Five years ago, several Portland elementary schools embarked on a new teaching method. The Oregon Reading First grant program used scientifically-based reading research to improve literacy skills on students as early as pre-K. Teachers shared more students and were more involved in each students' success; training programs helped teachers with their own teaching skills; and schools would visit other schools to see where their own practices could be improved. ...

Infants who slept in a bedroom with a fan ventilating the air had a 72 percent lower risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome compared to infants who slept in a bedroom without a fan, according to a new study...

Poet Rochelle Hart has had a wonderful year. The articulate, self-described revolutionary poet is set to release a new spoken-word CD in December. She's shopping for a publisher for her recently-completed biography of a local music producer ....

Martin Owino, one of the 98 artists opening their workplaces to the public during Portland Open Studios, lets you travel to Africa by way of southeast Portland on Oct. 11, 12 and 18, 19.
"Pure Africa" is in the jumping hands and prancing feet of the women who revel in good times even as the times are changing. Owino's original batik paintings capture the colorful spirit of his native Kenya...

Direct from Ethiopia, the 3-million-year-old remains of the hominid known as "Lucy" are on display the Pacific Science Center in Seattle through March 8, 2009. The exhibit, "Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia," are built around the oldest and most complete fossils of an erect-walking human ancestor ever discovered. For more information about the exhibit, go to www.pacsci.org/.

Photo by Susan Fried

A new report highlighting the dangers of taking antibiotics has come out just in time for the cold and flu season. The study, published in the September issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, shows that in addition to the hazards of driving up antibiotic resistance, the drugs can cause a variety of unpleasant and potentially life-threatening side-effects. ....

Recurrent violence in oil-rich parts of Nigeria may provide a sobering lesson for oil companies hoping to work in Iraq — a place that is much more dangerous despite the fact that attacks are at their lowest level in more than four years....

New law empowers Justice of Department to re-open cold civil rights murder cases  
The NAACP commends President George Bush and members of the U.S. Congress for passage of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. The measure passed enthusiastically in both houses of Congress and was signed into law last night by President George Bush.
The NAACP supported legislation puts additional federal resources and authority into solving many of the heinous crimes that occurred in the early decades of the civil rights struggle that remain unsolved, aiming to bring perpetrators to justice. 
"By investing new resources into these decades-old crimes we may finally be able to bring resolution to these cases and allow some closure for the victims' loved ones, as well as our nation as a whole," ....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement, says the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign reminds him of the hateful atmosphere that segregationist Gov. George Wallace fostered in Alabama in the 1960s.
Republican candidate John McCain on Saturday called Lewis' remarks "shocking and beyond the pale.''
The Obama campaign said the Illinois senator doesn't believe McCain or his policy criticism is at all comparable to Wallace and his segregationist policies.
In a statement issued Saturday, Lewis said McCain and running mate Sarah Palin were "sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.'' He noted that Wallace also ran for president.
"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights,'' said Lewis, who is black....

Don't wear campaign paraphernalia to voting polls on election day Nov. 4 or bring a sweater to cover it up, experts say. ''Whether or not they have a constitutional right to wear [campaign memorabilia] we tell them to leave it at home and avoid the hassle," says Laughlin McDonald, Director of ACLU Voting Right Project. "There is a Supreme Court decision that prohibited campaigning within 100 feet of a polling place so we advise that if they do wear a campaign button that they follow that state's law, unless they are trying to challenge it.''....