About a dozen teachers running for state legislative seats gathered with their supporters in Tulsa for a watch party on election night. The results were better for some than others.

A K-8 charter school has opened in Livingston, Ala., that is making history.

Members of 30 different state and national advocacy groups and unions are meeting in Washington, D.C., for the Grassroots Assembly for Child Care and Early Education.

Leipzig : W. Engelmann, 1870.

A Paris (rue St Denis No. 214) : chez Bance aîné, [1810?]

One more teacher was elected to state legislature in a closely contested race.

Speech by Mr Agustín Carstens, General Manager of the BIS, at the Fourteenth ASBA-BCBS-FSI High-level Meeting on Global and Regional Supervisory Priorities, Lima, 1 October 2019.

Story: As many as 12 million computers worldwide have been infected with a highly encrypted computer worm called Conficker. Writer Mark Bowden details how Conficker was discovered, how it works, and the ongoing programming battle to bring down Conficker in his book Worm: The First Digital World War.

Smallholders and people living in rural areas in Africa grow a huge variety of edible plants other than rice, wheat or maize. These crops, including the African yam bean, have long been neglected although they represent an excellent alternative food supplement to most diets. Grown in pockets of tropical Central, West and East Africa, the African yam bean (Sphenostylis stenocarpa) [...]

Youth around the world are increasingly turning away from agriculture. Traditionally requiring tough manual labour and offering low wages, agriculture does not often appeal to new generations who generally prefer to try their luck finding jobs in cities.  

Root vegetables like rutabagas and Jerusalem artichokes were ration staples during the Nazi occupation of Paris

Darin Isaac was elected on Wednesday as the new chief of the Selkirk First Nation in Yukon. Isaac also held the position for two terms from 2005 to 2011. He has also served as a councillor for three terms.

It looks like New Brunswickers will see more snow Saturday with a snowfall warning issued for central and northern parts of the province. 

A spring storm is set to slam parts of New Brunswick this weekend, bringing up to 30 cm of snow. 

As Nova Scotians gazed up at the Canadian Forces Snowbirds soaring through the clouds last weekend, Matt MacKenzie was looking down and feeling the weight of successive tragedies that had enveloped his home province. 

From stage to sofa: NAC brings local arts to homes in new livestream initiative  Connected to India

Young singers bring old Tamil gems to new gen  Times of India

As a farmer, spring means a fresh start, a chance for new life, hope and opportunities.

An idea that began when a classicist went to a brewery to sip beers and ponder the history of hops has brought to life an ancient ale.

More suffering is ahead for the developing world.

Denver Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 08:19 pm (CNA).- A Christian ethic of service and solidarity must be an important feature of the business response to the coronavirus epidemic and its economic impact, Catholic business educators have said.

For Karel Sovak, associate professor in the University of Mary’s Gary Tharaldson School of Business, two of the biggest skills that business can bring to recovery efforts are self-awareness and empathy.

“A business needs to help the community identify who they are, which may have been lost during this time of stay at home,” he told CNA. “Businesses need to help communities focus on what makes it viable in the first place, which are the people. Business can be used as a force for good only if they understand what that ‘good’ means. Being aware of those strengths can help transform a community as they seek to overcome any devastating tragedy, natural or otherwise.”

He cited the symbolic unity and mutual support shown by individuals and businesses, whether by showing hearts in windows, purchasing gift cards for businesses, or taking meals to essential personnel.

Over 75,000 deaths are attributed to Covid-19 in the U.S., with over 1.25 million confirmed cases, John Hopkins University said Thursday. Efforts to prevent the spread of infection led to public officials’ orders to close businesses, with the exception of some businesses deemed essential services.

Millions of people have been left unemployed due to the closures, while those with essential jobs worry that their places of employment are newly dangerous.

Sovak emphasized the importance of trust as a business skill, but noted that low trust and polarization were problems even before the epidemic. Community is about bringing people into communion, and business has a role to play in that community building.

“Business can reassure families, non-profits and churches that they are there for them. Solidarity is the word that comes to mind when determining how to establish trust,” he said. The social and spiritual nature of the human being means people will need to come together once again “to use the gifts God gave to each person to meet the needs of others.”

Laura Munoz, associate professor of marketing at the University of Dallas’ Satish and Yasmin Gupta College of Business, said her business school emphasizes both a skill-based and a virtue-based education that can help respond to the crisis.

Business professors aim to help students become resilient and adaptable. They must become critical thinkers “aware of multiple stakeholder perceptions in an ethical way,” she told CNA. These skills can also help in the service of others, as in the case of a business student who used her business skills to fund raise for an Argentine orphanage on social media.

“Yes, skills are needed but they cannot come if the ‘business person’ is not aware of the needs of the environment and does not have love, charity, for others,” said Munoz. “Businesses that acknowledge that serving a community is give and take, not just take, will probably receive more community support as well.”

For Sovak, Catholic business education focuses on virtues, “servant-leadership,” and upholding the tenets of Catholic social teaching.

“There is no proof that any instruction can adequately prepare anyone, let alone young minds, for such a large-scale disruption as this pandemic has caused,” he said. However, teaching students the cardinal virtues of prudence, courage, justice and temperance is a good path in both strong economies and in economic downturns.

Such an education helps students “to understand that life is not about them; it is about serving others who are in need, which is what we are called to do.” Students should be prepared “to recognize their vocation is more than a job and they are called to greatness, ‘magnanimity,’ especially in dire times.” This helps them to “focus less on self and more on the situation at hand” and to bring about “true humility.” This path helps students be optimistic and trusting in innovative ways and help contribute to solutions

“Life is full of disruptions, simply because we can’t predict the future,” Jay Wesley Richards, assistant research professor at the Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Business, told CNA. “I think two of the most important business skills are simply virtues. One is courage—which means you’ll act even if you might fail. The other is resilience or anti-fragility—which means you learn from disruption and failure. The pandemic, and more precisely, the shutdown in response to it, is a historic and massive disruption. But disruption itself is part of life.”

Richards said one of his classes this semester had been discussing looming disruptions from technology and “the need to develop virtues and skills that humans will always do better than machines.”

“The discussion was mostly abstract until spring break, when the semester itself was disrupted by the pandemic shutdown, and we had to move online,” he said. “Suddenly, we were using disruptive (if imperfect) video-conferencing technology! At that point, students started asking more questions about disruption in the economy.”

