Imagine the frustration you’d feel if you were diagnosed with a serious illness requiring a lot of treatment and even though you were covered by insurance, the co-pay costs involved for expensive medications meant you had no money for rent or electricity.
Jeff Spafford, who ran a pharmacy in Orlando, Florida, knew that hundreds of people were in such financial straits, so he co-founded The Assistance Fund with the goal of opening up access to medicine for all.
It is not uncommon for piano tuners to be blind, but very rare for piano builders to have no sight.
John Furniss of Vancouver, Wash., is that rare individual. He persevered even after he was told by an institute for the blind that he couldn’t possibly restore pianos.
He uses tools unique to his situation that his mentor, Rick Patten, built himself.
“I’m totally blind,” he told KGW-TV. “But if you put your mind to something, you can do what you want to do.”
Say sweet dreams to Aaron Hopkins – the sleepless little Sheffield boy who’s finally managed to get his 40 winks… with the help of the humble banana.
For three-and-a-half years, Aaron’s parents were battling to find a solution to the youngster’s night terrors and hallucinations.
They finally found their miracle with the help of a sleep workshop run by Vicki Dawson at their local hospital – and a banana before bed.
(READ the full story from The Star)
The world’s 63 biggest cities have almost doubled the activities they undertake to reduce climate change since 2011, according to a report from the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.
“Mayors have real power to cut emissions and improve climate resilience, and they are taking action,” C40 chairman, Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, said from the group’s Mayors Summit in Johannesburg last week. “C40’s networks and efforts on measurement and reporting are accelerating city-led action at a transformative scale around the world.”
More than 8,000 climate actions have been implemented by the cities, with 41 percent of these taking place citywide, according to their website and the Feb. 5 report.
The 63 cities, which represent one in twelve people on the planet, have committed to reducing greenhouse emissions through modernizing transit systems, improving waste management, and implementing energy efficient building codes.
(READ the story from Bloomberg News)
Crusader Prime, a masked 40-something Indiana man in red spandex, a fedora and a thrift store trench coat, hit the streets on a cold day to hand out blankets and food to homeless people.
He would soon be joined by Patchwork, another Real Life Superhero — RLSH for short — who was traveling with a suitcase full of socks.
Call it comic book fantasies coming to life or 21st-Century altruism. The RLSH movement has ballooned across the country since the mid-2000s, united through the internet on www.reallifesuperheroes.com.
At first, The Real Life Superhero Project was conceived as an avenue to shine some light on this new breed of activism and altruism, through a photographic installation to benefit the established organizations the superheroes believe in. But as more people were brought into the wholly volunteer project, largely through Tangen’s infectious enthusiasm, the scope and purpose expanded exponentially.
Now, what began as a gallery exhibit, has come to serve as the launching pad of something far greater—a living, breathing community that inspires people to become the positive forces for change we all can be. To become more active, more involved, more committed, and perhaps, a little super in the process.
(WATCH a video below – READ the current story from Detroit Free Press)
Chicago’s overall crime rate fell last year to a level not seen since 1972, and the number of shooting incidents involving victims 16 and younger dropped 40 percent in 12 months, city officials say.
Some believe the decline is a result of spending more than $100 million on police overtime. But city officials insist the numbers are evidence that changing police tactics and creating and expanding after-school jobs and mentoring programs for young people are paying off.
(READ the AP story from NPR)
An alternative and non-invasive treatment for autism has led to significant reductions in maladaptive behaviors in children, according to a new study published in the January issue of the peer-reviewed journal, EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing.
Robert Weiner, the author and lead researcher of the multi-site study, calls the novel NeuroModulation Technique a “promising intervention for autism.”
Weiner, a Dallas, Texas behavioral medicine psychologist who has been in private practice since 1987, told the Good News Network, “I started using NMT, a gentle consciousness-based therapy, in my practice in 2004 and observed remarkable results, particularly with allergies.”
The school principal at Port Barre Elementary in Louisiana is a living example of perseverance.
Gabe Sonnier worked as the school’s janitor in 1985 when then-Principal Westley Jones pulled him aside and said, “I’d rather see you grading papers than picking them up.”
It was a turning point in Gabe’s life. After that, he began studying for his teaching degree.
“Isn’t that something?” Mr. Sonnier asked reporter Steve Hartman.
Yes, it is.
(WATCH the video or READ the full story from CBS News)
“The key to the future of the world is finding optimistic stories and letting them be known.”
-Pete Seeger (1919 – 2014)
Nine years after an accident caused the loss of his left hand, Dennis Aabo Sørensen from Denmark became the first amputee in the world to feel – in real-time – with a sensory-enhanced prosthetic hand that was surgically wired to nerves in his upper arm.
The team at EPFL Center for Neuroprosthetics in Italy developed the revolutionary sensory feedback that allowed Sørensen to feel the difference between an orange and a baseball when handling the objects.
“The sensory feedback was incredible,” reports the 36 year-old amputee from Denmark. “I could feel things that I hadn’t been able to feel in over nine years.”
