By Steven Goff, Washington Post

The end of MLS’s regular season ushers in not just the postseason but the awards season. The biggest prize, and typically most scrutinized, is the MVP trophy.

New England Revolutions’ Lee Nguyen (24) keeps the ball in play against the Columbus Crew during the first half of their MLS Cup playoff game, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014, in Columbus, Ohio. New England won 4-2. (AP Photo/Mike Munden)

MVP is, of course, an abbreviation for most valuable player, a Rorschach test for voters and fans: How does one define “most valuable?” Most valuable to the club’s success? To the players around him? To the league? If the playoffs are so much more important to MLS’s profile than the Supporters’ Shield, shouldn’t the polls remain closed until December?

Had the league created a player of the year trophy instead, we would probably enjoy an easier time selecting the winner, particularly this season with so many strong candidates.

The 2014 player of the year is Robbie Keane, the Galaxy’s Irish forward. Statistics are a crutch in awards season; it’s easy to declare the winner by using the tallest numbers. In Keane’s case, though, one cannot ignore the digits: 19 goals and 14 assists in 29 league appearances for an L.A. squad that recorded 61 points, second in the Supporters’ Shield race.

He not only accumulated the most combined goals and assists; he did it with pure class. He is a winner. He crosses the country and an ocean to represent his country. The blend of pure ability, spirit, leadership and professionalism makes him the finest player in MLS.

The best player, yes, but the most valuable? Here is where the criteria becomes murky. Keane was accompanied by Landon Donovan and a dynamic young striker, Gyasi Zardes. Donovan was MLS’s best supplier with 19 assists, while Zardes alleviated pressure on Keane by scoring 16 goals. No doubt, Keane’s contributions and presence elevated Donovan and particularly Zardes, the second-year pro; that should figure into the MVP equation. But they made him look better too.

Read the full article HERE.

By DAVID W. LLOYD, New York Times

Waist-deep in cool river water on a sweltering June afternoon, we waded toward the entrance of the immense Hang En cave in the Quang Binh province of central Vietnam. There, we donned our hard hats and headlamps and silently entered single file, darkness enveloping us, just the light of our flashlights illuminating our path. A few hundred feet in, we reached a mountain of boulders. As we scrambled up, the light became more intense as we gained height. On reaching the summit we were stopped dead in our tracks by the view before us — the cave’s gigantic main cavern.

Cavers enter Hang En, a cave tunneled out by the Rao Thuong River. (Photo by Carsten Peter/National Geographic/Getty Images)

At 300 feet in height and 600 feet across, the cavern is big enough to fit a Boeing 747 with room to spare. The space was flooded with rays of natural light coming in from an arch high above us. The beams of light illuminated a yellow sand beach hundreds of feet below, surrounding a calm turquoise pool.

A team of porters who had gone ahead of us were already down on the beach, some pitching our tents for the night, others keeping a fire burning ready to cook dinner. As flames flickered, catching on the light breeze being drawn through the cave, smoke swirled upward in the musky, dank air.

Two nights before I had been having dinner with Howard Limbert, a gregarious 57-year-old cave expert who left his job in England as a biomedical scientist in 2012 to devote his life to exploring the caves of Vietnam. Mr. Limbert spoke with infectious enthusiasm about his many research expeditions during the 1990s to map and measure Hang En and the other caves in the region, using laser technology. He told me, between deep drags on a Vietnamese-brand cigarette, that by trekking to Hang En, I would have one of the most exciting adventures of my life. As I stood looking out over the vast, otherworldly space before me and reflecting on the hike to reach it, his words rang true

In this jungle region of central Vietnam, the Hang En cave is one in a series of mind-blowing caverns discovered by Mr. Limbert, his wife, Deb, 54, also a caver, and their colleagues from the British Cave Research Association. The most enormous cave here is Son Doong Cave, which ranks — alongside Miao Room in China and Sarawak Chamber and Deer Cave in Borneo — as one of the world’s largest caves. Son Doong last year for the first time became accessible to a limited number of tourists, thanks to Oxalis, the most established and reputable company running tours in the region’s caves.

In Son Doong’s vast caverns, forests of 100-foot-tall trees thrive in spaces big enough to accommodate 40-story skyscrapers. Colossal 260-foot stalactites, not to mention monkeys, hornbills and flying foxes, are also found in Son Doong’s surreal habitat, first fully explored in 2009. However, Son Doong, at $3,000 for a six-day trek into the deep innards of the cave, was far out of my price range and, in any case, sold out. Only 250 total spots were available for 2014, but slightly more will be offered in 2015, with bookings beginning in November.

