Author: Reporter

Last living survivors of Pearl Harbor attack keep returning to honor those who perished in 1941

Ira “Ike” Schab had just showered, put on a clean sailor’s uniform and closed his locker aboard the USS Dobbin when he heard a call for a fire rescue party. He went topside to see the USS Utah capsizing and Japanese planes in the air. He scurried back below deck to grab boxes of ammunition and joined a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to an anti-aircraft gun up above. He remembers being only 140 pounds (63.50 kilograms) as a 21-year-old, but somehow finding the strength to lift boxes weighing almost twice that. “We were pretty startled. Startled and...

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“Day One” Dictator: Trump admits he will abuse power to seek retribution if he returns to White House

Disgraced ex-president Donald Trump declined to rule out abusing power if he returns to the White House after Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity asked him on December 5 to respond to growing Democratic criticism of his rhetoric. The GOP presidential front-runner has talked about targeting his rivals — referring to them as “vermin” — and vowed to seek retribution if he wins a second term for what he argues are politically motivated prosecutions against him. As Trump has dominated the Republican presidential primary, President Joe Biden has stepped up his own warnings, contending Trump is ” determined to...

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Parents face the challenge of “day 5” as more schools are adopting 4-day weeks

It is a Monday in September, but with schools closed, the three children in the Pruente household have nowhere to be. Callahan, 13, contorts herself into a backbend as 7-year-old Hudson fiddles with a balloon and 10-year-old Keegan plays the piano. Like a growing number of students around the U.S., the Pruente children are on a four-day school schedule, a change instituted this fall by their district in Independence, Missouri. To the kids, it’s terrific. “I have a three-day break of school!” exclaimed Hudson. But their mom, Brandi Pruente, who teaches French in a neighboring district in suburban Kansas...

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Academic recovery: How schools can educate kids after a generation’s worth of progress was lost

On a breezy July morning in South Seattle, a dozen elementary-aged students ran math relays behind an elementary school. One by one, they raced to a table, where they scribbled answers to multiplication questions before sprinting back to high-five their teammate. These students are part of a summer program run by the nonprofit School Connect WA, designed to help them catch up on math and literacy skills lost during the pandemic. There are 25 students in the program, and all of them are one to three grades behind. One 11-year-old boy could not do two-digit subtraction. Thanks to the...

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Fears grow in Congress for funding Ukraine’s defense as GOP demands connecting aid with border security

Lawmakers in Congress are trying to forge an agreement on sending a new round of wartime assistance to Ukraine. But to succeed, they will have to find agreement on an issue that has confounded them for decades. Republicans in both chambers of Congress have made clear that they will not support additional aid for Ukraine unless it is paired with border security measures to help manage the influx of migrants at the Mexico-U.S. border. Their demand has injected one of the most contentious issues in American politics into a foreign policy debate that was already difficult. TIME IS SHORT...

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Contaminated drinking water: Why some states reject federal money to replace dangerous lead pipes

As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds. Washington, Oregon, Maine, and Alaska declined all or most of their federal funds in the first of five years that the mix of grants and loans is available. Some states are less prepared to pay for lead removal projects because, in many cases, the lead must first be found, experts said. And communities are hesitant to take out loans to search for their lead pipes. States...

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