President Obama brought together leaders from 46 other nations yesterday with one goal in mind — keeping nuclear material out of the hands of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
The summit opened with the White House announcing its success in getting Ukraine to give up its entire stockpile of highly enriched uranium, said to be enough for several nuclear weapons. The country is to receive help in the disposal process.
The American economy appears to be in a cyclical recovery that is gaining strength. Firms have begun to hire and consumer spending seems to be accelerating, so it is surprising that many commentators, whether economists or politicians, seem to doubt that such a thing could possibly be happening.
Why is good news being received with such doubt? There are, I think, a number of reasons for the glum outlook that are unrelated to the actual economic data.
(READ the column by Floyd Norris in New York Times)
If you’re bored with your life and looking to shake things up, Lonely Planet has come up with 10 destinations where you can reinvent yourself and feel young again.
(READ the list at Reuters.com)
There are a lot of positive trends in America’s public schools across the country, despite what you may be reading.
The percentage of English-language learners nationwide attaining proficiency in reading and math on state tests increased in more than two-thirds of the 35 states studied.
The increase was present at the elementary, middle, and high school levels and the data showed that test scores have also increased for other kinds of students, beyond English-language learners.
(READ More in the Examiner)
Airlines with fewer flights and fewer passengers have translated into better performance for the customer.
For the second consecutive year, the performance of the nation’s leading carriers improved, according to the annual national Airline Quality Rating. It was the third best overall score in the 19 years researchers have tracked the performance of airlines.
Finally, there is some good news from the jungles of nine nature reserves in India where a tiger census revealed a baby boom, of sorts.
Government conservationists tallied a birth total of 117 tiger cubs over the past 15 months, a favorable development in a country where an unusually high number of tiger deaths occurred last year.
(READ More in DNA India)
Though coal still provides the majority of China’s power, there’s good news about a greener future: New official Chinese records show that the nation’s renewable energy capacity is now growing faster than its coal plants.
Through the end of 2009 180 GW of new power capacity was under construction. Renewables outpaced coal by some 16 GW. All told, low-carbon energy sources (hydro, nuclear, and renewables) will account for 26% of China’s power capacity, by the end of 2010.
(READ More in Treehugger)
J.K. Rowling celebrated Easter at the White House, reading to some kids and answering questions about the future of Harry Potter.
According to the The Washington Post, Rowling said she doesn’t have explicit plans to write another Harry Potter tome, but she certainly hasn’t ruled out the idea. “Maybe 10 years from now,” she said.
(READ the story in ABC News)
Many of the world’s greatest inventions and innovations came about in times of crisis.
Sometimes it takes a wake-up call… an illness, or perhaps an injury, to make us change habits and practices that could be damaging our health. It is a conscious thought-action process to do so. It is difficult to change long-standing habits, but oh, so worth it.
People often refuse to ask for help. We can even delay reaching out and seeking help until it is too late, until greater harm has come to us, or our families. The ability to accept and when necessary to seek out, and accept the help of others is critical in times of crisis.
Florida violinist Kahane is a brilliant musician at only eight-years-old. She has performed at charity events in the past, but when she heard the devastating earthquake in Haiti had destroyed a music school and crushed the violinist who’d founded it, she wanted to help. She started writing letters to famous violinists asking for money to rebuild the school and instruments to fill it.
WATCH the video below, or at CBS News YouTube page…
Inspired by a standard office inkjet printer, U.S. researchers have rigged up a device that can spray skin cells directly onto burn victims, quickly protecting and healing their wounds as an alternative to skin grafts.
A laser can take a reading of the wound’s size and shape so that a layer of healing skin cells can be precisely applied, said the team at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
(READ story at Reuters)
One barometer of the economic health of American cities is the total value of the goods and services produced in a metropolitan area.
According to the Brookings Institution report, many dynamic cities have already exceeded economic output levels seen before the recession.
Of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, 28 of them regained their pre-recession levels at the end of 2009, posting new highs in output.
