Good News Stories From Mary March 24, 2009

In race against river, communities pull together

As the swelling Red River lapped within 30 feet of his back door, Carlis Kramer's property resembled nothing so much as a bustling construction site.

In a well-ordered ballet, four people loaded sandbags, four others hauled them to the house and another person stacked them into a dike.

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Obama: Long recovery effort will succeed

Recovery from the economic recession, now in its 16th month, will take a long time, President Barack Obama cautioned Tuesday evening, but he reassured Americans that he was making progress “on all fronts.”

“This crisis didn’t happen overnight,” Obama said in his second prime-time news conference. And the recovery will take “many months,” he said, because “we’ve accumulated structural deficits that are going to take a long time” to rectify.

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The hunt for the last Nazis

This avuncular 73-year-old is the epitome of politeness in his large office, with a photocopier whirring in the corner, brightly coloured document folders stuffed in many shelves, and cats tiptoeing over papers and desks.

But once, in 1973, Mr Klarsfeld, brandished a pistol in the street at a former World War II Nazi - Kurt Lischka, wartime Gestapo chief for Jewish affairs in France who was living comfortably in Cologne.

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The Guilted Age: Spending to Keep Others Afloat

Melanie Ulle and her husband are scrimping these days, and she feels guilty about the exotic foods -- the hummus, the naan, the chai -- that she stocks in her already-full kitchen each week.

Truth is, though, she'd feel worse if she stopped buying them.

Ms. Ulle likes the couple who runs the small ethnic market by her Denver home; she likes their kids, who play by the register after school. She sees how empty their shop is now. She's heard they've both taken second jobs. So, despite her own pinched budget, Ms. Ulle feels compelled to help them out. Each week, she faithfully runs up a bill close to $50.

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