Economic downturns in the business cycle are a standard topic in business education. Munoz said a pandemic is one of many possibilities taught through case studies, role playing, business planning, and discussions.

“We focus on going beyond a disruption and thinking ‘so what? How do we continue?’”

“Instead of the business coming to a stop, we think: ‘and what else can we do? How else can we do it?’” she said.

Michael Welker, an economics professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, reflected on the need for creativity given the conditions of a pandemic event.

“Such an event, in our lifetimes, is one that is unprecedented, complex, and so widespread, that there is a need for courage, openness to failure, iteration of ideas and experiments, and a need for management decisions to frame their enterprise cultures to engender this powerful way that human beings image the Creator,” Welker said.

Efforts to re-open businesses and other social venues, including places of worship, have come to be the focus of debate, planning, and activity.

Welker said the focus on “restarting the economy” means a focus on “a critical aspect of human life--a prudent and wise engagement with the world in many dimensions.” These dimensions include work, leisure, community, worship, and recreation. He suggested any approach to “restarting” the economy should take place in a context that recognizes “the great dignity of work” with the added sense of “the essential things, which are beyond just ‘making a living’.”

“This disruption has brought much multi-dimensional damage to people,” he said. “I believe authorities are attempting to walk the fine line between a serious and known risk and the need to get people into ‘normal’ living and acting, with the heightened concerns for safety and health.”

Sovak said that while there was indeed economic disruption, in part the economy “never really stopped.” Consumers continued to purchase, many people found different ways to trade, and the government infused additional money seeking a positive impact.

“If we are discussing how to get people back into the mix of work, travel, or play, again, much of that never stopped with work at home, it just got more creative,” he said.

At the same time, Sovak said that a too cautious approach to re-opening business will mean many businesses close, unable to adapt to the coronavirus epidemic.

There is also another risk.

“The risk of being too reckless means this thing (the epidemic) will come back around in a couple of months and bring about an even more devastating grind to the economy,” he added. “Again, the virtue of prudence comes to mind on how to tell what the times call for.”

“This isn’t a one-size fits all solution – what is controllable and what is predictable will be two ways to view the danger,” Sovak continued. “How much certainty does one have in the situation? The more certainty there is, the less risk and easier the decision that can be made.”

Richards similarly said there is no one right answer for a business response.

“Every business will have specific, even unique challenges, depending on where it is and what it does,” he said. “But the same general rules apply for businesses as for everyone else: Treat every person with respect and dignity, and that includes employees and customers.”

“It’s a serious mistake to present the current debate as if it were between the ‘economy’ on one side, and ‘lives’ on the other,” Richards said. “We should care about the economy precisely because we care about human lives and well-being. Really families, real companies, employers, and employees. Real lives.”

Richards cited the massive unemployment in recent weeks. The unemployment rate was at an historic low of 3.5% in February. Since mid-March, 33.3 million people have filed unemployment claims, making the unemployment rate higher than 20%, BBC News reports.

“There’s no such thing as a zero-risk option this side of the kingdom of God,” Richards continued. “Any challenge, like the coronavirus, involves a multi-side risk: Lives were at stake no matter what path we took,” he said. “The path of wisdom lies in understanding what the real risks are, and how likely various outcomes are. Only then do we have much chance of responding so that the benefits are greater than the costs.”

In the coronavirus epidemic, policymakers face the challenge of making “far-reaching decisions without having very good information to work with.”

“A response that puts 30 million people out of work isn’t just an economic inconvenience. It leads, and will lead, to loss of life and well-being,” said Richards. “The president understood this from the beginning. This is why he worried on Twitter that the ‘cure’ not be worse than the ‘disease’.”

“The question we will be asking for the next several years is this: Did the government response, and in particular, the shutdown of businesses and shelter-in-place orders for healthy people, save more lives than, in the long run, it will have cost?”

Sovak told CNA there are signs that tell whether a business mentality is dominating a discussion or or being neglected. When there is “negativity, pessimism or placing blame,” a conversation is likely headed in a wrong direction, whether a business community is being criticized or is offering criticism.

“Business certainly can’t solve every issue or does it have all the answers; however, there can be many benefits in taking a business approach to address any situation,” he said.

At the same time, a business analysis may not appeal to many, given the human cost.

“People are acting on emotion more today than facts and reason. Thirty million people are unemployed – putting a business touch on that doesn’t help that situation,” Sovak said. “Supply and demand means prices will rise, and inflation will come about but that doesn’t mean we have to bring that approach into the conversation when many people’s lives have been disrupted both financially and health-wise. This is where empathy has to come into play.”

Denver Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 02:59 am (CNA).- On Sunday, March 15, Nebraskans in the Diocese of Lincoln still had a choice of whether or not they wanted to attend Mass and risk possible exposure to coronavirus.

By the next day, they didn’t. Public Masses in the diocese were canceled, as they soon were throughout the country due to the pandemic.

Now that curves of infection are “flattening” and hospitals have had a chance to ramp up their capacity and supplies, many dioceses, including Lincoln, are slowly reopening Masses to the public. What exactly that will look like varies a lot depending on each parish's unique spaces and limitations. 

Archbishop George Lucas, currently serving as acting bishop of Lincoln, has followed guidelines from Governor Pete Ricketts in issuing some general guidance for re-starting public Masses. Ultimately, however, he left the decision to reopen up to each individual parish.

One place that has been offering public Masses as of Monday, May 4, is St. Wenceslaus parish in Wahoo, Nebraska, a town of 4,500 people located in the Diocese of Lincoln.

Fr. Joseph Faulkner, the pastor of St. Wenceslaus in Wahoo, said he decided to reopen public Masses at his parish after meeting virtually with the other priests in his area. The Masses, of course, will look quite different than normal - with limited capacity, social distancing, and precautions like no holy water, no hymnals, and no sign of peace.

And in many ways, Faulkner said he is encouraging his parishioners to act like it’s the weekend of March 14-15 again.

“From the get-go, we're telling people - you need to make a decision. I even put in my message (to parishioners), think back to - it's March 14th and you're trying to make a decision. Whatever decision you made then is probably still the right decision. If you need to be extra careful for yourself, for your family, for your parents, for your coworkers, for your patients you see in the nursing home, stay away,” he said.

