The most gifted diver in the class seems to be the free skier Rory Bushfield, who is wildly acrobatic with the necessary level of daredevil.

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The US agency was recently gifted two Hubble-class spy telescopes by the National Reconnaissance Office, but even with this donation Nasa is short of the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to turn one of them into a dark mission.

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The participants, about three dozen per class, are academically gifted, often varsity athletes, and driven.

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At NYC Gifted, the 90-minute class consists of 10 students and one teacher.

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Lack of specialist equipment and top-class competition are almost insurmountable barriers to even the most physically gifted athlete such as Niyonshuti, but by finishing fourth in last year's African Mountain Bike Championships he booked his place on the starting line at Hadleigh Farm.

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Judy Galbraith, a specialist in guidance and counseling of the gifted, recalls a time when her second-grade student brought The Hobbit to class.

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While Painter is a gifted story teller, the best one he told me is how he got elected president of his class at West Point.

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