1000501 Wicked Spring Weather

Wicked Spring Weather

Severe storm systems sweep across the south-central region of the U.S.

By Vickie An

A deadly storm system continued to sweep through the nation's midsection on Tuesday night and early Wednesday, causing widespread destruction and injuries in several states. Pounding rain, flash flooding and strong winds damaged dozens of homes and toppled trees. The violent storm killed 173 people across five states.

This round of wild weather comes just one day after a powerful storm system killed 11 people in Arkansas and Mississippi. On Monday, a tornado ripped through the town of Vilonia, Arkansas, in Faulkner County. The twister flattened homes, sent cars flying and tore down power lines. "It snapped overhead poles like they were toothpicks," said Faulkner County spokesman Stephan Hawks. "It was a heck of a little tornado."

A Season of Twisters

Much of the South was still struggling to pick up the pieces caused by flooding and earlier twisters when the latest series of storms struck on Tuesday. According to the Weather Channel, more than 290 confirmed tornadoes—and counting—have touched down in the U.S. in April. The number shatters the previous record, set in 1974, of 267 tornadoes in the same month.

The National Weather Service issued several tornado warnings in the region on Tuesday. Officials in Alabama reported two suspected tornadoes in Marshall County, near Birmingham. According to the National Weather Service in Fort Worth, Texas, at least one twister had hit between the small towns of Edom and Van, in East Texas.

"You could see lumber and stuff swirling in it," said resident Rhonda Modesitt, 45. She and her 15-year-old son had watched the tornado spin toward their apartment. "You could hear it coming through and then it got really still."

On April 22, a twister slammed Lambert Airport in St. Louis, Missouri, causing severe damage and chaos. The airport was closed after the tornado hit, but is now operating at near full capacity again. It was one of five twisters to hit Eastern Missouri on Friday.

The storm system is set to head east across the nation this week, affecting states from New York to Georgia.

Max-I knew that the weather is very bad in America right now. Many tornados and twisters swept through America and also killed a lot of people. I wonder why did this happen? Maybe it’s because of the hot weather of America. The storm started at a few days ago, and it blew everything where the tornado was, damaged a lot of homes and other things. At that time, it rained very hard, and there is lightning and floods too. After the storm, another twister came to America and also did the same thing with the storm. I know that every year, many tornados and twisters will sweep through America, and cause a lot of damage. Sometimes, the damage from the last twister hasn’t fixed, but there is already another twister which came to America. I think there are many twisters in America this month.

1000430 Cheng Yen

The 2011 TIME 100 Poll

Cast your votes for the leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes that you think are the most influential people in the world. Though official voting for inclusion on the TIME 100 list has now closed (with Rain as the 2011 readers' choice), users can continue to vote for their favorites until the final list, selected by our editors, is revealed on Thursday, April 21st

Cheng Yen

By TIME Staff Monday, Apr. 04, 2011

Age: 73
Occupation: Buddhist nun and philanthropist
Previous TIME 100 appearances: 0

Cheng Yen is known as the Chinese world's Mother Teresa. She runs the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, one of Asia's largest charities. Earthquakes, floods, typhoons, famine, tsunamis, you name it — Tzu Chi people are there dispensing food, blankets and warm clothing (as they have done recently in Japan), and also committing long-term by rebuilding villages, establishing clinics and schools and providing scholarships to needy students. The foundation is based in Hualien on Taiwan's east coast, but has chapters worldwide. Cheng Yen's reputation is such that the group is allowed everywhere, even into hermetic North Korea and conflict zones like Afghanistan. Tzu Chi is well funded by millions of donors, including a few tycoons who want her blessing, but there has never been any hint of impropriety.

Max-Cheng Yen is one of the most kindhearted people in Taiwan. Because of her father died suddenly when she was about twenty years old, she started to contact with Buddhism. After that, she went to Hualien to study Buddhism, and finally became a Buddhist nun. She founded Buddhism Tzu Chi Foundation, and now the foundation is already forty-five years old. When the foundation was founded, not many people know it, so they can only do things like donating money to help some people. However, after the foundation spread to other places of Taiwan, many more people become members of Tzu Chi, most of them had a bad life on the past and wanted to join Tzu Chi for the rest of their lives. In the past few years, the foundation started to help other countries when they met some disasters, they gave some supplies to the countries, and also donated money to them. So the Tzu Chi Foundation’s founder, Cheng Yen, is really a great Buddhist!

