WASHINGTON

Report: 168 million children worldwide work as laborers

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that about 168 million children, aged 5 to 7, worked last year as laborers around the world, about half of them in hazardous jobs.

The report on child labor in 140 countries called this an improvement from previous years. But while the decline is a move in the right direction, 10 percent of the world’s children still are being forced to work rather than go to school, the department said.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez says the world needs to do more to address the issue. The report doesn’t include the United States or countries in Western Europe. Of the 168 million child laborers, 85 million of them work at hazardous jobs, the agency said.

WASHINGTON

Minimum-wage protection will be delayed six months

The Obama administration is delaying its enforcement of President Obama’s initiative to extend minimum-wage and overtime protections to the nation’s nearly two million home-care workers.

The new rules are scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2015. The Labor Department says it is keeping the effective date but won’t enforce them against any employer for the first six months. And, from June-December 2015, it will consider enforcing the rule on a case-by-case basis.

Advocates for low-wage workers have long pressed for this coverage, especially those workers who care for elderly and disabled Americans.

A group representing such workers criticized the decision, saying that these mostly low-income women will have to wait up to a year to receive basic labor protections.

NEW HAVEN, Conn.

Study: Feelings amplified if experienced with others

The best way to make a good movie better might be to watch it with someone else. According to new research published in Psychological Science, experiences may feel more intense, good or bad, when someone else is there to share them.

Said lead researcher Erica Boothby of Yale University: “We don’t realize the extent to which we are influenced by people around us whom we don’t know and aren’t even communicating with.”

– From news service reports