Parishes in the cities of Lincoln and Omaha decided to wait to reopen, Faulkner said. Lincoln has a re-opening date of May 11 for non-essential businesses, and the size of Omaha parishes made re-opening at this point very difficult. Although Wahoo sees a lot of traffic from Lincoln and Omaha and other surrounding towns, Faulkner said he thought he could use appropriate precautions to make reopening safe at his parish.

“St. Wenceslaus specifically is lucky. We've got a nice big basement, so that gets you another 30%-40% seating room. We've got three priests, which is really lucky. So from five weekend Masses, we're going up to eight, so we can do more to spread our people out.”

Faulkner said he has even offered to other parishes with just one priest that he can send someone to help them out if they are offering extra Masses for social distancing and are feeling burned out.

For attendance and seating, Faulkner said he is blocking off every other pew and is going to stagger families in order to maintain six feet of distance. Instead of having people call or sign up online, Faulkner said he is hoping that the extra Mass times, the use of the basement space, as well as the people who choose to stay home, will be enough to maintain an appropriately staggered congregation.

Faulkner said he has been grateful to have public weekday Masses before the weekend to work out some of the kinks of the new restrictions. For example, he’s still working on his communion line protocol, he said. He tried a method using the side aisles and then the center aisle at his first Mass on May 4th, and “it was horrible. So I'm going to fix that tomorrow.”

Masks during communion have also been tricky.

“It's really hard to say Mass with a mask on, and then I have to make my Communion, I have to receive,” Faulkner said. The priests were donated some N95 masks, which Faulkner tried to use on Monday, but the straps made it hard to quickly receive communion and readjust the mask without touching his face or his glasses, he said, so he’s hoping to find a different kind of mask by the weekend.

From his parishioners, Faulkner said he has seen a variety of attitudes toward the closing, and now re-opening, of public Masses.

“There's really three camps,” he said. “There's the, yes, amen, be safe, meditate-on-the-saints-who-didn't-have-the-Eucharist-for-years group.”

“Then there's definitely the middle group, which is like, I don't want to take any risks, but I want the first available ‘okay’ to go to Mass,” he said.

“And then there's the, ‘I'm 85. If I die because I went to Mass, thank God’ crowd. Literally the people who are most cavalier are the older ones,” Faulkner said.

A bishop’s perspective: Oklahoma

Archbishop Paul Coakley, the bishop of Oklahoma City, told CNA that Catholic parishes throughout the state will start celebrating public Masses again on May 18th, with their first public weekend Masses on May 23-24, the Feast of the Ascension.

In a May 7 letter to Oklahoma Catholics posted on the archdiocese’s website, Coakley recognized that while the past two months without Mass have been a painful time for many, God never abandoned his people.

“The gift of the Holy Spirit assures us of God's continued presence in our lives. No matter the circumstance, he is with us. Perhaps the greatest sacrifice for the lay faithful these past few months has been fasting from Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity given to us in his real presence in the Eucharist. We pray that in this time of Eucharistic fasting, God has graced you with a profound hunger for this communion with Jesus and the members of his Body, the Church,” he stated.
 
The timing of reopening public Masses was chosen just before the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost “to remind us of God’s faithfulness and to prepare to celebrate the birth of our beloved Church on Pentecost,” he added.

The decision was reached through consultations with Bishop David Konderla of Tulsa, priest councils in the state, and medical experts, “including a prominent infectious disease specialist,” Coakley said.

“It won't be business as usual,” he said.  “We will be celebrating public Mass and people will be able to come and they will be able to receive Holy communion, but the churches won't be full. In fact, we're limiting it to 33% of the occupancy capacity,” he noted.

“We've been very cautious watching the numbers and putting in place pretty strict guidelines to ensure that we were able to maintain social distances and practice the appropriate kind of hygiene,” he added.

A five page document released by the state’s Catholic dioceses details the exact guidelines, such as including 6-foot social distancing between pews, the recommendation that all attendees wear masks, and the recommendation that priests have plenty of hand sanitizer readily available throughout the church.

Coakley said the document offers guidelines for pastors while still giving them the flexibility to implement the recommendations and requirements in the way that works best for their unique parishes.

“If the church fills beyond capacity, we’re asking them to consider using other space in the parish, perhaps the parish hall, to be able to put overflow crowds and continuing to social distance properly, parking lots, things of that sort,” he said. “We're going to have to rely upon the creativity of our pastors and they have been demonstrating a great deal of creativity up to now, so I'm sure they'll continue to do so.”

Coakley said he is asking priests to also continue offering livestream Masses for people who will choose not to come to the public Masses at this time. He noted in his May 7 message that the dispensation from the Sunday obligation still stands for all Oklahoma Catholics at this time.

“We are dealing with an invisible threat to people’s lives, a virus that our brightest doctors and scientists are still figuring out. The ever-present temptation in our American culture is to want solutions immediately and to act quickly, because we want what we want, and we want it now. As a Church, we must proceed more deliberatively,” he said.

Coakley told CNA that while he understands Catholics’ fear, anger and frustration during these past two months of suspended Masses, he also encouraged them to think of their time away as a way of serving others.

“We’re really living through a health crisis, a time of severe challenges, and it's impacting us in so many ways economically, and in terms of social isolation, loneliness, the liturgy also. But I think we need to think beyond individual rights and consider also our responsibilities toward one another, especially the responsibility to love and serve one another, to be mindful of one another's needs.”

Wichita, Kansas

On May 3, Bishop Carl Kemme of the Diocese of Wichita announced plans to reopen public Masses starting on Wednesday, May 6, following recommendations of the county’s local public health authorities.

Phase one of the guidelines will last until May 20, and they stipulate that parishes may hold Masses at no more than 33% capacity. Churches will use only one entrance, so that the number of people coming may be properly counted and seated, and six foot spacing should be clearly marked so that people can maintain social distance.

Mass attendees are encouraged to wear masks, and priests are required to wear them while distributing communion. Parishes are also encouraged to keep hand sanitizer available at entrances, and parishioners are “strongly encouraged” to receive communion in the hand.

Fr. Clay Kimbro is the parochial vicar at St. Anne’s parish in Wichita. Kimbro said he and the other priests of the diocese have been having weekly virtual talks with the bishop about when to re-open Masses and what that might look like, and so priests were able to give feedback as to what guidelines they thought would work well.

