Thanks to a $140 million fund created by wealthy donors, children in two states and 36 communities will get a chance to attend a private or parochial school next year. A lottery in April next year will determine which 35,000 children will receive the four-year scholarships that will range from $600 to $1,600 depending on their families ability to pay. The CEO Foundation, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, supports private scholarships and taxpayer-paid vouchers. John Walton, heir in the Wal-Mart legacy, serves on its board. Parents seeking information may call 1-800-805-5437.

A growing problem - nearly 1,500 veterans funerals held everyday but due to budget cuts and base closings, there aren't enough honor guards to go around. Getting a burial with full honors is becoming almost impossible to do, leaving some areas to hire buglers and look for alternative ways of staffing the honor guard. A bill before Congress would provide for a three-person honor guard for each veteran beginning in 2000, as well as a conference to study the problem. The House cleared the bill last week and the Senate is expected to approve it. The Defense Department is also considering another option that would use National Guard and reservists on their active days to perform honors at 2-3 funerals per day.

Last month a burst of radiation from a distant star hit the Earth with more power than has ever been recorded from beyond the sun. At least two satellites shut themselves down to save their electronic components. The burst of gamma and x-ray radiation that struck over the Pacific on August 27th temporarily ionized the upper atmosphere just as the sun does during the daytime. The energy was absorbed mostly by the upper atmosphere, and the miniscule amount that reached the surface of the planet posed no hazard to life, according to experts. The eruption came from a neutron star called SGR1900+14 about 20,000 light years away. Astronomers estimated that if the energy had been captured and put to use, it could power all of Earth's energy needs for a billion billion years - one billion periods of one billion years. In five minutes we saw as much energy as we will see from the sun over the next 300 years.

The extreme energy burst suggested that the object is a magnetar, a weird type of star first suggested by astrophysicists Robert Duncan (Univ of TX, Austin) and Christopher Thompson (Univ of NC, Chapel Hill). According to Cornell University's astronomer Jim Cordes, proof of the star's existence "is a triumph for theoretical astrophysics. This is the Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire of astrophysics. It is that big a deal." Magnetars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that have created a magnetic field far greater than any other known. From more than 100,000 miles away it could erase the magnetic strip on your credit card and suck the keys right out of your pocket. They are extremely dense, containing one and a half times the mass of the sun in an area just 12 miles across. Duncan said, "A tablespoon of material from this star would weigh as much as an aircraft carrier." It is rare for such a distant stellar explosion to have any effect on Earth, attesting to the strength of this energy release.