, few studies have been conducted in the tertiary care emergency department setting.

Adherence to septic shock guidelines in a tertiary care pediatric emergency department is low. Adherence to fluid guidelines and the entire PALS algorithm was associated with a shorter hospital length of stay. (Read the full article)

Many drugs are not approved for use in pediatric patients and there is limited evidence on their safety and efficacy in children. Furthermore, there is concern that the quality of pediatric trials is inferior compared with adult trials.

For conditions with a high disease burden in children, only a small proportion of clinical drug trials study pediatric patients. Most pediatric trials are not funded by industry, and the deficiency of evidence is largest in developing countries. (Read the full article)

Changes in resident work hours are believed to have an impact on resident education and patient safety.

This study provides an understanding of the impact of changes in resident work hours on the staffing strategies of children’s hospitals. (Read the full article)

There are limited data regarding the current status of the pediatric clinical trial enterprise.

Evaluation of the ClinicalTrials.gov data set allows description of the overall portfolio of clinical trials relevant to US children, which was previously not possible. (Read the full article)

Clinical guidelines for the evaluation of suspected physical abuse in young children emphasize performing radiologic imaging to screen for occult fractures. Little is known about the degree of adherence to guidelines for screening for occult fractures among pediatric hospitals.

Adherence to guidelines related to screening for occult fractures in young children diagnosed with physical abuse varies significantly among pediatric hospitals. Use of screening in infants who have injuries associated with a high likelihood of abuse also varies among pediatric hospitals. (Read the full article)

There is concern about the potential exploitation of children who are enrolled into clinical trials in developing and transition countries. Previous studies of globalization have only examined pediatric drug trials, and only 1 study has provided patient-level data by country.

The involvement of developing and transition countries depends on the product or indication under investigation and is greater for vaccines than for drugs or biologicals. Compared with our previous analysis, involvement of these countries in pediatric drug development has decreased. (Read the full article)

Children born small for gestational age (SGA) have increased risk of perinatal morbidity and mortality, neonatal death, and cerebral palsy (CP). Causes of SGA, such as congenital malformations, intrauterine infections, and preeclampsia, are also risk factors for the same outcomes.

In 90% of singletons born SGA, CP is apparently of prenatal origin. Low proportions of intrapartum events leading to CP could not be fully explained by a higher neonatal mortality rate in SGA than in non-SGA children. (Read the full article)

Previous studies suggest that hospitals under the greatest financial strain may be more prone to adverse events because they have limited resources to invest in quality and safety.

The patient population served, rather than hospital category, best predicts measured quality, underscoring the need for robust risk adjustment when incentivizing quality or comparing hospitals. Thus, problems of quality may not be systemic across hospital categories. (Read the full article)

Impaired visual development has been reported in infants born to mothers prescribed methadone in pregnancy. Immature visual evoked potentials have been reported in this population, but data were confounded by gestation, growth restriction, and illicit drug use.

Visual evoked potentials are small and immature in infants exposed to methadone and other drugs of misuse in utero. These changes are independently associated with methadone exposure and persist after controlling for gestation, socioeconomic deprivation, alcohol consumption, and cigarette smoking. (Read the full article)

Studies of clinically derived samples of infants with failure to thrive have reported that children remain shorter and lighter than their peers at school-age. Enhanced weight gain ("catch-up") in small infants has been linked to subsequent obesity.

Infants with early weight faltering caught up in weight by 2 years, but height gain remained disproportionally slow. Those with weight faltering later in infancy remained shorter and lighter throughout childhood. Anthropometric outcomes of both groups were within population norms at 13 years. (Read the full article)

In the era of widespread conjugate vaccine use, the prevalence of bacterial meningitis has declined. However, the impact of this decline on the rate of emergency department visits for viral meningitis and cost of caring for these children is unknown.

There was a decline in the rate of diagnosis of viral meningitis in US children’s hospitals between 2005 and 2011. Most children diagnosed with viral meningitis are treated with antibiotics and are hospitalized, accounting for considerable health care costs. (Read the full article)

Clinically significant bleeding in pediatric immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is rare. Evidence-based guidelines for the management of pediatric ITP recommend that patients with mild or no bleeding be followed with observation alone.

Many pediatric patients with newly diagnosed ITP continue to be managed in the inpatient setting. Bleeding events are rare in this setting. Although geographic variability exists, intravenous immunoglobulin is the most commonly used inpatient ITP treatment in the United States. (Read the full article)

Electronic health record (EHR) uptake by US hospitals has been slow, including among children’s hospitals. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health program, which began in 2011, offers incentives for adoption and meaningful use of EHRs.

