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…
Porsche shocked the world this week at the Geneva Auto Show unveiling its first plug-in hybrid car.
The Spyder 918 is gorgeous, with its open-top and fast, with a V8 engine. The combination gas-and-electric sports car uses the 500+ hp to reach 60 mph in 3.2 seconds, quicker even than a Carrera GT, possibly making it the peppiest Porsche road car ever. It would also be the most fuel-efficent, according to Porsche, achieving around 78 mpg.
The company is only testing the water here, not saying whether the concept car will go into production or how much it would cost. But it was the hit of the show and some car columnists are betting that the design will surely make it to showroom floors.
Porsche shocked the world this week at the Geneva Auto Show unveiling its first plug-in hybrid car.
The Spyder 918 is gorgeous, with its open-top and fast, with a V8 engine. The combination gas-and-electric sports car uses the 500+ hp to reach 60 mph in 3.2 seconds, quicker even than a Carrera GT, possibly making it the peppiest Porsche road car ever. It would also be the most fuel-efficent, according to Porsche, achieving around 78 mpg.
The company is only testing the water here, not saying whether the concept car will go into production or how much it would cost. But it was the hit of the show and some car columnists are betting that the design will surely make it to showroom floors.
The presence of Tupperware and Avon in poor nations have provided a much-needed chance for women to gain economic independence. While direct sales presents a potential career path for Americans looking for work, most of the growth for these companies is happening abroad—specifically, in emerging markets like Africa and Indonesia.
It’s been a successful partnership on both sides, and the impact of these companies is starting to attract attention. Rick Goings, the CEO of Tupperware, recently returning from the World Economic Forum at Davos, says, “Even in Davos, they’re talking about the Tupperware effect.”
(READ more in Newsweek.com)
We’ve just concluded what might have been the most environmentally friendly Olympics to date.
During the next global sporting event, the FIFA World Cup, Nike’s official team jerseys — worn by nine teams — will be made from plastic bottles that otherwise would have been destined for landfill sites in Japan and Taiwan. And, the manufacturing process uses 30 percent less energy in production.
(READ more in Good magazine)
A US judge granted German homeschoolers asylum in January after ruling they faced persecution in Germany, where the practice is punishable with fines or imprisonment. The US Home School Legal Defense Association says other German families are exploring political asylum in the U.S.
(READ the story in the CS Monitor)
A local construction company is preparing to open a new 3 million-gallon biodiesel plant in hopes of turning Tucson’s used cooking oil into a valuable commodity for the community.
The company hopes to persuade local restaurants, which generate more than 40,000 gallons of used cooking oil per month, to make their grease benefit the area through a program called Enjoy Dining Green.
“The biggest expense with alternative fuels is shipping these fuels by rail from outside of Arizona,” said Colleen Crowninshield, manager of the clean-cities program. “If we can produce them right here in our own cities and use them here, we would cut down on a huge transportation cost.”
(READ more of the AP story in Tri-Valley Dispatch )
When Stinne Holm Bergholdt of Denmark was diagnosed with bone cancer at age 27, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to have children.
So she asked her doctors if they could remove an ovary before her treatment and transplant it back afterward to preserve her fertility.
More than six years later, Bergholdt and her husband now have two daughters, making her the first woman in the world to give birth twice after an ovary transplant.
READ more at ParentCentral.ca)
The Move Your Money campaign was started by American college students who formed a campaign to encourage their universities to shift their financial investments out of corporate institutions and into local community banks. Similar campaigns are ongoing in US cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
More and more Americans are abandoning corporate banks and moving their financial business to local credit unions and banks. These local institutions stimulate business activity in communities by providing loans to local businesses and offer a non-profit ethos to shareholders, which are the customers.
(READ MORE in THE ARTICLE at CBS)
Get more info about the campaign at MoveYourMoney.info
Do you remember the commencement speaker at your high school graduation? Well, this year the event will be absolutely memorable for one lucky high school class when President Obama climbs the podium to offer inspiration to the national winner of his President’s Commencement Challenge.
The White House and the Department of Education announced last week a new contest, inviting public schools across the country to “Race to the Top”, and show how they are making strides toward personal responsibility, academic excellence and college readiness.
Interested high school students will submit a two-minute video or written essay demonstrating how their school is helping prepare students to meet the President’s 2020 goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Applications will be judged based on the school’s performance and dedication to providing students an excellent education that will prepare them to graduate ready for college and career choices. Apply for the Commencement Challenge here.
The Obama Administration took additional steps to address the drop-out epidemic this week, beginning with a pledge of $900 million in grants to states and education districts that agree to drastically transform or even close their worst performing schools.