At St. Anne’s, which has 1,200 families, Kimbro and his leadership team have been meeting and working on logistical things, like roping off every other pew so that Mass attendees can maintain proper distancing.

He said he has also had extra meetings with his ushers, who on the weekends will “seat everyone so that they can make sure that the distance is maintained. That's a lot more responsibility than our ushers are normally given.”

Kimbro said the parish is not having parishioners sign up for Masses online. Instead, if more people show up than the allowed 33%, the overflow congregation will be directed to the school’s auditorium, where a second priest - either Kimbro or his pastor - will celebrate a concurrent Mass, also with social distancing protocols in place.

“We were a little leery of (adding Mass times), because when you add Mass times, it's hard to take them back,” Kimbro said. “Also, it's hard to turn people away. They come to the door at 10 a.m. for Mass, and we say, ‘Come back at 1:00 p.m.’ Well, it's a lot easier to say, ‘Go over to the auditorium.’”

Kimbro said the parish is working on decorating the auditorium to make it an appropriate place to have Mass, and they are also putting down tape lines to direct traffic and to mark distances.

“There's a lot of work in planning, and it can be a little overwhelming, but we're overall just really excited to see people again,” he said.

St. Anne’s parishioners have been “all over the map” in terms of their eagerness to return to Mass at this time, Kimbro said. Some have been signing up to read at Mass, or to usher or distribute communion, because they miss Mass so much and they want to be involved.

Others are a bit more anxious, Kimbro said, and he has encouraged those people to attend weekday Masses, where there are likely to be fewer people.

He also added that the Sunday obligation continues to be dispensed for everyone, as Bishop Kemme made clear in his May 3 announcement.

“I do want to emphasize that the current pandemic is far from over. Medical experts tell us that this health crisis remains a very serious threat to the lives of many people,” Kemme stated.

“Because of this, I want to urge all those in the high risk population and others who so choose to continue to use the general dispensation I am giving from the obligation to attend the Sunday celebration of the Mass, which continues indefinitely during this crisis. Please do not put yourself or others at risk by attending the Masses once they resume. This is my urgent appeal to all in our Catholic Community: use extraordinary caution and good judgment in determining if you should attend Mass. No mortal sin is committed if you decide that you and your family should not attend.”

Kimbro said that he is looking forward to having parishioners come back to Mass, even though it might not be the triumphant return that some may have envisioned just yet, with everyone packing in the pews like normal.

“I think everybody was hoping it would kind of be like this post-9/11 experience, where churches are packed and everybody recognizes that need (for God), but we're tempering that, and it's kind of like everything in this virus, right? Our expectations versus our reality - having to live in the reality of the moment and what we're given and just go with that,” he said. 

“But then I looked at the Gospel for this Sunday that we're back, and the first line is: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.’ So that's perfect.”

With the help of puppets, Corrie, a short-term worker from the UK was able to share the message of Christ in schools and kindergartens across Hungary this Easter.

OM Hungary team members put on a special Christmas programme a local refugee camp.

OM Hungary's Sports Team brings baseball and the Gospel to local schools in their now-annual visit to sports classes.

The impact of baseball on young people’s lives in Hungary goes far beyond learning how to play a new sport.

London, England, May 5, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- A parish in London’s West End is offering the homeless adoration, access to sacraments, and the rosary -- along with food provided by a five-star restaurant. 

St. Patrick’s Church in Soho, an area known for its nightlife and red-light district, is offering a remarkable ministry to the homeless as the capital struggles to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. 

Pastor Fr. Alexander Sherbrooke said he had “a strong sense that the Holy Spirit is literally building a church on the streets” in response to the crisis. 

When the city began to shut down in mid-March, Westminster City Council turned to Sherbrooke, who has overseen daily outreach to the homeless since he arrived in the parish in 2001.

He told CNA that the council had asked St. Patrick’s to increase its provision of food to the homeless significantly while it tried to house those living on the streets. 

The parish, founded in 1792, had previously fed the homeless in its parish center. But after Catholic churches across the country were ordered to close because of the virus, St. Patrick’s was forced to improvise. It began serving the homeless food on its doorstep twice a day, Monday through Sunday.

“On most days we are providing up to 320 meals,” Sherbrooke explained. “On average, we probably see 220 people a day, some of whom come for both breakfast and dinner.”

Hot food is supplied by the Connaught Hotel, a five-star restaurant in London’s affluent Mayfair district, as well as by Wiltons Restaurant in Jermyn Street. The Pret a Manger chain provides sandwiches. 

“It’s a very sophisticated operation and we fully intend to be diligent in preserving social distancing, personal hygiene, food hygiene, etc,” the priest said. “We have a good number of volunteers. We also continue to provide a shower and lavatory facility.” 

Sherbrooke explained that the homeless in the West End live off the footfall generated by local businesses, restaurants and theaters. 

“There is none of that now,” he said. “It’s amazingly empty and can be quite intimidating, particularly at nighttime.”

”The West End has many who are alcohol and drug dependent and without their normal source of income, this can create a volatile situation. Police are very present, but the West End is very inhospitable, at times threatening and not very pleasant.”

“I’ve been in the parish for some 17 years, throughout which  much of my time has been spent in pastoral care for those who are needy. But nothing has really prepared me for where we are at the moment.”

Volunteers at St. Patrick’s are determined to relieve spiritual as well as physical deprivation. As food is distributed, they pray before the Blessed Sacrament in a nearby adoration tent, while observing social distancing. Sherbrooke is available for visitors seeking a sacramental encounter, sitting at a safe distance and behind a white sheet. There is also a tent offering lectio divina. 

“This enhanced feeding facility has come very much as a response to the request of the local authority,” Sherbrooke said. “We have a long tradition of feeding people happily and well. But in a very strange sort of way, the Church, from being a physical reality behind four walls, is now a reality in the street.”

Sherbrooke, who cites St Damien of Molokai and Mother Teresa as inspirations, continued: “It’s imparting a spiritual, pastoral care, where I have a strong sense that the Holy Spirit is literally building a church on the streets. There’s lectio divina. There’s adoration -- in other words, a prolongation of the Holy Mass -- confession, rosary, etc.”

“We are ministering to the people. We are going to them, speaking to them, giving rosaries and sharing the Gospel. So there is a real work of evangelization going on.”

Volunteers also distribute a sheet each week with reflections, Scripture readings, and advice on how to pray.

