OHIO — Sixteen children in Ohio have been reported missing and are still missing this week. The missing person reports are from the dates of 12/1 to today, 12/7. The missing children and their information have been posted on the... The post Sixteen children reported missing in Ohio this week first appeared on Ohio Statewide .

Vendula Wendy Rose, an Ohio mother who went missing on Sept. 24, was identified by human remains found in the Talladega National Forest by the Alabama Department of Forensic Science on Wednesday, Dec. 4, Cleburne County Coroner’s Office said in a statement on Facebook.

Every had someone tell you "turn that frown upside down!" Obnoxious advice? Maybe. But they might just be onto something. By now, most of us have heard of forced smiling — or the act of turning your mouth up at the ends into something like a smile — and how it can potentially turn your mood around by tricking your body into, essentially, think it's happy.Research has shown that smiling more, even when you have to fake it, can boost your mood, lower stress, bring your heart rate down, and give your immune system a boost. But did you know some people say the same is actually true of laughing?Reseachers wanted to test the positive effects of laughter, so they found some of the most stressed out people they could manage: Students.Researchers from Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa chose nursing students who exhibited high levels of stress due to their coursework and put them through a rigorous laughing protocol. Nursing is notoriously one of the most stressful college majors.First, students were surveyed on measures like their self-reported stress levels, the academic self-efficacy or confidence, and overall well-being.For the test group, a group of the students took a 40-minute laughter yoga courses once per week, for five weeks.Laughter yoga is a unique sort of yoga class that has four components, according to the study. First, a playful clapping warm-up. Next, deep breathing. Third, silly games, and fourth, laughter exercises. The idea is to force yourself to laugh — even literally saying the words ha-ha over and over — until eventually you start genuinely laughing and smiling. Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash Compared to the control group, the intervention group saw significant improvements in overall well-being and perceived stress levels after five weeks of laughing yoga.The findings from the new study line up with previous research about laughing yoga and forced laughter. Previous studies have shown laughing yoga, specifically, to be beneficial for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy as well as the elderly. This aligns with common sense, too. You can only say hahaha so many times before you start genuinely cracking up, and you're bound to feel fantastic afterwards.So far, the science says that regular forced laughter is a fun, cost-effective, and non-medicinal way of lowering stress and increasing well-being. Plus, if you try out laughing yoga, you get to tell people that you're going to yoga class when you're really just goofing around! Win-win.Are there potential downsides to forced laughter or smiling? Photo by Freddy Mishiki on Unsplash Forced laughter, especially in social settings, is a heavily studied phenomenon. Did you know there are four types of forced laughter, depending on the reason and motivation behind each one? Studies show that forcing a laugh can be a mixed bag. Intimacy maintenance laughter, or "a forced laugh used to brighten the atmosphere in a situation or to maintain or improve one’s level of intimacy with another," unsurprisingly has positive ramifications on our mental health. But expression control laughter, where we fake a laugh to hide a negative emotion, can have the opposite effect.It definitely begs the question — could forcing ourself to laugh or smile when we're stressed actually be harmful? So far, there's not much data to suggest a downside to something as gentle and fun as laughing yoga, but there is research that shows when sad people try to smile more it makes them feel worse in certain circumstances.And some people, whether it's supported by data or not, just can't get on board with trying to "trick" our minds and bodies into feeling a certain way. It's definitely not a concept that would sit well with truly dedicated yogis.Finally, when it comes to the stories we've all heard about forced smiling, it turns out the positive effects are probably a lot smaller than we've been led to believe anyway. Even the recent study on laughing yoga for stressed out nursing students, while definitely demonstrating an improvement in well-being, fell short of the massive effect you might expect.The takeaway? Forcing a laugh or a smile can be a good pick me up, and a solid everyday habit, like meditating. But it's best viewed as a short term solution and probably isn't going to cure your stress and anxiety all on its own.The ideal would be if you can find a way to genuinely smile and laugh every day. Talk to a friend, watch a funny movie, joke around with the kids.But if you have to start with a forced smile or laugh, it's better than nothing. Stress levels have been rising in America for years, so at this point, we'll take anything we can get!

