So far, corporate first-quarter earnings reports are delivering more than pedestrian growth, justifying a stock market rally based on fundamentals.
New hiring and more upbeat outlooks to kick off the reporting session are encouraging investors, thanks to yesterday’s announcement from Intel that they will hire 1,000 and the sunnier outlook expressed by JP Morgan Chase and Alcoa.
(READ the analysis at Forbes.com)
Alex Griffith, 16, was adopted as a baby from a Krasnoyarsk, Russia, hospital. Now, he’s raised more than $60,000 to design and build a playground for the Krasnoyarsk orphans back home.
In light of recent news reports of adoptive parents returning a boy to Russia, a GNN subscriber suggested I find a story that can better portray the reality of most adoptions — happy and loving parents nurturing compassionate children.
Alex — originally named Sergey — was adopted by a Maryland couple and brought to the US 16 years ago. While an infant in the orphanage, the baby weighed less than 2 pounds and doctors said he had a mild case of cerebral palsy. The couple nursed him back to health and later the teen found inspiration through a Boy Scout project, to give back to those Russians who helped him.
Watch the video below, or read the story at CNN Heroes. (Thanks to Rosemary for suggesting the story!)
Alex Griffith, 16, was adopted as a baby from a Krasnoyarsk, Russia, hospital. Now, he’s raised more than $60,000 to design and build a playground for the Krasnoyarsk orphans back home.
In light of recent news reports of adoptive parents returning a boy to Russia, a GNN subscriber suggested I find a story that can better portray the reality of most adoptions — happy and loving parents nurturing compassionate children.
Alex — originally named Sergey — was adopted by a Maryland couple and brought to the US 16 years ago. While an infant in the orphanage, the baby weighed less than 2 pounds and doctors said he had a mild case of cerebral palsy. The couple nursed him back to health and later the teen found inspiration through a Boy Scout project, to give back to those Russians who helped him.
Watch the video below, or read the story at CNN Heroes. (Thanks to Rosemary for suggesting the story!)
80 volunteers at the US Department of Agriculture are lending their sweat and muscle to an organic garden created by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack along the National Mall, on the grounds of the agency’s headquarters.
Vilsack carved out the garden last year from an asphalt parking lot. He grabbed a jackhammer and challenged USDA facilities across the country to follow suit and create what he calls a People’s Garden.
All of the food grown at these gardens — 29,656 pounds last year — is donated to food pantries and soup kitchens.
(READ the story w/ photos at the Washington Post)
For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting a significant drop worldwide in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth, to about 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980.
The findings, published in the medical journal The Lancet, challenge the prevailing view of maternal mortality as an intractable problem that has defied every effort to solve it.
(READ More in the New York Times)
The process of manufacturing cement is both energy intensive and dirty. Globally, it emits roughly five percent of greenhouse gas emissions annually. But a Canadian company called Pond Biofuels has become the first to successfully capture the carbon dioxide and other emissions from a cement plant and use it to create a nutrient-rich algae slime which can be dried and used as a fuel.
(READ the story at Environmental News Network)
Trudy and Greg’s 6-month old feline smelled a dangerous gas leak in the middle of the night and alerted the family by jumping on Trudy’s chest, and persistently pawing at her nose.
Since her cat had never done that before, Trudy thought the feline may have been trying to tell her something…
Schnautzie the black cat was honored with a Purple Paw award from the Great Falls Animal Foundation Saturday.
(READ the story at Great Falls Tribune)
Ever think about how amazing it would be if solar cells could be simply sprayed onto a surface? A group of researchers found that a common organic semiconductor may make that situation a reality.
Scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology determined that the material may be useful, once the tech is optimized, to create electronic transistors like solar cells that can be sprayed onto a surface just like paint.
(READ the story at Inhabitat.com)
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.
