| U.S. prosecutors to appeal probation for Beanie Babies creator Posted: 13 Feb 2014 04:04 PM PST  By Mary Wisniewski CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors on Thursday filed an appeal of the sentence of probation that kept billionaire Beanie Babies soft toy creator Ty Warner out of jail for his conviction on tax evasion. Warner pleaded guilty in October to tax evasion and in January was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Chicago to two years probation and at least 500 hours community service that includes mentoring high school students. The U.S. government filed a "notice of appeal" to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit over the January 15 sentencing order, according to court documents. Federal sentencing guidelines called for a prison sentence of up to five years.
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| Storms taking toll on families, schools in Northeast Posted: 13 Feb 2014 03:29 PM PST By Victoria Cavaliere and Chris Francescani NEW YORK (Reuters) - A winter storm that froze the U.S. southeast in its tracks pushed north on Thursday, with driving winds and heavy snow snarling travel and closing many schools from Washington to Connecticut, creating havoc for winter-weary parents. More than 700,000 people, including residents of Georgia and South Carolina hit by a heavy blast of ice a day earlier, were without power as the storm made its way up the coast, closing much of Washington and threatening to drop up to 18 inches of snow in some areas. Jane Mills, a former teacher from Nashville, Tennessee, who was walking with her 6-year-old granddaughter in Brooklyn, said it was "absolutely ridiculous" that public schools were open. About 1,000 people spent the night on cots and mats at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, the airport said. |
| California lawmaker wants warning labels on sugary drinks Posted: 13 Feb 2014 03:06 PM PST  By Sharon Bernstein SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - Sodas and most other sugar-sweetened drinks sold in California would be required to carry warning labels for obesity, diabetes and tooth decay under a bill introduced in Sacramento on Thursday and backed by several public health advocacy groups. The first proposal of its kind would put California, which banned sodas and junk food from public schools in 2005, back in the vanguard of a growing national movement to curb the consumption of high-caloric beverages that medical experts say are largely to blame for an epidemic of childhood obesity. A growing body of research has identified sugary drinks as the biggest contributors to added, empty calories in the American diet, and as a major culprit in a range of costly health problems associated with being overweight. Efforts to curtail consumption of sugary drinks through taxes and other efforts have met fierce resistance from the U.S. food and beverage industry, which came out against the California labeling bill on Thursday.
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| Record number of U.S. wives more educated than their husbands: study Posted: 13 Feb 2014 02:16 PM PST  By Marina Lopes NEW YORK (Reuters) - A record number of wives in the United States are more educated than their husbands, as the rate of college-educated women grows, according to the Pew Research Center. "It used to be more common for a husband to have more education than his wife in America," Wendy Wang, a research associate at Pew, said in a statement on her findings. After three decades of steadily increasing, the percentage of couples in which husbands are more educated fell to 20 percent in 2012. The trend among newlyweds is even more pronounced, in part, due to rising college graduation rates for women, the study says.
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| New York City draws fire for keeping schools open in blizzard Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:40 AM PST  By Edith Honan and Marina Lopes NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was blasted by a teachers union, many parents and even a well-known TV weatherman on Thursday for keeping the city's public schools open during near-blizzard conditions. Even as school districts in neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut wrestle with how to make up lost time after calling repeated snow days in a storm-filled winter, public schools in America's biggest city have been closed only once. Newly elected Mayor Bill de Blasio, a champion of early childhood education whose own teenaged son is in the public school system that has some 1.1 million students and 75,000 teachers across 1,800 locations, defended the decision to keep schools open. "I look at this from a number of different perspectives including that of a public school parent, which I have been for the last 14 years," de Blasio told reporters.
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| Today Is the Worst Day to Be a New York City Public School Kid Posted: 13 Feb 2014 08:14 AM PST  Washington D.C. has shut down, thousands of flights have been canceled, and a number of states have declared a state of emergency in the wake of this brutal storm. Yet, New York City's public school kids are going to school today. In keeping with its tradition of being stingy with snow days, the New York City Department of Education, decided to keep its schools open in spite of storm which is supposed to bring at least 10" of snow into the city:
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