In 2008, 16-year-old Andrew Mupuya was looking for opportunities because he had no way to pay for his schooling.
Suddenly, Ugandan officials announced they were considering a ban on plastic bags which had become a major source of pollution, so Mupuya, who was still in secondary school, immediately wondered if it made sense to launch a paper bag production company.
“I conducted a feasibility study, market research around retail shops, kiosks, supermarkets around Kampala and discovered there is need and potential market for paper bags.”
Jona Rechnitz, who won $50,000 on the 2012 Superbowl just did it again … by placing the same exact bet.
He bet last year that the Giants, and this year, the Seahawks, would score first as a result of a two-point safety.
Both times the NYC real estate mogul donated the winnings to charity — $75,000 in total.
(READ the story from TMZ)
A German man with severe heart failure and a puzzling mix of symptoms including fever, blindness, deafness and enlarged lymph nodes that baffled doctors for months, finally was diagnosed when he was referred to a fan of the U.S. television medical drama, ‘House’.
“After five minutes, I knew what was wrong,” said Dr. Juergen Schaefer, who works at the Center for Undiagnosed Diseases in Marburg, north of Frankfurt.
He said the man’s symptoms matched up almost perfectly with a patient on an episode.
(READ the story in the Calgary Herald)
The executive director of Pebble Beach National Pro-Am golf tournament now has a great story to tell his grandchildren: “Clint Eastwood saved my life,” said Steve John, after he was rescued from choking at a party honoring tournament volunteers.
John, 50, was eating hors d’oeuvres Wednesday when a piece of cheese became lodged in his throat. Eastwood, the 83-year-old Oscar-winning actor and director, was in attendance and quickly performed the Heimlich maneuver.
“I looked in his eyes and saw that look of panic people have when they see their life passing before their eyes,” Eastwood told The Carmel Pine Cone newspaper. “It looked bad.”
(READ the story at TODAY)
In the blink of an eye, William Berkshire lost his home and everything in it after his travel trailer went up in flames outside of Roy’s General Store in Traverse City, Michigan on Sunday night.
The store’s manager felt so bad for the now homeless guy known as Mountain Man, he gave him a rarely used camper trailer so he would have somewhere to live.
“I look at this disaster … and that could be any of us, it really could,” Rob Hentschel told UpNorthLive.com. “We’re all human beings, we’re all neighbors. I had something that I could live without, and he needed a place.”
Hentschel posted the news about the fire on Roy’s General Store Facebook Page and asked others to donate items of clothing if they could. Within two days, Mountain Man had clothes, bedding and boots and dishes. American Waste also donated a dumpster for him to use as he cleans up the rubble.
WATCH the Video below from UpNorthLive or READ their report)
As recently as December, the outlook for Tunisia remained grim. However, on Friday, French President Francois Hollande and other world leaders attended a ceremony for the formal adoption of a document being praised as one of the most progressive constitutions in an Arab nation.
What a turnaround.
After overthrowing their dictator in 2011 and launching what became known as the Arab Spring, Tunisians brought a moderate Islamist party into power allied with two other secular parties.
“By adopting the constitution, Tunisia celebrated a triple victory — over dictatorship, over terrorism that seeks to spread chaos and block our path to democracy and over our own divisions,” said President Moncef Marzouki in an address before Tunisia’s parliament.
(READ the AP story in the Montreal Gazette)
Drought-stricken California got some help Thursday from the weather — a prelude to a bigger storm for parts of the state over the weekend that could dump as much as two feet of snow in the northern Sierra and six inches of rain on Bay Area mountains.
The state has been suffering from one of the worst drought and fire seasons in history.
(READ the full story from the AP in The Examiner)
Deaths from measles have dropped 78 percent since 2000 as global vaccination campaigns curb outbreaks of the pneumonia-causing disease, according to the World Health Organization. (Bloomberg)
For weeks, Lisa Urness went to the Wisconsin Humane Society in Milwaukee on her lunch break to search for the right dog. One day, a 6-month-old Husky and Shepherd mix who had been found on the streets caught her eye.
“I got to my car door and I couldn’t leave,” she says. “I walked back in and I said to the people at the desk, ‘That’s my dog.’”
That was 14 years ago, and the two have been inseparable ever since.
“I don’t know how to explain him, but he’s like my ‘heart dog,’” she says, choking up. “I’ve often used the expression that he’s like my familiar. He and I are just one.”
So when Tanner started having trouble with his legs in 2012, it was “very hard to watch,” she says. Urness didn’t know how much more time he had when she turned to photographer Sarah Beth Ernhart to schedule a Joy Session.
In his 10 years as a mentor and tutor, Kenny Thompson has always done his best to meet the needs of the students in his life.
That’s exactly what he did when he heard last week that dozens of Utah students, whose accounts were delinquent, had their lunches taken and thrown away.
He not only inquired about it, Thompson learned that the parents of many of his students couldn’t afford the meals that cost just 40 cents a day. He took $465 of his own money and zeroed out the delinquent accounts of more than 60 kids.
(WATCH the video or READ the story from KPRC)
