“There are better odds of getting struck by lightning,” Van Loenen said. “A random taxi driver offering to give me his kidney and all these pieces match. There has to be something behind this. How can this be?”

Chappell, who has been driving Van Loenen to dialysis appointments, shocked the Gilbert, Ariz. woman a month ago by offering to donate his kidney. But even more shocking to her was that doctors found they had the same blood type, that they were compatible.

“He calls me all excited. If we were a closer match, we would’ve been siblings. I was ready to fall off the floor,” Van Loenen said.

The Phoenix taxi driver said he was a man of faith and that a higher power wanted him to step in.

“By then, me and the good Lord already had a talk. He said ‘Tom, you go give her one. It will work,’ ” Chappell said.

Last year, Van Loenen, an instructor in special education methods, began feeling ill and experiencing water retention in her legs. She went to see a doctor and was diagnosed with kidney disease. With kidney failure setting in, friends and family were tested but there was no match.

In February, she received her cousin’s kidney but that transplant failed. One day, Van Loenen, 63, found herself telling Chappell, 56, about how her son was now going to get tested. Chappell decided to add his name to the list.

“I said ‘Rita, your son’s a whole lot younger than me. He’s got a lot more years. I’m gonna go down and go through the process and see if it will work.’ I don’t think she really believed I was going to.”

“God never treated anybody as good as he’s treated me,”Marty Alvey told the Daily News, three days after his vision inexplicably returned.

“When I got out of bed this morning, I looked into the mirror, and I said, ‘Hello there, Marty, nice to see you.’”

Alvey had given up reading and was forced to watch TV from a distance of 6 inches after being stricken with macular degeneration, which causes the loss of central vision.

Now the retired carpenter is hoping to go on sightseeing trips throughout the Northwest and possibly meet “a nice young gal, about 80 years old.”

“I’ve been reborn,” Alvey said, noting he can see clearly 5 feet ahead.

Alvey’s transformation came early Saturday after he awoke feeling woozy. After getting stuck in the bathroom, he crawled to his phone and called 911. On the way to the hospital, Alvey started feeling better.

When a doctor walked into his room, Alvey says he realized his vision had improved.

“He started talking to me, and I said, ‘You know, I can see you! I can see you!’” Alvey recalled. “I went crazy, completely crazy.”

A pair of ophthalmologists examined Alvey’s eyes two days ago and found no explanation for his improved vision.

“There are no anatomical changes within the eye to account for his subjective visual improvement,” saidDr. Anthony Cirino, of Kaiser Permanentein Portland, noting that Alvey’s performance on an eye exam showed no improvement. “From my standpoint, I can’t explain it.”

Alvey has spent the past few days tidying up his home in Tualatin, a suburb of Portland. The feisty nonagenarian has also relished gazing at photos of his five children and numerous grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren – and greeting his neighbors.

“Now when I meet people, I say, ‘Good morning, nice to see you,’ and I really mean it,” Alvey said. “Some people think I’m an old ding-a-ling, but that’s okay. I can see.”

There are events advertised as mere cocktail parties until, poof! A preacher appears and the host and hostess swap vows between sips of Champagne. There are receptions that feature a bride and groom swaying to something syrupy likeUnchained Melody until, screech! The tame track abruptly quits and, after a beat, the couple bust into something a little more saucy, like Baby Got Back. (A video of that bait-and-switch moment has garnered more than 8 million views on YouTube since 2007.)

And then there’s the prancing processional played round the world — more than 10 million YouTube hits since July 19 — in which a couple and their attendants fist-pump and handstand their way down a St. Paul church aisle to Chris Brown’sForever.

“This element of surprise to entertain your guests is certainly a trend,” says Modern Bride editor in chief Antonia van der Meer. But recession-era wow weddings aren’t punctuated with five-tier wedding cakes and 5-foot ice sculptures. “The feel-good moment is especially important to people right now,” and, “happily,” choreographed dances don’t cost anything (minus the time and energy invested for practice). “So I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more of it.”

Philadelphia has replaced 700 public trash receptacles downtown with 500 of the high-tech compactors, which use solar energy to condense trash — cutting collection trips by 75%.

Facing a $1.4 billion, five-year budget deficit, the city estimates it will save $875,000 a year with the compactors, bought with state grant money. Cities from Vienna to Boston to Vancouver have tried the devices in smaller numbers; Philadelphia put them along four collection routes downtown.

Streets Commissioner Clarena Tolson says the new compactors, the last of which was installed this month, need to be emptied about five times a week — vs. 19 times for a regular trash bin. The change frees up 25 streets department employees, who are now filling vacancies on trucks that collect household recycling.

The devices are being tried by governments and others in 40 states and 20 countries, but no other group is trying an approach as comprehensive as Philadelphia, says Richard Kennelly, vice president of marketing for BigBelly Solar, based in Needham, Mass.

The BigBelly is powered by light, but it does not need direct light, Kennelly said. When trash gets to the top of the bin, it breaks an electronic beam that triggers a motor that pushes it down. As trash gets more densely packed, the machine senses the resistance and changes a light on the front of the bin from green to yellow.

After all, Takeshi Murata is 84.

Murata was 18 and a student at University High School in Greeley, Colorado, in 1944 when he was drafted to fight in World War II, according to the Greeley Daily Tribune newspaper.

Murata approached his old school, thinking his military intelligence classes should suffice for any coursework he missed when he left school at 18.

Murata dropped the diploma quest and followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a farmer. He raised five children — each of whom earned college degrees.