“So there’s a kind of catechesis of the poor which is going on,” Sherbrooke said.

“There is a very real sense that in this terrible virus situation that God is creating a very different kind of Church, much more evangelical, and perhaps simpler. All this has happened not through management but I believe through God's providence.”

He noted that despite the present dangers volunteers felt a strong sense of supernatural protection. 

“Personally, I would say that the way that I haven’t caught [the virus] -- given the reality of the situation here -- is that every day I pray that the Precious Blood of Jesus will come into my heart, my veins, my lungs, and protect me from the virus so that I can do this work,” he said. 

In 2011, St. Patrick’s reopened after a £4 million restoration project, which included the excavation of the basement and the creation of the parish center, located beneath the church. Food for the homeless is now prepared there every day.

“It’s almost as though God has crafted this parish for this work at this time,” Sherbrooke said.  

CNA Staff, May 5, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Poland’s bishops have intervened in a debate about whether presidential elections scheduled for May 10 should go ahead despite a nationwide lockdown.

A statement from the permanent council of the Polish bishops’ conference April 27 urged politicians to work together to ensure that the election would be regarded as legitimate by all sides. 

It said: “We appeal to the consciences of those responsible for the common good of our homeland, both those in power and the opposition, to work out a common position on the presidential elections in this extraordinary situation.” 

Poland’s ruling coalition, led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, has rejected calls to postpone the election, due to take place this Sunday. 

The state began introducing lockdown measures March 10, which it is now starting to lift. Poland, which has a population of almost 38 million, had 14,242 documented coronavirus cases and 700 deaths as of May 5, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

The Polish Senate began debating legislation May 5 that would allow the election to be held by postal vote, rather than at polling stations, due to the pandemic. 

The Sejm, the lower chamber of the Polish parliament, will have the final say on the legislation. 

The bishops called on lawmakers to resolve the issue while upholding the principles of Poland’s constitution. They emphasized that they were not seeking to engage in “purely political disputes over the form or timing of election, let alone to advocate this or that solution.”

The bishops’ permanent council said: “We encourage dialogue between the parties to seek solutions that would not raise legal doubts and suspicion, not only of a violation of the current constitutional order but also of the principles of free and fair elections adopted in a democratic society.”

“We ask that, guided by the best will, they would seek in their actions the common good, which today is expressed both by the life, health and social existence of Poles, as well as broad social trust in the electoral procedures of a democratic state jointly developed over the years.”

The bishops continued: “In this difficult situation that we are experiencing, we should take care to cultivate a mature democracy, protect the nation of laws, building -- despite differences -- a culture of solidarity, also in the political sphere.”

If parliament approves the postal vote, the government could delay the vote to either May 17 or May 23 to allow more preparation time, according to Reuters. 

Opinion polls suggest the incumbent President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, would be re-elected by a significant margin if the vote were held soon. 

Bishops’ conference president Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki entrusted Poland to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and to Our Lady, Queen of Poland, at Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa May 3.

OM attempts to bring Christ’s love to the darkest corners of Sham Shui Po, and to walk with those neglected by society.

Denver Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 08:19 pm (CNA).- A Christian ethic of service and solidarity must be an important feature of the business response to the coronavirus epidemic and its economic impact, Catholic business educators have said.

For Karel Sovak, associate professor in the University of Mary’s Gary Tharaldson School of Business, two of the biggest skills that business can bring to recovery efforts are self-awareness and empathy.

“A business needs to help the community identify who they are, which may have been lost during this time of stay at home,” he told CNA. “Businesses need to help communities focus on what makes it viable in the first place, which are the people. Business can be used as a force for good only if they understand what that ‘good’ means. Being aware of those strengths can help transform a community as they seek to overcome any devastating tragedy, natural or otherwise.”

He cited the symbolic unity and mutual support shown by individuals and businesses, whether by showing hearts in windows, purchasing gift cards for businesses, or taking meals to essential personnel.

Over 75,000 deaths are attributed to Covid-19 in the U.S., with over 1.25 million confirmed cases, John Hopkins University said Thursday. Efforts to prevent the spread of infection led to public officials’ orders to close businesses, with the exception of some businesses deemed essential services.

Millions of people have been left unemployed due to the closures, while those with essential jobs worry that their places of employment are newly dangerous.

Sovak emphasized the importance of trust as a business skill, but noted that low trust and polarization were problems even before the epidemic. Community is about bringing people into communion, and business has a role to play in that community building.

“Business can reassure families, non-profits and churches that they are there for them. Solidarity is the word that comes to mind when determining how to establish trust,” he said. The social and spiritual nature of the human being means people will need to come together once again “to use the gifts God gave to each person to meet the needs of others.”

Laura Munoz, associate professor of marketing at the University of Dallas’ Satish and Yasmin Gupta College of Business, said her business school emphasizes both a skill-based and a virtue-based education that can help respond to the crisis.

Business professors aim to help students become resilient and adaptable. They must become critical thinkers “aware of multiple stakeholder perceptions in an ethical way,” she told CNA. These skills can also help in the service of others, as in the case of a business student who used her business skills to fund raise for an Argentine orphanage on social media.

“Yes, skills are needed but they cannot come if the ‘business person’ is not aware of the needs of the environment and does not have love, charity, for others,” said Munoz. “Businesses that acknowledge that serving a community is give and take, not just take, will probably receive more community support as well.”

For Sovak, Catholic business education focuses on virtues, “servant-leadership,” and upholding the tenets of Catholic social teaching.

“There is no proof that any instruction can adequately prepare anyone, let alone young minds, for such a large-scale disruption as this pandemic has caused,” he said. However, teaching students the cardinal virtues of prudence, courage, justice and temperance is a good path in both strong economies and in economic downturns.

Such an education helps students “to understand that life is not about them; it is about serving others who are in need, which is what we are called to do.” Students should be prepared “to recognize their vocation is more than a job and they are called to greatness, ‘magnanimity,’ especially in dire times.” This helps them to “focus less on self and more on the situation at hand” and to bring about “true humility.” This path helps students be optimistic and trusting in innovative ways and help contribute to solutions

“Life is full of disruptions, simply because we can’t predict the future,” Jay Wesley Richards, assistant research professor at the Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Business, told CNA. “I think two of the most important business skills are simply virtues. One is courage—which means you’ll act even if you might fail. The other is resilience or anti-fragility—which means you learn from disruption and failure. The pandemic, and more precisely, the shutdown in response to it, is a historic and massive disruption. But disruption itself is part of life.”

