The wobbly housing market showed a rare sign of strength in February: pending home sales were up significantly, a report released on Monday said, suggesting that Americans took advantage of a tax credit for home buyers set to expire April 30.
Sales rose 8.2 percent, the National Association of Realtors said. Analysts had expected sales to stay flat.
(READ the report in the New York Times)
Stephen Goosney, 29, and Tommy Larkin, 30, were born a year and a half apart. They were both adopted and began life knowing they were missing vital pieces of their lives.
They soon uncovered their past — just across the street from one another.
The pair discovered from an adoption agency that they had been within shouting distance for seven months.
(READ the story at the Globe and Mail)
Madonna today visited Gumulira, a Millennium Village of approximately 5000 people in rural central Malawi. Raising Malawi, an organization co-founded by Madonna, has been a partner in the Millennium Villages project in Gumulira since its inception in 2006. Madonna was joined in her visit by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and co-founder of Millennium Promise.
When the Millennium Villages project in Gumulira was launched, the area was beset by a number of complex challenges. Food insecurity was high due to limited access to modern seeds and fertilizers. Access to medical services, classrooms, school supplies, and clean water was extremely limited.
“In the space of just a few years, Gumulira has made major gains in food production, educational infrastructure, drinking water, and basic health services,” said Millennium Promise CEO John W. McArthur.
Today, the Millennium Villages reach nearly 500,000 people across 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and the partner communities in each country are registering a cross-section of major improvements.
“We are incredibly grateful to Madonna and Raising Malawi for their partnership in making this progress possible, and their broader leadership in helping to highlight the dramatic and rapid inroads that can be made against extreme poverty.”
The mission of Millennium Promise is to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals in Africa by 2015. The eight globally endorsed objectives address the multiple causes of extreme poverty, and are premised on the belief that, for the first time in history, our generation has the opportunity to end extreme poverty, hunger and disease disparities.
To learn more about the progress being made and the evolving priorities in Gumulira and throughout the Millennium Villages, visit www.millenniumpromise.org.
More than 100 Chinese miners were pulled out alive Monday after being trapped for over a week in a flooded coal mine, where some ate sawdust and strapped themselves to the shafts’ walls with their belts to avoid drowning while they slept.
“A miracle has finally happened,” Liu Dezheng told reporters Monday morning, after the first nine miners were taken out shortly after midnight.
(Continue Reading story in the Toronto Star)
Photo credit: nasirkhan from morguefile.com
News reports and inflamed commentary that invoke recent incidents as evidence of a modern epidemic of “mean girls” ignore real positive trends in girl crime.
“This panic is a hoax,” according to a New York Times editorial:
We have examined every major index of crime on which the authorities rely. None show a recent increase in girls’ violence; in fact, every reliable measure shows that violence by girls has been plummeting for years. Major offenses like murder and robbery by girls are at their lowest levels in four decades. Fights, weapons possession, assaults and violent injuries by and toward girls have been plunging for at least a decade.
In the 15 years before 2009, according to the F.B.I., girls’ arrest rates for violent offenses fell by 32 percent, including declines of 27 percent for aggravated assault, 43 percent for robbery and 63 percent for murder. Rates of murder by girls are at their lowest levels in at least 40 years.
News reports and inflamed commentary that invoke recent incidents as evidence of a modern epidemic of ‘mean girls’ ignore real positive trends in girl crime.
“This panic is a hoax,” according to a New York Times editorial:
We have examined every major index of crime on which the authorities rely. None show a recent increase in girls’ violence; in fact, every reliable measure shows that violence by girls has been plummeting for years. Major offenses like murder and robbery by girls are at their lowest levels in four decades. Fights, weapons possession, assaults and violent injuries by and toward girls have been plunging for at least a decade.
The U.S. government announced new fuel efficiency standards for all manufacturers of cars and light trucks, requiring an average fuel efficiency of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 — a 30 percent increase over today’s cars.
The move was a validation for 13 states that led the way through adoption of California’s tougher emissions standards.
The standards are good news for the environment because car emissions represent about one-fifth of America’s greenhouse gases. Reductions of emissions by 21 percent are expected by 2030 — the equivalent to taking 50 million cars and light trucks off the road in 20 years.
A little engine called Butler, the small liberal arts college from Indianapolis, has won 25 basketball games in a row, beating Michigan State last night (52-50), to reach the famed NCAA final.
The Butler Bulldogs, whose odds of winning the NCAA Tournament were 200-to-1, will be the smallest school in 40 years to play for the national title.
Brad Stevens, Butler’s boyish coach of 33, is only three years into his coaching career. In contrast, his rival in the final against Duke is going for his fourth national title, having coached his first game when Stevens was just 3 years old.
