PETA, the animal-rights organization, has donated more than 100 fur coats — and dozens of leather jackets, wool scarves and angora sweaters — to needy residents at a Detroit homeless shelter earlier this week.
“We can’t bring these animals back to life… but we can try to use these coats for an ethical purpose now,” the group’s spokesperson told TODAY.com.
Every year, the organization receives hundreds of furs from people who no longer want them, she said.
(READ the story from TODAY)
A kindergarten student at a holiday concert enthusiastically sang the songs with her classmates, but also used sign language and animated facial expressions to help her deaf parents in the audience enjoy the show.
This cutie has earned six million hits on YouTube in the nine days since it was posted.
WATCH the video below…
A heroic guide dog named Orlando is getting praise for saving his owner, a blind man named Cecil Williams, who fell onto the subway tracks in New York, and barking for help, which ultimately saved the man’s life.
The clever Orlando is set to retire — and Williams’ insurance will only pay for an actively working dog, so people are now tweeting the story and donating money to keep his hero by his side, along with a new service dog.
General Motors announced plans to invest $1.2 billion in new equipment and expansions at five Midwest factories. GM’s investment, mostly in three Michigan plants, will retain or add about 1,000 jobs, many of which are in the company’s Flint hometown.
The expansion plans were announced Monday, the same day a new study was released, compiled by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, that estimated the rescue of GM and Chrysler saved 2.6 million jobs in 2009 and 1.5 million in 2010.
James Barber’s home goes up for auction today, but a “white knight” has rescued the 77-year-old from homelessness.
An anonymous Christchurch businessman was so taken by Barber’s plight that he is offering to buy him a house “to live out his days in peace”.
“I didn’t know there were people like this still about,” Barber said.
“Miracles do happen, there is no doubt about it.”
(READ the story from New Zealand’s Stuff)
A Canadian man who just won $40 million in the Lotto Max jackpot knows exactly what he wants to do with his newfound wealth: he is giving it all away to charity.
Tom Crist, who is retired, told Canadian news station CTV that he planned to give away all the prize money to different charities and organizations he chooses.
He lost his wife recently to lung cancer, so cancer research organizations and the hospital where she was treated are high at the top of his list.
(READ the story from the Calgary Herald)
The U.S. Embassy tried to delay the auction of sacred Hopi and Apache artifacts in Paris but a French judge ruled that the items, irreplaceable and historic, would be sold to the highest bidder. More than 100 American Indian artifacts (24 of which were masks of religious value that were stolen many years ago) were about to go on sale December 9.
That’s when Annenberg Foundation Vice President and Director Gregory Annenberg Weingarten made the unprecedented decision to intervene. He knew he had to keep the plan a secret, even from the Hopis, so as not to inflate the prices.
For James “Bim” Costello, April 15th was one of the worst days of his life. At the finish line of the Boston Marathon when the bomb exploded, he suffered not only physical wounds but emotional trauma, after learning about his friends and their injuries.
“I soon wondered why and for what reason this had happened,” he wrote in a Facebook post this week.
Recovering in Spaulding Hospital, and still wondering what good could come from the tragedy, he met a nurse named Krista.
“After sharing a handful of conversations I realized not only how beautiful she was but also what a kind heart she had (and) somehow convinced her to attend a benefit with me,” Costello wrote.
After a few “inseparable months” he realized the silver lining of his involvement in the tragedy eights months ago: “It was to meet my best friend, and the love of my life.”
“We got engaged last night in the middle of the beautiful French city Lyon!!!”
(READ the story from CBS Local)
Remember the boy with leukemia who donned a batman suit last month and was treated to a day of ‘pretend crime fighting’ that involved thousands of participants in San Francisco? (See the original story here)
Now someone has paid for a billboard featuring a picture of the 5-year-old Miles Scott dressed as ‘Batkid’, to thank him for “saving the city”.
Patricia Wilson, executive director of Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area, tweeted a photo of the huge sign near the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
(READ the story from NY Daily News)
The Senate on Monday passed a bill to extend a ban on guns that can’t be detected by x-ray machines and metal detectors.
President Obama later signed the 10-year extension of the Undetectable Firearms Act into law.
The law, first passed in 1988, was set to expire on Tuesday, at a time when plastic guns created by 3-D printers are causing concern.
