The Verizon Innovative App Challenge gives kids a chance to create apps that can solve problems in their community.

    Do you want to make a difference in your community? The Verizon Innovative App Challenge can get you started. The first step is to think of a problem in your community. The next step is to create an app that can solve the problem.

    Groups of five to seven students in middle school or high school, led by a teacher, can enter the contest. First, teams compete on a local level. Teams that make it to the next round receive $5,000 for their schools. Finalists present their app ideas to judges in a live webinar (网络研讨会)．

    Next, the judges pick national winners. The top eight teams receive an additional $15,000 for their schools, and each team member receives a Samsung tablet. Plus, the winning teams get the chance to bring their app to life.

    A group of six girls from Los Fresnos, Texas, won the second annual Verizon Innovative App Challenge. They came up with the Hello Navi app concept, short for “hello navigation”. The app was designed to help visually­impaired (视力受损的) students navigate their school by using an internal compass and voice­over technology. Read more about the team in September 19, 2016 issue of TIME For Kids: Edition 3－4.

    Do you have an app idea that could help solve a local issue? The deadline to register is November 24, 2016. Find more information and register your team at www. verizonfoundation. org/appchallenge.

    Here are some tips from the Verizon Foundation to get you started：

•Get your team together for a brainstorming meeting. Write out all the ideas that come to mind.

• Don't ignore challenges. Think of the problems that exist in your community.

•Ask family, friends, and people in your community to share their thoughts about problems that they want to see solved.

    Located in Los Angeles, University of Southern California is in the heart of a leading city. Although LA ranks highly in The Economist s Safe Cities Index, navigating and city calls for certain safety precautions (预防措施) along with practicing common sense.

    Mobile Safety App Powered by LiveSafe

    The Mobile Safety App powered by LiveSafe, manage by the USC Department of Public Safety and the USC Department of Emergency Planning, is a free downloadable app that that mobile users can use to initiate contact with emergency responders around the campus. Features include: immediate “push button” calls to DPS, easy reporting for suspicious activity or crimes in progress, and location services to notify friends of your route through campus.

    Blue Light Phone Locations

    The University Park has multiple blue light phones that are strategically placed throughout campus. Take note of where the closest ones are on your route. They come in handy in case you lose your phone or in an emergency. These phones are directly connected to USC's Department of Public Safety's 24-hour communications center. Besides emergency needs, it can also be used to report suspicious activity, request for an escort (护送) if you feel unsafe and to report a crime.

    Trojans Alert

    Trojans Alert is an emergency notification system that allows university officials to contact you during an emergency by sending messages via text message or email. When an emergency occurs, authorized USC senders will instantly notify you with real-time updates, instructions on where to go, what to do (or what not to do), whom to contact and other important information. All members of the USC community, as well as parents and regular visitors to campus, are strongly encouraged to sign up for Trojans Alert.

    The hemlock(铁杉) trees along the Wappinger Creek, New York, look healthy. However, scientist Gary Lovett says the white balls which provide protection for the bugs are created by a tiny insect. It's hard to believe the tiny bug could kill a tree. However, trees can end up with millions and millions of the pests. When there are that many, it ends up killing the tree.

    The bug from East Asia is slowly killing trees across the USA. The trouble－making bug is just one of many invasive(入侵的) pests that have slipped into the United States. They can hurt other living things in their new home.

    Many invasive pests arrive on wooden pallets piled inside shipping containers. They support and separate goods, and keep them from sliding around. Invasive pests often tunnel into the pallets.  How can we stop pests from riding on pallets? Lovett says new rules are needed. The companies that make pallets don't want more rules. Congress has added an amendment(修正案) in the 2018 Farm Bill to try and prevent this problem. However, Lovett is not hopeful it will make much of a difference. Pallets are checked by inspectors. Many are sprayed with bug－killing pesticide. "I believe in the system，" said Brent McClendon, president of The National Wooden Pallet and Container Association. He also said shipping containers are checked very carefully.

    Still, each year 13 million containers are shipped to the U.S. Each is full of wooden pallets. Lovett says: "Inspectors can't possibly check everything. All it takes are a few bad pallets; we should get rid of wooden pallets." He believes pallets should be made of plastic or eco－composite wood. Eco－composite wood is a mix of wood fiber and plastic. Insects cannot hide into it. One problem is that these choices cost more. They may be worth the extra money, though. Invasive pests cost the U.S. $5 billion a year. Trees don't just die in forests. They also die in cities and our yards. Then, they need to be replaced. That costs money, too.

