A major Sudanese rebel group in Darfur has signed a cease-fire agreement with Sudan’s government following negotiations in neighboring Chad.
A statement from the Chadian presidency in Ndjamena Saturday said the cease-fire between the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese government takes effect immediately.
Old tires (more than 5 years old) are sold as “new”, because the outside tread looks untouched. However, tires, like milk, have a shelf life after which they can be dangerous — even deadly — for drivers. For instance, an ABC News investigative team found some Walmart stores selling 12 year old tires as “new.”
The next time you buy tires, make sure you know how to read the code on the side of the product.
Numbers engraved in rubber on a tire wall will tell you when they were made. Many are easy to see on the outside, but sometimes companies put this number on the inside of the tire.
This ABC news video from 2008 demonstrates how to decode the jumble of numbers on a tire to decipher when the tire was made.
Watch below, or at ABC News…
Westminster College in Salt Lake City has 14 students competing in Vancouver in events like freestyle aerials, moguls and cross-country skiing. It’s a school with a serious winter sports culture.
Serious skiers from out of state come to this small liberal arts college for a unique combination — the academic challenge along with the ability to head out to the mountain five days a week. Park City is just 30 minutes away.
(Listen to the story or continue reading at NPR)
London’s fashion week kicked off with some of the biggest names in fashion, entertainment and sport, hitting the catwalk to raise money for women, children and babies in Haiti.
The Fashion For Relief show, organized by supermodel Naomi Campbell, raised more than £1million.
Online auctions commenced on March 15 and featured donated items modeled by celebrities that night. The auctions were expected to double the amount raised overall, according to the organizers.
(Watch video below – Read more in the Daily Record, here)
From Planet Green TV comes this rundown of their picks for the Top 5 animal rescues of the decade. An angel Dog, a pig who gets attention on the highway to rescue its owner and a goat warmer are three of the “Planet 100 Top 5 Superhero Animals.”
Watch the video below… or on YouTube.
A 28-year-old Iraq war veteran saw black smoke billowing from an office building as he was driving by in his truck. Robin De Haven turned around and rushed to the scene thinking he could help.
He hurled his 17-foot ladder from off his truck, helping to rescue people peeking through broken windows as thick smoke poured into the air.
“I don’t feel like a hero. I was just trying to help,” he said.
(Continue reading the AP story at Dallas Morning News)
Fewer home loans are going bad these days, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. said Friday in its quarterly delinquency report.
Calling the finding surprising, the trade group interpreted it as a signal that the housing markets are healing.
“We are likely seeing the beginning of the end of the unprecedented wave of mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures that started with the subprime defaults in early 2007.”
(Continue reading at the LA Times)
Being happy and naturally optimistic cuts the risk of developing heart problems, say researchers.
They found that those who are enthusiastic, contented and believe the glass is half full rather than half empty have a better chance of keeping their heart healthy.
Being happy and naturally optimistic cuts the risk of developing heart problems, say researchers.
They found that those who are enthusiastic, contented and believe the glass is half full rather than half empty have a better chance of keeping their heart healthy.
It is the first study to find such a strong link between positive emotions and a lower risk of heart disease.
Findings published in the European Heart Journal reveal the potentially damaging effects of pessimistic thoughts and long-term negativity.
“This is the first study to show an independent relationship” between heart disease and a positive attitude that was spelled out through clear data, as opposed to just being based on a person’s own report of their attitude.
(Contine reading in the Daily Mail)
The Census of Marine Life, a project that involved more than 2,000 scientists from 80 countries, has paused to announce the discovery of more than 5,000 new species.
These include bizarre and colourful creatures, like the hirsuta crab (photo, right), which was so unusual it warranted a whole new family designation. Many of the organisms produce therapeutic chemicals.
A panel of scientists presented these preliminary insights from the decade-long census at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Diego. The final report will be released in October.
(Read more of the report in the BBC)
Five years of exhaustive research has yielded the key to thwarting “the most dangerous animal on the planet:” disarming its nose. Scientists at two American universities have pulled apart the 70 different and distinct receptors that work in a mosquito’s nose, or antennae, to lead the insects to human skin.
The discovery represents a major advance in the all-out war by scientists around the world and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to eradicate malaria.
(Continue reading from HealthZone.com)
Jessica was only a sixth grader when she learned that most girls in Rwanda are orphans, and they don’t have the money or materials to attend school. Over the next several years, she rallied her classmates to raise money for rural Rwandan girls through bake sales, tee shirt sales and donation drives.
