The Vatican has launched its own cricket club — a move aimed at forging ties with teams of other faiths.
Rome’s Capannelle Cricket Club is hosting training matches that will lead to the creation of the Vatican team, the St. Peter’s Cricket Club.
Today, the Vatican says, cricket is one of the world’s most popular sports, with a mass following in Asia and Oceania.
(LISTEN to the audio or READ the story at NPR)
Quarterback superstar Aaron Rodgers surprised a young lady, who is a big Packers fan, bringing her onstage at The Pabst Theater in Milwaukee to produce some music. He also wanted to raise awareness for Independence First, an organization she works with that is run by and for the benefit of people who have disabilities.
Aaron and David Gruber host an online series of videos where they surprise guests and invest time into helping them achieve their goals and ambitions. You can find more of them at www.ItsAaron.com.
(WATCH the fun video below or READ the story from Wisconsin Free)
In 2009, Matthew and Amy Shack celebrated their 6th anniversary at Outback Steakhouse with Aussie cheese fries, several rounds of bread and butter, an 18-ounce prime rib and dessert. That’s when the couple realized they had to change their ways.
Four years later, the couple has combined to lose over 400 pounds. Here’s how they did it…
(READ the story from MyFox-8)
A full-page ad in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch yesterday might have made you choke up with emotion.
The Boston Red Sox purchased the ad in the newspaper to say ‘thank you’ to the St. Louis Cardinals organization and its fans.
With the headline, “From One Great Baseball Town to Another” the color ad features a picture of two boys at a baseball game, one a Cardinals fans and the other a Red Sox fan.
“The warm Midwestern welcome you extended to our team and our fans during this year’s hard-fought World Series is truly appreciated. Your region, its people and the entire Cardinals organization represent everything that’s great about baseball.”
(WATCH the video below or READ the reactions, and SEE the ad at Fox-2 News)
The power of one person to make a difference can never be overstated.
One woman, Eva Whitmore, decided she would use her exceptional organizational talents to spread some happiness to women living in shelters.
Because of Whitmore, her city of Winnipeg now benefits from The Shoebox Project, a Canadian non-profit group that distributes gifts in the form of shoeboxes to women living in shelters across the country.
The concept is simple — fill up a shoebox with items valued at $50 that a woman in hard times would enjoy but never splurge on for herself.
“Some of these women will tell you that they haven’t had a birthday gift or a Christmas gift in years,” Whitmore told the Winnipeg Free Press. “These shoeboxes help brighten the holiday season during difficult times and let these women know that they are special and not forgotten.”
(READ the story in the Winnipeg Free Press)
Chum salmon are spawning again at an urban creek in the heart of East Vancouver.
The salmon returned this week to Still Creek, which sits in a ravine surrounded by warehouses and was once thoroughly polluted by urban garbage, sewage and toxic chemicals.
“I thought we had done such terrible things to the creek that the fish just couldn’t survive, but here they were coming back and spawning in our creek,” one resident told the CBC News.
Much of the credit goes to people who have painstakingly restored their habitat.
(READ the story from CBC News)
In Berlin recently, a lone street musician with his guitar was covering the Bronski Beat tune “Smalltown Boy” when the most unlikely thing happened.
Bronski Beat co-founder Jimmy Somerville happened to be out walking his dog and stepped in to sing harmony on the duet!
Random music lovers caught the act on video and shared the amazing moment on YouTube.
In honor of his mother, a breast cancer survivor, and for Breast Cancer Awareness month, Ryan Marotta bought pink sneakers to wear to school. The NFL does it, so it must be cool.
But, some of his middle school classmates harassed him because he was a boy wearing pink.
When his friends found out why he was wearing the shoes, everyone started wearing pink: Pink socks, pink shoes, pink hats, pink ribbons.
“My mom cried tears of joy last night when she found out,” he said.
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from CNN New Day)
Steve Sparks is a former white supremacist who denounced his former gang of haters to pursue a relationship with a black woman.
To this day, members of the Aryan Brotherhood in Oklahoma have vowed retribution.
Sparks simply realized he was tired of hating. “Hate was eating my soul up and I didn’t even really know why I hated anyone.”
He also had a big secret that wracked him with anxiety – he loved black women.
Eventually he married one.
He met his new wife online at a social media website in 2010 and today they have a beautiful 15-month-old mixed race son together.
(Source: BeyondBlackWhite.com)
Though he crossed the finish line hours after everyone else did, Jimmy Jenson still was first at the New York City Marathon Sunday.
The 48-year-old was first in the history books — the first person with Down syndrome ever to complete the race that wanders through five New York boroughs.
He finished the race in just over eight hours, and he helped other runners to finish too, telling them that if he could do it, they could do it.
