May 2009 U.S. News Archives

April 2009 U.S. News Archives

Dad attends birth by video

(Peggy O'Farrell, Cincinnati Enquirer) When her husband was deployed to Iraq in January, Nicole Fetick was afraid that she'd be on her own for the birth of their child. "It's not pleasant knowing your husband's going to be gone while you're giving birth," she said. But Lance Cpl. Ray Fetick, a heavy equipment operator with the U.S. Marine Corps, was "on hand" after all as their daughter Lorelai Ann was born Saturday at Mercy Hospital Fairfield.

 

Cadet runs laps to support Wounded Warrior Project

(The Express-Star) West Point Cadet David Swanson recently completed his 429th lap around the Yukon High School track, having logged 107.25 miles in support of the Wounded Warrior Project, a non-profit organization that supports soldiers wounded in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Child caught after falling three stories

(Jill Harmacinski, Eagle Tribune) At 6:30 last night, Robert Lemire was chatting on his cell phone, talking about coaching his daughter's softball team this spring. But when he looked across the street, Lemire quickly realized someone else's daughter was going to need his help first. A child was dangling out of a third-story window at 700 Haverhill St., and Lemire, without thinking about his own safety, bolted across the busy street to help the toddler.

 

Recession Angels Rise to the Occasion

(Scott Mayerowitz and Lee Ferran, ABC News) This recession has no lack of villains. There are predatory lenders, super scammers like Bernard Madoff, and propped-up CEOs who insist on their multimillion-dollar bonuses while Americans lose their homes and watch their savings plunge. But there are also plenty of Americans who have done extraordinarily generous things, even as the economy around them crumbles. Call them recession angels, people who have taken their own money and given it to employees and their communities just as everybody else has been cutting back.

 

Idled workers off to low-cost colleges for new career path

(Kevin Simpson, Denver Post) When Neoplan laid him off after 23 years of building buses, Jimmy Cardinelli embarked on the only career transition that made sense. He decided to become a nurse. Cardinelli took advantage of a Colorado Community College System whose enrollment has surged 11.5 percent with the recent economic downturn — a number that suggests many others also have sought tools to carve out a second career.

 

Long-lost meteorite comes home to Ariz.

(John Faherty, Arizona Republic) It was never just any meteorite. Unlike most, this one had a name. The "Basket" meteorite, which screamed to Earth 50,000 years ago, is shaped a bit like a basket with a handle. It was stolen from Meteor Crater east of Flagstaff back in August 1968.

 

Oral history: Telling the story of America

(Inara Verzemnieks, The Oregonian) One of my greatest regrets is that that I never recorded my grandparents' stories: how they came to this country, what they left behind, the things they sacrificed. But also what they felt they gained. And now they are gone. So maybe I am automatically predisposed to see something both sweet and profound in the small gesture of a local library to record the oral histories of immigrants and the children of immigrants.

 

The new cool kids

(Meghan Irons, Boston Globe) There was a time in Myriam Piquant's young life when she refused to admit she was smart. So she kept quiet about her good grades to her neighborhood friends. In elementary and middle school, she didn't let on to fellow students about where she lived (Mattapan) or her cultural difference (Haitian), or her goals in life (lawyering).

 

L.A. third-grader basks in glow of a presidential moment

(Seema Mehta, LA Times) Ethan Lopez became an instant celebrity at his Los Angeles elementary school Friday, the day after President Obama selected the 8-year-old to ask the final question at a town hall meeting. Media crews filmed the boy and his family while the school principal and teachers gushed over his question about teacher layoffs, and classmates cheered. The moment was not lost on the third-grader.

 

A Homeowner Who Wouldn't Sell, Part II

(Steve Hartman, CBS News) At the bottom of a 5-story chasm sits a story-and-a-half … a story about a little old lady who stood up to a big new development. You've probably seen similar stories, but I promise, you've never seen one that ends quite like this.

 

She's square with life: Hospice brings partners for resident's last dance

(Steve Rosenberg, Boston Globe) Marilyn Coyne survived the Depression with little food and no heat in her parents' flat in Portland, Maine. She married and sent four kids to college. She saw her husband and one of their children die. And, in November, after three years of fighting breast cancer, she was told by a doctor that she had months to live. In hospice care and losing weight in recent weeks as the cancer crept through her body, she confided to a hospice volunteer that she had a last wish, something that recalled summer nights of her childhood and joy with her husband. She wanted a final square dance.

