A woman paid back $200 she stole from a bar 15 years ago while bartending because “it was wrong and I regret it.”
When Pamela Hedges, owner of the sports bar Gibb’s, found out a letter in her mailbox, she thought it was a credit letter from a bank. But when she opened the envelope, she was stunned to find a $200 check and a handwritten apology from a worker she employed fifteen years ago.
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from WWGP-ABC News)
Story tip from Julia Frerichs
A teenage cancer survivor who lost his leg to a rare form of the disease had his dreams cut short to one day become a police officer.
However, thanks to a thoughtful teacher, Kieran Maxwell was given a taste of what it would be like to ride with his blue uniformed heroes on Friday night when off-duty police arrived at his house to take him and his date to the school prom
(WATCH the video below or READ the story at the Daily Mail)
Thanks to Craig Withers for submitting the link!
A professor of chemistry in Madurai, India believes the mounds of trash lining the roads and fields to be a “wonderful resource” for his country.
The innovator created a method for building roads by transforming common plastic litter—not only thicker acrylics and bottles but also grocery bags and wrappers—into a substitute for bitumen in asphalt.
Rajagopalan Vasudevan’s become known as Plastic Man and travels throughout India instructing engineers how to apply it. To date, more than 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) of plastic roads have been laid in at least 11 states.
(READ the story from Business Week)
Photo by Sam Javanrouh, with CC license
The first of the 2014 summer supermoons filled the night sky last night. Here are some of your photos from around the United States.
CLICK to see the gallery.
(All photos via Flickr with Creative Commons licenses.)
In Iraq, a Ramadan game called Mheibbis brings even Sunnis and Shiites together in peaceful competition.
A ring game traditionally played between neighborhoods during the holy month, Mheibbis (meaning, rings) has offered men the opportunity to break Baghdad’s tension and offer messages of unity and brotherhood — even between rival sects.
(READ or LISTEN to the story from NPR News)
Photo: Video on Wikipedia shows Mheibs game playing
A yew tree that hunkers over a graveyard near a church in Wales is more than 5,000 years old, according to experts — making it older than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The church has launched a campaign to protect old yews throughout the region.
(READ the story from NPR News)
Today is the annual day of the year when Manhattan’s street grid, first laid out in 1811, aligns perfectly with the setting sun over New Jersey. The sun is so aligned that on a clear day it shines down the East-West streets, illuminating both the north and south sides of the streets, a day sometimes referred to as a Manhattan Solstice or, as Neil deGrasse Tyson calls it, Manhattanhenge.
You can look the sun setting in the New York burough at 8:25 p.m. and then be sure to look again for the first FULL “supermoon” of the summer which will appear in the Saturday evening sky.
(LEARN more from Tyson, or on Wikipedia, here)
Photo by Dan Nguyen, taken from a taxi in NYC (CC license on Flickr)
What do you do when you’re 84 and own Canada’s most beautiful bookstore? And one that is thriving.
Sell it? You could. Close it? You could do that, too.
But if you’re Jim Munro, who for 50 years has run Munro’s Books in Victoria, B. C., you do something exceptional: you give the business to four of your staff.
(READ the story, w/ photo, from the Toronto Star)
Story tip from Colleen Eggertson – Photo from Munro’s Books Facebook Page
Apple this week signed a development agreement with the City of Claremont, which will allow it to build its third massive solar farm in North Carolina.
When finished, the 100-acre farm is expected to produce 17.5 megawatts at a development cost of $55 million.
(READ the full story from Inhabitat)
Photo from Apple shows its maiden solar farm in NC
What if you took a megaphone and a convertible, and drove around complimenting people on how good they looked, how erect they walked or how great their smile made you feel?
Blake Grigsby did it and made a video to show how happy it made people.
(WATCH the video above)
A hero cat saved its owners life by tapping on a next-door neighbour’s window when she collapsed at home.
Tomcat Slinky Malinki came to 48-year-old Janet Rawlinson’s rescue by tapping on the window of Mel and Stephen Sharp with his paw to raise the alarm.
(READ the story in the UK Mirror)
A teenager drowning off the Cornish Coast was saved after he used his phone to post an SOS message on Facebook. The 18-year-old’s dinghy capsized – but he managed to type a message on his phone before it got too wet.
The rescue crew was scrambled from Fowey and by the time the teenager was picked up a mile off shore, he had been treading water for two hours.
(READ the story in ITV.com)
Photo by Nekanaiz, CC license
For Marcellous McDonald trash collection is much more than helping keep the city clean. The former high school peer counselor who has been living on the streets for months is part of a new program that puts the homeless to work picking up litter and sweeping leaves in downtown San Jose five days a week.
In return, the program gives them access to a host of benefits including housing and job placement, food and even background checks.
(READ the story in the Mercury-News)
Photo credit: XAtsukex with CC license
It’s easy to forget how important they are to our food chain, so July 11th is Cow Appreciation Day.
Here are some great ways to say “Moo-chas Grasses” to bovines everywhere, from the folks at Fearrington Village, a resort and spa on a historic dairy farm in North Carolina.
– Have a glass of milk. Or better yet, make it a milk punch, a sweet, cold, elegant blend of dairy and liquor that dates back centuries, which is enjoying a revival these days.
– Visit a working farm and hug a cow. The striking appearance of these Belted Galloway cows (below) are reminiscent of an Oreo cookie. (Milk, please!) This breed of cow, which originated in Galloway, Scotland over a century ago, adorn many fields in the USA today.
