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How five Canberrans are marking Mother's Day in the time of COVID-19 - The Canberra Times

  1. How five Canberrans are marking Mother's Day in the time of COVID-19  The Canberra Times
  2. Eight Australian mothers share the greatest thing their kids have taught them  ABC News
  3. Mother's Day: Our special mums - your stories  New Zealand Herald
  4. Mother's Day: Jacinda Ardern shares heartwarming message in celebration of her mum  Newshub
  5. Mum, in memory: A Mother's Day Tribute  New Straits Times
  6. View Full coverage on Google News





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The COVIDSafe app – What we know and questions that remain unanswered - Coronavirus (COVID-19) - Australia - Mondaq News Alerts

  1. The COVIDSafe app – What we know and questions that remain unanswered - Coronavirus (COVID-19) - Australia  Mondaq News Alerts
  2. Readers respond to the COVIDSafe app's launch  Sydney Morning Herald
  3. COVIDSafe app downloads shoot past five million  Sky News Australia
  4. UK contact tracing app source code shared as researchers seek to solve mystery  9to5Mac
  5. Lack of honesty on virus app is a problem  9News
  6. View Full coverage on Google News







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South Korea takes first cautious steps into a post-Covid world - The Guardian

  1. South Korea takes first cautious steps into a post-Covid world  The Guardian
  2. S. Korea warned of COVID-10 second wave  NEWS.com.au
  3. South Korea reverses on reopenings amid nightclub outbreak  The Age
  4. S.Korea leader says no panic as cases rise  SBS News
  5. Coronavirus: How South Korea 'crushed' the curve  BBC News
  6. View Full coverage on Google News





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Coronavirus Australia live updates: Jenny Morrison's reveals "honest" life in lockdown - NEWS.com.au

  1. Coronavirus Australia live updates: Jenny Morrison's reveals "honest" life in lockdown  NEWS.com.au
  2. Isolated life at The Lodge brings the Morrisons closer  The Age
  3. PM in lockdown with wife, daughters, mum and mum-in-law  Daily Telegraph
  4. Jenny Morrison reveals why she used to hate Mother's Day  Daily Mail
  5. View Full coverage on Google News







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WA coronavirus restriction easing not enough for pubs, beauticians, tourism industry - ABC News

  1. WA coronavirus restriction easing not enough for pubs, beauticians, tourism industry  ABC News
  2. Coronavirus crisis: Weekends in Esperance back on the cards  The West Australian
  3. WA's decision to keep its mines open amid coronavirus may have saved Australia's economy | ABC News  ABC News (Australia)
  4. View Full coverage on Google News







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The first books have arrived at Ballou High School in DC!


The first books from the wish list have arrived at Ballou High School in Washington DC and are front and center for students to check out! 

We are very excited by how the Annual Book Fair for Ballou Library is going — over 80 books have already been purchased. Our hope is to send 150 books to Ballou from their amazon list this month and we would be delighted to surpass that goal. There are still over 200 books on the list, covering many topics and genres. (Especially 2 MCAT study guides for one student who hopes to be a neurosurgeon & wants to get a head start on what she will need to know for medical school.) 

We hope you will take a look at the list (http://tinyurl.com/BookFairBallouHS) and help spread the word. Be sure to follow @BallouLibrary & my twitter feed, @chasingray, for updates as the books arrive and, if you have any questions, check out the original post on book fair or email me at colleenATchasingrayDOTcom.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE ANNUAL BOOK FAIR FOR BALLOU!!!!!



  • Book Fair for Boys

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Collected Brevity: Anthologies and Short Story Collections

When my friend Christopher Golden announced the forthcoming The Twisted Book of Shadows anthology - which will start accepting submissions in February 2018, so mark your calendars! - I started considering what I could write and submit. That led to thinking about my favorite short stories, which is a pretty short list (no pun intended) as I tend to gravitate towards longer stories, full-length novels and serialized television. I started asking friends, colleagues, and patrons of all ages about their favorite anthologies and short story collections, and here's what we've got!

