After years of pressure to stop marketing sugary sodas to children, Burger King has announced that it will be removing all soda pop products from their kids’ menus, effective immediately.
Burger King joins three other fast food chains, Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Arby’s, in providing healthier options as the default beverage in their kids meals — fat-free milk, low-fat chocolate milk or 100 percent apple juice.
MomsRising.org and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, has been urging the changes for years. The change is significant because soda is the leading source of calories in children’s diets, according to the Center.
“Restaurant chains that market soda as part of their children’s meals are making life harder for parents, most of whom want to reserve soda as a special, occasional treat if they allow it at all,” said the Center in a statement released after the Burger King policy change. “Fewer kids will become conditioned to think that soda should be a part of every eating out occasion.”
“While this is a great first step – we urge all fast-food restaurants to further improve upon their healthy options for children and adults by serving whole grain rolls, offering more fruit and vegetable options, reducing sodium across the menu, and adopting a comprehensive policy to limit the marketing of unhealthy food to children,” said a spokeswoman for the grass-roots organization, MomsRising.org.
A cheerleader with Down syndrome being bullied at a Lincoln Middle School basketball game in Kenosha, Wisconsin spurred three of the basketball players to walk off the field in her defense.
Desiree Andrews moves to her own internal rhythms while cheering on the sidelines. After someone in the stands began criticizing her, some eighth grade players, Miles Rodriguez, Chase Vazquez and Scooter Terrien stepped in to stop it.
“A couple of us went over there and were like, can you guys just stop, that’s not right,” Miles Rodriguez, told WTMJ-4 News.
In honor of Dee’s enthusiasm and sweet smile, the school’s athletic director said he was going to hang a banner that proclaims the school’s gym to be “D’s House” — a nicknamed that has stuck over the past year.
A community business owner saw the story in a newscast and said they would donate the banner.
(WATCH the video above or READ the story, w/ photos, from Kenosha News)
Two Swiss pilots attempting the first flight around the world in a solar-powered plane completed the maiden leg of their voyage from Abu Dhabi to Oman.
Solar Impulse 2 took off on Monday to start a five-month journey of 22,000 miles (35,000 km) organized to focus the world’s attention on sustainable energy.
The two pilots, organization co-founders, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschbergtaking, will take turns in the single-seat aircraft hope to finish circumnavigating the Earth by July of this year. Several legs of the trip will span thousands of miles, carrying the alternating pilots over two oceans without a single drop of fuel.
The plane’s giant wings, which are longer than a Boeing 747, include 17,000 solar cells that harvest energy for its three lithium-ion batteries that will keep four propellers going all night.
Veteran beekeepers are calling it “mindboggling.” A father-son team in Australia invented the Flow Hive which allows users to collect honey on tap directly from their beehives without bugging their winged workers.
“It really is a revolution,” said Graham Anderson, a beekeeper of 40 years. “I was completely amazed.”
Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart have long lamented the difficult and messy task of gathering honey from their bees. So they designed a completely new system. After ten years of testing prototypes, they unveiled their Flow Hive on the crowd funding platform, Indiegogo.
Within five minutes they reached their initial goal of $70,000, needed to purchase specialized manufacturing equipment. In the two weeks since, they have raised more than 5.6 million dollars in funding — promising their amazing products in return for upfront cash.
More than one thousand people have ordered their full beekeeping system at a cost of $600.
In the past, harvesting honey has been too difficult for the average joey — put on the bee suit, split the boxes from the hive, calm the bees with smoke, remove frames, cut wax caps from honeycombs, extract the honey. Whew.
Taking all the hard work out of harvesting, Flow Hive‘s frames don’t need to pulled out of the hive. The cells are arranged upon channels that open with every turn of the tap. Voila, the honey flows down.
Having exceeded their crowdfunding expectations, the Andersons hope to expand their business internationally. The father-son duo wants to ease new beekeepers into the trade by introducing this system to urban areas. A win-win for the ecosystem, local food markets and the world’s bee population.
In the frigid month of January in Sioux Falls, six puppies left in a dumpster were rescued and handed over to inmates to be raised and given round the clock care.
After eight weeks of supervision by the Paroled Pups Program at the South Dakota State Penitentiary, the dogs are now ready to move to their forever homes.
But they will be missed.
“We were just looking at a picture of how small they were before,” inmate Lance Przybylski told KDLT News. He helped care for the pups when they were struggling to survive.
“It’s just incredible how big they are, and healthy.”
While the inmates are sad to see them go, it won’t be long before the humane society brings in a new litter to raise.
From behind bars, the six adorable puppies were moved to the Sioux Falls Area Humane Society adoption center last week and each one found a new home within hours.
(WATCH the video above or READ the story from KDLT News)
Despite living with M.S. and terminal cancer, 45-year-old Arlie Smith couldn’t be more positive about life.