However, other remarkable caves are nearby and much more affordable. There is the Hang Ken cave with its waterfalls spilling into large lagoons, shimmering goldlike mineral deposits and soaring columns created over thousands of years when stalactites hanging from the cave roof met stalagmite formations building from the cave floor. I decided on the larger and more dramatic Hang En cave on Mr. Limbert’s strong recommendation as it offered the chance to camp inside the colossal main cavern, and would be a wildly adventurous journey.

The Hang En tour involves a difficult daylong trek over limestone mountain paths and along riverbeds to the remote indigenous village of Ban Doong. As a Hanoi-based travel journalist and photographer who has lived in the region for nearly four years, I relished the idea of discovering something fresh and different. And as a competitive cyclist and mountain runner, I liked the muscle-burning aspect.

The expedition began in Phong Nha, a sleepy community of 1,000 people about six miles from the start of our trek. The town has acted as a base for cave-visiting for the past few years, with numbers swelling after the 2011 opening of the easily accessible Paradise Cave, popular with Vietnamese tourists as it can be reached by boat with no trekking required. Before the cave tourists arrived, the town was poor, with income mainly derived from farming, fishing and hunting.

The Paradise Cave and the more adventurous cave expeditions have turned this former tourist backwater, which lies 12 hours by train from Hanoi, into a bucket-list destination for intrepid travelers, with a choice of three caving adventures now on offer via Oxalis Adventure Tours: the Son Doong cave trek; treks to the Tu Lan river cave system that includes the Hang Ken cave at a cost of $260; and the Hang En trek that I had opted for, at $275.

Mr. Limbert and I had met for dinner at his favorite Phong Nha restaurant, Quan An Vung Hue. Sparsely decorated, it is hidden behind the small town’s narrow main street. Soon, an array of his culinary recommendations lay before us — a bowl overflowing with marinated, grilled ribs, a plate of crunchy greens sautéed with garlic, a dish of beef stir-fried with pineapple, and the obligatory mound of rice. Grazing on our feast, Mr. Limbert recalled the four full days it had taken him in the early 1990s to complete what had been for me only an overnight journey from Hanoi.

Clearly in his element, he leafed through photographs as he recalled those early days. In one, his wife, Deb, stands on a rutted stone track, cradling a rusted machine gun in her hands. “That was in 1990,” he said. “You almost couldn’t put your foot down without treading on remnants of war. There were guns, bullet shells and bomb casings everywhere.”

After dinner, we cycled toward my guesthouse along pitch-black streets devoid of streetlights. The chatter of families emanated from the small, one-story homes on the river’s edge, some made of concrete, others little more than shacks, in which several generations live crammed together. Otherwise, the only noise was the cacophony of buzzing and whirring insects from the riverbank. As we rode, a small boy appeared from nowhere and hitched a ride on my bike’s rear rack. “That’s normal here — bicycles are like a free informal taxi service,” Mr. Limbert said, smiling.

We arrived at Ho Khanh’s Homestay, owned by Mr. Ho Khanh himself, now a local celebrity who is credited with discovering the Son Doong entrance in 1990 while on a hunting trip. He later led Mr. Limbert and other members of the initial cave exploration team to Son Doong. Never afraid of a superlative, it was then that Mr. Limbert made his bold claim, bidding me the good-night promise that the next day I would be doing one of the “best, most amazing things it’s possible to do in Vietnam” — the Hang En trek.

The next morning I arrived at the Oxalis Adventure Tours office and met my fellow cavers — seven Australian men and women in their mid-20s, some on vacation, some on extended backpacking trips. After being kitted out in Cambodian army boots and given waterproof backpacks and water bottles, we set off by van for the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, a few miles from town.

Read the full article HERE.

By Hope Gillette, VOXXI

Dr. Kent Brantly, an Ebola virus survivor, generously donated his blood to be used in the treatment of Texas nurse Nina Pham who contracted the disease working with a Liberian patient.

US President Barack Obama (R) listens as Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly introduces him during an event in the east room of the White House October 29, 2014 in Washington, DC. Obama spoke about the administrations efforts to combat Ebola in the US and abroad. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Though the practice of using blood transfusions for treatment of Ebola is has no long-term proven track record, experts felt scientific evidence supported the therapy enough to warrant its implementation.

They may have been right, as Nina Pham was released from the hospital on October 24th, free from Ebola. Did the blood transfusions play a role?

According to medical officials keeping track of the Ebola outbreak, there is a good chance the antibodies from Brantly helped Pham’s immune system combat the virus.

“Convalescent serum is high on our list of potential therapies and has been used in other outbreaks,” a World Health Organization spokesman told Science magazine in August. “There is a long history of its use (for other diseases), so lots of experience of what needs to be done, what norms and standards need to be met.”

The theory behind using serum from an Ebola survivor has to do with passing along antibodies against the virus.