 

Thunderbirds give Valley police hero a ride in an F-16

(Jeffrey Javier, Arizona Republic) Fabian Gonzalez, a Phoenix police officer who performed a heroic deed in Glendale, was given a surprise reward Thursday: a flight in an Air Force Thunderbirds F-16. The Air Demonstration Squadron arrived early to prepare for this weekend's Thunder in the Desert air show at Luke Air Force Base. On each visit, the Thunderbirds honor a local hero through their Hometown Hero program. Gonzalez, who was working off-duty, was chosen for subduing a man who was holding a Westgate City Center security guard at gunpoint. The Phoenix Police Department has also recommended him for the Medal of Valor.

 

Goodwill helps many people in Valley find employment

(Eugene Scott, Arizona Republic) The unemployment rate may be increasing for Arizona and the nation, but that's not stopping Goodwill of Central Arizona from placing people in jobs. The non-profit set a record helping more than 5,100 people get jobs in 2008. And Goodwill Career Centers, where clients can get career advice, served more than 23,000 people last year - another record.

 

School's iPod Day a fundraising iDea that rocks

(Fred Swegles, Orange County Register) It isn't every day that Gabby Cullen, 12, gets to take her iPod to school and listen to the Jonas Brothers. Before this week, she never could. iPods were, and are, taboo on campus. But Thursday was a special day at Vista del Mar Middle School in San Clemente. Gabby was one of 200 kids, teachers and staff members who paid $5 each to get to listen to tunes during select times in the school day.

 

Shovel-Ready Project: A White House Garden

(Jane Black, Washington Post) For more than a decade, food activists have rallied, cajoled, even pleaded for a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. Now they're finally going to get it. Today, first lady Michelle Obama will host a groundbreaking for a White House kitchen garden on the South Lawn. She will be joined by students from Bancroft Elementary in Northwest Washington, whose participation in the project will continue past today, as they help with planting in the coming weeks and harvesting later this year.

 

Oregon Town Unites In Version Of 'Biggest Loser'

(Howard Berkes, NPR) Every Tuesday morning, a new sign goes up in the storefront window of The Mercantile, the only grocery in Fossil, Ore. The lime-green cardboard sheet names the remote central Oregon town's biggest losers. But there's no shame attached to the distinction. The big losers are considered big winners as they compete in a 12-week contest to lose weight.

 

100 People Join in Constructing 'Green' Home for Family That Lost Trailer in Hurricane

(David Betancourt, Washington Post) Corey Carswell was headed nowhere when two YouthBuild recruiters approached him seven months ago with this offer: Join us, and help us rebuild your community. At the time, he was homeless and out of work and hadn't attended school since 2004. But now the 22-year-old has a job, an apartment and plans to get his general equivalency diploma.

 

In Detroit, Artists Look For Renewal In Foreclosures

(Jennifer Guerra, NPR) Amid the crumbling auto industry, mounting job losses and thousands of foreclosures, there's not a whole lot of good news coming out of Detroit these days. But Mitch Cope and his wife, Gina, are trying to change things — one house at a time. The Copes, who bought a home on Detroit's north side four years ago, have been recruiting artists from around the world to buy the foreclosed houses in the neighborhood and rebuild.

 

Contemporary eco-village bucks housing crash

(Tess Eastment, CNN) The idea of investing in new home construction and high-end restaurant businesses would send most entrepreneurs running these days, but developers in a small community in rural Georgia say they're still growing. At first glance Serenbe is a bucolic scene of horses and stables ringed by 40,000 acres of dense oak and pine forest, but as you drive around the first bend, a collection of look-alike white houses emerges, giving the distinct impression of a conventional high-end housing development. But a 21st century high-tech eco-village soon emerges from the mists.

