Not Doing It: Fewer High School Kids Having Sex

New York — The troubles with kids these days … are not as common as they used to be. U.S. teens are having a lot less sex, they are drinking and using drugs less often, and they aren’t smoking as much, according a government survey of risky youth behaviors.

“I think you can call this the cautious generation,” said Bill Albert, spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Among a decline in several risky behaviors, a sharp decline in sexual activity stood out to researchers.

The survey found 41 percent said they had ever had sex, after it had been about 47 percent over the previous decade. It also found marked declines last year in the proportion of students who said had sex recently, had sex before they were 13, and students who had had sex with four or more partners.

The results come from a study conducted every two years by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The surveys included 16,000 students at 125 schools, both public and private. Participation was voluntary and required parental permission, but responses were anonymous. Results were released Thursday.

Setbacks Seen for Islamic State In Syria, Iraq, Libya

Beirut — U.S.-backed fighters in Syria converged from three sides on an Islamic State stronghold near the Turkish border Thursday, while Iraqi special forces pushed deeper into Fallujah, one of the last bastions of the militant group in western Iraq.

In Libya, IS militants were fleeing their stronghold of Sirte as forces loyal to a U.N.-brokered government advanced, with some fighters reportedly cutting off beards and long hair to blend in with civilians. The anti-IS offensives posed a significant challenge to the extremist group as it tries to stave off multiple attacks across parts of Syria and Iraq, where it declared a so-called caliphate in 2014, and in more recently seized territory in chaotic Libya.

If the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces capture Manbij, it will be the biggest strategic defeat for IS in Syria since July 2015, when it lost the border town of Tal Abyad, a major supply route to the militants’ de facto capital of Raqqa.

Pickup Driver Charged with Murder In Bicyclists’ Deaths

Detroit — A Michigan prosecutor filed murder charges on Thursday against the 50-year-old driver of a pickup truck that struck a group of bicyclists out for a casual ride, killing five of them and seriously injuring four others.

Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey Getting charged Charles Pickett Jr. of Battle Creek with five counts of second-degree murder and four counts of reckless driving in the crash Tuesday in Cooper Township north of Kalamazoo.

Pickett is hospitalized and in police custody. He will be arraigned as soon as his health permits, Getting said during a Thursday afternoon news conference. Getting cited patient privacy laws and declined to discuss why Pickett was hospitalized or his condition. Police are continuing to gather information on what led to the crash and the charges were the first step in the legal process, he said.

— Wire reports