    As long as people have been telling stories, crones(丑陋的老太婆)have been scaring the wits out of children. "Nags(怨妇),witches, evil stepmothers, cannibals(食人妇). It's quite dreadful," says Maria Tatar, who teaches a course on folklore and mythology at Harvard. "But old women are also powerful—they're often the ones who can work magic." In the Disney film Snow White, there's a scene in which the beautiful, charming, wicked queen turns into an old hag and poisons Snow White so she'll sleep forever. The old lady in Hansel and Gretel wants to roast children in her oven and the witch in The Little Mermaid cuts out Ariel's tongue.

    Tatar says old women villains (恶人)are especially scary because，historically, the most powerful person in a child's life was the mother. "Children do have a way of splitting the mother figure into...the evil mother—who's always making rules and regulations, policing your behavior, getting angry at you—and then the kind mother—the one who is giving and protects you, makes sure that you survive."

    Veronique Tadjo, a writer who grew up in the Ivory Coast, thinks there's a fear of female power in general. She says a common figure in African folk tales is the old witch who destroys people's souls. Still, they're not all bitter and evil hags. Elderly women in folk tales often use their knowledge and experience of the world to guide the troubled protagonist(主人公). Tadjo points to the Kenyan story Marwe In The Underworld about a girl who commits suicide by drowning herself and enters the Land of the Dead where she meets an old woman. "That old woman teaches her quite a lot of things," Tadjo says. "And also, when Marwe starts longing for the world of the living, she helps her go back to the surface with a lot of riches. And we understand that Marwe has been rewarded for her goodness." In other words: Do your chores and you'll be rewarded. The point of these ancient tales, no matter what continent they come from, may have been to scare children into behaving.

    Perhaps the scariest old woman character—the ugly Baba Yaga—comes from Russia. She's bony with a hooked nose and long, iron teeth. Her hut(小屋)stands on chicken legs and she kidnaps children and eats them. Safe to say Baba Yaga has been making Eastern European children sleepless for centuries. In one interpretation, a mean stepmother sends the young girl Vasilisa to Baba Yaga's hut in the woods to get a candle. The girl is sure she's being sent to her death. Baba Yaga forces her to cook and clean, and Vasilisa does everything she's told. In the end, the old crone gives her what she needs and sends her home. "You see this kind of double face of the hag,"Maria Tatar says. "On the one hand: aggressive, threatening. And on the other hand: sometimes to make sure that there is a happily ever after."

    There's that power again. In Japanese folklore, the Yama Uba(山姥)is an equally ambiguous old woman. She's a mountain witch who, like Baba Yaga, lures people into her hut and eats them. But she'll also help a lost traveler. Noriko Reider is a professor at Miami University of Ohio who's done extensive research on Yama Uba stories. "She brings fortune and happiness," Reider says. "She can also bring death and destruction for those who are not very good."

    According to Cuban-American writer Alma Flor Ada, in Hispanic(拉美地区的)culture old women are multi-talented. Ada is co-author of Tales Our Grandmas Told, which includes a story about Caliph's son who becomes seriously ill. After "all of the best physicians in the land" fail to cure him, Caliph sends his messengers searching for help. Then one morning, an old woman arrives with this advice: To get well, the prince must wear the overcoat of a man who is truly happy. And of course it works.

    An 8-year-old southeast Kansas girl is being praised for her quick, calm thinking. She grabbed the steering wheel(方向盘) and drove the family's SUV when her mother fell unconscious on their highway ride to school.

    Abby Porter and her mom, Shelly, were heading for her school in Riverton when Shelly had a medical emergency. She passed out(昏倒) behind the wheel.

    Abby is a second-grader whose father sometimes lets her drive their tractor. With her mother falling down heavily, Abby leaned over and took the wheel. At some point, Abby even successfully performed a U-turn on the four-lane highway, because she was going home to her daddy, according to Galena Police Chief Larry Delmont.

    "That was at 8:37 in the morning, and there was a lot of traffic," Delmont said. Officer Jimmy Hamilton noticed the SUV going about 20 mph and weaving a bit between the two lanes. He suspected someone was driving under the influence. As he got closer, he noticed the woman fell over in the driver's seat and saw Abby at the wheel.

    Hamilton tried to get in front of Abby's car to slow her down, but she kept switching lanes to avoid bumping into his car. Hamilton got alongside her and told Abby to stop the vehicle, but she didn't know how. He then told her she needed to bump into him to stop the car, but Abby said she didn't want to because she was afraid. He convinced Abby bumping into his car was OK.

    "I never saw her cry," Hamilton said. "From just the expression on her face and the tone of her voice, you could tell she was scared. But she stayed with it."

    Emergency crews got Abby's mother to the hospital, but Delmont said he didn't know what caused her to lose consciousness.

    The police department in Galena, a town of about 3,000 residents about 150 miles south of Kansas City, planned to present Abby with a plaque(匾牌) for "outstanding bravery in a life-threatening situation".