Jules, who runs the fantastic blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, loves Naomi Shihab Nye's Honeybee, which offers both poems and prose. She calls it "a rewarding read" - "the results are both striking and moving, yet she manages to throw some humor in there, too." Check out her review of the collection, which includes quotes from the text, with the author's permission. (I love this note from the author: "If I see a lone bee hovering in a flower, I wish it well.")

Allison seconds the recommendation for Naomi Shihab Nye, saying her work is "off all charts. I’ve never read anything by her that didn't have at least a touch of honeyed language. One of my other favorite short story/essayists is Bailey White who used to read her short stories and essays on All Things Considered. Her first book was Mama Makes Up Her Mind. Barbara Kingsolver and bell hooks are two others I love."

Author and artist Sarah Jamila Stevenson, whose novels include The Truth Against the World and The Latte Rebellion, enjoyed the anthology Slasher Boys and Monster Girls edited by April Tucholke. "This 2015 anthology featuring some big names in YA literature brings a fresh perspective to classic horror tropes - and it's not for the faint-hearted. I'll never think of the Mad Tea Party in the same way again, that's for sure..."

Rachel's favorite anthology is The Best Science Fiction of the Year 3 edited by Terry Carr. "This anthology got me hooked on science fiction and fantasy when I was around 12 or 13, and I have been hooked ever since," she said. It contains two of her favorite short stories, Of Mist, Grass and Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin, both of which she considers "still incredibly relevant today." Prompted by our conversation, she looked up the full table of contents and added, "One of the ones I'd forgotten about, that hits me in a completely different way now, is The Women Men Don’t See, written by Alice Bradley Sheldon under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr." 

When I asked the aforementioned Christopher Golden to list some of his favorite anthologies, he included "all of Charles L. Grant's legendary Shadows volumes and Kirby McAuley's Dark Forces, which were all hugely influential on me as a teenager and into my twenties. The horror stories in those books inspired me as a writer and as a reader…and later as an anthologist in my own right."

As for collections, he said, "The easiest and truest answer is that Stephen King set the bar with Night Shift and Different Seasons. If you go back and read those today - the former a collection of short stories and the latter a quartet of novellas - you'll see the master at work. King didn’t realize it at the time, but those were STATEMENTS, establishing the benchmark for weird fiction. Years later, I wrote the introduction for Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts and I had no idea of his parentage. I should have known, reading those stories, because that set a bar for a new generation. Others that should absolutely be on your weird or horror fiction collection list include all six volumes of Clive Barker's groundbreaking Books of Blood, Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and Other Stories, and Robert Shearman's Remember Why You Fear Me. On the fantasy side, Robert Holdstock's The Bone Forest is an overlooked marvel, and Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen is remarkable."

Thanks to Chris for giving us so many recommendations -- and for giving me a segue to share my own! I really enjoyed Golden's fantastic short story collections The Secret Backs of Things and Tell My Sorrows to the Stones. The titles are fantastic and the collections fully deliver. He recently released Don't Go Alone, a collection of collaborations, which includes Joe Golem and the Copper Girl (co-written with Mike Mignola and part of their series of Joe Golem novels and comics), Ghosts of Albion animated films and books), and Wellness Check (co-written with Thomas E. Sniegoski and part of their fantastic dark fantasy series The Menagerie, which I really love).

Looking for books for younger readers and/or more classic fare? As a kid, there were collections of myths and scary stories that I read multiple times. Check out my booklist packed with short story collections and quick reads for elementary through high school readers. Have fun adding titles to your to-read pile, and feel free to leave your short story recommendations in the comments below!




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Black Light Express by Phillip Reeve


From my recent review of Black Light Express for Locus:


Philip Reeve’s absolutely incredible world building again takes center stage in Black Light Express, the sequel to Railhead. The second book picks up soon after the events that brought Railhead to a stunning close, with former thief and unwitting catalyst Zen Starling having fled the Network Empire along with Nova, his android girlfriend. Meanwhile, completely against her will, Threnrody Noon, the Paris Hilton of the empire-controlling Noon family, has assumed the position of Empress. She is only a pawn of more powerful interests however and virtually trapped in the palace attending a haze of pointless engagements while her former fiance, Kobi, is on the other side of the galaxy about to be forced into a corporate approved marriage with someone he has never met. Basically, the fallout from Railhead is reverberating across all the lives of the major characters while, unknown to them, it’s about to get a lot lot worse. 