1000415 Spring Cleaning On Mount Everest

Spring Cleaning on Mount Everest

A team of mountaineers begins an expedition to clean up trash left behind by climbers of the world's highest peak

By Kelli Plasket

The world's tallest mountain is in need of spring cleaning. A team of mountaineers flew to Mount Everest today to begin an expedition to clean up tons of trash that was left on the massive mountain by its climbers.

Mount Everest is located in the Himalayas, on the border of Nepal and Tibet. At 29,035 feet about sea level, it's the tallest peak in the world. Climbers first successfully reached the peak in 1953. Since then, thousands of people have climbed Everest, leaving their trash along its trails. This includes ropes, tents and empty oxygen bottles, which climbers use to breath more comfortably at the mountain's high altitudes. Nepal requires Everest climbers to bring down everything they take up to the mountain to get their deposit back, but trash from climbs before the rule took effect still litters the slopes.

The mountaineers plan to bring down 11,000 pounds of garbage from Everest this spring. This is the peak climbing time before the summer monsoon season begins. Expedition members will receive $1.40 for every kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of trash they carry down the mountain.

A Local's Mission

Eco Everest Expedition organized the cleaning expedition. This is the fourth year one has been held. Leading the team is Apa, a veteran Nepalese guide who has climbed Everest a record 20 times since 1989. "I want to do this for my country, my people and for Everest," Apa says.

Apa says that when he first began climbing Everest, the trail to the summit was covered in ice and snow. But now the path contains bare rocks with deep cracks from melting ice. This makes expeditions up the mountain more dangerous. Apa, who grew up in the foothills of Everest but now lives in the United States, has campaigned for saving the mountain from the effects of global warming and other issues.

Max-Climbing the highest mountain-Mount Everest is a challenge for humans in the past years. At that time, technology hadn’t developed to this degree as now, so mountain climbers can’t climb to the top of Mountain Everest before. After the year 1953, two climbers called Tenzing and Hillary climbed to the top, many more people also started to climb to the top of the mountain. Right now, climbing to the highest point isn’t hard anymore, since many more people climbed to the top, someone started to make some records, like the youngest climber, the fastest climber to the top…etc. Since many people climbed Mount Everest, the also may have many garbage. So one man called Apa from Nepal organized a team that is used to clean the garbage on Mount Everest. Over the past fifty years, there must be a huge amount of garbage. This is the forth year the team formed, so I think the environment on Mount Everest would be much cleaner than before.

1000408 Is Anyone Up There?

April 4, 2011

Is Anyone Up There?

NASA makes one last effort to contact a Mars Rover that has been silent for more than a year

By Andrea Delbanco

Hello? Is anyone up there? NASA's twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been exploring the Red Planet since 2004. But a little more than a year ago, NASA lost contact with Spirit. The space agency has tried several strategies to make contact with the rover, but Spirit has not sent back any signals. Now, NASA's gearing up to give it one more try. If it doesn't work, will it be time to say goodbye to Spirit?

Twin Rovers

Spirit landed on Mars on January 4, 2004. Three weeks later, Opportunity arrived. Soon after, the rovers parachuted to opposite sides of Mars. Spirits' original mission was only designed to last for three months, but Spirit has worked for more than five years doing bonus-time extended missions. Both rovers have made important discoveries about ancient Mars, including wet environments that may have been able to support microbial life.

Spirit is solar-powered. It got stuck in a sand trap in April 2009. The rover tried to wiggle free, but stayed stuck and could not tilt itself toward the sun as the Martian winter approached. Without enough energy reaching its solar panels, it went into hibernation and has not communicated since March 22, 2010.

One More Try

The fact that Spirit has not called home likely shows that something is more seriously wrong than just a power issue. NASA scientists are losing hope of ever reconnecting with Spirit, but they will give it one more try. Ground controllers are paging Spirit over a range of frequencies and at different times during the day in case its internal clock stopped working and it lost track of time. They also are commanding the rover to turn on its backup radio transmitter in case the main one is dead.

