In one of the largest gifts ever to a dance organization, philanthropist Glorya Kaufman is donating $20 million to the Dance at the Music Center program and its 11-acre campus in downtown Los Angeles.
“The arts are critical to the lifeblood of this nation,” said Kaufman, widow of KB Homes co-founder Donald Bruce Kaufman. “During this difficult time when art programs are barely getting by, we must do our part.”
(Read the full AP Story at MSNBC)
With all the reports of health care delivery being bottom line driven, it is reassuring to know that hospitals across the country are seeing the value of nurturing their own, with workshops and inspirational books that encourage reflection, self-care and compassion.
Leaving behind an era where ‘time is money’ and performance excellence is measured by the number of times blood pressure is taken or medication is delivered, health care professionals are now being encouraged to see each patient as a person rather than as “that heart case.” By viewing a patient as someone’s mother, sister or daughter, a human connection is forged, hastening recovery for the patient and deepening meaning for the caregiver.
After years of foot dragging, major car companies are at last accelerating into a market for electric-powered vehicles.
GM and Chrysler both say they will sell a plug-in car in 2010. At least nine car companies worldwide say that by 2013 they will offer plug-in vehicles that use electric motors as their primary means of propulsion. Most will be plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) that use small gasoline engines as a backup.
(Read the full report in CS Monitor)
Plug-in America, an activist group, came up with the following list of vehicles and dates:
Tracy Moser spends all her money and time saving unwanted or ill puppies from abandonment and death. She was honored by the local media as a “hometown hero.”
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An eco-village community in Palmetto, Georgia was founded on principles of farm-to-table cooking, & green building techniques. The high-tech eco-village with Organic farm is surrounded by forests with galleries, yet includes boutiques, shops and restaurants as part of the village community.
(Read the full article at CNN)
French physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d’Espagnat has won the Templeton Prize for work which acknowledges that science cannot fully explain ‘the nature of being’. “He has constructed a coherent body of work that shows why it is credible that the human mind is capable of perceiving deeper realities,” wrote the chair of physics at American University in the United Arab Emirates in his nominating letter.
From the mid-1960s through the early 1980s, d’Espagnat, 87, was a major player in the physics research community during a revolutionary period of exploration and development in quantum mechanics, specifically on experiments testing the “Bell’s inequalities” theorem. Definitive results published in 1982 verified that Bell’s inequalities were violated in the way quantum mechanics predicts, leading to the discovery of the phenomenon known as “non-local entanglement,” and, in turn, to “quantum information science,” a flourishing contemporary domain of research combining physics, information science, and mathematics.
The Templeton Prize was announced Monday at a news conference in Paris by the John Templeton Foundation, which has awarded the prize each year since 1973 to a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension. The Prize, valued at one million pounds sterling (approximately $1.42 million or €1.12), is the world’s largest annual monetary award given to an individual.
ormer enemies filed into the church on Friday to mourn as one at the funeral of a slain policeman. It is the latest and most powerful demonstration of the ways in which Northern Ireland’s people and its leaders have united against a return to the violence that racked the province for 30 years.
Michigan is an unlikely home for a solar powerhouse, but in early February 2009, when the Dow Corning Corporation announced it had produced double-digit increases in revenue in 2008, the company credited the Hemlock Semiconductor Group, its solar energy materials unit, for much of the good news.
Since it was formed in 1961, Hemlock Semiconductor has manufactured polycrystalline silicon, the basic raw material that powered the computer chip industry. In 2002, as global interest grew in generating solar energy from photovoltaic cells, the company began providing greater amounts of “solar grade” polycrystalline silicon to solar cell and module manufacturers.
President Barack Obama moved to boost U.S. job creation on Monday by making it easier for small business owners to borrow money and by spending up to $15 billion to ensure funds are available for loans.
The programs announced on Monday build on $730 million for small businesses included in the $787 billion stimulus package approved by Congress last month to help the economy out of recession. (Read full report at Boston Globe)
Jay Leno has added a second free show for the Detroit area’s unemployed. Heavy demand for the April 7 show at The Palace of Auburn Hills prompted organizers to add a second performance on April 8, and making available another 15,000 tickets, which include free parking and refreshments. (Read more at New York Times)
Thanks to J. Shelton for the story tip!
