A Pittsburgh man whose wedding was called off decided to turn the lemons he was dealt into “LemonAID”, a charity fundraiser for an organization that provides free surgery in developing countries.
32-year-old Phil Laboon, who is a marketer by trade, sold tickets to his pre-paid reception for $75. He expected to raise about $50,000 from the sold-out Saturday event, and from raffle ticket sales on items donated to the cause — all for the benefit Surgicorps International.
60 veterans stood as honor guard at a cemetery in the town of Gardiner, Washington during a ceremony to replace three special military coins that were stolen from veteran Marvin G. Shields’ graveside earlier this month.
Bill Pletcher led the effort to replace the ornate brass medallions earned during the Vietnam War, even securing a new admiral’s coin, a request expedited by the Pentagon.
Other visitors to the cemetery left coins before the ceremony, and now there are more than two dozen challenge coins, which bear various military insignias, resting on Marvin’s headstone.
Shields earned a Medal of Honor for saving lives during a 1965 battle in South Vietnam, that claimed his life.
Daily fruit consumption cuts the risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 40%, according to Oxford researchers. The findings from the seven year follow-up study of nearly a half million people in China found that the more fruit people ate, the more their risk of cardiovascular disease declined.
“Our data clearly shows that eating fresh fruit can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke,” said Dr. Huaidong Du. “And not only that, the more fruit you eat the more your CVD risk goes down.”
The current study, presenting to the European Society of Cardiology in Spain yesterday, included almost 451,681 participants with no history of CVD and not on anti-hypertensive treatment from 10 different areas of China — 5 rural and 5 urban. Consumption of fruit was recorded according to five categories: never, monthly, 1-3 days per week, 4-6 days per week, daily. 18% of participants consumed fruit daily and 6.3% never consumed fruit. The average amount of fruit eaten by the daily consumers was 1.5 portions.
Over the seven year follow up period there were 19,300 cases of heart disease and 19,689 strokes. The researchers found that compared to people who never ate fruit, those who ate fruit daily cut their CVD risks by 25-40%.
The researchers also found that people who consumed fruit more often had significantly lower blood pressure.
In a separate analysis, the researchers examined the association of fruit consumption with risk of death in more than 61,000 patients from China who had CVD or hypertension. They found that compared to those who never ate fruit, daily consumers of fruit cut their overall risk of death by 32%. They also reduced their risks of dying from heart disease by 27% and from stroke by around 40%.
Professor Zhengming Chen, the principal investigator of the China Kadoorie Biobank, said: “Patients with CVD and hypertension should also be encouraged to consume more fresh fruit. Many western populations have experienced a rapid decrease in CVD mortality during the past several decades, especially stroke mortality since the early 1950s, for reasons that are not yet fully explained. Improved access to fresh fruit may well have contributed importantly to that decline.”
The researchers concluded that policies are needed to “promote the availability, affordability and acceptability of fresh fruit through educational and regulatory measures.”
It wasn’t just the rooftop pool, the indoor basketball court or the 24-hour concierge that made Mara Pillinger want to sign a lease at 2M, a new apartment building in Washington, D.C.
Rather, one wrinkly, adorable four-legged tenant was “95 percent of the reason I moved in,” says Pillinger, a 29-year-old Ph.D. candidate in international relations at George Washington University.
Emmy, a nearly 1-year-old English Bulldog, is the building’s communal pup.
“I spend time with Emmy twice a day every day — it’s study breaks,” says Pillinger. “I just go in and plop down on the floor and play with her.”
Emmy lives with the building’s property manager, Doug Crawford, full time. He cares for her and takes her to all of her veterinary and grooming appointments. But Emmy spends her days hanging out in the office and is available when residents want to come play with her, either in the office or in the building’s courtyard, which boasts a private “pet park.” (Emmy is only allowed to leave the building with Crawford or other members of the office team.)
Assistant property manager Kaitlyn Luper says at least one resident a day comes by to take the pooch for a walk in the pet park.
Pillinger first heard about the building when her friends sent her news stories about the communal dog.
“A lot of our residents either saw information on Emmy through various media outlets or met her when they toured the building,” says Luper. “While it might not be the deciding factor for them to move into 2M, she has definitely given the building a lot of attention.”
“The Sweetest Thing”
New tenants Carolyn and Matthew ready Emmy for a walk around the courtyard – Instagram @2mpup
For Pillinger, Emmy provides the perfect balance of enjoying the company of a dog without the responsibility of caring for her own pet while she’s busy with her studies.
