Watch Father Alberto Cutie Be Interviewed on ARV for Telemundo!

Watch LCO client Father Alberto Cutie and his wife Ruhama Canellis in an interview on “Al RojoVivo” for Latino network Telemundo! He talks about his new book “Dilemma” and they both opened up about their love and experience in dealing with some of the scrutiny they have received. Click on the picture to watch the interview.

Read Donna Antebi’s Blog on The Huffington Post Called “Don’t Guess, Drug Test.”

LCO client Donna Antebi wrote a blog on the Huffington Post regarding the issue of the increasing rates of teens using drugs titling it “Don’t Guess, Drug Test.” Read and post a comment as well!

Don’t Guess, Drug Test!

A drug crisis is sweeping America and it’s killing our children.

Parents be warned. We have now entered the culture of ”Pharma-geddon.” Kids are sneaking pills, drinking alcohol, and using illegal street drugs at an alarming rate. Even heroin, once considered the last outpost on the way to junkie-town, is now disturbingly common.

Sadly, today’s young people, obsessed with pop culture, may soon head further down this road. Teen mega-sensation Miley Cyrus shamelessly allowed herself to be videotaped smoking from a bong — not with marijuana, but salvia, a powerful and newly popular hallucinogen.

Almost all drug addicts, as I continually remind my children, start out the same way. They experiment with alcohol and marijuana as teenagers. Unfortunately, no one can tell which teenagers will hold the line at experimentation, and which will become full-blown addicts. Parents like to think, “Not my child. My child is too busy, too smart, or too into sports.” This kind of thinking is a mistake. Denial can kill your child. Yes, kill.

I have seen the dangers of drugs first hand. I’ve sat next to my children at the funerals of wonderful young people whose lives were lost to accidental overdoses. Teaching children to ”just say no,” crossing our fingers, and saying a prayer is not enough. Nothing compares to the grief of losing a child. We owe it to children to do everything in our power to protect them.

An alarming new report by The Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that one in five teens — 20 percent — is now abusing prescription drugs. Parents of teenagers must remain vigilant and should never assume they can slack. When our children were babies, we didn’t question whether they would fall down the stairs or put a fork in a light socket. We baby-proofed the house. With teenagers, our job as protectors does not end. We must still anticipate the possibility that a teenager will use poor judgment. It’s a teen’s nature to test the boundaries, and it’s our job as parents to stay hot on their heels and catch them before they fall.

Turning a blind eye is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. As parents our first line of defense starts at home by keeping prescription medications and alcohol locked up. It’s much harder to monitor children outside our homes but thankfully, there is a product that can helps us do just that. It’s a simple to use, home drug-testing kit that can detect multiple substances including marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, methamphetamine, benzodiazepines, heroin, LSD and Ecstasy.

It is best to begin drug testing long before any drug temptation or experimentation ever takes place. Around your child’s thirteenth birthday, pick up a dozen home drug tests and display them on your counter. Have a sit-down conversation with your child, discussing the dangers of drug experimentation.

Tell them how much you love them. Explain that you have a responsibility to do everything in your power to protect them — including sending them to a lock down boarding school, if that is what it takes to keep them off drugs. Then let your child know that, starting right now, and continuing as long as you support them, you will be giving them random drug tests. This will shock them, annoy them, and perhaps even embarrass them. Good. They need to know you mean business when it comes to drugs. Assure them that this is not about trust — it’s about doing your job. Explain that clean tests will allow for more freedom, and will give you more peace of mind. Then give the test on the spot. It should come up clean, and your bold stance will give them plenty to talk about with their friends.

Give one of the follow-up tests on a day when your teen has a few friends over as witnesses. That way, when peer pressure tempts your child, it makes an easier out for your teen. ”No, it’s not worth it. I get drug tested.” Friends will know this is absolutely true. And, for goodness sake, don’t stop when tests continually show up clean. That’s the point. Keep doing it. Your teenager may still sneak and try alcohol and drugs, but if you do your job with consistent, periodic drug testing, your child will not travel down the road to addiction — not while you’re on duty.

Addiction is a lifetime commitment we don’t want our children to make. It can be an uncomfortable subject to bring up, but drug education needs to start early. Once we fully comprehend the life-ruining effects of drug abuse, the awkward factor melts away. Armed with love and information, we can talk openly with our kids about addiction. It may be the most important dialogue we will ever have with our teens.

