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Grit And Gratitude Join Reading, Writing And Arithmetic On Report Cards BY LORETTA KALBLKALB 01/27/2015 Outside Harry Dewey Fundamental Elementary School in Fair Oaks, Amanda Christensen recalled the first time she saw the detailed report card for her three children. “At first it was very complicated,” Christensen said. “You see all these new things and you don’t understand quite what they mean.” Case in point: Her kids are now graded on their level of grit. “What does my child have to do to get a grade in that?” she wondered. Across the state, report cards are undergoing a sea change...

AIMEE PICCHI January 28, 2015 1 In 5 American Kids Rely On Food Stamps America is a global leader on a number of fronts, including having the largest economy in the world. But here is one area where the U.S., given its general affluence, would rather not distinguish itself: It has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the industrialized world. Even as the economy continues to recover from the Great Recession, 1 in 5 children are on food stamps, the U.S. Census said on Wednesday. Before the housing crash, 1 in 8 received federal food assistance. This...

Ben Lucas was shocked when he found his packages damaged earlier this month. That's when he went to the surveillance videotape and saw the shocking moment the driver urinated on his home. UPS eventually apologized and fired the seasonal deliveryman. This guy puts the pee in UPS. A Houston deliveryman was canned from his job after a customer caught him on camera taking a leak on the side of his house. Ben Lucas went to the tape after items inside a package delivered to his home this month in the Heights neighborhood were broken and busted open. He suspected the...

Two Israeli soldiers and a U.N. peacekeeper were killed Wednesday, as Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah traded fire in the biggest escalation of fighting since their 2006 war

W orking professionals across sectors might not have much to cheer this year as salary increases likely to see a “marginal” rise compared with last year’s pay hikes in India. According to a study released today by global management consultancy Hay Group, employees across job roles can expect an average of 11.3 percent wage hike in 2015 led by FMCG and chemical industry. Last year, the actual average salary increase was recorded at 10.9 percent across industries, the report noted. “The study that we have conducted predicts that the pay raise in 2015 will remain in double digits. At this...

California has a way of living up to the worst regulatory expectations, as grocery shoppers across the country are discovering. The state’s latest animal-rights march is levying a punishing new food tax on the nation’s poor. Egg prices are soaring in California, where the USDA says the average price for a dozen jumbo eggs is $3.16, up from $1.18 a dozen a year ago, and in some parts of the state it’s more than $5. (SNIP) The state legislature realized this would put home-state farmers at a disadvantage, so in 2010 it compounded the problem by requiring that eggs imported...

SEE: Critical of Obama’s past actions, GOP now wants to give him more power on trade ”Republicans have consistently railed at President Obama’s exercise of his executive authority, disparaging him as “an emperor” who has ignored Congress on immigration, climate and Cuba. Now that they fully control the Congress, those same Republicans critics are on the verge of handing the president expansive new powers to circumvent those who want to stand in his way on trade. GOP leaders in both chambers are close to introducing legislation that would grant the administration broad authority to finalize one of the largest free-trade...

There’s no denying it. Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” has struck a chord with the American people, and did so by tapping into the deepest civic values we have as Americans – duty, honor, fidelity, courage, love for country…and a love for others. However, no war movie can live on the big screen without a spew of liberal backlash, and this film is no different. Criticism has come quickly from Michael Moore, Seth Rogen, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and other Hollywood leftists. Thankfully, some things speak louder than cowardly tweets—like the more than $200 million in ticket sales the movie...

Just lately I've noticed a lot of commercials promoting virtues like kindness, patience, generosity, etc. They are produced by something called "The Foundation for a Better Life," web site "values.com." Their message seems so secular humanist, since there's no mention of Jesus (and that's further confirmed in that their site even says that they believe people to be "basically good,") that I thought to look them up, and finally remembered to today. I discovered that Philip Anschutz, the founder, is actually said to be a very wealthy, "conservative Presbyterian," and liberal Media Matters says he has supported groups who have...

(Reuters) - Kinder Morgan Inc's (KMI.N) proposed Freedom Pipeline, which would move West Texas crude oil to Southern California, is "getting more interest" from U.S. West Coast refiners, the head of the company's natural gas pipeline unit told analysts on Wednesday. Unit President Tom Martin said the company "may have a shot" at moving ahead with converting a natural gas pipeline to move crude and condensate to California "if we can get the refiners on board." The pipeline and logistics company first proposed the $2 billion project in 2012 but shelved it in May 2013 for lack of shipper interest....

Following are excerpts from an interview with Abu Imad Al-Rifai, Palestinian Islamic Jihad Representative in Lebanon, which aired on Al-Jadeed/New TV on January 19, 2015: Abu Imad Al-Rifai: When the Syrians see that there is a war between Israel and the [Syrian] regime, a large part of the opposition will stand alongside the regime, and fight the Israeli enemy. […] We are part of the resistance, and we will be at the middle of the fighting with the Israeli enemy if it breaks out. Within 72 hours, half of the Galilee will have fallen into the hands of the resistance,...