If this final effort to connect isn't successful, NASA will shift the focus to Opportunity. Spirit's odometer is stuck at 4.8 miles, but Opportunity is still on the move. It has travelled 16.6 miles so far, and is currently rolling towards another crater it has yet to explore.

Max- There’s a lot to explore in space, especially on Mars, because we need to know can the planet be our second Earth. There are also many planets that we can live, but most of them are too far, and may also have problems for living on it. So we think Mars is the best place for humans to live, and there are some similar things than Earth. Now, two rovers are exploring Mars from seven years ago, and they are executing some missions. But, five years after they were on Mars, one of the rovers, called Spirit, was stuck on a sand trap, even the rover wanted to free itself from the trap, it couldn’t! So it started sinking, and it can’t be adjusted towards the Sun, and Spirit is solar powered, so it ran out of energy after about a few months, and it stopped connecting from a year ago.   When Spirit was stuck into the sand trap, it had some problems with some things. Its internal clock stopped a few times, and the radio transmitter was also broken so they had to use the backup radio transmitter. Now, NASA gives one last try to connect with Spirit. If it fails, it is the end for Spirit, and NASA would focus on the other rover, Opportunity. So can it be connected?

Deadly Snake Escapes

Deadly Snake Escapes

A venomous Egyptian cobra has gone missing at the Bronx Zoo, in New York City

By Kelli Plasket

Do you speak Parseltongue? The snake language may only exist in the world of Harry Potter, but it sure would be useful for zookeepers in New York City this week. On March 25, the Bronx Zoo shut down and secured its Reptile House after zookeepers discovered that an Egyptian cobra had slipped out of its private enclosure and disappeared.

The missing cobra is just a few months old, 20 inches long and pencil thin. Egyptian cobras are most commonly found in Northern Africa. The snakes can eventually grow to up to 9.8 feet long. It is one of the most venomous, or poisonous, species of snake. A cobra's bite can be deadly if not treated properly. However, cobras aren't likely to attack humans unless they feel threatened. Zookeepers are confident that the missing snake is contained in a nonpublic, isolated area of the building.

"Right now, it's the snake's game," Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny says in a statement on the zoo's website. "At this point, it's just like fishing; you put the hook in the water and wait. Our best strategy is patience, allowing her time to come out of hiding."

The cobra is likely hiding in a warm, closed-in space. The snakes can live for a long time without food or water, so it could be days or weeks before the snake comes out of hiding in search of food, experts say.

Snake Around Town

In the meantime, an anonymous Twitter user is having some fun with the missing cobra. The unidentified user created an account with the username "BronxZoosCobra" on Twitter, a social networking site. By Wednesday, it had more than 140,000 followers. The account documents the snake's fictitious adventures exploring New York City. "I want to thank those animals from the movie Madagascar. They were a real inspiration," the "snake" posted.

According to the updates, the cobra has already visited several New York tourist spots, including the Empire State Building and the Museum of Natural History. "Holding very still in the snake exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. This is gonna be hilarious!" read one post. And how does a snake with no thumbs or Internet access manage to update a Twitter page? The snake's explanation: "Ever heard of an iPhone? Duh."

Max- Cobras are already very dangerous, but this deadly cobra just escaped from the zoo! The zookeepers found this cobra missing, while it started to crawl around New York City.   This cobra, which is an Egyptian cobra, is deadly. It can grow to a long size, and it’s deadly. But it doesn’t bite people when it saw them; it only bites when they feel threatened. So I’m not really sure how many people did it bite. The cobra also went to many famous buildings, and it kept hiding a few days.   Some users also started to use blogs to talk about the missing cobra. Those blogs had some fun with the cobra and many people saw it.   After the cobra escaped, it can take a few weeks to find that cobra and take it back to the zoo. Because the places that cobras live have a lot of food and water, so it may take a long time to see the cobra come out of the hiding place because of hunger.

Also, after reading this article, happy April Fools Day(this article isn't fake)!