Flight of Fancy

Ever dream about flying in possibly the fastest jet fighter in the world? Just fork over $10,000-sorry, airfare to Moscow not included - MIGS Etc., a Florida-based company, and your vocation at the airbase clinic. Then get fitted up with flight suit and helmet - yours to keep. The Russian end of this enterprise sees these flights as a novel way to advertise their product to the West. Expensive, yes. But perhaps the most peaceful use found for such deadly inventions.

Foot for thought

The traditional Greenland lifestyle is one of hunting and fishing - most important, the hunting of seals. Now scientists have discovered that the Inuit diet of seal and fish protets them against some of the big evils of Western civilization because these foods contain a lifesaving fatty acid known as omega-3. Researchers in Louisiana conducting the largest-ever study of arteriosclerosis say the evidence shows that the Inuit in Greenland suffers less from the disease, and they suggest Westerners might consider modifying their own eating habits accordingly.

The Radio Reverend

Want a wedding your friends will really talk about? How about live on the radio? Disc jockey Steve Jaxon was doing a radio show with members of the Universal Life church when he got the idea: "Hey,why don't you ordain me?" A decade later, he's married 16 couples on the air. Steve has never done a chrch wedding. The nuptials are usually in strange places like restaurants, bars or shopping malls. Fun is the top priority. Most of the couples have been married before and this time have more of a sense of humor.

Hines Ward’s Mother Recalls Hard Road to Success

Kim Young-hee
-A picture from Hines Ward's 100th-day celebration (a traditional milestone for Korean children) in 1976.

When Hines Ward was given one of the highest accolades in American football, the trials his Korean mother faced over the years and the bitterness she felt seemed to melt away in an instant. But when Ward was named Most Valuable Player in the Super Bowl after his team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, laid waste to the Seattle Seahawks, Kim Young-hee (59) was calm and collected. "Supporting a child so he can do what he wants to do and encouraging him the whole way seems like the secret to success,” Kim told the Chosun Ilbo from her home in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia.
How do you feel about the MVP title?
"I admire him and I'm proud of him. Since his junior year at Forest Park High School, he got a lot of press and picked up more than just a few accolades. I watched the game on TV, but then I dozed off until I got a call from my son at about 1 in the morning. 'Mom, we won the Super Bowl!' he said, so of course I said, 'Congratulations.' I was a little groggy from some cold medicine that I had taken, so we just talked briefly and left it at that. I really hate crowded places, so I don't usually go to the stadium; instead I watch the games on TV.”

Ward has credited you with his success…
"Well, maybe that's what he thinks. From the time Hines was in elementary school I had to leave the house at 4 in the morning to go to work. I washed dishes and cleaned up in companies that produced airline food, at restaurants, and at hotels, I also worked as a cashier at the grocery store. I made about US$4 an hour. It was always a 'two jobs' life, one full-time and one part-time. Sometimes I would add in one more part-time job, working up to three jobs per day. For me there was no Saturday, no Sunday, and no days off. But since Hines turned pro in '98, I've cut down to just one job."
Eight months after he was picked up by a pro team, Ward bought a large house for his mother in the city of Smyrna, but she said it was too big for one person alone, so she moved to a smaller house in Henry County where she has been living ever since. Although her son is now making millions a year, she still works in the cafeteria of a local high school.
What does Hines think about the Korean blood that runs though his veins?
"Since he was young, he always got along well with the other Korean and Vietnamese kids. It seems like he does have some pride in his Korean blood. But we've also been hurt as Koreans. When Hines was in high school, there was an inter-school friendship match for the Korean students. Since he was good at baseball, a school invited him to play. But after the game, when the kids went out to eat, the person who put together the event only took the Korean kids, leaving Hines behind (Ward is of mixed parentage, his father an African-American). After that I told Hines to never hang out with Korean kids. Yet when we went to Korea in '98, even Korean people who looked educated spat when we walked by. Koreans judge others based on their appearance and their age. Those kinds of Koreans think that they are so special…"
Any plans for a Korea visit?
"My son asked me to go this April, so I said yes, but I’m not sure whether I'll really go with him or not. I have been back to Korea a few times, but my mother died in 1998, and I have no brothers and sisters there. But sometimes I do feel like I'd like to go back to Korea to live. Korea is very crowed, but that really makes it feel alive. Although I have been living in America for almost 30 years, it's not really that exciting here."
(englishnews@chosun.com )