“She’s the sweetest thing ever. She’s always happy to see you, always wants to play. She’s always sort of puzzled when she’s not the center of attention — not that that happens very often for her,” Pillinger laughs.
Like Pillinger, new resident Carolyn Belcher, 22, would like to get a dog of her own someday. But she and her boyfriend just moved to the area from North Carolina and know it will take a while to establish their schedules so they know they’ll be home to take care of a dog.
When her boyfriend’s brother told them about Emmy, they thought a building dog was the next best thing.
“It’s kind of nice because it’s like having a dog without having to take care of a dog every day,” Belcher says. “So you have all the benefits of the dog without all the responsibility.” And if Belcher and her boyfriend decide to get a pet of their own, their new addition will be welcome in 2M’s pet-friendly environment.
Vetstreet.com is a pet website written by top veterinarians, pet health experts and professional journalists dedicated to giving you the most accurate information possible, so you can keep your dogs and cats healthy. The key is a well-informed owner and an expert veterinary care team.
Tommy Bensko went on the road to primarily in low-income neighborhoods, fixing kids’ bikes for free and giving them a hands-on education about bike repair.
“It’s been amazing,” said 12-year-old Eric Austin, who hasn’t been able to ride for months since his bike’s tire popped. “It’s been like the best feeling I’ve had for a long time.”
He feels pride too, because now he knows how to fix the flat himself.
I would really love to share our good news story with you.
We are a large family living in Cape Town, South Africa. My husband and I have 5 children – 4 biological and an adopted son, Noah.
Noah was abandoned at birth. He was found wrapped in his mother’s jacket and left under a tree in a field outside a nearby shanty town.
At around the same time, I was pregnant with twins, but sadly at 12 weeks, tragedy struck and I lost them through a traumatic miscarriage which nearly took my life in the process. As devastating as it was, this experience left us changed in a rather profound way.
A few months later, we got a call from a friend about this little boy that had been abandoned. It stirred us so deeply that we had to go and find out more.
Talk about love at first sight! When we met him, we just knew that it was meant to be. Three weeks later, we brought him home. He is now four years old and the most beautiful blessing to our family – we couldn’t imagine life without him!
My husband, Jeremy, is a professional musician and singer-songwriter. We often write together, and about a year ago, we felt inspired to write about our story: how two tragic events turned into something so beautiful. The response to this song has truly overwhelmed us. Jeremy has performed it on stages in Holland and Switzerland, as well as here in our own country and it always has the same effect: people seem to be not only moved, but inspired. We have just finished making the music video which tells the story and we are now in the process of releasing the song in SA.
“What you thought was lost can be found – and made beautiful.”
We are currently working with UNICEF SA on a new campaign called ‘Ending Violence Against Children and Women’ using this song and our story to raise awareness for the abandonment problem in SA. We would really love our story to bring a light to this problem and to motivate people to get involved in whatever way they can.
But more than that, we’d love to ignite hope in people who are experiencing their own form of brokenness. The truth is that we can be each other’s healing. If we are brave enough to reach out and be the solution for someone else in our own time of struggle, an amazing exchange takes place. In rescuing someone else, we ourselves were rescued!
“Although Mike Devlin was trained as a lawyer, his love for gardening led him down an unexpected career path.”
Devlin lives and works in Camden City, New Jersey, an impoverished city with a lack of fresh food. As a new resident 30 years ago, he became involved in community gardening. Today his garden club and other neighborhood programs provide fresh produce to a significant number of people in a food desert with zero supermarkets willing to operate there.
Today is Labor Day in the United States, for more than a century, a national holiday on the first Monday in September meant to honor the work — and economic achievements — of laborers and labor unions. The equivalent holiday in Canada, Labour Day, is also celebrated today.
Organizing by unions, and many workers losing their lives in the 19th and 20 century, helped win standards that most Americans enjoy and take for granted today, including the 40-hour work week, 8-hour day, and mandatory worker safety requirements.
The man in this photo, demonstrating in Madison Wisconsin in 2011, believes the right to organize and form a union is a sacred right — as “American” as baseball and apple pie.
Read about the history of Labor Unions on Wikipedia.
On Wednesday, an overflow crowd gathered at a groundbreaking for an innovative concept to take homeless people off of Austin streets. Alan Graham, president and CEO of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, the social outreach ministry behind the effort, noted that the day culminated more than 10 years of hard work by people throughout the city.
Community First! is a 27-acre, master-planned project in East Austin designed to provide affordable, sustainable housing and jobs, including 100 lots for RVs, 125 micro-homes and canvas-sided cottages.
A large community garden, bee hives and chicken operations are already up and running on the site.