He has worked at the Costco store in Danville, California for 21 years, always smiling and cheerful as he looked at shoppers’ receipts at the door.
Yesterday those customers surprised Smith and his wife after raising about $2,500 to send he and Shari on a vacation to their favorite beach spot.
Arlie is also thrilled to be raising as much money as possible during a store-wide fundraiser in May for Children’s Hospital, “a fundraiser in which he has previously finished in the top ten in North America,” reports KTVU-TV.
(WATCH the video above or READ the story from KTVU)
No good can come from publicly shaming a six-year-old boy. That’s the lesson educators at Lincoln Elementary in Grants Pass, Oregon recently learned when the community stepped up in a student’s defense.
Nicole Garloff, mother of first-grader Hunter Cmelo, took him to school late due to her poor health and a broken down Dodge Durango. The boy’s punishment was sitting behind a cardboard screen in the lunchroom, segregated from all of his classmates.
Garloff stopped by the school during lunch only to discover him crying. She took a photo before leaving, which the grandmother later posted on Facebook.
Soon the school was flooded with messages from all over the country demanding an end to the practice.
Expressing his outrage, local radio personality Bill Meyer from AM 1440, started a campaign to get the family a reliable set of wheels. The Durango was deemed too damaged for repair, but a surprise was in store for the family.
Rapid Repo and Collections, with help from other local businesses, donated a refurbished 2001 Chrysler Town and Country minivan. Kelly’s Automotive Service, who repaired the van, included free oil changes for a year and $100 in free gas.
”I’m just blown away to see the community come together like this, and that there are still good people out there and people who care,” the boy’s father, Marc Cmelo, told KPTV.
The outrage on social media made a positive impact on School Superintendent John Higgens, who changed his policy for students who are tardy four or more times. They will make up work in a private space alongside a teacher’s aide with a positive tone.
The sister of a hearing-impaired young man in Turkey teamed up with an ad agency in a grand scheme to let her brother feel what it would be like to have no barriers to communication.
It took a month of planning and sign language trainings to prepare for the big day, December 28, 2014.
The ad agency set out to make a commercial for Samsung’s new video call center in Turkey that helps hearing impaired people with customer service.
Every person, from the bagel shop clerk, to people on the street and the taxi driver, spoke to Muaharrem in sign language.
A new device that simulates the human heart will spare some animals from medical drug testing.
The new heart-on-a-chip developed by researchers at UC Berkeley, hosts live, beating heart cells and is a major advancement for medical science. Professor Kevin Healy says his device is a more efficient, accurate and less expensive method for testing cardiac drugs.
Typically, human subjects are too weak to undergo clinical trials, so animals have been substituted. But, this practice is also known to cause high failure rates in predicting human reactions.
“Ultimately, these chips could replace the use of animals to screen drugs for safety and efficacy,” said Healy. It also could cut the cost of bringing a drug to market.
“It takes about $5 billion on average to develop a drug, and 60 percent of that figure comes from upfront costs in the research and development phase. Using a well-designed model of a human organ could significantly cut the cost and time of bringing a new drug to market.”
In a study published Monday by the journal Scientific Reports, researchers explain how the inch-long silicone device provides a safe testing ground for a variety of compounds.
Pulsating cardiac muscle cells made from adult stem cells are placed in the device, which copies the 3D structure of how cells grow in the heart. Within 24 hours after the heart cells were loaded into the chamber, they began beating on their own at a normal rate. The engineered tissue remained functional for several weeks.
Healy hopes this process will be used to test various drugs and eliminate animal subjects all together in the future.
See the pulsating heart-on-a-chip in action in this short clip below:
(Learn more at UC Berkeley) – Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley
Public schools in Saudi Arabia will for the first time offer programs of physical exercise and sports for their girls. Even though the country’s schools are segregated by gender, only the boys’ schools have offered gym time in the past.
Obesity is skyrocketing in the country and the numbers are highest for women — and rising for children and teens, according to NPR News.
Saudi Arabia is changing slowly, but advances for women since 2005 portend a hopeful future with even more equality.
After 2005, when King Abdullah was crowned the country’s leader, Saudi women were issued national identity cards for the first time. Jobs also opened up to women in government offices like the passport administration, civil defense, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, reports Al Jazeera.
“During this period, a woman was appointed deputy minister of education (becoming the first woman to hold the rank of minister), and another was appointed university director for the first women’s university in Saudi Arabia (Princess Noura bint Abdul Rahman University).”
The 2012 Olympics included female Saudi athletes for the first time and the first women’s sports club, Glowfit, was granted a license to open the following year.
More importantly, the force behind this move in public schools is the Shura Council, a government advisory board chosen by the Saudi king, who for the first time in 2013 included women. At least 30 Saudi women are now asserting their position as full members on the Council, which recommended bringing sports to girls’ schools.