(WATCH the inspiring video below from NBC)
Superstorm Sandy showed New York’s vulnerability to big weather, and offered a warning to the world.
Now the Rockefeller Foundation is offering $100 million dollars in grants to help cities face up to Sandy-like events and prepare, so they can come out the other side.
Its 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge looks to catalyze infrastructure investment, improve coordination within governments, open up access to useful software and services, and spread good ideas.
(READ the article from Fast Coexist)
A collection of 1,500 artworks confiscated by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s has been found in the German city of Munich, media reports say.
The trove is believed to include works by Matisse, Picasso and Chagall, the news magazine Focus reports.
Some of the works were declared as degenerate by the Nazis, while others were stolen from or forcibly sold for a pittance by Jewish art collectors.
(READ the story from the BBC)
Between classes, they schemed and conspired. For weeks, the football players at a middle school in Olivet, Mich., secretly planned their remarkable play. Not even the coaches knew.
The goal was not to score, but to “make someone’s day, make someone’s week, make them happy.”
Keith Orr is a little kid who’s learning disabled and struggles with boundaries — but in the sweetest possible way. What is surprising is how the team has embraced him.
A single mom in Durham, North Carolina had her faith restored in her own parenting abilities by a complete stranger.
The mom, whose kids are often hard to handle in restaurants, received a kind note applauding her patience and parenting skills from a young man at a nearby table.
After signing the note, Jake even paid for the family’s dinner and included a Pizza Hut Gift Card for the next time they want to dine out.
The mother, who is remaining anonymous, told WTVD that her 6-year-old boy has ADHD and Asperger’s, the other, a 4-year-old shows bullying tendencies, so they often sound loud in restaurants.
But Jake focused on the good in the situation, and wrote the following:
“I do not know your back story, but I have had the privilege of watching you parent your children for the past 30 minutes. I have to say thank you for parenting your children in such a loving manner.
“I have watched you teach your children about the importance of respect, education, proper manners, communication, self control, and kindness all while being very patient. I will never cross your path again but am positive that you and your children have amazing futures.
“Keep up the good work and when it starts to get tough do not forget that others may be watching and will need the encouragement of seeing a good family being raised. God bless! -Jake”
(WATCH the video below or READ the article from WTVD, via KTRK)
A Good Samaritan has stepped in to help a 19-year-old DePaul student whose bike was stolen in Chicago.
After Olguiemar Freyre’s bike, her only form of transportation, was stolen while she was working earlier this week, the part-time student penned an angry note and left it at the scene of the crime.
A Chicago man who saw the note stepped in and offered to help.
(READ the story from NBC Chicago)
This could be the best example of positive thinking yet.
Your unpleasant feelings are not only inevitable, they can also play a key role in your health and well-being.
A small study from Olin University published earlier this year showed that being comfortable experiencing and expressing mixed emotions was a predictor of improvements in well-being, while ignoring or evading negative feelings was not associated with boosts in well-being.
Participants who reported and acknowledged that they had both happy and sad emotions, were more likely to have better mental health.
A Huffington Post article describes six ways to embrace negative emotions, including turning your anger into creativity, gaining compassion by working through your shame, becoming grateful after loss, and using envy to spur yourself to become more.
(READ the article in the Huff Post)
Half Moon Reef was once a massive underwater oyster colony in the most productive fishery in Texas, rich with shellfish, blue crabs and shrimp. Today there is barely an oyster left in the nearly-500-acre site.
It took seven years of planning but conservationists with the Nature Conservancy in Texas, are now rebuilding the reef in the heart of Matagorda Bay using huge boulders of Missouri limestone carried down the Mississippi River on 36 barges.
Scientists, engineers and laborers will spend two months placing the rocks in 8 feet of water along 45 acres. In its first-ever reef construction starting from the ground up, The Conservancy’s hopes are high for revitalizing an entire ecosystem.
In the wake of a natural disaster, whole cities must commence rebuilding. The challenge for social entrepreneurs in countries like Haiti, who want to help in the aftermath, is to deploy a housing design that would require only minimum time and effort for its construction so great quantities could be produced and quickly distributed to the homeless.
A recent graduate cum laude from Delft University of Technology, Pieter Stoutjesdijk, came up with an elegant solution.
US factory activity expanded in October at the fastest pace in two-and-a-half years, suggesting that the 16-day partial shutdown of the government had little effect on manufacturers.
Instead, overseas demand and healthy US auto sales appear to be supporting factory output.
(READ the AP story via the Charlotte Observer)
A study at Great Ormond Street Hospital suggests lullabies do more than just help babies sleep – they reduce pain in sick children.
Singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Hushabye Baby and Five Little Ducks to sick children was found to alleviate their suffering, and in a more significant way than previously parents might have guessed.
(READ the story in The Telegraph)
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