Global media spotlight successes of Mormons

In recent weeks there have been enough personality profiles of Latter-day Saints in the news to fill a Mormon version of People magazine. Whether it be champion snowboarder Torah Bright, a master circus man, a Canadian politician, a standout high school senior, LDS students in the Ivy League or two brothers who have excelled at Scouting and football, recent news is chock full of LDS up-close-and-personal stories.

Aussie LDS snowboarder

Bright made the Live magazine section of the Sunday (London) Mail.

The magazine wrote: "Torah Bright is the most famous female snowboarder in the world — and one of the most successful. She specialises in the treacherous half-pipe competition, which involves a series of spectacular jumps from the lip of a deep, snow-covered channel. In the past three years she's been crowned TTR World Tour Champion, won the Burton Global Open Series, the Nippon Open and the World Superpipe Championship and landed a gold medal at the 2009 Winter X Games. And she's still only 23. She was born the fourth of five children into a sporty family in Cooma, New South Wales, at the foot of the Snowy Mountains, and took up snowboarding when she was 11. She turned pro three years later. Competing takes her all over the globe, but her main home is now in Salt Lake City, Utah."

Alberta politician

A Calgary Herald political columnist assesses the movement of Paul Hinman, a prominent leader of Alberta's Wildrose Alliance political party.

"If Paul Hinman really does quit the Wild?rose Alliance leadership, I'll miss seeing him wander lonely as a cloud around the legislature press gallery, begging for scraps of attention in the papers or on TV.

"Hinman has been hard-working, earnest, honest and often amiably goofy, both as leader of Wildrose and the earlier Alberta Alliance. He knows exactly where he stands on every issue. Royalties? Changing them was a disaster from Day 1. Health care? Centralization is already a fiasco.

"Like many a man who knows what's right, and right-wing, he'll talk your ear off. Hinman became the only leader who speaks for a huge constituency of small 'c' conservative Albertans."

Building understanding at Yale and Harvard

Two recent stories, one from Harvard and the other from Yale, profiled Latter-day Saints who attend the Ivy League schools.