“It is a huge dramatic change. And it’s beautiful,” a personal trainer at Glowfit, Nouf al-Musehel, told NPR News. “It’s just beautiful to watch the change in Saudi.”
FedEx driver John Bryant headed out to work in Arlington, Texas like it was any other day. But on March 5th, the sight of smoke off the highway convinced Bryant to detour from his normal route.
“The smoke didn’t look normal to me,” he said. “I pulled off the highway and headed over to see if everything was okay.”
Things were far from okay.
As he pulled down the street, Bryant saw a house on fire and frantic neighbors were screaming that the homeowner was inside. Firefighters weren’t on the scene yet, but Bryant, a volunteer firefighter and former EMT in Kuwait, didn’t hesitate.
A 15-year-old dog that lost the use of his back legs will be able to continue his favorite pastime, taking walks, thanks to the kindness of two Home Depot employees near Los Angeles.
Risa Feldman came to the hardware store in Hawthorne and asked employee Ernesto Moran how she could construct a cart for pushing around the neighborhood. He said he’d think about it and call her back.
Moran and his co-worker Justin Wadman came up with a brilliant solution for Risa and her beloved Ike, and custom built it themselves, including a ramp on hinges.
Appreciate all shapes and sizes of people, and NEVER keep anyone from dancing. That’s the message coming from social media in support of a man who was laughed at and shamed for dancing in public.
The photos above were posted anonymously by someone who wrote “Spotted this specimen trying to dance… He stopped when he saw us laughing.”
This so appalled Cassandra Fairbanks in Los Angeles that she and her friends decided to try and find the unknown man and throw him a huge party to dance with him.
2000 self-described “babes” took to Twitter with a campaign #FindDancingMan and within a day they succeeded.
Sean posted a new photo of himself from London, England, smiling and holding a note saying, “Hi Cass… (as requested)!”
Having found their man, Cass and her crew began a fundraising campaign to buy Sean a ticket to L.A.
“We are so happy to make a difference for #dancingman and anyone else out there who has experienced this type of pain or ridicule,” Cass wrote on the new GoFundMe page.
In three days their campaign raised more than $37,500 for the party.
Celebrities have also volunteered to help. Pharrell Williams wants to perform and Moby has asked to be the guest DJ.
Details about the party are still to be determined, but the women are hoping to set up plenty of photos and a Livestream of the event, saying, Sean is “a beloved rock star and so many people globally wish to dance with him.”
There’s nothing fun about cartilage wearing down and bones rubbing together. Can you say ouch? The only refuge from arthritis today comes from either pain killers, which often have negative side effects, or complex joint replacement surgery. But hope is on the horizon for sufferers, thanks to a breakthrough study at the University of Manchester, where professor Sue Kimber and her team may have developed a cure for arthritis .
The researchers transformed embryonic stem cells into cartilage cells and injected them into rats with defective joints. The results were “amazing.” Within four weeks the cartilage was partially repaired and by twelve weeks the high-quality new tissue looked pretty much normal.
On top of that, the scientists, whose work is funded by Arthritis Research UK, were thrilled to discover no signs of any side-effects.
Kimber is hopeful that, although in the early experimental stages, the research will lead to an inexpensive treatment that is applicable to a greater number of arthritis patients.
”Current treatments of osteoarthritis are restricted to relieving painful symptoms, with no effective therapies to delay or reverse cartilage degeneration,” said Arthritis Research UK Director Dr. Stephen Simpson. “Joint replacements are successful in older patients, but not young people, or athletes who’ve suffered a sports injury.”
The researchers are excited about the immense potential of Kimber’s work. Developing and testing this process in rats is the first step in generating the information needed to run a study in people with arthritis.
Hollywood superheroes Chris Evans, who plays the role of Marvel’s Captain America, and his friend Chris Pratt (who plays Star-Lord in the film Guardians of the Galaxy) made good on a friendly Super Bowl bet on Saturday visiting Seattle Children’s Hospital bringing gifts and joy to young patients and their families.
Evans, a New England Patriots fan, and Pratt, a Seattle Seahawks fan, both wagered on who they thought would win the Super Bowl. Depending on the outcome, they promised to either visit the children of Christopher’s Haven in Boston (Evans’ charity of choice), or patients in Seattle. After the Seahawks lost, Pratt stuck to his word and joined Evans at the Boston home for kids with Cancer — and even wore a Tom Brady jersey, to sting his wound a little more.
But in true superhero fashion, they announced that both of them would visit both charities. The staff and patients were thrilled.
“I was so excited when I heard the news,” said Maggie Mittelstaedt, an 18-year-old patient at Seattle Children’s getting a hip replacement. “Guardians of the Galaxy and the Avenger movies are my favorites, and they were so nice to spend time with me.”
The actors brought superhero toys to hand out donated by Marvel and Disney.
