Environment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OPERATION USA TO AID TORNADO RELIEF EFFORTS IN MOORE, OKLAHOMA AND SURROUNDING AREAS

LOS ANGELES, CA (May 20, 2013) — Los Angeles-based international relief agency Operation USA announced today that it is providing emergency aid where needed to community-based health organizations across Oklahoma in the wake of a tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma.

The massive tornado destroyed entire blocks of homes, two schools, and a medical center in the city of Moore, part of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area. The storm system still threatens surrounding regions in the Midwest.

Operation USA is readying essential material aid– emergency, shelter and cleaning supplies– to send to where it’s most needed. Any funds collected for the disaster will be spent in Oklahoma helping community health organizations and schools recover from damage sustained from the severe storm system.

HOW TO HELP:
Donate online at www.opusa.org, by phone at 1.800.678.7255 or, by check made out to Operation USA, 7421 Beverly Blvd., PH, Los Angeles, CA 90036. Text AID to 50555 and donate $10 to Operation USA’s disaster relief efforts.

Corporate donations of bulk quantities of disaster-appropriate supplies are also being requested. United and Continental air miles can also be donated to Operation USA through United Airlines Charity Miles program at www.united.com.

ABOUT OPERATION USA
Since its start, Operation USA has responded to domestic disasters by providing material aid and financial assistance to affected communities. Operation USA’s response to Hurricane Katrina was one of the agency’s largest efforts to date. Having over 34 years of experience supporting low-income health programs, OpUSA provided millions in supplies as well as cash grants to Gulf Coast community health clinics in order to address the needs of those affected. Operation USA also aided community clinics in Joplin, Missouri following a deadly tornado that struck the area in 2011. Material and monetary aid provided in the wake of these disasters ensured the clinics’ continuity of operations and allowed them to provide critical disaster relief and social services to affected communities.

Operation USA is an international relief agency that helps communities at home and abroad overcome the effects of disasters, disease and endemic poverty by providing privately-funded relief, reconstruction and development aid. Since 1979, Operation USA has worked in 100 countries, delivering over $400 million for relief and development projects.

Learn more and make secure donations at www.opusa.org.

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PRESS CONTACT
Mary Dolan
323.413.2353
Operation USA
mdolan@opusa.org

Richard Walden
President & CEO
Operation USA
323.413.2353
rwalden@opusa.org

The earlier young children learn "heart lessons" like caring, sharing, and treating others as they would like to be treated, the more successful they will be in life. That's the theory that powered the Gold Award project by this Nebraska Girl Scout, who wrote plays and built puppet theater sets in partnership with a local children's organization that will teach and entertain generations to come.


Growing up, Brianna loved to put on plays and puppet shows for her little sister. She donated a children’s puppet theater to the non-profit organization, Completely Kids. With help from her friends and family, Brianna designed and created the puppet theater and sponsored thirty puppets. She also wrote ten different scripts emphasizing “heart” lessons and led a donation drive to collect costumes so the children could dress up and role-play as their favorite “Community Hero” such as firemen, policemen, and doctors and be part of the plays. The puppet theater will help the children at Completely Kids learn to share, be kind to one another, gain confidence and many more valuable skills. Completely Kids has allocated funds to replenish the puppets so children may enjoy the theater for years to come.

An international team of researchers has developed a system that will help Chinese farmers convert massive amounts of pig waste into a renewable source of energy Getty Images and fertilizer. The project, led by Australia-based Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC CARE), uses a two-step anaerobic biodigester that is able to treat 73,000 tons of waste annually, producing 380 cubic meters of biogas daily and about 5,600 tons of fertilizer per year. According to its developers, it will also provide a solution to a growing waste disposal challenge in China, where pigs generate more than 1.4 million tons of excrement annually. “Only 10 percent of this waste is currently treated, posing a considerable disposal headache, as well as health and water quality risks,” said Ravi Naidu, managing director of CRC CARE. While the system is being introduced at pig farms across China, Naidu says the technology could eventually help solve critical waste management challenges worldwide and make the pork industry more sustainable.

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Illegal logging and unchecked economic development are taking a devastating toll on the forests of Vietnam and neighboring countries, threatening areas of biodiversity so rich that 1,700 species have been discovered in the last 15 years alone. BY DANIEL DROLLETTE

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Girl Scout Gold Award recipients are young women of extraordinary achievement who have made the world a better place. The Girl Scout Gold Award community Facebook page pairs Gold Award Alumnae and its equivalent from 1916 with girls currently earning their Gold Award.

Log onto Facebook and join the Girl Scout Gold Award community and conversation! Share your stories and make new friends!
Now check out this awesome Girl Scout Gold Award recipient! The world needs more girls in STEM careers. For her Gold Award project, this Georgia Girl Scout started a STEM career finder website that's since gone global, drawing girls from Atlanta to Africa.

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U.S. scientists have developed what they say is the first integrated nanosystem capable of replicating the process of photosynthesis, a sort of “artificial forest” that could one day lead to the production of hydrogen that could be used to power fuel cells. Composed of nanowire structures — including silicon “trunks” and titanium oxide “branches” — the system mimics the role played by chloroplasts in promoting photosynthesis in green plants. By assembling the “trees” in a dense array, resembling a miniature forest, the network lowers sunlight reflection and provides more surface area for hydrogen-producing reactions, the scientists say. “We’ve integrated our nanowire nanoscale heterostructure into a functional system that mimics the integration in chloroplasts and provides a conceptual blueprint for better solar-to-fuel conversion efficiencies in the future,” said Peidong Yang, a chemist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-author of the study, published in the journal NANO Letters. The lab of Daniel Nocera at Harvard University is doing related research into so-called artificial leaves.

