While out shooting a story about cameras on school buses in Bonnyville, Alta., northeast of Edmonton, a CBC crew caught the interest of a curious cat with a fondness for cameras.
Check out the photos as reporter Briar Stewart and cameraman Sam Martin deal with the attention-seeking house pet.
The video shows the reporter laughing throughout.
(SEE all the photos at CBC – and WATCH the video below)
The Good News Network is thrilled that a young man we’ve reported on for years, who has removed more than seven million pounds of garbage from America’s beloved rivers, has been named the 2013 CNN Hero of the Year.
With so many outstanding individuals nominated for the award, each creating miracles for so many people, it is the humble garbageman and defender of the Earth, Chad Pregracke, who takes home this year’s $250,000 prize, after five weeks of public voting on CNN.com.
Pregracke organizes community cleanups across the country through his nonprofit, Living Lands & Waters. About 70,000 volunteers have pitched in, helping Pregracke pluck millions of discarded tires, refrigerators and plastic bottles from rivers like the Mississippi.
Pregracke, 38, grew up in East Moline, Illinois, where the Mississippi River was in his backyard. As a teenager, he worked as a commercial shell diver and began to notice the heaps of debris in the fabled waterway, which supplies drinking water to 18 million people in more than 50 U.S. cities.
His nonprofit has already held more than 700 cleanups on 23 rivers — and close to 90% of what they recover is recycled.
Once named the “Hardest Working American“, Chad was recognized Tuesday night along with the rest of this year’s top 10 CNN Heroes.
Wearing a suit and tie, Pregracke received $250,000 along with the distinguished black trophy. That is in addition to the $50,000 that each Hero in the top 10 receives.
“I’ve met so many great people today, the other Heroes, and I’m really moved by all their stories and all the things they do around the world. … I’m going to give 10 grand to each of them, because they’re awesome.” (Read about the ten runners-up at the bottom of this CNN report)
This is the seventh year CNN has conducted its annual search for CNN Heroes. In those years, the campaign has profiled more than 200 people with inspiring televised reports on each one (see Chad’s below).
Each year, a glitzy gala held after Thanksgiving honors the slate. “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute,” airs Sunday, December 1, at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.
RELATED: Love of Rivers Makes Him Eager to Do the Dirty Work
Last night, a rocket took off. It launched from an island in Virginia and sailed into the atmosphere. Aboard were 29 satellites. One of those satellites was built by high schoolers.
That satellite — in space right now, whizzing over our heads — is called the TJ3Sat. Built by Virginia high-school students and their teachers, it represents more than six years of work.
You can also interact with it right now.
(READ the story for The Atlantic via Mashable)
Brevin Hunter was playing a video game when he heard the wail of the emergency sirens Sunday.
Today Governor Quinn is recognizing the 6-year old boy because his relentless nagging might have saved the lives of his family minutes before a deadly tornado bore down on their home in Washington, Illinois.
In response to the epidemic of inner-city violence in Chicago neighborhoods, Gary Slutkin found that it helps to look at the situation as one would an epidemic of contagious disease outbreak.
In 2000, he founded CeaseFire (now known as Cure Violence), to try to “treat” West Garfield, one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city — as a public health problem rather than a criminal justice issue. Shootings dropped dramatically.
Slutkin’s idea has since been replicated in communities across the country, including Crown Heights in Brooklyn, which in 2010 began taking a public health approach to gun violence.
(READ the story in the New York Times)
Watch this video that went viral last week and made 3.8 million laugh out loud, to date.
This slice-of-life moment captures a Russian toddler as she experiences walking on ice for the first time.
(WATCH the video below…)
FedEx is spreading holiday cheer to America’s service members and their families this season with a special delivery of more than 17,000 freshly cut Christmas trees.
Now in its ninth year, Trees for Troops brings together tree farmers across America with FedEx to transport thousands of real Christmas trees to service members stationed overseas, and on military bases in the U.S.