Richards said one of his classes this semester had been discussing looming disruptions from technology and “the need to develop virtues and skills that humans will always do better than machines.”

“The discussion was mostly abstract until spring break, when the semester itself was disrupted by the pandemic shutdown, and we had to move online,” he said. “Suddenly, we were using disruptive (if imperfect) video-conferencing technology! At that point, students started asking more questions about disruption in the economy.”

Economic downturns in the business cycle are a standard topic in business education. Munoz said a pandemic is one of many possibilities taught through case studies, role playing, business planning, and discussions.

“We focus on going beyond a disruption and thinking ‘so what? How do we continue?’”

“Instead of the business coming to a stop, we think: ‘and what else can we do? How else can we do it?’” she said.

Michael Welker, an economics professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, reflected on the need for creativity given the conditions of a pandemic event.

“Such an event, in our lifetimes, is one that is unprecedented, complex, and so widespread, that there is a need for courage, openness to failure, iteration of ideas and experiments, and a need for management decisions to frame their enterprise cultures to engender this powerful way that human beings image the Creator,” Welker said.

Efforts to re-open businesses and other social venues, including places of worship, have come to be the focus of debate, planning, and activity.

Welker said the focus on “restarting the economy” means a focus on “a critical aspect of human life--a prudent and wise engagement with the world in many dimensions.” These dimensions include work, leisure, community, worship, and recreation. He suggested any approach to “restarting” the economy should take place in a context that recognizes “the great dignity of work” with the added sense of “the essential things, which are beyond just ‘making a living’.”

“This disruption has brought much multi-dimensional damage to people,” he said. “I believe authorities are attempting to walk the fine line between a serious and known risk and the need to get people into ‘normal’ living and acting, with the heightened concerns for safety and health.”

Sovak said that while there was indeed economic disruption, in part the economy “never really stopped.” Consumers continued to purchase, many people found different ways to trade, and the government infused additional money seeking a positive impact.

“If we are discussing how to get people back into the mix of work, travel, or play, again, much of that never stopped with work at home, it just got more creative,” he said.

At the same time, Sovak said that a too cautious approach to re-opening business will mean many businesses close, unable to adapt to the coronavirus epidemic.

There is also another risk.

“The risk of being too reckless means this thing (the epidemic) will come back around in a couple of months and bring about an even more devastating grind to the economy,” he added. “Again, the virtue of prudence comes to mind on how to tell what the times call for.”

“This isn’t a one-size fits all solution – what is controllable and what is predictable will be two ways to view the danger,” Sovak continued. “How much certainty does one have in the situation? The more certainty there is, the less risk and easier the decision that can be made.”

Richards similarly said there is no one right answer for a business response.

“Every business will have specific, even unique challenges, depending on where it is and what it does,” he said. “But the same general rules apply for businesses as for everyone else: Treat every person with respect and dignity, and that includes employees and customers.”

“It’s a serious mistake to present the current debate as if it were between the ‘economy’ on one side, and ‘lives’ on the other,” Richards said. “We should care about the economy precisely because we care about human lives and well-being. Really families, real companies, employers, and employees. Real lives.”

Richards cited the massive unemployment in recent weeks. The unemployment rate was at an historic low of 3.5% in February. Since mid-March, 33.3 million people have filed unemployment claims, making the unemployment rate higher than 20%, BBC News reports.

“There’s no such thing as a zero-risk option this side of the kingdom of God,” Richards continued. “Any challenge, like the coronavirus, involves a multi-side risk: Lives were at stake no matter what path we took,” he said. “The path of wisdom lies in understanding what the real risks are, and how likely various outcomes are. Only then do we have much chance of responding so that the benefits are greater than the costs.”

In the coronavirus epidemic, policymakers face the challenge of making “far-reaching decisions without having very good information to work with.”

“A response that puts 30 million people out of work isn’t just an economic inconvenience. It leads, and will lead, to loss of life and well-being,” said Richards. “The president understood this from the beginning. This is why he worried on Twitter that the ‘cure’ not be worse than the ‘disease’.”

“The question we will be asking for the next several years is this: Did the government response, and in particular, the shutdown of businesses and shelter-in-place orders for healthy people, save more lives than, in the long run, it will have cost?”

Sovak told CNA there are signs that tell whether a business mentality is dominating a discussion or or being neglected. When there is “negativity, pessimism or placing blame,” a conversation is likely headed in a wrong direction, whether a business community is being criticized or is offering criticism.

“Business certainly can’t solve every issue or does it have all the answers; however, there can be many benefits in taking a business approach to address any situation,” he said.

At the same time, a business analysis may not appeal to many, given the human cost.

“People are acting on emotion more today than facts and reason. Thirty million people are unemployed – putting a business touch on that doesn’t help that situation,” Sovak said. “Supply and demand means prices will rise, and inflation will come about but that doesn’t mean we have to bring that approach into the conversation when many people’s lives have been disrupted both financially and health-wise. This is where empathy has to come into play.”

Denver Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 02:59 am (CNA).- On Sunday, March 15, Nebraskans in the Diocese of Lincoln still had a choice of whether or not they wanted to attend Mass and risk possible exposure to coronavirus.

By the next day, they didn’t. Public Masses in the diocese were canceled, as they soon were throughout the country due to the pandemic.

Now that curves of infection are “flattening” and hospitals have had a chance to ramp up their capacity and supplies, many dioceses, including Lincoln, are slowly reopening Masses to the public. What exactly that will look like varies a lot depending on each parish's unique spaces and limitations. 

Archbishop George Lucas, currently serving as acting bishop of Lincoln, has followed guidelines from Governor Pete Ricketts in issuing some general guidance for re-starting public Masses. Ultimately, however, he left the decision to reopen up to each individual parish.

One place that has been offering public Masses as of Monday, May 4, is St. Wenceslaus parish in Wahoo, Nebraska, a town of 4,500 people located in the Diocese of Lincoln.

Fr. Joseph Faulkner, the pastor of St. Wenceslaus in Wahoo, said he decided to reopen public Masses at his parish after meeting virtually with the other priests in his area. The Masses, of course, will look quite different than normal - with limited capacity, social distancing, and precautions like no holy water, no hymnals, and no sign of peace.