 

Leap to Track. Rescue Man. Clamber Up. Catch a Train

(Michael Wilson, New York Times) Subway heroes, as they are inevitably tagged even before the grease from the tracks is rubbed off, come along every now and then - indeed, as the story of Chad Lindsey suggests, perhaps more often than we know. Minutes after rescuing a man who had fallen onto the subway tracks at the Penn Station stop on Monday, Mr. Lindsey managed to melt back into the anonymity of the city, escaping the notice of the police, paramedics and subway workers.

 

Friends help with transplant expenses

(Cincinnati Enquirer) The staff at the Huntington Bank branch in Mason raised $24,000 to help their manager, Halis Gorgulu, pay the expenses associated with a lung transplant. Gorgulu, a Huntington vice president, was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

 

Economic downturn a gift for dance hall's polka fans

(Jeremy Moorehead, CNN) The beer is flowing, the polka band is playing, and dancers are twirling across the dance floor. Blob's Park lives again. The popular Bavarian beer hall and weekend nightspot had closed its doors in 2007, the victim of an unlikely foe: progress. Developers, eager to build on the 400 acres of prime real estate in the bustling Baltimore/Washington, D.C., corridor, had purchased the 400 acres upon which the dance hall sat.

 

In Recession, Church Multiplies Money For Needy

(Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR) Fair Haven Ministries, a church in recession-battered Michigan, is trying to juggle a drop in offerings with an escalating need to help people in the community. So it created its own stimulus package by drawing inspiration from a New Testament parable in which faithful servants took money given by their master, invested it and brought back more.

 

Don't pay as you go: New York store gives away goods for free

(Ed Pilkington, The Guardian) In recent months downtown Manhattan has spawned a new pastime - you might call it disaster tourism. Every day thousands of people throng its narrow streets, attracted to Ground Zero rising slowly out of the ashes of 9/11. This week, though, visitors expecting to experience terrorist and economic catastrophe at close range have been amazed to stumble on something far more positive, even joyful, just around the corner.

 

Don't Bully the Bullies, School Learns

(Neal Karlinsky and Sidney Wright IV, ABC) It's supposed to be a nurturing place, but for thousands of students, just going to school in the morning can be a terrorizing experience. Ali Bybee was one of those students. The 14-year-old attended White Pine Middle School, a small school in Ely, Nev., with a huge bullying problem.

 

Using tax dollars to turn lives around is money well-spent

(Steve Lopez, L.A. Times) Judge Michael Tynan stepped down from the bench and congratulated five criminal defendants who had turned their lives around. His voice cracked as he told them how proud he was, and then he threw a party and passed out pieces of chocolate cake, with hugs all around.

 

Smith boys three-peat at spelling bee

(George Plaven, Denver Post) A proud spelling tradition continued this afternoon in Denver, where a Smith kid once again came away as Colorado's wizard of Webster. It started two years ago, when Jake took first place in the state spelling bee. Alec had his turn hoisting the trophy last year, and now brother Christian has made it a family three-peat.

 

Long-remembered heroism

(Emily Badger, Christian Science Monitor) The South African teenager, whom I'd met in Athens, was appalled. "American!" he shrieked, accusingly. Not long after, a Polish man suggested I try to pass myself off as a New Zealander so I would have the opportunity to hear "what other people really think of Americans." I wasn't sure why he thought this was the point of my travels overseas. Like many Americans in Europe over the past eight years, I was asked dozens of times, "How could you have elected him a second time?" But then I went to Normandy.

 

Translator Helped Grandson Decipher Relationship

(NPR) George Edwardson's grandfather, Roy Ahmaogak, was a Presbyterian minister who helped create a writing system for his native language, Inupiaq. One of his major translations was the New Testament. And it was while watching his grandfather work on his translations that Edwardson says he learned how to interpret the language of love between his grandparents.

 

At Colorado prison, wild horses tame inmates

(AP) It takes convict John Peterson four months of hard work to turn a wild, aggressive mustang into a saddle-trained horse. Mustangs have returned the favor for Peterson, who's serving time for burglary at a Colorado state prison outside Canon City.

 

Teen gives away thousands in cash he found

(AP) A 16-year-old Minnesota boy has given away thousands of dollars to fellow students and a school aide. The bag full of money he found was apparently tossed by a drug dealer.

