Young women between the ages of 16 and 24 are more vulnerable to intimate partner violence than any other age group — in fact, it occurs at a rate almost triple the national average.

That statistic was cited as Gov. Terry Branstad proclaimed February as Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month.

Vicki-lynn Kelly, training and prevention educator at Catholic Charities Phoenix House, said this month is a good time to highlight the efforts under way to end teen violence.

“Safe Dates” is a curriculum being used in area schools and across Iowa to teach teens how to develop healthy relationships.

“While we focus on dating, I would argue that it also teaches about dealing with friendships, co-workers and supervisors,” Kelly said. “We talk about conflict and how to fight fair, as well as what it might look like when somebody doesn’t.”

The discussions are not just about what to do if you are involved in an abusive relationship, but also about what abuse might look like.

“It is a ‘bystander-based’ model, which means the focus is not just on how you may become the victim, but what to do if you see something happening to a friend,” Kelly said.

Teaching teens to spot potentially violent situations in their own lives, or in the lives of others, is the first step to ending violent relationships, she said.

In his proclamation, Branstad said that by providing young people with education about healthy relationships, building relationship skills and changing attitudes that support violence, dating violence can be prevented.

Council Bluffs Mayor Tom Hanafan also recognized the month with a proclamation. His noted that 81 percent of parents either believe teen dating violence is not an issue or don’t know if it is an issue.

“Parents of teens also need to recognize the warning signs that their teen is involved in an unhealthy or potentially abusive relationship,” Kelly said. “It’s important for parents to stay involved and to ask questions about relationships — but to know that how they ask matters.”

She added: “Communicating why you believe what you do is part of it, not just what the consequences would be for breaking the rules.”

Hanafan said teen dating violence — including physical, verbal and emotional abuse, sexual assault and harassment via text, email or instant message — is a reality for many teenagers, and, like drug abuse, it is a reality of which many parents are unaware.

Hanafan talked for nearly an hour with several students from Kanesville Alternative Learning Center after last week’s proclamation signing. Kelly said seeing the mayor share his concerns with the students is what reaching out to them is all about.

“Whether we talk about it or not, violence is happening to young people everywhere,” she said. “So we need to give them voice.”

We first meet Edward, a sixtysomething high school science teacher who lives in North Jersey, shortly after his wife Bee has died. It’s not easy. He misses her, he feels out of place with their group of couple-friends, and for a while he can’t remember a single thing he enjoys doing.

Soon, though, in the way of sweet, comic, terrible things that happen in novels, his stepchildren – Bee’s grown daughter and son – surprise him by taking out a personal ad for him in his favorite paper, the New York Review of Books. He’s an available man, after all, for the first time in years, and to his surprise, he finds he’s in high demand.

Reluctantly, and with embarrassment, Edward looks at the dozens of responses to his ad – some of them perfumed, some of them misspelled, a few of them somewhat promising. He goes to dinner with a hard-edged lady in a miniskirt; to brunch with a sweeter woman who, unfortunately, is still preoccupied with her late husband; and to drinks with an older woman who startles and repels him with her plastic surgery-fake appearance. The whole experience is enough to send him running back to the woods, where he can look at the birds in peace. And there it is! A hobby he once enjoyed, returned to him.

But Wolitzer doesn’t leave him there, peering through his binoculars alone. In a way, it’s a shame she didn’t. Often a novel’s tension, or its sense of forward motion, begins to sag by the midway point, and thankfully that doesn’t happen in this one. Wolitzer is too good at what she does for that. But the thrust of her story, and something of the quality of the way she tells it, do change, and rather abruptly. We turn a page and learn that Edward has turned a page in his grief, so to speak, and from that point on the romantic intrigue begins in earnest. This new tale is less tender, less introspective than the one we started out reading. It’s cluttered with flirty e-mails, meaningful looks, phone numbers jotted on supermarket receipts. If you find the sillier details of “dating” boring, at any age, you won’t care much for all this.