Léonie Martin had a troubled childhood and was almost forgotten after her deathA French bishop has officially opened the beatification Cause of Léonie Martin, the sister of St Thérèse of Lisieux. Bishop Jean-Claude Boulanger of Bayeux-Lisieux opened the diocesan stage of the Cause on Saturday at a Mass at the Monastery of the Visitation in Caen, north-west France, where Léonie lived from 1899 until her death in 1941, aged 78. Léonie, who took the name Sister Françoise-Thérèse when she entered religious life, now has the title “Servant of God”. Léonie, the third of the five surviving children of the Martin...

It sounds like something from a science fiction plot: so-called three-dimensional printers are being used to fashion prosthetic arms and hands, jaw bones, spinal-cord implants -- and one day perhaps even living human body parts. While the parts printed for humans so far have been fashioned from plastic, metal and other inorganic materials, researchers in California and elsewhere also have begun printing living tissue, with the goal of eventually employing these "bioprinters" to create customized kidneys, livers and other organs for people needing transplants. What's particularly attractive about the technology, according to its proponents, is that 3D printers can produce...

Michigan’s prevailing wage law sets an arbitrary mandate for what public entities (like schools) have to pay for construction projects. Top Republicans in Lansing rightly want to eliminate these mandates, as the Mackinac Center has recommended for years. This is estimated to save taxpayers more than $200 million per year. Democrats disagree with the proposed changes. "It's extremely disappointing that the first priority of Republicans is to lower wages and have people work for less," said House Minority Leader Tim Greimel, D-Auburn Hills. "It's just another example of Republicans' relentless push for cheap labor." But if government can set an...

Denver, Colo., Jan 28, 2015 / 05:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The battleground for religious freedom is currently the soft, frosted tops of cakes in Colorado. Jack Phillips, owner of the Lakewood, Colo., Masterpiece Cakeshop, was sued in July 2012 for refusing to make a same-sex “wedding” cake on the grounds that it violated his Christian beliefs. He and his staff were ordered by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to undergo anti-discrimination training and to submit quarterly reports on changing company policies. In July 2014, the commission rejected Phillips request to temporarily suspend the orders against him while his case proceeds...

The Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission will release its long-awaited report Thursday, which will propose fundamental changes to military benefits including ending the 20-year retirement, according to the Military Times, citing sources familiar with the report. The plan calls for Congress to create a hybrid system of smaller defined-benefit pension along with more cash-based benefits and lump-sum payments. A significant portion of retirement benefits would come in the form of government contributions to 401(k)-style investment accounts, those familiar with the report told Military Times. In addition to the 401(k) for troops serving less than 20 years, the commission will...

NEW DELHI: Russia, France, Germany and Spain, all better watch out. They may have to contend with Japan in the race to supply submarines to India. In keeping with their expanding strategic partnership, the Modi government has asked the Shinzo Abe administration whether it would be interested in the over Rs 50,000 crore project to build six stealth submarines in India. With Japan recently ending its decades old self-imposed arms export embargo, New Delhi has forwarded "a proposal" to Tokyo to "consider the possibility" of making its latest diesel-electric Soryu-class submarines in India, say sources. This "feeler" dovetails into PM...

Cardinal Baldisseri joins the debateROME: Last week, the debate about next October’s Synod on the Family came into view once again as the Secretary General of the Synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, opened a three-day (January 22 -25) international conference of lay and family movements in Rome. Cardinal Baldisseri called the 300 conference participants, representing 80 different organizations, to enter into the synod process by reflecting on the preparatory document, called the Lineamenta. The document contains the final report from last October’s preparatory assembly (the Extraordinary Synod of 2014), together with 46 questions intended to facilitate its reception and examine the...

U.S. President Barack Obama told CNN he will not meet with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in March because his trip to Washington comes too close to Israel's upcoming elections. "I'm declining to meet with him simply because our general policy is, we don't meet with any world leader two weeks before their election," Obama told Fareed Zakaria in an interview which will air Sunday and of which excerpts were released Wednesday. "I think that's inappropriate, and that's true with some of our closest allies," he added. The President said the United States and Britain had to quickly to put...

I was too sick to grapple with the recently revealed fact that the Supreme Court is going to decide some foundational issues with respect to marriage equality this spring and summer. And maybe because I’ve spent so long worrying about a premature decision that I cannot quite believe that the Fourteenth Amendment will find one more minority to protect. The power of the language and arguments in the Windsor decision would be very hard to take back, and with 36 states now offering marriage equality, the ruling would not be another Roe (there’s already a budding national majority for equal...