“Meeting them was a nice reprieve for us,” said one 7-year-old’s mom. “So many of our visitors are doctors, and the conversations are medical. I can’t wait to watch the Captain America movie with her son. It will be like he knows him personally now.”
“We were so surprised,” said the mother of a boy who is receiving a bone marrow transplant at the hospital. “It gave Tyler five minutes of happiness. This situation will never be normal, but their visit helped make us feel special.”
A Wichita, Kansas diner that has been a hub for kindness and helpfulness changed the life of a smiley waiter who was in dire need of dental care.
Server Brian Maixner is one of the most recent recipients of the Doo-Dah Diner’s giving atmosphere, thanks to an Oklahoma attorney.
People magazine reports, “Since childhood, the kind and talkative waiter has been plagued with dental issues. Working to earn the money for dental insurance, Maixner was still missing several teeth and suffering from painful mouth infections when Fred Boettcher sat in Maixner’s section on a busy weekend morning.”
A 23-year-old shopper who forgot to take his money from the ATM slot was shocked when he returned an hour later to find a kind stranger waiting to hand it back.
Grant Somerville, in Glasgow Scotland, made a withdrawal of £150 for his mother’s birthday present.
When he rushed back to the cash machine, a “wee elderly lady” was still standing there, waiting with the cash and believing the owner would return.
Like a bell rings in the film, It’s a Wonderful Life, whenever an angel gets its wings, a hospital in British Columbia plays the lilting sound of chimes in hallways and rooms whenever a baby is born.
The practice, launched February 20 at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, was inspired by ringing chimes following every birth at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Washington.
In a place where grief, sadness and death burden so many, the tinkling sound of chimes, initiated by pressing a big orange button in the delivery rooms, can bring a sense of healing and lightness to families.
The public announcement system is normally broadcasting urgent distress calls such as a missing patient, according to Kamloops BC Now. The sound of a chime following the birth of a baby now offers a moment to pause in the midst of chaos.
The chimes idea in Kamloops was initiated by Michaela Swan, who works as a spokesperson at the hospital, and her sister, Dara Johnson, a nurse there.
A towering oak tree in the middle of a grassy soccer field in Estonia was named European Tree of the Year after 200,000 people cast their votes in February.
The 150-year-old oak offers shade to football teams competing in Saare County that have learned how to use the tree to complete passes.
In 1951 the town of Orisaree enlarged a small sports field incorporating the mighty oak into its playing area.
“This contest really joined people together and made us all feel the importance of trees for our community,” said Heiki Hanso, coordinator of the contest in Estonia.
The European Tree of the Year contest was launched in 2011 by the Environmental Partnership Association as a fun way to highlight the significance of old trees in the natural and cultural heritage of all countries in Europe. Check out some other winning trees below.
The Great Plane of Tata, Hungary
On the banks of the Old Lake of Tata, a sycamore tree has guarded the castle gate for 230 years. Along with several others, the tree was brought from Versailles by a member of the Esterházy family. If it could speak the old plane would fill several books with stories about friendships, loves and artists inspired by the great sycamores. “Author Mátyás Pribojszky wrote the story of the Sycamore King, after he regained his writing skills thanks to the tree,” according to the contest entry. Sycamore trees (sometimes called plane trees) can reach ages of five hundred to six hundred years
The Oak Slav, Poland
The tree became a symbol of Polish identity, paying homage to those who fought for centuries against the Germanization of the Silesia region. The tree dates back to the Silesian Piast dynasty symbolized by the patriotic name Slav.
The tree stands in the village of Dębina (meaning oak forest) whose inhabitants cherish it as a living symbol of their local community.
European Tree of the Year (2014)
Photo by: Georgi Angelov
The Old Elm in Sliven, Bulgaria is a beloved symbol standing directly in the city square. It is a centuries-old silent witness of the Sliven’s turbulent and heroic past and its modern day parades and protests. The tree is featured on the city’s coat of arms and will remain a historic marker for generations to come.
European Tree of the Year (2013)
Photo by Platán Restaurant & Cafe
The Plane tree in Heves county, Hungary is among several remarkable tree species that thrive in the unique environs of the Eger thermal spa that promotes fast growth.
A local myth describes a scene from 1552, during the successfully defended Turkish attack against the Eger castle, in which the Turkish army was directed from beneath this Eastern Sycamore. This tree, however, was planted in the 18th century when Karoly Eszterhazy was bishop of the city.
Photos courtesy of European Tree of the Year; Top photo by Elina Kalm
A man dressed as comic hero Spider-Man has begun walking the streets of Birmingham, England handing out sandwiches to the homeless.
“It’s nice to see the smiles on their faces when they see Spider-Man,” said the 20-year-old bar worker, who like the comic book star wishes to remain anonymous. “The people I’ve met on the streets have all been very positive toward what I’m doing and I will keep doing it.”