In order for someone to survive Ebola–or any virus–their body must produce antibodies in an immune response to combat the invading pathogen.

According to material from the University of California, San Fransisco, antibodies bind with invading pathogens to neutralize them and then recruit other cells to come break down the pathogen and expel it from they system.

The down side is it can take time to build up enough antibodies to fight off a virus like Ebola, and during that time the virus is wreaking havoc on internal organs.

By taking survivor’s blood, which is already filled with antibodies, and giving it to a new Ebola patient, that patient doesn’t have to go through the process of amassing their own immune response; therefore, decreasing the amount of time Ebola has to cause harm within the body.

The less harm Ebola is able to do, the more likely the individual is to make a full recovery.

Read the full article HERE.

From Asia One

Michelle Phan – with more than a billion views on YouTube and seven million followers; her own L’Oreal line and lifestyle media network; booming e-commerce beauty startup called Ipsy; and a new book – is teaching more people how to decorate their faces than perhaps anyone else in the world.

Michelle Phan. (Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images for Endemol Beyond USA)

According to Recode.net, the 27-year-old mogul had a modest start with her family – living on food stamps at one point – and now has a company with an US$84 million (S$108 million) annual sales run-rate.

She has 700,000 subscribers who receive her Glam Bags – little sacks of makeup samples – for $10 a month. The makeup business is famous for its high margins.

Her interviewer, Re/code’s Dawn Chmielewski, asked how it all began.

“The first videos I uploaded on my own personal channel were videos of dogs,” Phan said.

Read the full article HERE.

By NANCY NEUZIL, Chicago Tribune

Friendship, fun, language and culture were the key ingredients at Grand Prairie Elementary School recently during an English Language Learner (ELL) Family Night. Students and their families came out to enjoy pizza, crafts, games, pumpkin painting, reading together and having fun with their classmates.

The Dobrovitz Family enjoyed Family Night. (Posted by NANCY NEUZIL, Community Contributor)

In Frankfort District 157-C, there are twenty-three students currently listed as English Language Learners. These are students who came to the district speaking a language other than English or live in a home where another language is spoken, and now are learning English at school. Current students in the program include children from Project BEGIN and all K-8 grades except sixth grade. Their languages include Spanish, Russian, Korean, Arabic, Polish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Mandarin, Chinese and Kazakh. The students are doing very well with their English studies and many other children have already progressed out of the program.

The District’s ELL teacher, Shelby Baty, teaches the ELL’s for kindergarten through fifth grade and also oversees pre-kindergarten and sixth through eighth grade students. Project BEGIN English Language Learners are taught together by the Project BEGIN teachers who have the appropriate ELL endorsement. Sixth through eighth grade students are taught by Jennifer Rayola, the Spanish education and ELL teacher.

A combination of pull-out and push-in services is used, depending upon the needs of the students. Mrs. Baty stated, “For pull-out, I create units using Content-Based Instruction. I pick thematic units that focus on developing all of the tiers of vocabulary ranging from social and interaction skills and words for newcomers, to Tier 3 content words for advanced students.” She works on different things each day depending upon the groups she has, but every lesson tries to incorporate the four domains of reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Read the full article HERE.

From Bernama

HANOI — A project to provide 24 television and radio channels to overseas Vietnamese via the Internet will be implemented from 2015 to 2020, reports Vietnam News Agency (VNA).

TV and remote. (Photo by Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The project aims to provide information on policies of the Party and State, achievements of the doi moi (renewal) period and Vietnamese foreign affairs and the economy, as well as projects to attract international investment, tourism and trade promotion and the country’s integration with Vietnamese citizens abroad.

It is also to expand high-quality and multi-form television and radio services on the Internet to make it more suitable to the country’s socio-economic condition and the world’s latest information technology.

It will strive to cover all of the main areas and ensure that about one million people have daily access to the Internet broadcast system, which can simultaneously serve about 150,000 to 200,000 users.

Read the full story HERE.

By Miriam Elder, Buzz Feed

Back in January 2013, a Russian company called ZEFS put up a sculpture outside a St. Petersburg university devoted to the iPhone, the love of Russian hipsters everywhere.

Back in January 2013, a Russian company called ZEFS put up a sculpture outside a St. Petersburg university devoted to the iPhone, the love of Russian hipsters everywhere. (Courtesy of ZEFS press service)

On Friday, a day after Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote an essay saying he was gay, ZEFS took the sculpture down. In a statement sent around on Monday, it said the iPhone was now “public propaganda for sodomy.”

“After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the sculpture was dismantled in line with Russia’s federal law protecting children from information that propagandizes the rejection of traditional family values,” the statement said.

The statement cited Maxim Dolgopolov, the head of ZEFS, as saying everyone should stop using the iPhone, which, he said, was more dangerous than cigarettes or drugs.