After a recent front page article in the Seattle Times caught the attention of Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, he donated $25,000, bringing her total to $75,000 raised in three years.
The charity, Richard’s Rwanda, now has five chapters in Seattle high schools and, after visiting the African country, Jessica has recruited a private girls’ school there to help expand her fundraising work internationally.
According to a national survey released by the Girl Scouts on the eve of New York City’s legendary Fashion Week, most girls are happy with their bodies and reject thin fashion models as unrealistic.
According to a Girl Scouts of America press release, the survey of 1,002 girls ages 13 to 17 “comes amid continuing controversy over super thin models who are dangerously underweight, (and charges that) the fashion industry’s preference for waif-like women has led to models engaging in obsessive dieting and extreme weight loss, as well as setting a poor example for teenage girls.”
The study found that girls’ friends and peers have much more influence over how they feel about their bodies than do fashion models. Eighty-two percent said that their peers and friends influenced how they felt about their bodies; 65 percent said it was their parents, and 62 percent reported another family member.
About three-quarters of the girls were happy with their bodies.
(Continue reading at Discovery.com)
Do people prefer to spread good news or bad news? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles and found that readers would rather enlighten others.
People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics. Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list.
(Read reading the results in New York Times)
A new set of bike paths placed along the Tejo river in Lisbon, are filled with phrases from a famous Portuguese poem by Fernando Pessoa, the well known lines inspired by that very river.
Translation in English:
The river of my village doesn’t make you think about anything.
When you’re at its bank you are only at its bank.”
Through the Tejo you go to the World.
Beyond the Tejo is America
And the fortune you encounter there.
Nobody ever thinks about what’s beyond
The river of my village.
Watch a beautiful and romantic video taken of the bike path and set to music.
In one of the most stirring descents in Olympic downhill skiing history, Lindsey Vonn ignored the pain in her injured shin, a posible chased down her rival and teammate, who was sitting in first place, and caught up to a lifetime of expectations to become the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in downhill.
With an aggressive style and stance she held throughout her run — jaw, hands, knees and hips always angling forward for more speed — Vonn’s time of 1 minute 44.19 seconds on the icy, bumpy, treacherous Whistler race course put the Nevada skier in the lead by more than a half second.
(Continue reading in the New York Times)
A CEO this week gave his entire company to the workers who’ve made his natural food company the success that generates revenues exceeding $20 million a year.
Founder of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods, Bob Moore, turned 81 on Monday, Feb. 15 and announced the news to his employees in Milwaukie, Oregon.
With everyone at his birthday celebration and on behalf of his partners in the business, Bob announced that through the creation of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), Bob’s Red Mill is now an employee-owned company.
“We believe our employees are the finest people in the natural foods business, and by offering our current and future employees an ownership in the company we will continue to retain and attract the best.”
A CEO this week gave his entire company to the workers who’ve made his natural food company the success that generates revenues exceeding $20 million a year.
Founder of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods, Bob Moore, turned 81 on Monday, Feb. 15 and announced the news to his employees in Milwaukie, Oregon.
With everyone at his birthday celebration and on behalf of his partners in the business, Bob announced that through the creation of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), Bob’s Red Mill is now an employee-owned company.
“We believe our employees are the finest people in the natural foods business, and by offering our current and future employees an ownership in the company we will continue to retain and attract the best.”
Two boys walk over the steep hillsides of Haiti, the first time in a month they’ve been able to go to school. It was destroyed, like thousands of others, in the magnitude 7 earthquake. Government buildings too, were destroyed, including the ministry of education. Despite this, Haiti’s Minister of Education, based now in UNESCO’s Port au Prince office, has been hard at work to get Haitian children back to school in whatever way he can.
To help in this heroic effort, 150 UNICEF Schools In a Box, which include a stand-alone emergency school tent and school supplies, have arrived at the UN organization’s storage facility to cater to affected areas. After an intensive training session with volunteer Haitian boy scouts on erecting the tents, the distribution begins.
One year ago President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the Stimulus Bill.
According to economists on the left and the right, there is reason to believe that the Recovery Act helped avert a major economic disaster. Looking at economic indicators across the board, there is an unmistakable optimistic trend.
Just today, AP reported, “Industrial production rose 0.9 percent in January, the seventh consecutive monthly increase as manufacturers help lead the nation’s economic recovery. Numbers rose in all three major categories: manufacturing, mining and energy utilities.”
This chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that even job losses are finally waning.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the Recovery Act is already responsible for retaining or creating as many as 2.4 million jobs through the end of 2009 and as a result, job losses are a fraction of what they were a year ago.