Selected months in advance, the venue for Monday night’s championship game (do you think the stars are aligned?) happens to be Indianapolis, giving the Bulldogs, who were 16-0 at home this year, home-field advantage. A win against No. 1 seed Duke could send the city into delirium.
(READ more of the Cinderella story in the IndyStar)
A little engine called Butler, the small liberal arts college from Indianapolis, has won 25 basketball games in a row, beating Michigan State last night (52-50), to reach the famed NCAA final.
The Butler Bulldogs, whose odds of winning the NCAA Tournament were 200-to-1, will be the smallest school in 40 years to play for the national title.
Brad Stevens, Butler’s boyish coach of 33, is only three years into his coaching career. In contrast, his rival in the final against Duke is going for his fourth national title, having coached his first game when Stevens was just 3 years old.
Selected months in advance, the venue for Monday night’s championship game (do you think the stars are aligned?) happens to be Indianapolis, giving the Bulldogs, who were 16-0 at home this year, home-field advantage. A win against No. 1 seed Duke could send the city into delirium.
[UPDATE: Tuesday– Of their 61-59 loss to Duke in the final, one commentator said that though Duke had won the nail-biter, no one could say the noble Bulldogs had lost anything.]
(READ more of the Cinderella story in the IndyStar)
When the Kansas Hate group known at the Westboro Baptist Church announced it would picket a Bay Area School and Jewish Institutions, students at Gunn High School decided they could not sit by quietly. They organized a Love-in, waved homemade signs and attracted community support.
Meanwhile, a student at a different school had the same idea, but with a financial twist: to turn a negative into a positive by raising funds for charity. Jason set up a donation table across the street from a hate rally in his neighborhood and collected funds for donations to a civil rights group, a Jewish charity and AIDS foundation. The money will be donated in the name of the Westboro Baptist Church.
WATCH their inspiring rallies below.
When the Kansas Hate group known at the Westboro Baptist Church announced it would picket a Bay Area School and Jewish Institutions, students at Gunn High School decided they could not sit by quietly. They organized a Love-in, waved homemade signs and attracted community support.
Meanwhile, a student at a different school had the same idea, but with a financial twist: to turn a negative into a positive by raising funds for charity. Jason set up a donation table across the street from a hate rally in his neighborhood and collected funds for donations to a civil rights group, a Jewish charity and AIDS foundation. The money will be donated in the name of the Westboro Baptist Church.
WATCH their inspiring rallies below.
Jodie Nelson was disappointed that she only raised $6,000 in advance of her 40-mile paddle for breast cancer — until a whale joined the cause.
During the nine hour journey from Santa Catalina Island to Dana Point, CA, a 30-foot minke whale swam alongside her 14-foot board, accompanying the surfer for two hours as she stood and paddled.
Minke whales are common in these waters, but rarely seen for more than a quick look. Since this remarkable encounter, donations have been flooding into the websit, paddlewithpurpose.
READ the story at GrindTV.com…
Thanks also to John Flippin for submitting this story!
Lalita Booth dropped out of school and turned to drugs after being abused as a teenager, but turned her life around after enrolling in a community college, and then becoming an honors student at a four-year university. Now, she’s in the process of earning a Master’s degree in business and public policy from Harvard University, financing her own education through 20 scholarships totaling more than half a million dollars.
WATCH the inspiring story at CBS News…
In his years of caring for patients with Parkinson’s disease, Dr. Bastiaan R. Bloem thought he had seen it all. But the 58-year-old man who came to see him recently was a total surprise.
He had had Parkinson’s disease for 10 years, and it had progressed until he was severely affected, unable to walk. He could walk only a few steps before falling, but the man told Dr. Bloem something amazing: he said he was a daily cyclist.
“I said, ‘This cannot be. This man has end-stage Parkinson’s disease.”
(READ More in the New York Times)
With the rising number of suicides caused by cyber-bullying, a South Korean movement is leading the way in efforts to restore civility to human interactions on the internet.
It began as a simple class assignment to 500 students in Professor Min Byoung-chul’s global leadership course at Seoul’s Kunkuk University. In response to the encouragement he received, Dr. Min launched the “Sunfull movement” on May 23, 2007 to counter the culture of hatred on the internet and promote the value of mutual encouragement and respect.
Min was inspired to take action after the shocking suicides last year of two female celebrities, Jeong Da-bin and Yuni, who both hanged themselves after being diagnosed with severe depression. Before their deaths, their homepages had been deluged with disparaging allegations and scorn over their private lives and choices, such as undergoing plastic surgery.
A similar case emerged this week in the Boston school system, which has now set up a cyber-bullying tip line, after the suicide of a student.
