By ,
Published May 08, 2017
Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine...
Turning Up the Heat
We begin with a Friday Follow almost three years in the making.
As Doug McKelway reported, the White House is currently installing solar panels to help power the first family's residence.
It is part of a promise by the Obama administration to utilize green technology.
The administration's original deadline of spring 2011 came and went with no sign of progress until this week.
Environmentalist Bill McKibben says it's about time.
Quote -- "One hopes that this is a small sign that the second-term Obama administration will make climate change a priority." He said.
Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed, they came down during the Reagan years and George W. Bush put them back up.
This will be the first time solar has been used for a president's living quarters.
Shuttered Down
A Google street view photographer ran into a roadblock while trying to capture images in Thailand recently.
20 villagers in a town in Northern Thailand blocked his car and detained him accusing him of being a spy.
The car is retro-fitted with cameras to take pictures at 360 degrees for Google maps software.
Residents believed it was surveying the area for a controversial project to build a dam.
The manager newspaper reports, villagers drove the Google employee to a Buddhist temple and made him swear on a statue of Buddha that he was not a spy.
The group has since apologized.
An Eye for Fine Jewelry
And finally, a flea market find has turned quite lucrative for one Philadelphia woman.
Norma Ifill says she bought this unusual necklace for $15 about eight years ago.
A few years later, she noticed the similarity between this necklace and an Alexander Calder jewelry exhibit at an Art Museum.
A specialist verified, she had been wearing one very pricey piece of art.
Turns out that her necklace once hung in the Museum of Modern Art. That was about 60 years ago.
That necklace is now on sale at Christie's Auction House, where her $15 investment is expected to bring in between $200,000-$300,000.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/grapevine-google-street-view-photographer-mistaken-for-spy