“Now, when it’s clear that iPhones are more dangerous than cigarettes or drugs, when in addition to its technology this brand becomes a symbol for sodomistic sin, reasonable people in the world will start rejecting Apple products en masse,” he said.

“Since the public sodomy propaganda from the head of Apple, the sculpture now carries two meanings: antagonistic to our Russian culture and to Russian law,” Dolgopolov said, explaining his decision to dismantle it.

ZEFS didn’t stop there. It also said the revelations about Apple by Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower now living in Russia, also encouraged its decision to remove the sculpture.

“What’s more, in light of recent revelations of former NSA agent Edward Snowden, it is known that Apple’s technology practically spies on its users around the world, informing US security services about them,” the statement said.

Read the full article HERE.

From FOX News

A Dallas nurse who recovered from Ebola was reunited with her dog Bentley, after it was quarantined when she was sick with the virus.

Nina Pham holds her dog Bentley, at Hensley Field in Grand Prairie, Texas, Nov. 1, 2014. Pham, who recovered from Ebola, and the King Charles Spaniel were reunited privately on Saturday in a vacant residence where officers once lived at a decommissioned naval air base, where he was quarantined for 21 days. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Juan Guajardo)

Nina Pham and Bentley were rejoined privately Satuday in a vacant residence where officers once lived at a decommissioned naval base. The King Charles Spaniel was quarantined for 21 days as veterinarians in full protective gear checked on it daily.

“I’d like to take a moment to thank people from all around the world who have sent their best wishes and prayers to me and Mr. Bentley,” said Pham, who read a statement at a news conference Saturday. Bentley, whom she called “one of my best friends,” was there on a leash.

Read the full story HERE.

By Daisy Nguyen, Taipei Times

One of Vietnam’s most prominent dissidents said he was asked to sign a form seeking a pardon for spreading “propaganda against the state” before his release from prison last week, then forced onto a US-bound flight with just the clothes on his body.

Nguyen Van Hai, one of Vietnam’s most prominent dissidents, speaks to the Associated Press on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014 in Los Angeles after being released from prison and flown to the United States. Hai, who is known as Dieu Cay, was serving a 12-year prison term on charges of spreading “propaganda against the state” through his blogging and citizen media activities. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

Nguyen Van Hai, who blogged under the name Dieu Cay, said on Thursday that he refused to sign the document because he didn’t believe he had committed a crime.

He said authorities gave him no option but to leave for the US.

“They rushed me directly from the jail to [Hanoi’s] Noi Bai International Airport and escorted me onto the airplane. They didn’t allow me to see my family before my departure. So we can’t say they released me. If they had given me back my freedom, I could have gone back home instead of going directly to the airport without seeing my family and my friends,” he said.

Vietnam’s communist government previously said Hai was released for humanitarian reasons.

A US Department of State spokeswoman said Hai had decided himself to travel to the US.

Hai, 62, said he wasn’t aware of US involvement in his release, other than that the Obama administration was appealing for the release of prisoners of conscience in Vietnam.

Washington has been calling on Vietnam to improve its human rights record to smooth the way for stronger military and economic relations. The US, which has a stated commitment to supporting democracy and human rights around the world, wants closer ties with Vietnam as it looks to ramp up America’s presence in Southeast Asia and counter an assertive China.

Washington has been intimately involved in negotiations around the early release of other dissidents, but US officials rarely speak about the details publicly. Three dissidents were granted early release in April. One of them, Cu Huy Ha Vu, went directly from jail to the US accompanied by a US diplomat posted at the embassy in Hanoi.

Hai’s release came on the same day Tom Malinowski, the US assistant secretary of state for human rights, visited Hanoi.

Hai said Hanoi should be congratulated for releasing several political prisoners this year, but questioned its motives.

“I think Hanoi should be encouraged to release political dissidents, but it’s unacceptable when they use political prisoners as bargaining chips in diplomatic negotiations,” Hai said.

“I hope that all governments [negotiating with Vietnam] put democracy and other civil rights as conditions under which the country should respect and comply with,” he added.

Hai was the cofounder of the Club for Free Journalists, which was established to promote independent journalism. He was first detained in 2007 as a result of his political views. His 12-year prison term began in September 2012, and he later went on two hunger strikes against being held under solitary confinement.

He said he shuffled among 11 prisons, where he saw overcrowding, a lack of clean water and poor health care. He said he wasn’t allowed visitors or access to media.

Hai said he was able to smuggle a message by a cellmate who is serving a two-year jail sentence for posting online criticism of the government. Truong Duy Nhat, a blogger and former reporter at a state-run newspaper, was convicted of “abusing democratic freedoms” in March.

His message read: “A government needs a critical media, more so than a media that only knows how to praise a government.”

Read the full story HERE.