McClatchy Newspapers

Sitting at his youngest daughter's high school graduation, Bruce Katzen fought back the sting in his eyes. His thoughts raced from "Oh, my God, my baby is graduating," to "This is going to be an exciting time for my wife and me."

"It's a milestone," Katzen said.

This month, parents of more than 3 million high school graduates are celebrating the transition to the next phase of their children's lives. But where generations past fretted over the empty nest and the prospect of loneliness, today's empty-nesters are active in the workforce and see the transition as opportunity for better work-life balance and new routines.

The scapegoating of immigrants must stop. Whether it's Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blaming the wildfires in the Southwest on immigrants coming across the border or whether it's the state of Alabama passing the harshest anti-immigrant law in the country, it's clear that brown-skinned immigrants have become the targets of the day.

We've moved from the era of Jim Crow -- with legalized, racial segregation against blacks -- to the era of what I call Juan Crow, with legalized, racial discrimination against Latinos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The Kings took a detour through Milwaukee to get him, but hey, who wouldn't go a few extra miles for a rock star? For Jimmer Fredette? He tweets, he shoots, he scores.

He stars in a documentary.

He is a one-man, predraft publicity machine.

So now that he's here -- or almost here -- does he play bass or lead guitar? Is he part of the opening act or does he come off the bench? And what does he know about funding mechanisms and construction of new arenas? (Seriously, we would have asked these questions had Fredette's handlers made him available to the Sacramento media in a late-night, post-draft teleconference, as is the NBA norm. Now we'll just wait for the news conference that is tentatively scheduled for Saturday).

New plastics designed to break down naturally have been hailed as environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional plastics. Instead of taking decades or even centuries to decompose, they vanish in a few years.

But new research at North Carolina State University suggests they may not be so green after all.

Coleslaw clearly trumps potato salad in the nutritional department, but cabbage slaws made with a traditional mayo-based dressing can still bump up the calorie count of a cruciferous vegetable that starts out at a humble 16 calories per cup.

This Southwestern Coleslaw keeps it clean and bright with a colorful salad that combines fiber-rich black beans with creamy bits of avocado that contain good fat and lycopene-rich tomatoes, all dressed in a light vinaigrette of fresh lime juice, rice vinegar and olive oil spiked with earthy cumin.

Researchers believe cruciferous vegetabl

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- Maj. Aaron Jelinek of the Air Force Thunderbirds flies his F-16 upside down, rolls it, thunders past his teammates in breathtaking close charges and joins five other fighter jets in precision formation.

And for the first time in the 58 years of Thunderbird air shows, Jelinek's flight last month was fueled by a 50-50 blend of conventional jet fuel and biofuels.

"Flying is a blast," he said after the show at Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington. As for the biofuels blend, he said: "There is no difference that I can tell."

Biofuels have buzz in the military because the Air Force and the Navy are taking a lead role in creating a U.S. market for them. They've spent the past few years testing and certifying aircraft to run on them. Now they need hundreds of millions of gallons of biofuels to meet the goals they've set for using alternative energy by the end of this decade.

WASHINGTON — Taryn Zychal thought she’d be working as an industrial designer after graduating from the Art Institute of Philadelphia. Instead, it’s the debt collection agencies that are working overtime, calling her nearly 30 times a day from 8:30 in the morning to 9:30 at night. The 27-year-old says she has around $150,000 due in loan payments from attending the private, for-profit university, but Zychal said she couldn’t get a job in her chosen field, and not one of her credits would transfer when she tried to switch to another school.