Living Today: Issues of modern living

AIRLINE NOTIFICATION VIA E-MAIL, PHONE

Airline customers now can sign up for automatic notifications on arrival and departure times, including information about delays, gate changes and, in some cases, where baggage can be picked up.

Many major airlines allow customers to sign up to receive these notifications on the carriers' Web sites, The New York Times reports.

Messages are sent to any device that can receive text or e-mail -- a computer, pager, handheld organizer or mobile phone. Some airlines send voice messages for their less-wired customers or those with older cellphones.

However there is a limitation: flights often are delayed after most passengers have left for the airport.

TEEN ABSTINENCE PROGRAMS TO GET BOOST

More than one-third of U.S. high schools teach sexual abstinence until marriage and 700 abstinence programs spread the sex-can-wait message in all 50 states, Newsweek reports.

Next year, President George W. Bush hopes to boost abstinence spending to $135 million -- up from $60 million in 1998 -- fulfilling a campaign promise to spend as much on abstinence as on teen family planning programs.

Teen chastity is on the rise -- the percentage of high schoolers who said they'd ever had sexual intercourse dropped from 54 in 1991 to 46 in 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

HOLIDAY SPENDING FORECAST

The Gallup Organization reports Americans are projected to spend $769 on gifts this holiday season, about $51 less than last year.

Gallup Poll data show about 25 percent of Americans say they will spend less on Christmas gifts this year than last year. Nineteen percent say they'll spend more.

Gallup interviewed more than 3,000 consumers at three separate points beginning in mid-October.

"In 1999 Americans said that they would be spending almost $900 on gifts, compared to this year's $769," Frank Newport, editor in chief of The Gallup Poll, says in a statement.

There is at least the possibility of a loosening of the purse strings as the holiday approaches, Newport adds.

NUNS USE NET

A secluded community of Benedictine nuns on San Juan Island in Washington state is using the Internet to find new recruits because the order, Our Lady of the Rock, is mostly made up of nuns over the age of 60 and could be in danger of dying out.

The nuns are faithful to the traditions of their founders in the 6th century, St. Benedict and St. Scholastica.

The Web site rockisland.com says the Holy Mass, in Latin, is the focal point of the monastic day, followed by prayers, spiritual reading, study and manual work.

Stewardship of the land, especially in the care of rare breeds of animals, is the community's focus.

The nuns are devoted to preserving minor breeds of livestock such as Kerry Cattle, Highland Cattle, Cotswold sheep and llamas. They also produce hand-crafted woolen items.