The initiative kicked off today in Thorntown, Indiana, where FedEx volunteers are helping prepare 250 trees, donated by members of the Indiana Christmas Tree Growers Association, to be shipped to service members stationed in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East.
At the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip, the iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign is getting even more fabulous: The power source is going solar.
Monday, officials broke ground at the site of the 50-year-old landmark and promised the makeover, with construction of renewable energy solar trees, will be completed in early 2014.
The Las Vegas sign was built 53 years ago by Western Neon. The local businessman, Ted Rogich, later sold it to Clark County, Nevada.
(READ the story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Inspired by a few frustrating encounters with deaf riders who needed help, bus driver Edwin Cora decided to learn American Sign Language to communicate with members of the deaf community.
Now he can tell which riders are deaf without even seeing them sign.
“They are always surprised to see a bus driver who knows how to sign even a little bit,” Cora, 55, said. “They get very happy…very excited.”
He was awarded the Hometown Heroes in Transit award, which honors extraordinary transit workers in New York City.
(READ the story, w/ photos, in the NY Daily News)
A group of retired farmers is calling on Western Australian’s grain growers to donate a small percentage of this year’s harvest to help feed the children and their families fleeing from Syria.
“If farmers have surplus, perhaps we can get them to donate and the kids don’t need to starve.”
Through their charity initiative, which targets a specific area of need every year, the farmers have helped to make a difference around the world.
– LISTEN to the interview
– READ the summary at ABC.net.au
A settlement was reached in the civil suit brought by the Obama Administration’s Justice Department against JPMorgan Chase & Co. regarding wrongdoing that led to the housing collapse.
The largest bank in America will pay $4 billion to consumers who were hurt by faulty mortgage underwriting, part of a larger $13 billion fine to settle the bank’s liability in the collapse of toxic securities during the housing crisis.
“A source familiar with the settlement says that as much as $1.7 billion will go to homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth,” reports NPR’s Jim Zarroli. “Portions of the money will also go to restructure mortgages. And in an unusual agreement the bank will use part of the money to fight blight in distressed neighborhoods by doing things such as tearing down rundown buildings” that may have gone through foreclosure.
This settlement dwarfs the $4 billion BP was forced to pay for the Gulf oil spill.
(READ the story from NPR News)
The City of Vancouver, B.C. has launched the world’s first cigarette butt recycling program in its bid to become the greenest city.
The pilot project began last Tuesday with the installation of 110 receptacles in four downtown areas where discarded butts pile up.
Because the cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate, they can be recycled into eco-friendly products.
When Bree McMahon was a high school senior, her future was set: She had already earned a scholarship to play soccer in college.
But that future changed suddenly one day in 2009, when a close friend accidentally struck McMahon with a car. Doctors could not save her left leg.
Still, McMahon was undeterred. She forgave her friend, and immediately asked her doctor when it might be possible to run again.
“I knew what I wanted, and I was gonna chase after it with everything I had.”
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from TODAY)
A conspiracy of kindness in an American city made a wish come true for a five-year-old battling cancer.
San Francisco turned into the comic book downtown of Gotham City, and thousands of its citizens and cops, came together to cheer the boy as he foiled bad guys like the Riddler and Joker.
It was one of the most popular stunts in the history of the Make A Wish Foundation. Fake crimes were set up across the city for the “Bat kid” and his partner Batman to solve.
Even President Obama gave Bat Kid a shout out through social media.
(WATCH the video below from ABC News or READ the story in the LA Times)
Peyton Robertson has always loved math and science. His parents taught him that whenever he saw a problem, he could invent a solution to fix it.
Recently, the twelve-year-old boy from Fort Lauderdale, Florida was named America’s Top Young Scientist for 2013.