A 34-year-old Halifax woman with Down Syndrome had a dream come true Saturday when, with the help of her parents, the Guardian newspaper of Nova Scotia, hotel executives who got her a room when everything was booked, and Shania Twain herself, she got to see her hero perform.
Shallen Jackson, who’s been listening to Twain since she was a teenager, reacted exactly the way her parents expected she would when she got the news that she was going to a concert.
“She freaked out,” Jerry Jackson told the PE Guardian Tuesday from his cottage in Nova Scotia.
“She just screamed.”
She and her parents didn’t know it at the time, but Shallen would actually get to meet her hero backstage at the private benefit concert for Twain’s charity for at-risk children, Shania Kids Can.
Rebel groups from northern Mali have agreed to end hostilities and present a united front ahead of negotiations with the Malian government that begin in Algiers next week.
With peace talks between the rebels and the Bamako government around the corner, representatives from two rebel groupings have signed an agreement to end fighting and work towards a sustainable solution for northern Mali.
No one knows exactly who started it, but since spring, people who live in Oakland, California have been showing up Sunday afternoons for a pop-up picnic that is drawing families, boaters, runners and musicians to the once-neglected Lake Merritt, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
Locals say such a display of Oakland pride hasn’t been seen for a long time.
A publicly financed $198 million makeover of the lake supported by a clean-water bond passed in 2002, has created “lush greenways, swaths of flowers, a widened walkway with benches and public telescopes to get a closer look at the scullers, kayakers, boats and birds gliding on the water.”
He’s all smiles now that he’s been fitted with dentures after a GoFundMe campaign raised more than $11,000 in less than one day, reported the Daily Mail.
The dental procedure was not covered by insurance, but Good Samaritans have donated more than $21,000 to help the brave young cancer survivor.
Alex Hunter, 16 was first diagnosed with cancer when he was four and then diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 13; his family say he is now cancer-free.
Firefighters in Texas are receiving praise after they responded to a 911 call when a man had collapsed while mowing the yard.
The guys from Baytown’s Engine 4 decided to do something nice for the family and returned to the scene to finish the lawn chore.
”We’re all fighting over who can push the mower first,” Station Lieutenant JD Giles told KHOU-TV.
They left a note for the family saying they locked the garage and left the key in the mailbox. “We are very sorry that your husband became ill, we hope he has a speedy recovery,” they added. “Let us know if there is anything we can do to help you out.”
A neighbor saw them mowing the lawn and snapped some pictures, later posting them on the Baytown, TX Facebook Page.
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from KHOU) – Photo by Ashley Odom Chandler
Do you find it frustrating looking at stories while using the LOAD MORE button when it sends you back to the homepage rather than the long list of stories you just loaded?
Javascript is the creator of the “Load More” feature and it doesn’t work with a back button.
But, there is a solution.
If you want to get caught up on the Latest News, just click the Blue title that says, LATEST ARTICLES, instead of using the ‘Load More’ option.
It will open a page with all our stories in chronological order. The infinite scroll allows you to keep going back in time, with a flick of the wrist.
If that helped, or not, let me know in the COMMENTS below.
The second of two dams along the Elwha River in Washington State was demolished by crews Tuesday at Glines Canyon. The Elwha River now runs free for the first time in more than 100 years, and habitats for fish and wildlife are already recovering.
Since the National Park Service began the Elwha River restoration project three years ago and the first dam was removed, sediment once trapped has gradually rebuilt riverbanks and created estuary habitat for crabs, clams, and other species.
Salmon populations are recovering, and researchers expect the whole food web—from invertebrates to birds to otters and bears—to benefit.
An Australian ambulance paramedic trainee found a parking ticket dropped in the vehicle by a family whose mother died three days later.
Marc Primrose sympathized with the grief the daughter must be feeling and instead of returning the ticket to Rosemary Morgan, he paid the $129 fine for her.
“For a complete stranger to do something like this was just amazing,” Mrs. Morgan, who was lucky enough to thank the officer in person, told the Whittlesea Leader.
He contacted them at the address on the ticket lest they worry about late fines, and sent this note:
Dear Rose and Family, I found this in the back of the ambulance after we dropped you and your mother at home from the Broadmeadows Hospital on Tuesday afternoon. I didn’t want you to incur a late fee from this parking fine so I’m posting this back to you. I also decided to pay this fine for you given the difficult time you and your family are going through.
“An injured bear cub is recovering in Arizona after a man who initially thought it was a dead dog along the side of the road scooped it up and drove it 80 miles to get help,” reports the Associated Press.