John Reichart, 74, is on a mission to bring Christmas cheer and new memories to his wife of 53 years, Joan, following her Alzheimer's diagnosis. Joan was diagnosed four years ago with the disease. The couple got engaged on Christmas Eve, and Joan has been a lover of the Christmas season throughout their marriage. So Reichert decided to decorate every house in their Indianola, Iowa, neighborhood this year with holiday decorations and lights that he purchased out of his own pocket. His goal: to bring Joan joy and help her make new memories for them to share while she still can. - YouTube www.youtube.com Reichart asked each neighbor for permission before he began to decorate. “One neighbor thought I was kidding until I showed up at his lawn putting decorations up,” he told Iowa's Local 5 News.Reichert has painstakingly decorated each of the 17 homes on his block, complete with illuminated Christmas trees, snowmen, wreaths, snow flakes and more.A Marine veteran, Reichart has vowed to keep decorating until he physically is unable to do so. Unfortunately, he's not sure how much time that will be. Reichart shared that Joan's condition has continued to worsen, that she is forgetting how to brush her teeth and that she is "to a point of having more bad days than good.” "I love her with all my heart and soul. As long as she enjoys it, I'll keep doing it as long as I have the strength to do it. I'll do it every Christmas,” he told the news outlet. “Time is limited, time is short and so I want her to remember. This is something that she will remember.”And his wife is incredibly grateful for his love and care. “He means the world to me. Without him, I don’t know what I’d do,” she told the news outlet.With the entire East Franklin Avenue neighborhood decorated, Reichart has invited his local community to take a stroll or drive down the street to enjoy the display for themselves, noting that the lights will be lit from 5 to 11 p.m. everyday until the second week of January.To help recoup the cost of the lights and storage, the Reicharts' neighbor, Frank Ewurs, created a GoFundMe for John and Joan with a fundraising goal of $20,000."So many of you have already driven down our bright street and felt the love he has put on display not only for his wife, but also for everyone in the spirit of Christmas," Ewurs wrote on the fundraising page. He added, "Your generosity is helping make this incredible display of love and Christmas spirit possible. Every donation and kind word is a true gift."The couple is also asking for Christmas cards to be sent to them to help brighten their days this holiday season. They noted that they plan to read them every night before they go to bed, and will send thank-you notes to those who send a card in the new year. You can send them a card addressed to:John and Joan ReichartP.O. Box 133Indianola, IA 50125

If you want to know what it was like to be gay in the United States in the 1980s, an interview on ABC’s “20/20” where one of America’s prominent journalists, Barbara Walters, talked to 29-year-old Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein, is a great place to start. In 1983, Fierstein was the hottest thing on Broadway” with 2 hit shows: “La Cage aux Folles” and “Torch Song Trilogy.” But even though he was the talk of the town, Walters treats his homosexuality as if it is something foreign and threatening.At the time, Fierstein was a rarity in pop culture—an openly gay male celebrity and his “Torch Song Trilogy” dared to do the unthinkable: humanize homosexual relationships. Fierstein later found mainstream success in films, starring alongside Robin Williams in “The Birdcage,” a movie version of “La Cage aux Folles,” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.” In 1983, Fiersten sat down with Walters for a prime-time interview where he made the case that homosexuality wasn’t a deviant lifestyle and that it’s much more prevalent than most people think, especially in the arts. “What's it like to be a homosexual,” Walters asked the actor, writer and one-time drag queen, point-blank. “I don't know. I'm just a person. I'm a person who sees the world in the opposite light than you do, that's all. But I see the exact same world as you do. I assume that everyone is gay unless I'm told otherwise. You assume everyone's straight unless you're told otherwise,” he told Walters and the millions of viewers watching at home. See on Instagram Fierstein went on to dismiss the myth that homosexuality was caused by a strong mother and a weak father by noting that his brother was straight. He added that people must be born gay because LGBTQ people are found in every part of the world. “I mean you have to you have to start from the basics, 10% of the world is gay,” Fierstein said. “You got to stop with the ‘this is a sickness,’ ‘this is an abnormality.’ This is a normal thing that has gone on through the history of man. It has always been 10% of the population has never been bred out.”In the interview, Fierstein also debunks the notion that homosexual people can’t enjoy the same type of committed romantic relationships as heterosexuals. “Those are not heterosexual experiences and those are not heterosexual words. Those are human words. Love, commitment, family belong to all people,” Fierstein said. "It is the norm in the homosexual community. It is not the norm in what you see on the news and all that. But what you see on the news and what you see in print are the bars.”Fierstein added that when a happy lesbian couple stays together for 70 years, it doesn’t make the news. “Monogamy is as prevalent a disease in homosexuality as it is in heterosexuality. It's all the life choice that you make for yourself,” he joked.The interview is a fascinating time capsule of a world right before the AIDS epidemic when LGBTQ people began coming out of the closet in increasing numbers to help fight the deadly pandemic. In the interview, Fierstein, as one of the few out and proud gay male role models, was forced to share simple truths about gay life that, 40-plus years later, most people have come to understand. It took a lot of courage for Firestein to speak his truth on such a big stage, and he did so fearlessly and with love and humor. You can watch the entire interview here. - YouTube www.youtube.com