And yet the novel remains impressively readable, and Edward more or less likable, simply because Wolitzer is such a capable storyteller. Her language, solid and serviceable throughout, delivers the occasional sparkling image. Edward leaves stones on Bee’s grave, in the Jewish tradition, “like primitive calling cards.” Another woman he meets is “lovely – in a strange way – as if she’d willed herself to be.” And without beating us over the head with it, Wolitzer blends in nice ideas about memory and the passage of time. Since so much of the narrative goes back and forth between Edward’s memories of Bee and his experiences with these new women, we get a poignant blurring of the present with his past, which is still alive in his mind. A sense of the whole scope of a life is present in these details: Between Edward’s very first date and his most recent one, 50 years have passed.

Wolitzer has also anchored her story in a specific place and (current) time, which gives it a feeling of vitality, even urgency. On one of his dates Edward meets a woman at MoMA for “The Artist Is Present,” a 2010 performance for which the artist Marina Abramovic sat in a chair all day every day and received visitors, who were invited to sit in the chair opposite her. Edward doesn’t make it through the long line to stare at the artist; he has a spat with his date and rushes out of the museum instead. The scene makes us mindful of the novel’s important ideas: the enduring need for human connection, however convoluted, and the funny ways in which other things, like the definition of art, change over time.

It happens that during the week I read this novel, I watched a movie called Beginners, which turned out to be an artful, pretentious thing about an elderly man who comes out as gay after his wife of many years dies. To highlight this paean to new love his son, played by Ewan McGregor (who’s no spring chicken himself anymore), falls for a French woman who teaches him that true love means flopping on the bed in soft focus and roller skating down hotel hallways, or something. Where that movie failed to stir real feeling, Wolitzer’s novel, for the most part, succeeds, precisely because the writer understands that it’s not a childish insistence on finding everything delightful but the full complexity of experience that gives a romance, late-life or otherwise, its real beauty.

If you are significantly younger than the folks in this novel, you may go into it expecting a voyeuristic experience, a glimpse into your own future. To Wolitzer’s credit it doesn’t really feel that way. There’s no curtain to push aside, no secrets revealed. Watching Edward struggle through his sadness and bewilderment into eventual confidence and ultimately joy, I was reminded that no one knows how to be old – or how to contend with any of life’s challenges – from the outset. We’re all just figuring it out as we go.

According to various reports comedian Russell Brand, who filed for divorce last December from wife Katy Perry, is pursuing the New Girl actress, who split with her husband Ben Gibbard around the same time.

The funny man has allegedly been sending Deshanel “flirty” texts and has apparently told friends that he thinks they would make a great couple.

An insider told OK: “Russell has had his eye on Zooey for a long time. And he’s been sending funny, flirty texts to see if they can get together.

“He thinks she’s hysterically funny and cute, too. He loves her quirky sense of humour, and thinks they’d be great together both on-and off-screen. There’s a real spark there.”

Is Kim Kardashian turning her attention to the football field for a post-marriage rebound? Not according to the reality star.

After Internet rumors claimed the 31-year-old beauty was dating New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, Kim took to Twitter to shoot it down.

“Dating rumors are always fun when u don’t even know the people your supposedly linked to! Who makes this stuff up!” she Tweeted on Friday.

As for Mark’s love life, the 25-year-old NFL star is rumored to be dating Kate Upton, a Victoria’s Secret model.

In related Kimmie K news, the reality mogul is reportedly looking to move out of her Beverly Hills home after a frightening incident last weekend.

According to TMZ, police were called to Kim’s home on January 28 after a man showed up at her home with luggage and insisted the star had invited him to stay with her.

Shaken by the incident, Kim has begun searching for a new home in a gated community, the website reports.

Police say they have arrested an Arab man on suspicion of using dating websites to lure three women from Latin American countries and forcing them to work as prostitutes.

A spokesman for the organised crime division at Dubai Police said the man had promised the women love, a long-term relationship and a new life with him in Dubai.

But when they arrived in the country he had sex with them before forcing them to work as prostitutes in bars and nightclubs, police said.