The government is pulling out all the stops to get the economy’s heart beating again, including a large clean energy investment that’s part of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009–the stimulus package. It provides about $80 billion altogether for renewable energy, energy efficiency, mass transit, updating the electrical grid and research.
Businesses that manufacture and install renewable energy systems will be big winners as the stimulus kicks in, potentially creating millions of jobs and thousands of businesses across the country.
The stimulus allows those installing solar power to apply for a cash grant instead of a tax credit and get the money back in 60 days. These grants will bring investors back into solar and wind, ensuring strong growth.
(Read more of the report in Entrepreneur)
The Walt Disney Company has released a set of strategic environmental goals to reduce emissions, waste, electricity and fuel use, along with its impact on water and ecosystems.
The goals are part of Disney’s first Corporate Responsibility Report, and include the company’s first comprehensive greenhouse gas inventory and updates on its healthy food guidelines and smoking guidelines for films.
The company’s environmental goals include cutting carbon emissions from fuels by half by 2012. And, by 2013 the company plans to cut solid waste to landfills by half and reduce electricity consumption by 10%–both based on 2006 baselines.
Scientists have the first evidence that life-threatening peanut allergies may be cured one day. A few kids now are allergy-free thanks to a treatment that uses tiny amounts of the very food that endangered them.
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If you’re looking for a great bargain in the Las Vegas home market, take a Sunday tour of foreclosed homes on the new bus called the “Foreclosures Express.” The eager real estate agents from Prudential offer Danish and muffins and then load the would-be home buyers into a small shuttle bus for a look at 16 cherry-picked foreclosed properties in well-respected communities.
The bus also tours Stockton, San Diego, and Palm Springs. (Read more in the LA Times)
Also see www.VegasForeclosureExpress.com.
The financing technique that gave Europe an early lead in renewable energy is starting to cross the Atlantic. Put simply, the idea is to pay homeowners and businesses top dollar for producing green energy. In Germany, for example, a homeowner with a rooftop solar system may be paid four times more to produce electricity than the rate paid to a coal-fired power plant. This month Gainesville, Fla., became the first city in the United States to introduce higher payments for solar power.
100 people began lining up in the cold, 24 hours before a new Chick-fil-A opened its doors, to win a year’s supply of weekly free chicken dinners. The Virginia customers were greeted by the earnest Chick-fil-A CEO as they entered the restaurant following a festive night of partying and sleeping in tents as elite members of the “First 100” club.
Read reporter Dan Zak’s account of the generous chicken company and its loyal fan base here, in the Washington Post.
“Spend 24 hours at a Chick-fil-A opening and witness the teeny ironies of human economics: how people skip work and burn gasoline traveling hundreds of miles for coupons and how a company thrives in a marketplace meltdown by treating its customers like royalty…”
(photo courtesy of Dan Zak)
In his weekly address, President Barack Obama announced two measures to protect the American people from disease and protect injured animals from abuse.
The Department of Agriculture will invest in the FDA to substantially increase the number of food inspectors and modernize food safety labs.
The department will also close a loophole to prevent “downer” cows from entering the food supply — “downers” are cattle too sick or injured to walk, which often harbor diseases.
The decision is the fruit of many years of lobbying on the part of The Humane Society of the United States, which has been pressing for serious reform on the issue for many years.
UK Engineers working on a new development in Salford Quays have been using the Manchester Ship Canal to transport freight. The old canal helps reduce CO2 emissions as well as highway congestion. The water from the canal will be used to cool the buildings in the new MediaCity development. (Video from BBC)
By-standers become by-dancers in this ingenius T-Mobile commerical filmed in January in the London Street Station. The seemingly-spontaneous eruption of joy captured in this video has received more than 7 million hits on YouTube, entitled, Life is for Sharing.
Police are praising the actions of two men who may have saved the life of a disabled Fenton man after his minivan caught fire on busy US-23 near I-96 just outside Brighton Friday morning.
“I was panicking, I would’ve fallen out at the level of the flames, and (Gren) pulled me out,” Conkey said. (Read full story at Ann Arbor News)
Phhoto courtesy of Sun Star
