With these increased pressures and difficulty in ensuring a graduate job, more people are turning to recruitment (招聘) agencies for help. Luke Harper wrote for the Independent warning students to be cautious when using graduate recruitment agencies in their job hunt. The article’s main argument against graduate recruitment agencies is that they are looking to sign people up to the agency and harvest data, without having any real intention to personally find them a job.

The fundamental problem with this approach is a basic misunderstanding of how the recruitment sector works. One of the more common ways is that recruitment agencies aim to find you a job to secure a fee from their clients. Recruitment agencies operate as a business, not a careers service and are not expected to find you a job while you wait around.

There is no denying that amongst the recruitment agencies, there are some CV(简历) hungry, cut and shut agencies that are uninterested in the candidates they have on their books. However, nowadays these are in the minority and don’t tend to last very long.

Paul Farrer, Chief Executive of a leading recruitment agency is worried that a few bad apples are ruining the reputation of what is an excellent sector. Farrer said “The trouble with such an imbalanced and misleading article is that some graduates may now be put off approaching recruitment agencies who may well be able to help them.”

Professionals in the industry are cautious of how some of the less respectable agencies operate. Earnest recruiters believe that graduates should be aware that some of these agencies will take on graduates for all their details rather than helping them find a job, like Harper mentioned. To fight this, Farrar advises that “Graduates should have a simple checklist before approaching any agency. Has the agency taken the time to talk to me? Have they invited me to a face-to-face meeting? Have they guaranteed not to forward my CV to any employer without my permission? These three steps will safeguard every application.”

Farrer also pointed out that that is not the only safety net that graduates can rely on. He said “Graduates can also check to see if the agencies are members of either APSCo or the REC, the two trade bodies they can make an official complaint to. The vast majority of recruitment agencies are professional organizations that help place thousands of graduates every year and poorly researched articles help no one.”

New Zealand has announced it will ban (禁止) smoking for the next generation, so that those who are aged 14 and under today will never be legally (合法) able to buy tobacco.

“The new law means the legal smoking age will increase every year to create a smoke-free generation of New Zealanders,” associate health minister Dr Ayesha Verrall said on Thursday.

The government announced the rising age alongside other measures to make smoking unaffordable and difficult to reach, trying to realize its goal of making the country entirely smoke-free with in the next four years. Other measures include reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products to very low levels, cutting down the shops where cigarettes could legally be sold, and providing services for smokers to give up smoking. The new law will not limit vape (电子烟) sales.

“We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it illegal to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to teenagers. People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally buy tobacco,” Verrall said.

New Zealand’s daily smoking rates have been dropping over time—down to 11.6% in 2018, from 18% a decade earlier. But smoking rates for Maori and Pacifika were far higher—29% for Maori and 18% for Pasifika. “If nothing changes, it would be decades till Maori smoking rates fall below 5%,” Verrall said. She said banning smoking in the next four years was within reach: “I believe it is. The issue is, though, if we don’t change what we’re doing, we won’t make it for Maori—and that’s what the law is really focused on”.

Getting less sleep has become a bad habit for most American kids. According to a new survey(调查) by the National Sleep Foundation, 51% of kids aged 10 to 18 go to bed at 10 pm or later on school nights, even though they have to get up early. Last year the Foundation reported that nearly 60% of 7- to 12-year-olds said they felt tired during the day, and 15% said they had fallen asleep at school.

How much sleep you need depends a lot on your age. Babies need a lot of rest: most of them sleep about 18 hours a day! Adults need about eight hours. For most school-age children, ten hours is ideal(理想的). But the new National Sleep Foundation survey found that 35% of 10- to 12-year-olds get only seven or eight hours. And guess what almost half of the surveyed kids said they do before bedtime? Watch TV.

“More children are going to bed with TVs on, and there are more opportunities(机会) to stay awake, with more homework, the Internet and the phone,” says Dr. Mary Carskadon, a sleep researcher at Brown University Medical School. She says these activities at bedtime can get kids all excited and make it hard for them to calm down and sleep. Other experts say part of the problem is chemical. Changing levels of body chemicals called hormones not only make teenagers’ bodies develop adult characteristics, but also make it hard for teenagers to fall asleep before 11 pm.

Because sleepiness is such a problem for teenagers, some school districts have decided to start high school classes later than they used to. Three years ago, schools in Edina, Minnesota, changed the start time from 7:25 am to 8:30 am. Students, parents and teachers are pleased with the results.