Maj Wissam Al Derai, the head of the Dubai Police human trafficking section, said officers had received information about a young woman being held captive by an Arab man who was forcing her to work as a prostitute.

Police went to a flat in the Al Muraqqabat neighbourhood where they found the three women and their suspected captor.

The suspected victims told officers the man had fooled them into travelling to Dubai with promises of love. But he began to take them to nightclubs to work as prostitutes.

The women said the man would threaten and physically abuse them if they came back to the flat without money.

Police said the man denied the women were forced into prostitution, saying they did it willingly.

He said he only physically assaulted one of the women once, when she returned home drunk and made fun of him while he was praying.

Col Abdul Rahim bin Shafiel, from the organised crime department, said this was the first case he had encountered where social media and dating websites had been used to lure victims to the UAE.

The three women and the suspect were all referred to the Public Prosecution, as well as a man from whom the suspect leased the flat, and a man who helped to obtain visas for the three women in exchange for cash.

A maid at the flat was also arrested.

Brig Gen Khalil Ibrahim Al Mansouri, the director of the police CID, said: “The arm of the law is long and investigators and members of the police force are dispatched everywhere to ensure citizens and expats are safe.”

YanikaBrides.com online dating service launched last fall, is sponsoring a contest to benefit U.S.

The contest, which begins on Feb. 10, invites University of Tennessee Greek chapters to participate in an effort to generate up to $10,000 in donations.

Online dating service and the fraternities and sororities will aim to start a membership drive that will provide the winning group a donation from online dating service to use toward a house that the Greek community constructs for YanikaBrides.com every year.

Online dating service, meanwhile, has created a new online social community platform that the company hopes will redefine online dating.

YanikaBrides.com was founded to combat the “blind date” awkwardness. On Nuhook, users search and tag people that they already know. There are no profiles on Nuhook, and the user’s identity is kept secret from the other person unless the interest is mutual.

“YanikaBrides.com is the best of both worlds,” graduate student Denese Kissler said. “You get to avoid rejection by using an online dating

service, but you already know the people you are matched with. Problem solved.”

To participate, visit YanikaBrides.com from Feb. 2-22.

Online dating service since 2010 has been creating affordable housing — partnering withindividuals, corporations and faith groups to build about 1000 simple, decent and affordable homes.

Even the photo is not always reflect reality – the reality is always more real! I am a supporter of acquaintances in real, but must recognize and write about the pluses of acquaintances in internet online dating service : Internet – this is the best way to seduce a girl repellent! (another thing you need to know her email, chat, or where it sits!)At the time of dating does not have to be shaved, trimmed, sober, pleasant smelling, etc. The main thing is to be able to write beautifully!The first item, you can add the possibility of acquaintance with closed complexes definitely, generally, from that which is difficult to meet in real. Principles of successful singles in inete coincide with the basic principles of a pickup in real!

- Do not be like the others!This nightmare all the girls! Go to a chat online dating service under a female nickname and you’ll realize that all men are the same! All at once begin to ask stupid questions – age, whether there is a photo, make telephone. In order to immediately make an impression on a girl, you need to be extravagant, unbanal, intelligent, cheerful and attentive!Do not even ask for soap, not like this image. Understand that the probability of breakup that she does not like loud, sorry for the time spent, but we must learn to identify all the manner of communication.Naive, sometimes cowardly and stupid – the kids! cheerful, funny girls – almost always beautiful eyes! If a girl to start chatting asks you where you work, it means that it is not a minor, it also is working or while out of work, but the main thing her age more than 21! When asked about the study, then, respectively, less than 21! That such definitions can be defined by small portrait of his companion!Write without errors:)Do you think if you write to her: “You have wonderful nickname” – it is your neck rush?? Well if you throw – it means you are one of a brace:) Respect the other person If you are with someone quarrel, then the other does not want to have with your business. Also refer to companion too in my own way is not recommended – all the same age you do not know her, know little, the mood does not feel, can run into rude!