What Black Light Express (and the first book, Railhead), offers readers is sentient trains, a vapid rich girl who decides she doesn't want to be a pawn anymore, political machinations, alien technology, aliens, dinosaur-descended aliens, human-android romance, the fact that the human-android romance is the best kind of romance, more stupid rich people, the satisfaction of rich people losing because they are stupid, a protagonist who is smart and scrappy and more than willing to walk on the wrong side of the law because playing by the rules gets you only so far (and those rich jerks are the ones who wrote the rules in the first place).

Oh - and a train is killed and that is far more upsetting than you would think. 

As I wrote in my review, I'm really surprised that these books are not more well known. They  are excellent SF (which is not too common in the YA literary world) as well as being excellent political mirrors for much of modern society. Check them out!




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U.S. bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic dies at 43

Former U.S. Olympic bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic died May 3 at the age of 43, USA Bobsled/Skeleton said in a release Saturday.




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В Южной Корее выявили рекордное количество зараженных COVID-19 за месяц

За прошедшие сутки в Южной Корее было выявлено 34 новых случаев заражения коронавирусом — это рекордное число за последний месяц. Все случаи связывают с молодым человеком, который проигнорировал подозрение на наличие вируса и посетил несколько клубов Сеула, где контактировал с 1,5 тысячи посетителей.




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Российский эпидемиолог оценил риск заражения COVID-19 при купании в водоемах

COVID-19 не несет опасности при купании в водоемах, так как передается воздушно-капельным и контактно-бытовым путем. Лебедев добавил, что некоторые водоемы сильно облучаются солнечным светом, что губительно для коронавируса. Эксперт также уточнил, что стоит опасаться других инфекций, например острых кишечных.




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Otevřeno pro jednoho hosta. Pandemie inspirovala vznik svérázných restaurací

Celosvětová pandemie koronaviru, kvůli které nejspíš zkrachují tisíce restaurací, inspirovala koncept švédské restaurace Bord For En (Stůl pro jednoho). Podnik bude servírovat tříchodové menu vždy jen pro jediného hosta. Stolovat se bude venku na louce, s výhledem do zeleně, uvedla ve své reportáži stanice CNN. Restaurace se otevře 10. května a bude v provozu jen přes léto.



  • Ekonomika - Zahraniční

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Doplatek cestovce za zrušený zájezd je nemorální, zlobí se Dostálová

Zákon, díky němuž mohou cestovky místo vracení peněz nabízet vouchery, podle ombudsmana Stanislava Křečka nechrání jejich klienty. Poukazuje přitom na případ rodiny, která musí cestovní kanceláři naopak doplácet za dovolenou, která se nejspíš neuskuteční. Podle ministryně Kláry Dostálové může být takové jednání nekalou obchodní praktikou.



  • Ekonomika - Domácí

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Slabá koruna může zdražit zájezdy, říká zástupce cestovek

Cestovní ruch v mnoha zemích zamrzl, dovolené v zahraničí přesto mohou zdražit. Očekává to místopředseda Asociace cestovních kanceláří Jan Papež. Důvodem je podle něj oslabení koruny kvůli pandemii, kterou nazval tichou intervencí.



  • Ekonomika - Domácí

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Third Brighton player tests positive for coronavirus

A third Brighton player tests positive for coronavirus.




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Coronavirus: 'Stay alert' advice defended by communities secretary

It follows criticism that a move away from the "stay at home" slogan could confuse the public.




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KVÍZ: Znáte specifika bydlení v družstevním bytě?

V družstevních bytech žije přibližně 10 procent českých domácností. Vzhledem k rostoucím cenám nemovitostí je tento typ bydlení oproti osobnímu vlastnictví dostupnější, a zažívá tak další vlnu rozvoje. Družstevní vlastnictví má ale svá specifika. Pokud o koupi družstevního bytu uvažujete, ověřte si své znalosti v dnešním kvízu.



  • Finance - Finanční rádce

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Смяротная аварыя пад Лідай: Volkswagen урэзаўся ў грузавік, які спыніўся на абочыне