Students at Barnfield College sent bundles of toys and clothes to needy children in Cameroon in time for Christmas. The youngsters collected 65 boxes full of gifts to brighten the festive season for children in the remote northern villages of West Africa - Ntumvaw, Ndu and Nsop. Goodies were collected during December and gift-wrapped at the co .

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It's an issue that has largely flown under the radar of corporate America, but that is starting to change. Benefits offered by employers focus on treating physical ailments. Social stigma, privacy concerns and difficulty in making a business case for coverage can present other barriers. However, faced with escalating medical costs, large employers are focusing more on measures to prevent problems before they happen. That trend is shedding light on the mental health challenges workers face, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The reason: more use of questionnaires called health risk assessments (HRAs), which ask workers to describe the state of their health. More... .

The creation of the Prozac myth

In the heyday of antidepressant PR, only about 10% of results about how the drugs affected quality of life were published. More than two-thirds of studies today are industry funded, and such research is four times as likely to find in favour of the drugs than independent inquiry. It is hardly surprising, then, that research has tended to give a positive spin to antidepressants.

The new negative results might seem to promise a change of direction. But they may just be the other side of the industry coin. What remains unchallenged is the diagnosis of depression itself. GPs diagnose it every minute of the day, celebrities reveal they suffer from it and soap opera characters wrestle with it. Yet 40 years ago depression was hardly anywhere. A tiny percentage of the population were deemed to suffer from it.

Alternative Lenders Crack L.A. Market Amid Credit Crunch

In some cases, it has been hedge funds that are providing the financing, in others it has been private equity firms or players such as St. Cloud, which has a business model based on both debt and equity financing.

Scott Kolbrenner, a director at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin, a Los Angeles-based investment bank, said that while tightening credit requirements are putting the squeeze on L.A. companies, there are more alternative options available than after the dot-com crash.

(We) believe that 2008 will be a very strong year for growth through mergers and acquisitions, but getting the deals done will require more creative financial structuring, he said.

Seeking flexibility

In the case of Cal Coast, the company could have qualified for a bank loan, but the tightening credit markets made the application process onerous.

Del Piero scores late penalty as Juventus draws 1-1 at Catania

MILAN, Italy (AP) -Captain Alessandro Del Piero's last-minute penalty helped Juventus draw Catania 1-1 in the Serie A on Saturday.

"I think they were encouraged by the fans; they started really strong," Del Piero said.

City paramedic bike team to receive grant tomorrow

The Baltimore Fire Department is receiving tomorrow a $7,125 grant to help support the agency's paramedic bicycle team, the city announced today. Money will be used for portable radios.

The bicycle team was established in 1999 after celebrations at the Inner Harbor drew tens of thousands of spectators and made it difficult for bigger ambulances to reach people in need.

"As the number of large city events increases, so has demand for Bike Team services," Acting Fire Chief Gregory Ward said in a statement. This year, the bike team is assigned to 11 downtown events expected to draw a total 1.5 million people.