One barometer of the economic health of American cities is the total value of the goods and services produced in a metropolitan area.
According to the Brookings Institution report, many dynamic cities have already exceeded economic output levels seen before the recession.
Of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, 28 of them regained their pre-recession levels at the end of 2009, posting new highs in output.
A green roof at a UK primary school in Sheffield is the first to be designated as a nature reserve after a rare bird took up residence there.
A network of green roofs on new and regenerated buildings in the Yorkshire city has lured back a protected bird – the black redstart, which has also become a high-profile indicator of green roof success in London.
The citywide program of “green roof safaris” showcase the merits of topping buildings with grass, tenacious plants and even groves of birch trees and a pond.
The Sharrow school’s green roof design provided value through its control of stormwater, noise, heat and pollution. A happy by-product was its value to local wildlife.
A green roof at a UK primary school in Sheffield is the first to be designated as a nature reserve after a rare bird took up residence there.
A network of green roofs on new and regenerated buildings in the Yorkshire city has lured back a protected bird – the black redstart, which has also become a high-profile indicator of green roof success in London.
The citywide program of “green roof safaris” showcase the merits of topping buildings with grass, tenacious plants and even groves of birch trees and a pond.
The Sharrow school’s green roof design provided value through its control of stormwater, noise, heat and pollution. A happy by-product was its value to local wildlife.
Worldwide, investors put $1.9 billion into clean tech startups in the first three months of 2010. That is an 83% increase from the same quarter last year and a 29% increase from the fourth quarter of 2009. Additionally, the number of deals hit a record high.
Electric car-related startups and solar technology startups received the most investment. The results come from a survey of investments made in 180 companies from North America, Europe, Israel, India, and China.
(READ More from Reuters)
Unemployment can be lonely. “It’s isolating to be at home while most of the rest of the world is working,” said Jennifer Hong, a mother of three in South Carolina. So she did something about it.
“I’ve been unemployed for two years. I couldn’t find a forum or a place for people like myself to discuss unemployment issues so I created one,” said Hong, who launched www.unemployed-friends.com last July.
Hong said the site gets about 5,000 unique visitors a day and that there are 200 to 300 members online at any given time. People write in the forum not only about the frustrations of the jobless life, but also about what’s going on in Washington, D.C. with extensions of unemployment benefits — and how they can get involved.
(READ More from Huffington Post)
ABC News- In the dusty Afghan village where U.S. troops killed two pregnant women and three other innocent civilians in February, a remarkable scene played out this week between an aggrieved father and the most senior special operations officer in the United States military.
Vice Admiral William McRaven — the commander of Joint Special Operations Command — showed up with two sheep, and in the cultural understanding of the region, surrendered himself.
He didn’t literally surrender. But he didn’t have to. In the code followed by the southeastern Afghan family so devastated by the February incident, offering two sheep is the equivalent of begging for forgiveness.
And the father — who has lost two sons, two daughters and one grandchild — accepted McRaven’s apology.
A British Columbia city is overcoming a water problem by getting the oil and gas industry to pay for its daily sewage treatment.
Dawson Creek, in the heart of the province’s booming oil and gas sector, had a great plan for reusing its wastewater — they just didn’t have the $10-million they needed. But when they put out a request for proposals, Shell Oil said they would pay for the whole thing.
The town will become the first in North America to be equipped to sell its sewage for reuse in the gas industry. The new wastewater treatment plant will upgrade the quality of about 400,000 cubic meters of sewage every day to a standard that makes the water useable by industry.
(READ the news in Toronto’s Globe and Mail)
A solar-powered airplane designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions successfully made its first test flight above the Swiss countryside on Wednesday.
The Solar Impulse, which has 12,000 solar cells built into its wings, is a prototype for an aircraft intended to fly around the world without fuel in 2012.
It took six years to build the carbon fiber aircraft, which has the wingspan of an Airbus A340 but weighs only as much as a mid-size car (1,600 kg).
(READ the story in Reuters)
