First Lady Spreads Anti-Bullying Message at Kids’ Hospital

“Melania Trump spread her anti-bullying message on an annual Christmas season visit to a Washington children’s hospital on Thursday, reading a story about a Christmas ornament named Oliver who is bullied by other ornaments in a family’s collection,” Darlene Superville writes for The Associated Press.

The author of the children’s book sat a few feet away, thanking the First Lady “from the bottom of my heart” for inviting him to join her. “Mrs. Trump launched an initiative earlier this year to teach kindness to children, naming it Be Best,” Superville adds.

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“The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits plunged by 27,000 in early December to 206,000, erasing a surge around Thanksgiving that now appears to have been a temporary blip triggered by an earlier-than-usual holiday,” Jeffry Bartash reports for MarketWatch. “The decline in applications for benefits puts claims, a rough way to measure layoffs, back near a half-century low.”

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