27 years after Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping visited Muscatine, a small city in rural eastern Iowa and stayed in the homes of farmers and business leaders there, the future leader returned Wednesday to chat and drink tea with his old American friends.
Most of the people at the reception were the first Americans Xi ever met, and hosted the leader in 1985 when he was a local official from China’s northern Hebei province traveling with an agricultural research delegation.
“Sitting near a burning fireplace, with several Chinese paintings on the wall, Xi and his old friends cheerily recalled the old days,” reports the People’s Daily newspaper.
Marin County educators gathered this week to imagine a world without standardized tests, one in which teachers would teach less and students would study less — yet score near the top on international tests of math, reading and science.
Teaching would be a highly regarded profession in this world, and decisions about curriculum and other aspects of education would be made at the school — rather than the state or county level. The “achievement gap” between rich and poor schools would be unknown, as all schools would provide their students with a high level of education, along with free meals, counseling and health care.
This mythical world of teachers’ dreams has a name: Finland.
Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the athletic fields of UCLA, as both excelled at football and baseball. Yet they remain worlds apart in our nation’s consciousness.
Major League Baseball celebrates Robinson every year for breaking baseball’s longstanding color barrier. But no one pauses to remember that Washington broke the NFL’s modern-era color barrier as a member of the Los Angeles Rams in 1946 — a full year before Robinson’s milestone.
But, he isn’t even in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Some people are trying to change that. Just in time for Black History Month.
A Lancashire couple who were known around town as the hardworking fundraisers for the neighborhood park were thrilled to find an anonymous donation of piles of £20 notes left on their doorstep.
Ian Roberts and Pam Curtis discovered the money, £21,480, which they assume was left for their Hope Street Park appeal, tucked in a wicker basket.
Mr. Roberts said he was “exhilarated; not for any personal reason, but because it will help us so much” with efforts towards regenerating the pavilion in the square’s Victorian park.
A few days ago, Police Officer Cheryl Goede responded to a call about a “suspicious vehicle” and found a man who’d lost his job and lost his house. He lived in the car because he considered his family to be his two German shepherd companions and would never think of dropping them off at a shelter.
Little did he know that the woman officer was also a passionate dog-lover who heads up the wildly popular Facebook page, The German Shepherd Dog Community.
What happened next warmed the hearts of those those on Facebook and gave the man, AJ Hawk, new hope. (READ the story in the Examiner)
A Feb. 21 UPDATE from Cheryl on her Facebook page reports the German Shepherd community has raised enough money for several months of rent for AJ.
“I got in touch with AJ yesterday to have him start looking for a place to live! I also have made contact with a wonderful lady who is going to give him some information on getting started in the hail restoration industry. AJ has also promised to try and get me a picture of Houdini and Ceasar together to post on the page. (https://www.facebook.com/TheGSDC)
Thanks to Esmée La Fleur for submitting the story!
A few days ago, Police Officer Cheryl Goede responded to a call about a “suspicious vehicle” and found a man who’d lost his job and lost his house. He lived in the car because he considered his family to be his two German shepherd companions and would never think of dropping them off at a shelter.
Little did he know that the woman officer was also a passionate dog-lover who heads up the wildly popular Facebook page, The German Shepherd Dog Community.
Michigan environmental regulators said Thursday that they reached a long-sought deal with Dow Chemical Co. to clean up to 1,400 residential properties in Midland, home of its corporate headquarters and a plant that polluted the area with dioxin for much of the past century.
The agreement marked a milestone in on-and-off negotiations that began in the mid-1990s. Dow will cover all of the costs, offer to buy some many of the homes, and clean up a nearby river after polluting the Great Lakes region for much of the 20th Century.
The Westminster Dog Show is where purebreds are shampooed, trimmed and blown dry, where they’re hand-fed steak, dressed in bowties and followed around endlessly, but Maverick is an exception. He was found on Craigslist.
“He was a rescue that was abused and neglected and in terrible shape,” Maverick’s owner, Dan Stallings, told ABC News.
Five months after rescuing Maverick, Stallings started entering him in shows, and Maverick started winning, making it to the biggest stage of all.
The Westminster Dog Show is where purebreds are shampooed, trimmed and blown dry, where they’re hand-fed steak, dressed in bowties and followed around endlessly, but Maverick is an exception. He was found on Craigslist.
“He was a rescue that was abused and neglected and in terrible shape,” Maverick’s owner, Dan Stallings, told ABC News.
Five months after rescuing Maverick, Stallings started entering him in shows, and Maverick started winning, making it to the biggest stage of all.
General Motors earned its largest profit ever in 2011, two years after it nearly collapsed.
Strong sales in the United States and China helped the automaker turn a profit of $7.6 billion, beating its old record of $6.7 billion set during the pickup and SUV boom of 1997.
GM said 47,500 blue-collar workers in the United States will get $7,000 profit-sharing checks in March.
A French Champagne producer is spreading the wealth with his workers after they discovered nearly $1 million in gold coins stashed away in the building’s rafters, according to Agence France Press (AFP).
“One of the workers (was) attacking the building’s ceiling with a crowbar when gold coins started to rain down on him, followed by sacks of gold,” Francois Lange, head of Alexandre Bonnet in Les Riceys France, told AFP.
Starbucks has raised more than $7 million by selling ‘Create Jobs’ wristbands. The company expects the program to create 2,300 jobs as the money makes its way to small businesses and nonprofits.