And in many ways, Faulkner said he is encouraging his parishioners to act like it’s the weekend of March 14-15 again.

“From the get-go, we're telling people - you need to make a decision. I even put in my message (to parishioners), think back to - it's March 14th and you're trying to make a decision. Whatever decision you made then is probably still the right decision. If you need to be extra careful for yourself, for your family, for your parents, for your coworkers, for your patients you see in the nursing home, stay away,” he said.

Parishes in the cities of Lincoln and Omaha decided to wait to reopen, Faulkner said. Lincoln has a re-opening date of May 11 for non-essential businesses, and the size of Omaha parishes made re-opening at this point very difficult. Although Wahoo sees a lot of traffic from Lincoln and Omaha and other surrounding towns, Faulkner said he thought he could use appropriate precautions to make reopening safe at his parish.

“St. Wenceslaus specifically is lucky. We've got a nice big basement, so that gets you another 30%-40% seating room. We've got three priests, which is really lucky. So from five weekend Masses, we're going up to eight, so we can do more to spread our people out.”

Faulkner said he has even offered to other parishes with just one priest that he can send someone to help them out if they are offering extra Masses for social distancing and are feeling burned out.

For attendance and seating, Faulkner said he is blocking off every other pew and is going to stagger families in order to maintain six feet of distance. Instead of having people call or sign up online, Faulkner said he is hoping that the extra Mass times, the use of the basement space, as well as the people who choose to stay home, will be enough to maintain an appropriately staggered congregation.

Faulkner said he has been grateful to have public weekday Masses before the weekend to work out some of the kinks of the new restrictions. For example, he’s still working on his communion line protocol, he said. He tried a method using the side aisles and then the center aisle at his first Mass on May 4th, and “it was horrible. So I'm going to fix that tomorrow.”

Masks during communion have also been tricky.

“It's really hard to say Mass with a mask on, and then I have to make my Communion, I have to receive,” Faulkner said. The priests were donated some N95 masks, which Faulkner tried to use on Monday, but the straps made it hard to quickly receive communion and readjust the mask without touching his face or his glasses, he said, so he’s hoping to find a different kind of mask by the weekend.

From his parishioners, Faulkner said he has seen a variety of attitudes toward the closing, and now re-opening, of public Masses.

“There's really three camps,” he said. “There's the, yes, amen, be safe, meditate-on-the-saints-who-didn't-have-the-Eucharist-for-years group.”

“Then there's definitely the middle group, which is like, I don't want to take any risks, but I want the first available ‘okay’ to go to Mass,” he said.

“And then there's the, ‘I'm 85. If I die because I went to Mass, thank God’ crowd. Literally the people who are most cavalier are the older ones,” Faulkner said.

A bishop’s perspective: Oklahoma

Archbishop Paul Coakley, the bishop of Oklahoma City, told CNA that Catholic parishes throughout the state will start celebrating public Masses again on May 18th, with their first public weekend Masses on May 23-24, the Feast of the Ascension.

In a May 7 letter to Oklahoma Catholics posted on the archdiocese’s website, Coakley recognized that while the past two months without Mass have been a painful time for many, God never abandoned his people.

“The gift of the Holy Spirit assures us of God's continued presence in our lives. No matter the circumstance, he is with us. Perhaps the greatest sacrifice for the lay faithful these past few months has been fasting from Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity given to us in his real presence in the Eucharist. We pray that in this time of Eucharistic fasting, God has graced you with a profound hunger for this communion with Jesus and the members of his Body, the Church,” he stated.
 
The timing of reopening public Masses was chosen just before the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost “to remind us of God’s faithfulness and to prepare to celebrate the birth of our beloved Church on Pentecost,” he added.

The decision was reached through consultations with Bishop David Konderla of Tulsa, priest councils in the state, and medical experts, “including a prominent infectious disease specialist,” Coakley said.

“It won't be business as usual,” he said.  “We will be celebrating public Mass and people will be able to come and they will be able to receive Holy communion, but the churches won't be full. In fact, we're limiting it to 33% of the occupancy capacity,” he noted.

“We've been very cautious watching the numbers and putting in place pretty strict guidelines to ensure that we were able to maintain social distances and practice the appropriate kind of hygiene,” he added.

A five page document released by the state’s Catholic dioceses details the exact guidelines, such as including 6-foot social distancing between pews, the recommendation that all attendees wear masks, and the recommendation that priests have plenty of hand sanitizer readily available throughout the church.

Coakley said the document offers guidelines for pastors while still giving them the flexibility to implement the recommendations and requirements in the way that works best for their unique parishes.

“If the church fills beyond capacity, we’re asking them to consider using other space in the parish, perhaps the parish hall, to be able to put overflow crowds and continuing to social distance properly, parking lots, things of that sort,” he said. “We're going to have to rely upon the creativity of our pastors and they have been demonstrating a great deal of creativity up to now, so I'm sure they'll continue to do so.”

Coakley said he is asking priests to also continue offering livestream Masses for people who will choose not to come to the public Masses at this time. He noted in his May 7 message that the dispensation from the Sunday obligation still stands for all Oklahoma Catholics at this time.

“We are dealing with an invisible threat to people’s lives, a virus that our brightest doctors and scientists are still figuring out. The ever-present temptation in our American culture is to want solutions immediately and to act quickly, because we want what we want, and we want it now. As a Church, we must proceed more deliberatively,” he said.

Coakley told CNA that while he understands Catholics’ fear, anger and frustration during these past two months of suspended Masses, he also encouraged them to think of their time away as a way of serving others.

“We’re really living through a health crisis, a time of severe challenges, and it's impacting us in so many ways economically, and in terms of social isolation, loneliness, the liturgy also. But I think we need to think beyond individual rights and consider also our responsibilities toward one another, especially the responsibility to love and serve one another, to be mindful of one another's needs.”

Wichita, Kansas

On May 3, Bishop Carl Kemme of the Diocese of Wichita announced plans to reopen public Masses starting on Wednesday, May 6, following recommendations of the county’s local public health authorities.

Phase one of the guidelines will last until May 20, and they stipulate that parishes may hold Masses at no more than 33% capacity. Churches will use only one entrance, so that the number of people coming may be properly counted and seated, and six foot spacing should be clearly marked so that people can maintain social distance.