 

Americans retain optimism in recession

(Andy Sullivan, Reuters) Americans remain broadly optimistic about their economic prospects in the middle of the most severe recession since World War Two, according to a survey released on Thursday. The Pew Economic Mobility Project found that despite dismal economic conditions and decades of widening income inequality, Americans still widely believe in the "American Dream": the idea that success is determined by one's willingness to work hard, not the circumstances of one's birth or other external forces.

 

Local 'Einstein' only 6 years old

(Cindy Kranz, Cincinnati Enquirer) Pranav Veera can recite the names of the U.S. presidents in the order they served in office. He can say the alphabet backward. Give him a date back to 2000, and he’ll tell you the day of the week. He’s only 6 years old. At first glance, Pranav is a typical young boy who is highly competitive at playing Wii video games and likes to play outside. A closer look reveals he’s anything but typical.

 

In Lincoln's Watch, A Mystery Revealed

(Daniel Zwerdling, NPR) A couple of screwdrivers, a pair of jeweler's goggles and a steady hand have finally put a mystery to rest after almost 150 years: Did a repairman really engrave a secret message on Abraham Lincoln's watch the day the Civil War began? That's what watchmaker Jonathan Dillon told his family in the late 19th century. He claimed he was working in a posh jewelry store in Washington, D.C., in April 1861, just after Lincoln was elected. And he was assigned to fix the president's beloved gold pocket watch — reportedly the first watch the humble Lincoln had ever owned.

 

From Alabama civil rights tribute, higher hopes for race relations

(Gary G. Yerkey, Christian Science Monitor) Across this largely African-American city, there are signs of hope. Faces light up at the mere mention of President Obama. Even the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Alabama state troopers attacked defenseless civil rights demonstrators on "Bloody Sunday" 44 years ago this month, seems somehow to lead to a better place – if not yet to the promised land.

 

Financial woes inspire acts of kindness

(Judy Keen, USA TODAY) Bad times can bring out the best in people. Mounting layoffs and tumbling stock prices are creating economic anxiety and forcing many people to cut back on charity, but the nation's woes also are inspiring people to make generous gestures to acquaintances, employees and even strangers. Danny Cottrell, owner of the Medical Center Pharmacy in Brewton, Ala., and a health care store in Atmore, gave $16,000 to his 24 employees. Full-time workers each got $700 and part-timers got $300. Cottrell asked them to donate 15% to charity and spend the rest in local stores.

 

Mutton bustin’ breaks in next generation of riders

(Carolyn Feibel, Houston Chronicle) The calf scramble has always been a rodeo favorite, earning high scores on the “aww” scale. But now the calf-roping teens have nightly competitors in cuteness: the mutton busters. These tiny rodeo competitors weigh no more than 60 pounds, stay up past their bedtimes and power-binge on bananas and cotton candy.

 

Former Justice Pushing for More Civics, Less 'American Idol'

(Sarah Netter, ABC News) Call it a civics makeover -- that's what former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wants for the nation's schools where students know more about reality TV than their government.

 

Volunteerism on the Rise

(Shannon Davidson, WHP) If needles bother you - and the thought of donating blood gives you the heebie jeebies, think about donating your time - some folks in Carlisle have already beat you to it.

 

Hero trucker avoids fire disaster

(Leslie Albrecht, Modesto Bee) Police are calling a truck driver who kept his cool as his big rig was engulfed in flames a hero. Randal Taylor, 49, of Salt Lake City was asleep in his truck at Flying J Truck Plaza on Jack Tone Road just before 4 a.m. Thursday when a fire broke out inside the vehicle's trailer. The truck was carrying chemicals, including 908 pounds of sodium hydroxide and 612 pounds of an industrial-strength bleach, according to Chief Dennis Bitters of the Ripon Fire Department.

 

The White House’s First Celebrity Dog

(Diane Tedeschi, Smithsonian Magazine) When the Obama girls, Malia and Sasha, get their much-longed-for puppy, the dog will almost certainly be adorable. The Obama dog will also be—in the click of an Internet second—famous. Worldwide. But the pup won't be the first celebrity White House dog. That honor goes to Laddie Boy, an Airedale terrier who was the pet of President Warren G. Harding and his wife, Florence.