Among his impressive inventions is an idea he dreamed up after Superstorm Sandy for redesigning the traditional sandbag. Thes new sandbags provide better flood protection and they don’t weigh anything near 40-pounds, like old-fashioned ones stuffed with sand, which makes for easier transporting.
Because they use polymers and salt instead of sand, after the flooding (when the water evaporates) the bags shrink back to their thin-as-air, light-weight size.
The innovative design earned him $25,000 along with the Top Young Scientist award.
WATCH the boy demonstrate three of his creations on the Ellen TV show…
A Texas TV station aired a story in September about Seth Miller, who aged out of the foster care system, after growing up without a family since he was seven.
After the report was broadcast, showing him living in his car, emails came pouring-in with offers of money for food and rent, and even a set of new tires for the young man.
But even better, Seth will be enjoying his first proper Thanksgiving after being offered the one thing he’s always wanted. A family.
Not only that, the parents offering adoption have an 11-year-old daughter who is actually Miller’s biological sister, though they had never met.
“Miller has moved into their home, with several other brothers and sisters,” according to WFAA. “He attends their sporting and school events, cheering from the sidelines.”
Recently, he played in an adult baseball game for the first time. In foster care as a child, Miller dreamed of playing a team sport, but never had the opportunity.
He now calls Ara Hunt “mom.”
– READ the story at WFAA
Six years ago Rick Gunn, 49, left his job as a photo journalist to cycle across the world. He eventually met up with Iranian-born cyclist Mohammad Tajeran, who was also cycling the world, and together they crossed Malaysia as a team.
Ultimately Gunn and Tajeran were both transformed by scenes of war, poverty, and disease along the way. They each began dedicating their journey to the greater good.
“I expanded my definition of what it means to care, to give, and to love,” wrote Gunn, explaining that he volunteered in an AIDS Hospice in Thailand, helped with mine victim rehabilitation in Laos, and simply planted trees in Borneo.
Now, the two are planning to reunite next month to ride their bikes across Iran in a symbolic gesture of peace.
Their project, Wheels of Peace, will begin with each of them visiting schools in his respective country and sharing his experiences of finding friendship with someone who might otherwise be considered an enemy.
The children will be asked to write letters to students in the other country.
(WATCH the video below featuring Gunn’s photos, or READ the story in the Nevada Appeal)
In marked contrast to the spectacular display of dysfunction that led to the recent government shutdown in D.C., groups on all sides of a controversial issue in Montana have learned that “all or nothing” tactics usually lead to “nothing”.
For decades, Montana’s wood products industry, environmentalists, hunters and anglers, off-road-vehicle enthusiasts and others fought bitterly over the future of our national forests.
That’s why Senator Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act (FJRA), a bill now making its way through the U.S. Senate, has garnered such favorable praise.
When Jihad Dib was appointed principal of Punchbowl Boys High School in New South Wales at age 33, it was a hotbed of violence and trouble. His modern and successful approach to reforming the school has transformed the student body and staff into a family, and recently earned him a Pride of Australia medal.
The charismatic and inspirational headmaster has torn down the barbed wire that encircled the school and now finds teachers lining up to transfer there. Reading scores have risen, absenteeism has fallen, and the improvement in scores between year 7 and year 9 is among the highest in the country.
“Kids from families that have never had anyone finish high school, let alone get a degree, are graduating year 12 and bound for university,” reports the SM Herald.
– WATCH a video below, from Eyewitness News 10
– READ the story via a January Sydney Morning Herald)
[Editor’s note: If you are in the British Commonwealth, you may be able to view this Australian video from last week about Mr. Dib receiving the Pride of Australia Award. Also, thanks to Kimee Anderson for suggesting the story via our Facebook Page!
If you are like me, you won’t wear a bike helmets because you need the wind through your hair, like when you were a kid. (At least, I’m like that when riding in the countryside or through a park).
Now, two graduate students are getting global attention after creating an “invisible bike helmet” – actually a mini airbag designed to protect bicyclists’ heads from injuries.