As a proactive solution, the Sunfull Movement seeks to flood online message boards with positive comments. The self-funded, nonprofit organization is aiming to alleviate the effect of anonymous derogatory message postings and actually increase the practice of posting positive and encouraging messages on boards.
Online attacks are an increasing problem in South Korea, one of the world’s most connected nations. The National Police Agency receives tens of thousands of complaints every year, but there is not much that can be done to stop it, since attackers are often anonymous.
The Hogook Middle School in Ilsan, is participating in the nationwide program. Student Kim Hee-joo, 15, says on her school’s homepage she writes thank you messages to friends, family and teachers. When she sees people making bad comments about celebrities, she leaves nice messages, because when people see positive comments they are more likely to stop saying bad things and change their attitude.
“Young kids, they’re stressed out because of schoolwork, they have to prepare for their college entrance examinations, they just write whatever they feel. That’s one of the ways, so to speak, [to release] their frustration and stress,” explained Min.
In November 2009, the group named Sunfull Day as the first Friday of every November, and saw as many as 300,000 posts from high schools, universities and communities. It is currently in mid-preparation to set a Guinness Book Record of the longest string of positive comments.
The criteria of Sunfull comments are: (1) complimenting, (2) encouraging, (3) thanking, (4) comforting, (5) apologizing, (6) forgiving and (7) compromising.
Dr. Min’s goal is to attract ten million positive and encouraging comments (Sunfull postings) in Korea and ultimately extend this movement to attract six billion Sunfull postings worldwide. The English-languae professor introduced his anti-malicious online comment campaign to U.S. audiences on the radio show, “The World,” on March 8. He hopes that this movement will play a meaningful role in restoring civility to the global cyber world.
Back at the Hogook Middle School, teacher Kim Eun-young says she has seen a difference in her students since the school began the Sunfull program.
She says Koreans do not really say thank you or I love you to friends or parents. But this lets them be anonymous and not face-to-face, so they feel more comfortable saying those kinds of things.
Kim says bullying at the school, both online and offline, has decreased and students and teachers get along much better now.
(With information from VOA.org)
With the rising number of suicides caused by cyber-bullying, a South Korean movement is leading the way in efforts to restore civility to human interactions on the internet.
It began as a simple class assignment to 500 students in Professor Min Byoung-chul’s global leadership course at Seoul’s Kunkuk University. The response has culminated into a “Sunfull movement” to counter the culture of hatred on the internet and promote the value of mutual help and respect.
Min said he began the campaign in 2007 after the shocking suicides last year of two female stars, Jeong Da-bin and Yuni, who both hanged themselves after being diagnosed with severe depression. Before their deaths, their homepages had been deluged with disparaging allegations and scorn over their private lives and choices, such as undergoing plastic surgery.
A similar case emerged this week in the Boston school system, which has now set up a cyber-bullying tip line, after the suicide of a student.
The dream of an American scientist who imagined a world where every child in the world had a laptop computer has gained strength in eight years, and yesterday began its great sweep across remote north Australia.
At Yirrkala Community Education Centre, the One Laptop Per Child program handed over 200 of its white and green XO compact laptops to the wide-eyed youngsters.
Over the next 12 months, the OLPC program will deliver 15,000 of the laptops to remote schools across the inland and the north.
(READ the story in the Australian) Thanks to Suzanne for submitting the link!
For the first time in more than 40 years, an entire calendar month has come and gone without a homicide in New Jersey’s largest city.
It’s been 32 days since a homicide took place in Newark, marking the first time there has been a slay-free calendar month in the city since 1966.
The young mayor, Cory Booker (photo, right), shouted his pride on Twitter: “Best March Madness Ever – Congrats to Newark!”
(READ more from Star Ledger, in Huffington Post)
Serbia’s parliament approved a declaration Tuesday condemning the 1995 Serb massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, in a bid to distance the country from past warmongering under the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
The declaration passed with a slim majority of 127 votes in the 250-seat parliament, after a daylong debate.
“The National Assembly of Serbia harshly condemns the crime committed against the Bosnian residents of Srebrenica in July 1995 … expressing condolences and apology to the victims’ families because not all was done to prevent this tragedy,” the declaration says.
(READ the AP story at NPR.org)
She is Indian. He is Pakistani. Both are young and glamorous sports stars.
But the Indian tennis ace and Pakistani cricket player are making headlines off the sports field, because they are ignoring six decades of hostility between their nations, They’re getting married.
That makes them what’s known in South Asia as a “cross-border” couple, whose romance transcends rival national arguments over disputed Kashmir and religious extremism.
(READ the story in NPR.org)
