The Muslim Women’s Institute for Research and Development serves over 5,000 needy New Yorkers a month – and just got a new lease on life. The organization has two locations: in Highbridge and Parkchester, Bronx, providing hunger, health and immigration services. It was in danger of closing its doors on December 31, due to lack of funding, but got a donation just in the nick of time from the Collegiate Church . “It felt really good,” said Nurah Ama’tullah, executive director of the Institute. “It is truly like a blessing.” Ama’tullah said the payroll was disrupted around Labor Day and the Institute’s future was in limbo until the donation came in on December 19. “It was a time of prayer and reflection as to how we would continue,” she recalled. “For someone like myself, it’s always a question as to ‘Is this what Allah wants me to do?’” The $100,000 grant was able to pay off the $50,000 in existing debt and will be used to cover operational expenses through the end of March. But since the middle of December, an additional $49,000 was raised from various sources, so now costs are covered through the end of May. “We are working to raise additional funds,” Ama’tullah said.

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Bronx Interfaith Nonprofit Saved

UK cinema box office takings passed the £1bn mark for the first time last year, according to the British Film Institute (BFI).

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UK box office takes £1bn in 2011

A new think tank launched in the District Monday with the goal of reducing the cost of health care through research and entrepreneurship. The West Health Policy Center is the latest project of Gary and Mary West, the two billionaire philanthropists behind the West Wireless Health Institute and the West Health Investment Fund, a pair of California-based organizations that develop and fund health technology products. Read full article > >

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New think tank wants government to see gold in health technology

A new think tank launched in the District Monday with the goal of reducing the cost of health care through research and entrepreneurship. The West Health Policy Center is the latest project of Gary and Mary West, the two billionaire philanthropists behind the West Wireless Health Institute and the West Health Investment Fund, a pair of California-based organizations that develop and fund health technology products. Read full article > >

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New think tank wants government to see gold in health technology

The Institute of International Finance said on Saturday that talks on a Greek debt swap deal were continuing and its chief’s departure from Athens was scheduled and not unexpected.

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Greek Deal Unlikely Before Next Week

Andy Foster from the Trading Standards Institute explains consumer rights when it comes to unwanted Christmas gifts.

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VIDEO: Unwanted gifts: Your rights

The color of 2012 is a citrus-red hue that will give your weary eyes a break from all of those neutrals. Tangerine Tango , Pantone’s 2012 color of the year, was selected because, “there’s the element of encouragement with orange, it’s building on the ideas of courage and action, that we want to move on to better things. I think it would be a disservice to go with a relaxed, soothing color now,” Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, told the Associated Press. Read full article > >

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Tangerine Tango: Pantone’s color of the year in fashion

At a black-tie dinner Saturday, former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will receive an award from an outfit especially sympathetic to the rigors of his old job: the Panetta Institute for Public Policy , an academic center co-founded by Gates’s successor at the Pentagon, Leon E. Panetta. Panetta, who took over from Gates in July , has recused himself from direct involvement in the Monterey, Calif.-based institute since 2009, when he returned to government service to lead the CIA. But Panetta is expected to attend the dinner with his wife, Sylvia, who has run the nonprofit institute in his absence. Read full article > >

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Back in Monterey, Panetta’s institute honors a Washington crowd

WARSAW, Poland — Polish authorities have reopened an investigation into World War II crimes committed at Auschwitz and its satellite camps that was closed in the 1980s because of the country’s isolation behind the Iron Curtain. One aim of the new probe is to track down any living Nazi perpetrators, according to an announcement Thursday by the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body that investigates Nazi and communist-era crimes. Read full article > >

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Poland reopens long-dormant investigation into Auschwitz and other concentration camp crimes

MOSCOW — Frustrated by a bureaucracy that they say makes research here almost impossible, several hundred scientists staged a protest Thursday and demanded more control over their work. “We need to liberate our scientists,” said Alexander Zinoviev, a physicist at the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg. Read full article > >

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Young Russian scientists rally against bureaucracy

Falling incomes will mean the biggest drop for middle-income families since the 1970s, says a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

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UK seeing ‘big rise in poverty’

During his first week at Virginia Tech, Frank Shushok Jr. toured a 1960s-era residence hall that was being renovated as a resortlike facility, complete with movie theater, gym, gaming room and a salon with affordable spray-tanning. He was shocked. “I am operating under a completely different mental model of what residence halls are supposed to be,” said Shushok, the associate vice president for student affairs who is entering his third year at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. A residence hall should be “a place where students live so they can learn.” Read full article > >

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Virginia Tech dorm becomes a learning experience

There were rambling moments and unnecessary stage turns during Monday’s gala celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. But every minute of the 3 1 / 2 -hour program was worth it just to hear the evening’s honored guest, Aretha Franklin, sing jazz. Read full article > >

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Aretha Franklin steals the show at Monk Institute anniversary gala

College graduates are the fastest-growing group of consumers who have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past five years, according to a new study by a financial nonprofit, which underscores the broad reach of the Great Recession. The survey by the Institute for Financial Literacy, slated for release Tuesday, found that the percentage of debtors with a bachelor’s degree rose from 11.2 percent in 2006 to 13.6 percent in 2010. The group tracked similar but smaller increases in consumers with two-year associate and graduate degrees. Meanwhile, the percentage of debtors with a high school diploma or who did not finish college declined. Read full article > >

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Study: College graduates driving increase in bankruptcy filings

Household budgets could be squeezed for the next 10 years as the impact of tax rises and cuts is felt, the Institute for Fiscal Studies warns.

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UK budgets ‘face 10-year squeeze’