Now there’s another kind of prowess achieved by women in their 40s that men peak at earlier in life. Math. Not only do female math students outperform men at Ontario’s community colleges, but it’s the 40-something female multi-taskers juggling jobs, families and mortgages who edge out their classmates of either sex at any age, new research shows.
(READ the report at the Toronto Star)
The five greenest cities in the world aren’t necessarily those with nothing but trees and parks.
Being a green city is all about sustainability and improving your carbon footprint, and these five are putting themselves on the fast track to becoming sustainable-carbon neutral.
The five greenest cities in the world aren’t necessarily those with nothing but trees and parks.
Being a green city is all about sustainability and improving your carbon footprint, and these five are putting themselves on the fast track to becoming sustainable-carbon neutral.
Pond scum is a type of algae that makes water unsafe for drinking, swimming, fishing or watering crops. It’s a big problem in the developing world, and algal blooms are becoming more common.
Now, genetically engineered tobacco plants could offer a solution. The tobacco’s powers came from implanted genes that produce antibody proteins, which bind to toxins and make them less dangerous.
The technique could be an efficient way to clean up all sorts of environmental pollutants.
(READ More in Discovery News)
A survey of business leaders and supply managers in nine Midwest and Plains states suggests the region’s economy is set to grow in the coming months.
From employment to confidence, the figures have improved. Inventory rose, new orders and sales increased.
(READ the AP report at the Greeley Tribune)
HSBC boss Michael Geoghegan has confirmed that he will hand over 6 million dollars of his bonus money (£4mil) to charity. The bank said it made 13.3 billion US dollars (£8.8 billion) in underlying pre-tax profits last year.
The chief executive said he would pass on his £4 million bonus payment – which will be paid in deferred shares – to charities around the world over the next three years.
HSBC chairman Stephen Green has also waived his entitlement to annual bonus shares.
(READ More at the UK Metro)
A species of frog thought to have been extinct for 30 years has been found in rural Australian farmland, officials said last week.
A fisheries conservation officer stumbled across one of the frogs and has since identified a colony of around 100 yellow-spotted bell frogs.
The discovery is ‘as significant in the amphibian world as it would be to discover the Tasmanian tiger, said Frank Sartor, minister for environment and climate change.
(READ More of the AP story at the Wash. Post)
Since their comeback from the brink of extinction in the 1960’s, bald eagles have been flocking to this park every winter, attracting bird-watchers by the bus load.
300 to 1,000 eagles from California, Oregon and as far as the Northwest Territories of Canada arrive at Trinity Lake to rest and feed among old-growth ponderosa pines and Douglas firs.
The number of tourists to the Klamath Basin area swells during Presidents Day weekend and the annual Winter Wings Festival in January and February. They come to watch the national symbol, one of the most successful environmental comebacks of all time.
(READ the story in the Contra Costa Times)
Salt is precious in poverty-stricken coastal West Africa, but conservation experts say efforts to extract it are laying waste to mangrove swamps, causing erosion and ravaging fish stocks.
In Sierra Leone, one of Africa’s poorest nations still recovering from a 1991-2002 civil war, lawmakers are preparing a bill to join a seven-nation charter to protect the region’s mangrove forests.
Environmental groups are trying to encourage salt producers to use other methods of extracting the salt, including solar drying, to reduce the strain on mangroves.
(READ More at Reuters)
Shoppers returned to the nation’s malls last month, buying a surprising amount of spring clothing and other items and helping stores post the strongest retail sales since November 2007, a month before the recession began.
The better-than-expected 3.7 percent gain was reported Thursday.
(READ the AP report at NPR.org)
Marcia Merrick says helping is simple. With her two kids grown up now, she still makes lunches every morning — 400 of them — for Kansas City’s homeless. 400 paper bags are each filled with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a bean burrito, chips, fruit, and two homemade cookies. She also includes a note of encouragement.
As the founder of Reaching Out, Inc., she starts every day (Christmas and other holidays included) at 4:30 a.m. so she can finish her preparations and make the 15-minute drive to downtown Kansas City by 6 a.m., the time when most homeless shelters close and their overnight guests are turned out. She also makes stops at homeless encampments tucked away in secluded spots around the fringes of the city, under bridges and highway overpasses, and along the banks of the Missouri River.