'A hero's return' - S. Korea welcomes back native son Hines Ward

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Half-Korean Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward reached out Tuesday to a country that has suddenly embraced him as a hero, expressing pride in his Korean roots although he shunned that side of his heritage after facing prejudice as a child.
"I'm proud to be a Korean, and that's something that when I was little as a kid I used to be ashamed of," Ward told a sea of journalists packed into a conference room at the central Seoul hotel where he was staying in a complimentary suite normally reserved for world leaders.
Ward was virtually unknown here before the Super Bowl, where American football isn't widely followed.
But since the Pittsburgh Steelers' February victory and Ward's MVP award, he has become a media phenomenon in South Korea -- also drawing attention to the discrimination faced here by children of mixed parentage. Ward was born in Seoul to a Korean mother, and his father was an African-American soldier.
"The Korean community has supported my mother and I for the first time in my life," Ward said at the news conference, which drew breathless live coverage by several TV channels. "Now I don't have a problem with people teasing me or what not because that's who I am ... I get the best of both worlds -- African-American and the Korean customs."
Ward was having lunch later Tuesday with President Roh Moo-hyun. During his 10-day trip, he will also be granted honorary citizenship by the city of Seoul and be greeted at a reception hosted by the U.S. Embassy.
He will also meet with children of mixed backgrounds, and said he has plans to work with a foundation that supports them and also set up an organization of his own here.
"I'm very happy to be here. For me to come back where it all started ... it was something that the first time in my life I'm nervous about," Ward said. "I'm very intrigued with the Korean heritage. It's something that I missed out for 30 years of my life."
In a nod sure to be appreciated here, Ward also praised Korean food -- saying he had eaten galbi, or barbecued rib meat, along with kimchi for his first dinner after arriving in the country Monday evening.
Ward's family returned to the U.S. when he was a baby and his parents soon divorced, and the trip is his first time here as an adult.
His mother, Kim Young-hee, was initially ruled unfit to keep her son but he ran away to live with her in second grade. She worked three jobs to support him, a story that has drawn sympathy from hard-working Koreans.
Ward's mother has also commented on the discrimination Ward faced as a child when she tried to involve him in Korean groups, where he was treated differently due to his mixed roots.
The star receiver was repeatedly asked Tuesday about the ostracism faced by children like him, and acknowledged his mother had "tried to hide some things about the Korean culture from me."
"I had to overcome a lot being teased a lot by American kids about my being 50 percent Korean, being 50 percent African-American," he said.
Mixed marriages are growing in South Korea, but mostly among rural men who face a shortage of eligible women in villages and seek brides in nearby Asian countries. Children of mixed backgrounds still suffer discrimination here -- particularly those with an African-American parent, who are often being raised by a single mother, according to Pearl S. Buck International Korea, a group that supports mixed-heritage youth.
Ward said his mother taught him that race wasn't important _ even though she typically had wanted him to marry a Korean woman. He called for understanding among people of all backgrounds when asked what he would tell Korean parents whose children want to marry foreigners.
"This world is not one race, we all live in a melting pot," Ward said. "You can learn a lot from someone else's culture and if two people love each other, then love has no color."
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Bridge Band-Aid

Engineering students at West Virginia's 5-year-old Constructed Facilities Center are testing a new patch, a so-called bridge Band-Aid. So easy to apply, they claim, it can be used to repari bridges without having to divert traffic. It's part of their mission to develop new and imprved building materials and construction techniques. Many of the materials they're testing are called composites - combinations of plastics, fiber glass or space-age carbon materials - that one day might even be used to build an entire bridge.

This Land is our Land

Hawaiian sovereignty advocates like Bumpy Kanahele say their country was stolen form them when Queen Liluokalani surrendered to a squad of US Marines in 1893. They consider Hawii their country and America their visitor. In 1978 the state formed an independent office to create a Native Hawaiian state modeled largely after the Navajo nation of the Southwest. It would be established sometime in the last 1990s, possibly on undevelped land now held by the federal and state governments.

Pop (bottle) Fashion

This is new $85 pullover, made from about 25 recycled plastic soft-drink bottles.(It points a another picture.) Recycler Wellman Corp. chips old soda bottles, melts the chips and spins them into fibers and then into fleece. Sewing factories complete the metamorphosis form pop bottle to pullover. Both environmentally and financially, it makes more sense to make sweaters out of pop bottles than to make new bottles out of the old ones. Patagonia claims customers like the soda-bottle sweaters so well the company sold 16,000 of them the first month.

The Language of Peace

Since the Middle Eastern peace talks began two years ago, a number of Jordanians have started learning Hebrew at his school founded by 60-year-old Ghazi AI-Saadi, Ghazi beliveves his students are studying to get along with Israelis, not to prepare for more war. But, he says sometimes they are reluctant to admit that. Ghazi says he's not in it for the money;he offers this three-month couse for only 90$. He is an optimist whose hope, he says, is simply to enjoy the years he has left in harmony and peace.

India's Fizzy Economy

Coca-Cola, which pulled out of India in 1977 due to government protectioism, will soon be reentering India's soft-drink market. Pepsi has been in the counrty for almost three years and has cptured a third of the cola market. The learder in the Indian fizzy business is a homegrown concentrate called Thums up. Media reports indicate that Coke may team up with Thums up to take on Pepsi. With the cola war spilling over into India, the Indian soft-drink market may become one of the biggest in the world by the turn of the century.