But Murata still had no diploma of his own until a teacher at the school, Jeanne Lipman, heard his story last year. She found Murata’s report cards, got an original diploma from one of his old classmates and turned them over to University of Northern Colorado President Kay Norton. The high school is now called University High; the university ran it when Murata attended.

“I’m 84 years old now,” he said. “What am I going to do with a diploma? Look for a job?”

How had Hayes, 25, and Coleman, 21, heard the news so quickly?

Twitter.

Twitter’s constantly updating record of up-to-the-minute reaction has in some instances threatened to usurp media coverage of breaking news. It has also helped many celebrities, athletes and politicians bypass the media to get their message directly to their audience.

Make no mistake about it, Twitter has in many ways been a boon to the media. It’s one more way a story might go viral and it’s arguably the best way for a news outlet to get closer to their readership. Most outlets now have a presence on Twitter with a feed directing readers to their respective sites.

But even in an Internet world that has for years eroded the distance between media and consumer, Twitter is a jolt of democratization to journalism.

To date, the most salient, powerful example of Twitter’s influence has been Iranian protesters using the service (among many other methods) to assemble marches against what they feel has been an unjust election.

Early in the protests, the State Department even urged Twitter to put off maintenance that would have temporarily cut off service. Twitter is difficult for governments to block because tweets — 140 characters or less — can be uploaded from mobile phones like a text message. (The Iranian government has nevertheless often succeeded in blocking Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.)

Further, many Americans were upset at what they considered CNN’s thin early coverage of the revolution inIran and voiced their complaints (where else?) on Twitter. Some said they preferred news on Twitter to the cable news network.

Twitter also produced eyewitness accounts of the Mumbai terrorist attacks last year. And when the US Airways jetliner crashed into New York’s Hudson River, Twitter was among the first places photos of the landing were linked.

Many users have become accustomed to clicking on Twitter when news breaks. There, they can find a sea of reaction, commentary and links to actual articles.

The popular technology blog TechCrunch recently questioned whether Twitter is “the CNN of the new media generation.”

Chao Mu-he, better known to his classmates at Nanhua University in southern Taiwan as “Grandpa Chao,” said he began graduate school after being told he was too old to continue as a volunteer at a local hospital.

“I was bored after I left the hospital,” Chao said Thursday. “I don’t play mahjong or have other hobbies. I felt I had to do something with my life.”

In London, a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records said she could not say if Chao is the oldest recipient of a graduate degree because the company does not keep records in this category.

Chao said the most difficult part of his studies was coping with a poor memory.

“I can’t remember things as well as my fellow students,” he said. “So before a test I would wake up at midnight and study all night. That way, the material was still fresh in my mind when the test began.”

He specialized in the works of Chuangtze, a 4th century B.C. Taoist master.

Anything goes this year as companies such as the U.S. Spanish-language networkTelemundo and groups across the nation work with the Census Bureau to cook up creative and quirky ways to get the word out about the 2010 Census.

“It’s one of the most important game-changing events in our history,” says Don Browne, president of Telemundo, about the count of every person in the USA every 10 years. “There are enormous demographic shifts in our country … driven primarily by the growth in the Latino population.”

The network began airing Mas Sabe el Diablo (loosely translated as “The Devil Knows More”) last week. It’s a tale of a professional thief who falls in love with his lawyer, who happens to be engaged to the man he wants to destroy. In the fall, the character of a single mother who gets a job as a Census worker will be added.

“She will be interacting with people who are confused by the process,” Browne says. “This character will help people understand why the system works … to try to really make it clear that this is something positive and constructive.”

Tustin Mains was in the back seat with his 3-year-old brother Sunday when his father, Phillip Mains, slumped over at the wheel, the boy told police. The family had been driving home from a restaurant.

“I remember getting up to about the mall — that was about 6:45,” Mains told The North Platte Telegraph. “The next thing I remember was waking up to the officer and paramedics, and it was 8:15.”

Tustin leapt into his father’s lap so he could steer and see out the windshield. Mains’ foot had slipped off the accelerator, but even at idle the Chevrolet Avalanche was going an estimated 10-15 mph, police said.

The kindergartner steered the truck several blocks, even turning around when he entered a neighborhood he didn’t recognize, until he was spotted by police.

North Platte officer Roger Freeze ran up to the moving pickup, reached through an open window and rammed the gearshift into park.

Police Chief Martin Gutschenritter praised his officer and young Tustin.

“I will be issuing him a departmental citation for his quick, professional action on this case. That is also a very special young man. He was able to take quick action when his dad was incapacitated, and we are very proud of him, too,” Gutschenritter said.

When he saw his dad “fall asleep,” Tustin said, he got scared, then got another fright when officer Freeze appeared at the truck’s window.

But when Freeze abruptly stopped the pickup?

“I was just happy,” Tustin said.

Emma ended Emily’s 12-year reign as the No. 1 baby name for girls in 2008, the Social Security Administration announced Friday. Jacob was at the top for the 10th straight year.

Barack may have been the man of the year in 2008 as Obama won the presidency, but he’s still behind Elvis. Barack didn’t crack the top 1,000, though he did move up a record 10,126 spots, to No. 2,409. Elvis is still in the building, but he fell from 673 to 713.

Miley, as in popular teen singer Miley Cyrus, moved up 152 spots to No. 127. But her stage name, Hannah — as in Hannah Montana— fell from No. 9 to No. 17.

Biblical names dominate the top choices for boys while popular culture appears to have influenced some of the girls’ names.