Mass attendees are encouraged to wear masks, and priests are required to wear them while distributing communion. Parishes are also encouraged to keep hand sanitizer available at entrances, and parishioners are “strongly encouraged” to receive communion in the hand.

Fr. Clay Kimbro is the parochial vicar at St. Anne’s parish in Wichita. Kimbro said he and the other priests of the diocese have been having weekly virtual talks with the bishop about when to re-open Masses and what that might look like, and so priests were able to give feedback as to what guidelines they thought would work well.

At St. Anne’s, which has 1,200 families, Kimbro and his leadership team have been meeting and working on logistical things, like roping off every other pew so that Mass attendees can maintain proper distancing.

He said he has also had extra meetings with his ushers, who on the weekends will “seat everyone so that they can make sure that the distance is maintained. That's a lot more responsibility than our ushers are normally given.”

Kimbro said the parish is not having parishioners sign up for Masses online. Instead, if more people show up than the allowed 33%, the overflow congregation will be directed to the school’s auditorium, where a second priest - either Kimbro or his pastor - will celebrate a concurrent Mass, also with social distancing protocols in place.

“We were a little leery of (adding Mass times), because when you add Mass times, it's hard to take them back,” Kimbro said. “Also, it's hard to turn people away. They come to the door at 10 a.m. for Mass, and we say, ‘Come back at 1:00 p.m.’ Well, it's a lot easier to say, ‘Go over to the auditorium.’”

Kimbro said the parish is working on decorating the auditorium to make it an appropriate place to have Mass, and they are also putting down tape lines to direct traffic and to mark distances.

“There's a lot of work in planning, and it can be a little overwhelming, but we're overall just really excited to see people again,” he said.

St. Anne’s parishioners have been “all over the map” in terms of their eagerness to return to Mass at this time, Kimbro said. Some have been signing up to read at Mass, or to usher or distribute communion, because they miss Mass so much and they want to be involved.

Others are a bit more anxious, Kimbro said, and he has encouraged those people to attend weekday Masses, where there are likely to be fewer people.

He also added that the Sunday obligation continues to be dispensed for everyone, as Bishop Kemme made clear in his May 3 announcement.

“I do want to emphasize that the current pandemic is far from over. Medical experts tell us that this health crisis remains a very serious threat to the lives of many people,” Kemme stated.

“Because of this, I want to urge all those in the high risk population and others who so choose to continue to use the general dispensation I am giving from the obligation to attend the Sunday celebration of the Mass, which continues indefinitely during this crisis. Please do not put yourself or others at risk by attending the Masses once they resume. This is my urgent appeal to all in our Catholic Community: use extraordinary caution and good judgment in determining if you should attend Mass. No mortal sin is committed if you decide that you and your family should not attend.”

Kimbro said that he is looking forward to having parishioners come back to Mass, even though it might not be the triumphant return that some may have envisioned just yet, with everyone packing in the pews like normal.

“I think everybody was hoping it would kind of be like this post-9/11 experience, where churches are packed and everybody recognizes that need (for God), but we're tempering that, and it's kind of like everything in this virus, right? Our expectations versus our reality - having to live in the reality of the moment and what we're given and just go with that,” he said. 

“But then I looked at the Gospel for this Sunday that we're back, and the first line is: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.’ So that's perfect.”

OM Ships partners with Christian ministries and celebrates four years of service for Logos Hope.

From 21 July - 19 August, Logos Hope brought the hope of the Gospel to over 50,000 people who visited the ship in Incheon, South Korea.

The Autism Treatment Network and Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health were established in 2008 with goals of improving understanding of the medical aspects of autism spectrum disorders. Over the past decade, the combined network has conducted >2 dozen clinical studies, established clinical pathways for best practice, developed tool kits for professionals and families to support better care, and disseminated these works through numerous presentations at scientific meetings and publications in medical journals. As the joint network enters its second decade continuing this work, it is undergoing a transformation to increase these activities and accelerate their incorporation into clinical care at the primary care and specialty care levels. In this article, we describe the past accomplishments and present activities. We also outline planned undertakings such as the establishment of the Autism Learning Health Network, the increasing role of family members as co-producers of the work of the network, the growth of clinical trials activities with funding from foundations and industry, and expansion of work with primary care practices and autism specialty centers. We also discuss the challenges of supporting network activities and potential solutions to sustain the network.

Walvis Bay, Namibia:: The Vice President of Namibia officially opens Logos Hope as she visits the country.

Short Term Mission participants bring inspiration to Ukraine's churches for ministry amongst the aged and internally displaced people.

Bus4Life is OM’s mobile missions centre to the unreached people of Central and Eastern Europe, bringing books and also participating in summer programmes, as it did in summer 2017.

Why and how OM EAST produces Christian comics to reach minority peoples

OM Costa Rica brings the Festival of Smiles to the Cabécares and Bribri communities in Talamanca, Limón, to give gifts and God’s love to the children.

Mercy Teams International and a local church in Phnom Penh bring an Easter celebration to parents and children living in the slum.

OM’s Mercy Teams International and an Out of the Comfort Zone outreach team partner to practically demonstrate God’s love in Kampong Speu.

The Meadowbank Stadium was one of the shabbier landmarks in east Edinburgh until it was knocked down last year. A new one is rising from the ashes, looking like one of those massive cruise liners that appear in the Forth.

Framed prints of Steven Camley's cartoons are available by calling 0141 302 6210.

Rudy Gay's Flight 22 Foundation is partnering with ed-tech company EverFi to teach students how to create a successful business.

But the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was not unanimous in its support of the findings that students of color were not more likely to commit discipline-worthy offenses.

Russia's Teenagers Football League, the springboard to success for Yuri Zhirkov and Alan Dzagoev, has held a series of events aimed at uniting different faiths and nationalities.

Fever phobia is a ubiquitous problem throughout the world. As a result, fever is pharmacologically overtreated, and medical attention is frequently sought by worried parents.

Most Canadian parents fear their child’s fever, resulting in aggressive surveillance and treatment. Parents expect information about fever etiology and how to care for their ill child. Few parents expect antibiotics and satisfaction with care is high. (Read the full article)

At Battle High School in Columbia, Mo., students in geometry class have swapped their compasses and protractors for hammers and hard hats. And they're doing it for a good cause.

The Dallas String Quartet will deliver its passionate fusion of classical and contemporary music to the Community Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 19.