– Donate a cow to end hunger for a family. Heifer International is famous for its program that lets you buy a cow and donate it to a family, helping lift them out of poverty: www.heifer.org
– Take a local cheese making class and learn the difference between cow, sheep and goat’s milk cheeses.
They get excited if given the chance to solve problems: When challenged to figure out how to open a door or get to food, their heartbeat increased, brainwaves showed excitement, and some even jump into the air.
Cows benefit from almost 360 degree vision, with the ability to see predators coming from any direction. They also have an excellent sense of smell and are able to detect odors up to 5 miles away. Their hearing is also beyond human capacity, with both low and high frequency sounds.
– You can win a two night stay at The Fearrington House Inn — home to Belted Galloway cows — by entering their Instagram photography contest. Details here.
Photo credits: (top) Dave A – CC license
For a decade, the Rychner family of Farmington, Minnesota had little interaction with the elderly man living next door. Once in a while they waved hello in passing.
But that changed last year when the family’s 3-year-old son, Emmett, struck up an unlikely friendship with 89-year-old Erling Kindem over a shared love of tomatoes and lawn tractors.
“Every time he saw me out there he would come running over,” laughs Erling, remembering those early visits from the boy next door who would ask, ‘Erling, got any ‘matoes?'”
They are together every day now it seems, exploring bugs, playing croquet, and even riding bikes.
Watch the beautiful story told by one of our favorite storytellers, Boyd Huppert.
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from KARE-11 News)
Photo courtesy of Emmet’s family
Almost half of the US coastline from North Carolina to Mississippi has just been designated as critical habitat for threatened loggerhead sea turtles of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf coasts.
The federal agencies of NOAA and the Fish and Wildlife Service made their final ruling after a year of comment period, acting to declare 88 beaches as critical to the marine species’ survival. These beaches account for 48 percent of an estimated 1,531 miles of coastal shoreline used by loggerheads, which contain about 84 percent of their documented nests.
“Given the vital role loggerhead sea turtles play in maintaining the health of our oceans, rebuilding their populations is key as we work to ensure healthy and resilient oceans for generations to come,” said Eileen Sobeck, assistant administrator for fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“Coastal communities from North Carolina to Mississippi are also intrinsically tied to these shorelines and waters. By conserving the turtle and protecting its habitat, we are helping preserve not only this emblematic species, but also the way of life for millions of Americans,” said USFWS Director Dan Ashe.
Under the Endangered Species Act, critical habitat is defined as areas containing features essential to the conservation of a listed species. This designation will not create preserves or refuges or affect land ownership in the six states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. It only restricts human activities in situations where federal actions are involved, such as funding or issuing permits. In those cases, the federal agency concerned works with NOAA Fisheries or USFWS to “avoid, reduce or mitigate potential impacts to the species’ habitat”.
The loggerhead is the most common sea turtle in southeastern United States, nesting along the Atlantic Coast of Florida, South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina and along the Gulf Coast. It is a long-lived, slow-growing species, vulnerable to various threats including loss of natural beaches, vessel strikes and fishing nets.
A program that provides contraceptives to low-income women contributed to a 40-percent drop in Colorado’s teen birth rate over five years, according to state officials.
Likewise, the teen abortion rate dropped by 35 percent from 2009 to 2012, in counties served by the Colorado Family Planning Initiative.
68 family planning clinics provide intrauterine devices (IUDs) or implants, which safely prevent the fertilization of eggs, to low income women around the state.
(READ the story from Vox or Colorado State officials)
Photo by Harbor Life – CC license
A group of Communist Party members in Shanghai have won recognition for their grassroots initiatives, which include a decade of weaving with waste. Discarded rubbish is turned into useful items for community residents thanks to the skillful hands of the “Green Housewives.”
“We are not necessarily wealthy, but many of us have plenty of time,” said Shang Yanhua, Party head of one residential community.
They sew together discarded packaging into aprons, hats, purses, slippers and whatever they can imagine. They also plant community gardens and green roofs.
Green Housewives is now a registered nongovernment organization that has won awards, sewing machines, and thousands of dollars to help with their work.
(READ the new story in Shanghai Daily – and this archived CNN feature story with photos)
A Saskatchewan portrait photographer captured stunning photos Saturday for a newly married couple in which a tornado could be seen in the background.
Colleen Niska shared the photographs on Facebook saying she’s “dreamed about a day like this.”
“Pretty sure this will only happen once in my lifetime!”
Let’s hope the images don’t portend a stormy marriage ahead. (Instead, it could symbolize their raging passion for life.)
See more photos by Colleen Niska on Facebook.
(WATCH the video below, or READ more, w/ photos, from the CBC)
UN Women, the United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, announced yesterday it has tapped British actress Emma Watson as Goodwill Ambassador.
Known for playing the leading role of “Hermione Granger” in the Harry Potter saga, Watson has been involved with the promotion of girls’ education for several years, and previously visited Bangladesh and Zambia as part of her humanitarian efforts.
“Emma embodies the values of UN Women,” said Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
“Women’s rights are something so inextricably linked with who I am, so deeply personal and rooted in my life that I can’t imagine an opportunity more exciting” said Watson.
The role of the Goodwill Ambassador is to promote the empowerment of young women and to serve as an advocate for UN Women’s HeForShe campaign in fostering gender equality. That campaign is a solidarity movement which brings women and men together to fight against gender inequalities faced by women and girls globally.
“Being asked to serve as UN Women’s Goodwill Ambassador, a chance to make a real difference, is not an opportunity that everyone is given and is one I have no intention of taking lightly,” Watson said.