The coffee giant has distributed more than 500,000 red, white and blue “Indivisible” wristbands in the last three months, selling them for $5 each, with proceeds funneled to groups offering loans to small businesses and organizations that will create American jobs.
All his life they told him he wasn’t big enough for basketball. Now, the Asian economics major from Harvard, having been cut by two other pro teams, has become a global sensation driving his once-faltering team, the New York Knicks, to 7 straight wins. His sudden emergence as a New York phenomenon has earned him nicknames like, “Lin-sanity” and “Super Lintendo”.
Until recently, the Taiwanese-American was confined to his team’s bench and sleeping on his brother-in-law’s couch to save money. Since February 4th, however, the 6-foot-3-inch guard has been the hottest thing in American sports, scoring more points in his first five starts (136) than anyone since 1977, topping stars like Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal.
As a Muslim woman who teaches classes about the Holocaust at a Catholic college, I am constantly frustrated by the media coverage of the Middle East which overwhelmingly serves to highlight and entrench national and religious tensions, prejudice and conflict.
A documentary recently aired on Al Jazeera was an extremely heartening exception to the rule. The film, Jerusalem SOS, told the stories of Jews and Muslims saving each other’s lives.
Claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly dropped last week to the lowest level in four years, showing the U.S. job market is on the mend.
Applications for unemployment insurance payments decreased 13,000 in the week ended Feb. 11 to 348,000, the fewest since March 2008, Labor Department figures showed today.
You don’t often find the words “health care” and “good news” in the same sentence, but in a new Public Television documentary, we learn that while groups on all sides argue the merits and limitations of reform initiatives, a few American communities are already getting the job done. Correspondent T.R. Reid reports they are accomplishing what few have been able to do – deliver quality care for reasonable cost, and in some cases cover just about everybody in town.
The hopeful stories profiled in “U.S. Health Care: The Good News,” begin with Mesa County, Colorado, the region of the country with the nation’s lowest health care spending, according to the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. Outcomes there are just as good as places that spend twice as much.
You don’t often find the words “health care” and “good news” in the same sentence, but in a new Public Television documentary, we learn that while groups on all sides argue the merits and limitations of reform initiatives, a few American communities are already getting the job done. Correspondent T.R. Reid reports they are accomplishing what few have been able to do – deliver quality care for reasonable cost, and in some cases cover just about everybody in town.
The hopeful stories profiled in “U.S. Health Care: The Good News,” begin with Mesa County, Colorado, the region of the country with the nation’s lowest health care spending, according to the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. Outcomes there are just as good as places that spend twice as much.
When the administrative chief of a western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher’s home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled.
The tweet from Francis Kariuki was only his latest attempt to improve village life by using the micro-blogging site Twitter. Kariuki regularly sends out tweets that have found missing children and farm animals, showing that the power of social media has reached even into a dusty African village.
At the second annual White House Science Fair last week, President Obama got the chance to shoot a marshmallow across the State Dining Room using 14-year-old inventor Joey Hudy’s “Extreme Marshmallow Cannon.” Hudy designed and built the machine, which can launch the fluffy white confections up to 175 feet away using pressurized air.
“This is great!” exclaimed Obama, as the two pumped up machine using a tire pump. “The Secret Service is not too happy right now.”
The White House Science Fair featured research and inventions from more than 100 students. From robots in the Blue Room to rockets in the Red Room to marshmallow cannons in the State Dining Room, projects showcased the talents of America’s next generation of scientists, engineers, inventors, and innovators. One girl has even designed a targeted cancer treatment using nanotechnology.
Samantha Garvey, 18, of Long Island, N.Y., was on hand for the event after gaining media fame last month when her family received help after its eviction from their home. The newly homeless girl was given a place to live for her family from local social services after winning a spot on this year’s Intel Science Competition. Her environmental science project examines the effect of pollutants and predators on mussels.
Taylor Wilson, 17, of Reno, Nevada (pictured below) showed off his research on novel techniques for detecting nuclear threats and developed an environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and highly sensitive system capable of detecting small quantities of nuclear material.
Hayley Hoverter, a 16 year-old student from Downtown Business Magnet High School in Los Angeles, wants to reduce waste with her idea for a patent-pending dissolvable sugar packet.
After viewing some of the displays and talking with students about their work, the President addressed students, parents, and teachers in the East Room.
“When students excel in math and science, they help America compete for the jobs and industries of the future,” said President Obama. “That’s why I’m proud to celebrate outstanding students at the White House Science Fair, and to announce new steps my Administration and its partners are taking to help more young people succeed in these critical subjects.”
Hudy, from Phoenix, Arizona, maker of the Extreme Marshmallow Cannon — and an LED Cube Microcontroller Shield — has started a small business to sell his inventions.
At the second annual White House Science Fair last week, President Obama got the chance to shoot a marshmallow across the State Dining Room using 14-year-old inventor Joey Hudy’s “Extreme Marshmallow Cannon.” Hudy designed and built the machine, which can launch the fluffy white confections up to 175 feet away using pressurized air.
“This is great!” exclaimed Obama, as the two pumped up machine using a tire pump. “The Secret Service is not too happy right now.”
27 years after Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping visited Muscatine, a small city in rural eastern Iowa and stayed in the homes of farmers and business leaders there, the future leader returned Wednesday to chat and drink tea with his old American friends.
Hayley Hoverter, a 16 year-old student from Downtown Business Magnet High School in Los Angeles, wants to reduce waste with her idea for a patent-pending dissolvable sugar packet.