(READ the story from PC Magazine)
Where a string of robberies in local shops might have made Lexington, Kentucky a more sad place, one coffee shop has conjured up a few pay-it-forward Christmas miracles.
After thieves broke into A Cup of Common Wealth, the coffee shop’s owners were blown away by the huge outpouring from their community.
“They came out in full force and showed us so much love and support that we weren’t focused at all on what happened, just on what we were a part of,” said owners, Salvador Sanchez and Chris Ortiz, in an email to the Good News Network.
Reports of more robberies in local shops inspired them to rally the community.
Before his swim meet on Dec. 7 had even started, Florida swimmer Josh Zuchowski, 9, decided he was not only going to compete in honor of his biggest rival, but also win the top trophy in the event and give it to him.
Zuchowski had not seen his friendly rival, Reese Branzell, 10, from Lake Lytle, Fla., since he had been hospitalized November 8 with a bacterial infection in his hip.
(READ the story from TODAY)
There was no point in waiting inside the house for customers on that December morning because there’s no heat in there, either. No electricity. Not even glass in all the windows. He paid $500 at a county auction for the battered former drug house and he got what he paid for.
Many others in the city are living just as close to bottom. Some drink away their problems, sell drugs or steal their way through life. But Hakeem Muhammad the brake mechanic did something else — he decided to embrace poverty until things got better.
It would be a way to start over, he thought. To build character.
(READ the story, w/ photos, in the Detroit Free Press)
The United States is the world’s most generous nation, according to a global index of giving, as a higher proportion of Americans helped a stranger than any other country in the world.
The 2013 World Giving Index – published annually by international nonprofit organization Charities Aid Foundation – looks at three measures: monetary giving, volunteering and helping of strangers in a typical month. The survey, published on December 2, was carried out in 2012 across 135 countries.
(READ the story from CNBC)
RELATED: NASCAR Driver Jeff Gordon’s Generosity Continues With Congo Trip to Help Refugees
Entrepreneur Gives His Air Miles So 76 Others Can Be Home for the Holidays
Christmas in Alaska came early this week to nearly 300 students attending school in an Eskimo village, thanks to the volunteer program coordinated by the Alaska National Guard.
Santa and Mrs. Claus greeted children in the western Alaska community and took pictures with them before helper elves handed out gifts.
“It’s all to make the kids’ Christmas and bring a little joy to them,” Banez said.
(READ the AP story via CTV)
New cars and trucks sold in the US in 2012 hit a record for average of miles per gallon – 23.6 – in combined city and highway driving through improvements to engines and transmissions. Carbon dioxide emissions also hit a record low.
When Christopher Kiezek sat on Santa’s knee recently, like a lot of kids, he asked for an Xbox One. But he also asked for a new arm so can play it.
He was born without fingers and his mother says the insurance company won’t pay for a prosthetic device because it wasn’t necessary for the boy’s life.
A family friend known as Uncle Bobby was moved by the story of the boy’s Christmas wish so he set up an online page on Go Fund Me to raise the $25,000 needed.
Thanks to a New York television station sharing the story, the Long Island boy will get the new device — and the Xbox.
(WATCH the video HERE or READ the story from the Dailymail)
A financial planning professional went to Walmart to pick up bikes for a Toys for Tots drive held by his company when he overheard someone at the layaway counter worrying about whether she’d be able to pay off her gifts before Christmas.
Greg Parady got out his credit card and spontaneously started paying for people as they’d walk up to the counter. Eventually, the 40 year-old swiped his card for 76 people, spending $21,000.
He had to use three credit cards and talk on the phone with the banks because they thought so many payments in a row were fraudulent.
(READ the story from TODAY)
Flashmobs always involve the element of surprise. The best ones also inspire. This one in South Africa Saturday melted the hearts of a nation that is mourning the loss of their beloved freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela.
Woolworth’s retail store had planned a performance for December 7 at its Parkview location in Pretoria to support the store’s “Operation Smile” Christmas campaign. The Soweto Gospel Choir planned a rendition of James Brown’s “I Feel Good.” But, after Mandela’s passing, the choir decided on a tribute instead.
The 2013 Atlantic storm season has proved one of the quietest in decades with the lowest number of hurricanes since 1982 and none of them considered ‘major’, according to insurance broker Willis Re.
An unusually quiet hurricane season is significant for the insurance industry not only because there are fewer pay-outs for damage but also because it drives down reinsurance prices.
(READ the story from Reuters)
