This past Saturday marked the first anniversary of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. However, before the celebration could begin, came news that lawmakers had failed to garner the 60 votes needed to pass a short-term budget bill to fund government operations until February 16. As a result, at 12:01 am on January 20, the US government officially shut down! How did we get here and what happens next? Read on . . ....
Read news articleThanksgiving is one of the biggest and most anticipated of all American holidays. Observed annually on the fourth Thursday of November, the secular celebration, which marks the beginning of the holiday season, can be traced to a harvest feast enjoyed by the early European settlers, or Pilgrims, and Native Americans. Though food remains the centerpiece of the celebration, many other fun traditions have been added since. Here is some Thanksgiving trivia to get the conversation going as you sit down for the scrumptious meal on November 23....
Read news articleHarvey, Irma, Jose, and Maria — these seemingly innocuous names all belong to powerful hurricanes that have devastated small islands and major US cities in the past few weeks. Maria, a Category 5 storm began its path of destruction by pummeling the Commonwealth of Dominica, a tiny sovereign island country in the Caribbean, on Tuesday, September 18. Two days later, on September 20, the slightly weakened Category 4 hurricane unleashed its wrath on Puerto Rico, which was still reeling from the impacts of Irma....
Read news articleThough it has been 16 years, Americans who lived through the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks remember the events of the tragic day vividly. Early that morning, 19 members of the Islamic extremist organization Al Qaeda, split into four teams, each with an experienced pilot, and hijacked four commercial flights — United Flight 93 from New Jersey, American Flight 77 from Washington DC, as well as United Flight 175 and American Flight 11 from Boston....
Read news articleOn Friday, August 25, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Southern Texas as a Category 4 storm, leaving in its wake unprecedented damage and chaos. To make matters worse, the storm lingered around for days, dumping almost 52-inches of rain, breaking a 50-year record for tropical cyclone rainfall measured in a single place in the US....
Read news articleOn Saturday, April 29, 2017, President Donald Trump celebrated his 100th day in office. The marker has become a perennial fixture on the American political calendar since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), the 32nd President of the United States, helped the country limp back from the Great Depression with a flurry of new legislation within his first 105 days in the White House....
Read news articleAmerican historian Laurel Ulrich once said, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” In celebration of Women’s History Month, here are a few of the millions of brave women that have broken all conventional rules to make a difference in the world....
Read news articleA week from today, on Thursday, Nov 24, Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving. The annual tradition is credited to a harvest celebration between the early European settlers and the Native Americans. While that is true, there is more to that story and the other traditions observed on this secular holiday, on which family and friends get together to count their blessings over a scrumptious meal. Here is some Thanksgiving trivia that may be fun to share at the dinner table....
Read news articleSeptember is usually a month when the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) are at their lowest levels in the northern hemisphere. That’s because plants suck up a lot of the gas as they grow during the summer. But this year, the level of the greenhouse gas has remained stubbornly above the symbolic “red line” of 400 parts per million. This has caused scientists to predict that CO2 levels will not return to environment-friendly levels "ever again for the indefinite future.”...
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