Follow Donna Estes Antebi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/donnaantebi

If you would like to comment on Donna Antebi’s blog click here.

LCO Publicists Attended The Golden Globes Gifting Suite Yesterday With Client Tito Ortiz!

LCO publicists Shannon Donnelly, Erika Gutierrez, and Charles Figueroa attended the Golden Globes gifting suite yesterday with client

Tito Ortiz!

Due to a Wobble in Our Earth’s Axis, Our Zodiac Signs Apparantly No Longer Apply

New zodiac sign Ophiuchus: Why astrology is even sillier than we thought

New zodiac sign Ophiuchus: Thanks to a wobble in the earth’s axis, the astrological positions calculated some 2,000 years ago no longer apply. And even back then it was a big load of nonsense.

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Since this Ancient Roman zodiac unearthed in Qarat el-Muzawwaqa, Egypt, was created in the 1st or 2nd century AD, the astrology has only gotten more wrong, if that’s even possible, thanks to Earth’s precession.

Qarat el-Muzawwaqa

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer / January 13, 2011

If you look to your horoscope for a preview of your day, look again: You’re probably following somebody else’s supposed fate.

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• View gallery: Space photos of the day – WISE photographs

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Thanks to Earth’s wobble, astrological signs are, well, bunk. (Or even more bunk than you might expect.) Astrological signs are determined by the position of the sun relative to certain constellations on a person’s day of birth. The problem is, the positions were determined more than 2,000 years ago. Nowadays, the stars have shifted in the night sky so much that horoscope signs are nearly a month off. [Read: Why Your Horoscope for 2011 Is All Wrong]

“Astrology tells us that the sun is in one position, whereas astronomy tells us it’s in another position,” said Joe Rao, SPACE.com’s skywatching columnist and a lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium.

Space photos of the day – WISE photographs

The shift is caused by precession, the wobble in the Earth’s axis caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon to the Earth’s equator. Precession popped into the spotlight this week after Minnesota Planetarium Society board member Parke Kunkle told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about the gap between the astrological and the astronomical view. The story spread around the Internet quickly, but it’s actually old news, Rao said.

Very old news.

“The earliest known astronomer to recognize and assess the movement of precession was Aristarchus of Samos, who lived around 280 B.C.,” Rao told LiveScience.

The attention triggered by his interview with the newspaper has been “astounding.” Kunkle, who teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, told Livescience, He gave the interview at the request of the paper to discuss precession, and the science he described is centuries old, he said.

“Bombshell dropped?” Kunkle said. “Well, no, not really.”

Here’s what astronomers know: The Earth is like a wobbly top. As it rotates, its axis swings in a circle, pointing in different directions. As the Earth’s position shifts, so does our perspective of the night sky.

For example, Rao said, we take the North Star, Polaris, for granted. It’s the star most closely aligned with Earth’s North Pole. But back when the pyramids were constructed, the star that aligned with the North Pole wasn’t Polaris at all: It was a star in the constellation Draco called Thuban. In 12,000 years, Earth’s North Star will be Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra.

The complete rotation takes 26,000 years, Rao said.

“Everything in the sky is in flux,” he said.

Even if the astrological signs were stable, there’s no evidence the stars have anything to do with people’s day-to-day existence. One 2006 study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences used data from more than 15,000 people and found no relationship between date of birth and personality.

Despite the complete lack of scientific and observational evidence for astrology, 25 percent of Americans still believe in it, a recent Pew survey found. So here are the “real” dates of astrological signs, according to astronomers:

Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16.

Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11.

Pisces: March 11-April 18.

Aries: April 18-May 13.

Taurus: May 13-June 21.

Gemini: June 21-July 20.

Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10.

Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16.

Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30.

Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23.

Scorpio: Nov. 23-29.

Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17.

Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20.

The list includes Ophiuchus, a formation the ancient Babylonians discarded because they wanted 12 star signs, not 13. That’s yet another example of how astrologers cherry-pick and ignore astronomical observations, Rao said.

“It’s crazy,” Rao said. “Really, they have their own set of rules.”

Nevertheless, maybe some good will come of the astrology-astronomy media blitz, Kunkle said.

“At the very least, I hope it makes people go out and actually look at the sky,” Kunkle said. “That’s the fun part.”

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