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Germany’s foreign office is reportedly paying a freelance stylist nearly $8,000 a month to keep its minister looking presentable. Claude Frommen, a renowned freelance make-up artist who has reportedly worked with major clients such as Porsche and TUI, is reportedly being paid just under $8,000 a month by the government to keep its Minister of Foreign Affairs looking windswept and interesting. The expenditure comes at a time when many Germans are struggling under massive inflation which has seen the price of fuel, food and other amenities rise substantially this year. Nevertheless, according to a report by Bild, Germany’s Foreign Affairs...

Alberto Gullaba Jr. was the type of author that publishers dream of having in their catalogs. A first-generation college grad, a child of working-class immigrants, and the recent recipient of a Master of Fine Arts degree from the prestigious University of California, Irvine, program, Gullaba was a debut novelist with a gift for visceral and vivid prose. His first book, University Thugs, had all the makings of a smash hit. A work of character-driven literary fiction steeped in immersive vernacular, it tells the story of a young black man named Titus who is trying to make his way at an...

Publishers are moving away from 'macho' heroes in non-fiction books for boys and moving towards an 'alternative type of hero' who to those who 'checks their privilege'. It comes following impressive sales of books that empower young women, such as Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls which has sold more than a million copies worldwide. The publishers aim to move away from the 'stereotypical idea of masculinity' and action-men style heroes such as Prince Charming and will instead focus on stories of real-life heroes such as Usain Bolt and James Harrison, a blood donor"

Washington D.C., Mar 19, 2017 / 04:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Raymond Arroyo has an impressive resume.He’s a New York Times bestselling author several times over. He’s an award-winning journalist and producer. And his weekly EWTN show, The World Over Live, reaches more than 350 million global households and 500 U.S. radio affiliates.So when Arroyo says his Will Wilder series of books for young readers just might be “the most important work I’ve ever done,” it’s quite a statement.What makes these books so important, in his view? The lifelong impact that they can have on kids.“When an adult reads your...

I remember reading about Marley Dias previously. She's back in the news: Rescue people in another galaxy? Escape from a tower with a dragon's help? Visit England, China, and India, and still be back for dinnertime? That's all in a day's read for 11-year-old Marley Dias, who was featured in TODAY's "Can-Do Kids" series on Tuesday. "When I get lost in a book, it's just, like, magical!" Dias told TODAY's Jenna Bush Hager. The New Jersey sixth grader's love for reading was profound but not blind. After spending years of her life stepping into new worlds with every turn...

Hundreds of Meridian, Idaho high school students signed a protest petition when their local school board banned Sherman Alexie' young adult novel "The Absolutely True Diary of a part-Time Indian" from their 10th grade curriculum. But a private fundraising drive, organized by two Washington women, has now raised enough money to buy a copy for each of the 350 students who protested...

<p>Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender literature are included in the California Department of Education's newest reading list for students,prompting complaints from critics who say a leftist agenda is being pushed on kids, the San Jose Mercury News reported.</p> <p>Controversial topics have been introduced to California students in the past, but this is the first time the state has put forth works celebrated by the Stonewall Book Awards, which since 1971 has recognized LGBT literature, according to the newspaper.</p>

PHILADELPHIA — Like many of his third-grade classmates, Mario Cortez-Pacheco likes reading the “Magic Tree House” series, about a brother and a sister who take adventurous trips back in time. He also loves the popular “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” graphic novels. But Mario, 8, has noticed something about these and many of the other books he encounters in his classroom at Bayard Taylor Elementary here: most of the main characters are white. “I see a lot of people that don’t have a lot of color,” he said.

I have a 16 year old grandson that spends too much time on the computer and playing X games. He doesn't read books. So, I am thinking of giving him a couple of books for his christmas present. Two books I am thinking of is; 'The Richest Man In Babylon' by George Clasan and 'Anthem' by Ayn Rand. I would like suggestions from other writers that counter act the teaching he is getting in his school, and still be interesting for a 16 year old.

