Kids in the news

1. Certified yoga instructor at 12

She is a yoga instructor who has the challenging job of teaching fidgety preschoolers the ancient practice.

But once her charges get going, she says: "They really start to focus and listen."

Jaysea Devoe knows a thing or two about childhood and focus, for she is only 12 years old and just recently became a certified yoga instructor after completing 200 hours of teacher training.

She is believed to be the youngest certified female yoga instructor in the US.

In addition to her pint-size students, aged four to six, Jaysea teaches teenagers and fellow tweens in her California beach town of Encinitas.

But she is not alone in her entrepreneurial zeal, Reuters reported. Her twin brother is a sponsored competitive surfer and works at a surfboard fin manufacturing company.

Her 15-year-old brother is a "professional water man," spear fisherman, rod and reel angler, and surfer, who also teaches and has sponsors.

2. Boy, 5, uncovers Microsoft glitch

Microsoft recently received a tip about a security problem uncovered by an unlikely source - a five-year-old boy.

Kristoffer Von Hassel of California, US, had found a simple but clever way to hack into his father's Xbox Live account, local television station ABC10 reported.

The ingenious tot was getting around his father's account password by first typing in a wrong password, then typing only space keys and hitting enter when shown a password verification screen, allowing him into the account.

When the pair brought the glitch to Microsoft's attention, the company showed its appreciation by giving Kristoffer four games, US$50 (S$60) and a year-long subscription to Xbox Live, US news website Huffington Post reported.

But Kristoffer missed out on the US$10,000 bounty Microsoft pays hackers for finding security flaws in Windows software.

3. Baby accused of attempted murder

While many children his age are still learning how to crawl, a nine-month-old boy in Pakistan has been accused of attempted murder.

Mohammad Musa, along with his father and other family members, was booked for throwing rocks at gas company officials in a working-class neighbourhood in the city of Lahore on Feb 1, the family's lawyer Chaudhry Irfan Sadiq told AFP.

Inspector Kashif Muhammad, who attended the alleged crime scene and has since been suspended, wrote in his report that it was a case of attempted murder.

Appearing in a packed courtroom with others accused in the case, Musa was seen crying as his grandfather Muhammad Yasin held him.

Mr Yasin later fed him milk from a bottle while fielding questions from reporters.

Said the 50-year-old labourer: "Everyone in the court was saying 'How can such a small child be implicated in any case'? What kind of police do we have?"

Observers say the case highlights endemic flaws in the country's legal system.

The charge is in direct contradiction with Pakistan's minimum age of criminal responsibility, which was raised from seven to 12 years last year, except in terrorism cases.

4. Boy's organs save mum and two ill strangers

A seven-year-old boy's final wish to donate a kidney to save his seriously ill mother was granted by doctors on Thursday, after the child died of a brain tumour.

The transplant was carried out at a hospital in Jingzhou City in the Chinese province of Hubei, less than six hours after Chen Xiaotian died, cnhubei.com reported.

This was the province's first case of an organ donation between immediate family members, the report said.

The boy's mother, who suffered renal failure and required a transplant, should now make a full recovery, Shanghai Daily reported. The doctors said she should be able to leave intensive care within a week.

Two other people also received the gift of life from the boy.

A 21-year-old woman received his right kidney while his liver was donated to a 27-year-old man. Both transplants also took place on Thursday.

This article was published on April 6 in The New Paper.

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