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Girl Scouts of the USA announced today that Daniel Boockvar has been appointed the organization's first-ever Chief Customer Officer. Boockvar, who has been a senior executive at Weight Watchers International for nearly a dozen years, will join Girl Scouts on May 20, 2013.
Boockvar currently serves as Senior Vice President of U.S. Operations at Weight Watchers, where he has a broad portfolio of duties including responsibility for meeting the needs of over a million Weight Watchers members a week across 20,000 locations and overseeing approximately 20,000 employees. Boockvar joined Weight Watchers in 2002 as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel and steadily moved up the ranks, serving as Vice President of Operations and Sales and later Senior Vice President for Global Business Development.
During his tenure, he helped steward major transformational initiatives for Weight Watchers that include rolling out new national programs, introducing new products and partnerships, launching new stores, and opening new markets in China and Mexico. He began his career at the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and worked in sales and business development at several Internet/e-Commerce-based entrepreneurial ventures before joining Weight Watchers.
"Danny is the perfect fit for this key leadership position," said Anna Maria Chávez, Chief Executive Officer at GSUSA. "His considerable experience and expertise in managing a large, multi-unit membership-based service organization for an iconic global brand will be invaluable to the Girl Scouts as we move into our next 100 years of building girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place."
In his new role at Girl Scouts, Boockvar will report directly to Chávez  and will be responsible for helping GSUSA build its organizational muscle and make it even more service oriented and customer focused to better serve and engage its 3.2-million members. The position will be integral to the organization's operations and efforts to drive increased membership through better experiences and relationships with its customers--from its 112 councils, to girls, to adult volunteers and beyond.
"I am so honored to join what I consider the single most important organization for girls in the history of this country," Boockvar said. "The opportunity to be a part of this storied, vibrant brand with its unique mission, and to apply my background, experience, and passion is something that I am very excited about."

In the wake of the 2011 tsunami, the Japanese government is forgoing an opportunity to sustainably protect its coastline and is instead building towering concrete seawalls and other defenses that environmentalists say will inflict serious damage on coastal ecosystems. BY WINIFRED BIRD

Methane measurements collected during a scientist’s road trip across the U.S. indicate that local emissions of the potent greenhouse gas are higher than previously known in many regions. Using a gas chromatograph mounted to the roof of a rented camper, Ira Leifer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, collected air samples from Florida to California, finding the highest methane concentrations in areas with significant refinery activity — such as Houston, Texas — and in a region of central California with oil and gas production. He found that methane concentrations exceeded the levels estimated by the U.S. Department of Energy, particularly in areas near industrial fossil fuel extraction sites. The results point to the importance of targeting these “fugitive” methane emissions in parallel with efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Leifer's findings were published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

The glaciers on Mount Everest and the surrounding region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last five decades as temperatures have risen and snowfall has declined in Pavel Novak that section of the Himalaya, according to a new study. Using satellite imagery and topographic maps, a team of scientists found that the majority of glaciers on Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, and in the surrounding Sagarmatha National Park are retreating at an accelerating rate. In the last 50 years, the snowline in the Everest region has shifted up by an average of 590 feet (180 meters), said Sudeep Thakuri, a Ph. D. student at the University of Milan and leader of the research team, which presented its findings at a conference in Cancún, Mexico. Because glaciers are melting faster than they are being replenished, researchers say, rock and debris that were previously hidden under snow are now exposed and absorbing heat.

We should honor the 1976 public interest agreement and affirm “America’s greatest idea”

Girl Scouts of the USA is excited to launch BFF(Be a Friend First), a national bully-prevention initiative for middle school girls. Based on GSUSA's popular aMAZE! leadership curriculum, the program helps girls to recognize and intervene in bullying situations and lead positive change in their schools and communities. Sadly, statistics show that when a girl is bullied, 85 percent of the time nobody steps in to help her.

Additional research shows girls are more likely to bully others subtly, through relational aggression--manipulating their relationships with other girls online and off--as opposed to using physical aggression. The same studies also show that bullying behavior peaks in middle school, when the need for social acceptance is high, making this a crucial time to help girls learn to prevent bullying.
"Girl Scouts is about growing girls into leaders, which includes teaching girls to recognize when something is inhibiting their development, such as relational bullying," said Anna Maria Chavez, Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the USA. "Giving girls the skills, support, and tools they need to stand up for themselves and others is a key component of leadership. We are creating a program that, with the guidance of adults, can help girls to make their world a better place on an issue that is important to them."
As part of a recent contest, Girl Scouts Speak Out! received PSAs from girls around the country who had a lot to say about bullying.
The Washington Post reports that Hannah, a High School freshman, entered the contest to create an anti-bullying public service announcement Although there’s no talking in the Hannah’s video, the message is clear.
“When you’re exclusive and mean you don’t make any friends, in fact you just make enemies,” Hannah wrote in her contest entry.
The video, called “Cliques”, won first place. The national competition encourages girls to create videos about important issues. Five finalists were chosen by online voting, and “Cliques” was among the top five, with more than 5,300 votes. Girl Scout officials picked Hannah’s video as the winner.
“Cliques,” which was filmed at Hannah’s school, stars 15 of her friends.

The need to prevent bullying is more important than ever because such behavior can affect a girl throughout her life. Bullying statistics show that almost 1/3 of all students ages 12--18 report that they have been bullied at school and 160,000 children miss school each day out of fear of being bullied.
For more information on BFF and how you can get involved or bring the program to your area, look here!