Obama might as well start his daughters early on their hatred of America. While taking his daughters out to a bookstore for a photo-shoot/book purchase stunt, Obama bought three books according to The Blaze: “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” ”Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever“ and ”Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.” Diary of a Wimpy Kid could be Obama’s childhood story for all I know, but Descent into Chaos is another one of those America and Dubya Bush bashing books on middle east policy. The book is written by someone...

Can fart jokes save the reading souls of boys? You better hope so. Boys have lagged behind girls in reading achievement for more than 20 years, but the gender gap now exists in nearly every state and has widened to mammoth proportions -- as much as 10 percentage points in some, according to the Center on Education Policy. "It certainly should set off alarm bells," said the center's director, Jack Jennings. "It's a significant separation." Parents of reluctant readers complain that boys are forced to stick to stuffy required school lists that exclude nonfiction or silly subjects, or have teachers...

The Real Trouble with Twilight … The Vampire Craze Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga has a very dark side, according to the author of a new book 'The Trouble with Twilight.' On the eve of the release 'Eclipse' Television producer, occult researcher and bestselling author Steve Wohlberg says “...The real trouble with Twilight is that real teenagers

... Judging from The New York Times children’s best-seller list and librarian-approved selections like the annual “Best Books for Young Adults,” the bad parent is now enjoying something of a heyday. It would be hard to come up with an exact figure from the thousands of Y.A. novels published every year, but what’s striking is that some of the most sharply written and critically praised works reliably feature a mopey, inept, distracted or ready-for-rehab parent, suggesting that this has become a particularly resonant figure. ... Sometimes the parents are very, very busy, and sometimes they’ve simply checked out. The husband...

Several earlier posts have evolved into “50: Leading Boys To Reading,” a new section on Improve-Education.org. It’s of interest to parents who have a boy in school. There’s a list of books that most boys would like; some simple diagnostics to use when someone is avoiding books; and a column that first appeared on CanadaFreePress titled “Our Schools Are Skilled at Keeping Boys From Reading.” (The Left’s greatest victory may be that they were able to undermine reading so successfully for so many decades. Almost nobody can learn to read using sight-words, but that has been the official technique since...

China's Earliest Handicraft Workshop Discovered? One of the world's oldest handicraft workshops, dating back more than 3,600 years, may have been discovered by Chinese archaeologists in the country's Henan Province. Covering about 1,000 square meters the workshop used turquoise to make elaborate and ornate works of art. The workshop was found in the village of Erlitou of Yanshi City and is part of the ruins of the imperial city belonging to the Xia dynasty (2100 BC-1600 BC), China's earliest. The imperial city was discovered two years ago. At the workshop crafts people made ornaments with inlaid turquoise, said Xu Hong,...

Spy pics reveal ancient settlements August 03, 2006 06:51pm AUSTRALIAN researchers studying declassified spy satellite images have found widespread remains of ancient human settlements dating back 130,000 years in Syria. The photographs were taken by United States military surveillance satellites operating under the CIA and defence-led Corona program in the late 1960s. The team of researchers travelled to the Euphrates River Valley in April and June and searched sites they had painstakingly identified using the images, which were only declassified in the late 1990s. Group leader Mandy Mottram, a PhD student at the Australian National University's School of Archaeology and...

This music video is in Hebrew but it does have English subtitles. I know I shouldn’t love it, but I do anyway. So sue me.

Fooled ya once... In 1971, Kerry said American troops who served in Vietnam were bad. He didn't like them and said they were committing war atrocities. He said he was ashamed of his 4 months of service there and threw away his medals. America believed him, spit on their troops and elected John Kerry to public office. In 2004, Kerry says American troops who served in Vietnam were good. He likes them now and says he's 'one of them.' He says he's really proud of his 4 months of service there and has found his medals that he threw...