(READ more in the CS Monitor)
ALSO, Watch a video report from KMBC on YouTube…
Israel and the Palestinians agreed to begin indirect, American-brokered talks, the U.S. Mideast envoy announced Monday — ending a 14-month deadlock in peacemaking and representing the Obama administration’s first substantive diplomatic achievement here.
The announcement, however, came just hours after Israel enraged Palestinians by announcing new West Bank settlement construction on the same day U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden landed in the region to promote negotiations.
(READ More from AP via NPR)
In a remote corner of Ethiopia, a single dilapidated bridge had been critical to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Amhara highlanders who live without running water or electricity and depend on footpaths for their commerce and well-being. “If this bridge is broken, their lives are broken…”
Ken Frantz, a former builder from Virginia, is the founder of Bridges To Prosperity, a nonprofit group that constructs and repairs bridges in Asia, Africa, and South America. He formed the organization after seeing a photo of that bridge showing villagers crossing the swollen river by looping themselves and their cattle to a frayed rope held by 10 men on each side of the broken span.
(CONTINUE reading in Parade.com)
There have been plenty of Hollywood leading ladies honored during Oscar night — Hepburn, Streep, Mirren — but this year, the big Oscar buzz comes from a woman who works behind the camera.
Kathryn Bigelow is set to become the first female to win an Academy Award for Best Director. Her film, Hurt Locker, is tied with Avatar each leading the pack with nine Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director, an intriguing contest between Bigelow and her ex-husband James Cameron, the creator of “Avatar.”
“All eyes are on the David v Goliath battle between the low-budget ‘The Hurt Locker’ — made for around 11 million dollars — and ‘Avatar,’ which cost around 500 million dollars and is the highest-grossing movie in history with earnings of more than 2.5 billion dollars to date,” according to the AFP Oscar countdown story.
Watch the Kathryn Bigelow story below, or on MSNBC… And, watch the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony tonight on ABC.
The United States and Brazil signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to slash greenhouse gas emissions from tropical deforestation, one of the main drivers of global climate change. The deal, signed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Brasilia on Wednesday, marks the first time the two countries have formally agreed to work together on deforestation.
In the past, Brazilian leaders have been wary of foreign interference in the Amazon, Earth’s largest tropical forest.
(READ More in the LA Times)
The U.S. Senate approved legislation to encourage canceling Haiti’s $1 billion debt to international organizations. Passed without objection, the legislation directs the Obama administration to advocate for debt cancellation before such international agencies as the International Monetary Fund.
The old image of an Africa doomed to get ever poorer has certainly lost credence over the past decade even if it is a view still held by some.
Well, according to a new study, Africans are getting wealthier more quickly than previously believed and the poorest continent’s riches are also spreading beyond the narrow confines of its elite.
“Africa is reducing poverty, and doing it much faster than we thought,” the study by U.S.-based economists Xavier Sala-i-Martin and Maxim Pinkovskiy said.
“The growth from the period 1995-2006, far from benefiting only the elites, has been sufficiently widely spread that both total African inequality and African within-country inequality actually declined over this period.”
(Continue reading the article in Reuters)
Beginning today, at 1,000 Gap stores across North America, turn in your old denim and get new denim at a 30% discounted price. The denim drive is called, COTTON. FROM BLUE TO GREEN. Through March 14, consumers across the country can donate old denim at their local Gap, which will then be given a “new life” by being converted into Natural Cotton Fiber Insulation, and donated to communities in need.
Since the initiative was launched five years ago, the COTTON. FROM BLUE TO GREEN denim drive has recycled enough denim to create natural cotton fiber insulation for over 540 homes.
Decades after being imprisoned by North Korea on espionage charges, Dr. Kim Chin-Kyung is opening the first privately funded university in that country as a way to increase dialogue with the closed-off country.
He recalled what happened during the war in 1950, “I told God that if I survived, I would return the love to my enemies,” he says – his enemies at the time being North Korean and Chinese soldiers.
Read the story, featured in the new Making a Difference section of the CS Monitor. ..
Life hasn’t been easy for a 37-year-old Boise insurance agent who at one time lived in a homeless shelter. He has won $250,000 in the Idaho Lottery and says he won’t forget those who helped him get back on his feet.
Watch the video below, or at Clip Syndicate…