Using an annual survey, we evaluated how children’s hospitals have progressed in EHR adoption from 2008 through the start of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health program and assessed their ability to meaningfully use EHRs. (Read the full article)

Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OPD) prevalence is 19-99%. OPD based on parent-report is associated with gross motor skills in children with cerebral palsy (CP), however this underestimates prevalence. Almost all children with severe CP have dysphagia; little is known about mild CP.

The prevalence of directly assessed OPD in preschool children with CP is 85% (70% in GMFCS I; 100% in GMFCS V). OPD was prevalent even in mild CP. Gross motor functional capacity is strongly related to dysphagia severity and prevalence. (Read the full article)

Neuropsychiatric conditions comprise a substantial and growing disease burden among children. Pharmacotherapy represents an important treatment option for these conditions, although most drugs are not approved for use in children.

Very few drug trials studying neuropsychiatric conditions focus on children. Furthermore, these trials examine and provide pediatric evidence for only a fraction of all available drugs in the treatment of common neuropsychiatric conditions. (Read the full article)

Hospitalizations under observation status are presumed to be shorter and less resource-intensive, but utilization for pediatric observation-status stays has not been studied.

Children’s hospitals use observation status with great variation. Resource utilization for pediatric patients under observation status overlaps substantially with inpatient-status utilization, calling into question the utility of segmenting pediatric patients according to billing status. (Read the full article)

Pain in children with cerebral palsy is underrecognized and undertreated and negatively affects quality of life. Communication challenges and multiple pain etiologies complicate management. There is a wide range of pain prevalence reported in the literature (14% to 73%).

The impact of pain on activities in children with cerebral palsy across a wide age range and motor abilities is investigated. Physician-identified causes of pain are systematically assessed and reported. Concordance of physician and caregiver identification of pain is evaluated. (Read the full article)

Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is a short-term complication of type 1 diabetes and is a major cause of preventable hospitalization in children. Hospital resource utilization and readmission rates for DKA across the US are not known.

Readmission for DKA within a year of hospitalization is common, accounting for one-fifth of all DKA admissions. Resource use, hospital length of stay, and readmission rates vary widely across major US children’s hospitals, even after adjusting for hospital differences in patients. (Read the full article)

The intestinal microbiome may play a role in immune system maturation, and it has been postulated that early-life probiotic administration may reduce the risk of allergies and asthma in childhood. To date, however, results from clinical trials have been inconsistent.

In this meta-analysis, administration of probiotics in early life may reduce total immunoglobulin E level and protect against atopic sensitization but do not seem to protect against asthma/wheezing. Future trials should carefully select probiotic strains and include longer follow-up. (Read the full article)

Shared decision-making involves the assessment of preferences and goals and has been prioritized in new attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder treatment guidelines, yet no studies have examined the impact of both preferences and goals on treatment initiation.

Supporting the clinical utility of preference and goal assessment, we found that parental treatment preferences are associated with treatment initiation, and those with distinct goals select different treatments. (Read the full article)

Rehabilitation of people with cerebral palsy aims to achieve and maintain optimal performance in mobility and daily activities. Although insight into the developmental trajectories of activities from childhood into adulthood is important, little is known about long-term development.

The gross motor function of children with cerebral palsy determines the developmental trajectories of mobility performance but not of daily activities, where intellectual disability was shown to be the determining factor. (Read the full article)

Surviving infants with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) treated with hypothermia have decreased rates of CP in childhood. CP is associated with increased risk of slow growth.

Term children with HIE who develop moderate/severe CP are at high risk of progressive impaired growth, high rates of cognitive impairment, and rehospitalizations from infancy to school age. Gastrostomy tube placement to facilitate feeds is protective of slow growth. (Read the full article)

Over the past 10 years, children’s hospitals increasingly have established pediatric palliative care programs, but little is known about the prevalence of these programs or their geographic distribution, range of services offered, staff composition, or funding.

Among the 162 hospitals that responded to this survey (71.7% response rate), 69% have a pediatric palliative care program, with substantial variation across programs in terms of how they are staffed and funded and what services they provide. (Read the full article)

Fewer clinical trials are performed in children compared with other patient populations. It is unknown how well existing pediatric clinical trials are aligned with the needs of children, both in high-income countries and globally.

There is only moderate correlation between clinical trial activity and pediatric burden of disease, with certain conditions substantially underrepresented in the current research portfolio. Our findings provide a benchmark for prioritizing conditions for study, analyzing gaps, and identifying funding priorities. (Read the full article)

Tonsillectomy is one of the most commonly performed surgeries in children and is one of the most cumulatively expensive conditions in pediatric hospital care. Little is known about how the quality of tonsillectomy care varies across hospitals.

In a large cohort of low-risk children undergoing same-day tonsillectomy, there was substantial variation in quality measures of process, dexamethasone and antibiotic use, and outcome, revisits to the hospital within the first 30 days after surgery. (Read the full article)