U.S. factories revved up production, hired more workers and received a surge of new orders in July, helping them expand at the fastest pace in two years.
The gains could provide the spark needed to accelerate economic growth.
Meanwhile, British manufacturing grew in July at its fastest rate in well over two years — its fourth straight month of expansion. The reading was the strongest since March 2011, according to Reuters.
(READ the AP story in the Washington Post or the Kansas City Star)
South Korean petroleum company, S-Oil wanted to show that it valued resource conservation in the nation’s capital, Seoul, where gasoline consumption is the highest in the world. With more cars on the roads, parking spaces were more and more scarce, and Seoul drivers wasted expensive fuel wandering around looking for parking spaces.
Sgt. Reckless became a war hero to Marines fighting in Korea 60 years ago. The small Mongolian horse hauled supplies and ammunition on the front lines through constant gunfire for soldiers who last week remembered the bravery of their four-legged hero.
The mare became a national hero after a published article in the Saturday Evening Post described her service. Under heavy fire in 1953, she ran 51 supply trips in a single day. The mare was promoted to Staff Sergeant and is now immortalized in a bronze statue unveiled on the grounds of the Marine Base in Triangle, Virginia July 26.
Alaska Airlines is teaming up with The Nature Conservancy to help restore coral reefs in Hawaii. Touting the paper-reducing benefits of its mobile app, the airline will donate $1 for every customer who downloads the mobile app during the month of August. Passengers can rid themselves of the need to print paper boarding passes at the same time as they help rid the Hawaiian reefs of invasive species.
At one time in his life, after a divorce, Gary Pickering was homeless.
Now, Pickering is building small, portable ‘micro-houses’ for people living on the street.
They’re small, but have many of the advantages of real homes for those looking for respite from the harsh weather.
Community volunteers got together and built 40 of these shelters and they’ll deliver them to wherever the homeless people need them.
A curious father who wanted to take a closer look on his way home after noticing smoke billowing into the sky became a fire hero.
Wondering where it was coming from, Terry Jackson drove towards the terraced house in Radcliffe, Lancashire, England.
He would run into the burning building three times to rescue a family stranded inside.
New Yorkers’ newfound love of Cronuts has raised $3,800 this week to help feed the city’s hungry.
Thanks to Dominique Ansel, creator of the coveted pastry, a special passion fruit version is being giving away every day this week.
The Cronut Project will select two people from among those who donate to the Food Bank For New York City, NYC’s major hunger-relief organization — one to the day’s highest donor, the other will go to a random donor.
One widow is giving her travel-loving husband a final adventure at sea. In March 2012, Beverly Smith, 56, put the ashes of her late husband, Gordan Scott, in a bottle and tossed them off the coast of Big Pine Key, Florida.
With his remains were $2 and a note instructing whoever recovered the bottle to “call and tell [her] where he is.”
A mother was forced to make the life-or-death decision to drop her baby from a burning apartment’s window.
Luckily, Zna Gresham, just 10 years old, was there to catch the tiny newborn as she plunged 20 feet to the ground.
A woman in a wheelchair then helped the children while fire workers put out the fire.
A 10-year-old boy who acquired driving skills by go-karting and playing the video game “Mario Kart,” put those skills into action, saving himself, his brother and grandmother.
Gryffin Sanders of Golden, Colorado was riding in the car with his 4-year-old brother when their 74-year-old great-grandmother, Darlene Nestor, passed out in mid-sentence.
The “Peace Ark” hospital ship of the Navy of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has begun its “Harmonious Mission — 2013”, arriving in Pakistan, the 4th stop of the mission, on July 29 to begin a six-day-long goodwill visit to offer humanitarian medical assistance.
During the visit, the hospital ship will dispatch medical detachments to offer medical services at the Sifa Hospital of the Pakistani Navy, and training in Karachi, and perform surgery jointly with Pakistani medical staff. In addition, the dispatched medical detachments will also visit local schools to donate medical services to children in need.
(READ the story from the People’s Daily)
Pierre Paul Thomas, 68, spent most of his life seeing only vague shadows, until an accident left him needing surgery on his face.
His injuries were treated at the Montreal General Hospital, where, during a consultation with a reconstructive plastic surgeon, he was given the opportunity of a lifetime.
A Whitby restaurant has offered to help a nine-year-old autistic Oshawa boy whose lemonade stand was nearly shutdown by a sour neighbour who called police on him during a recent holiday.
The Baton Rouge restaurant will open its doors to Corbin Potter and his siblings and let them sell lemonade to their customers on Aug. 13. All proceeds will go to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
Israel and the Palestinians plan to resume peace negotiations this week for the first time in nearly three years after an intense effort by US Secretary of State John Kerry to bring them back to the table.
The talks are scheduled to resume in Washington on Monday evening and run through Thursday evening, with negotiations planned for nine months.
A collection of eye-catching stained glass installations by a Toronto artist is generating solar power at the Cathedral of the Holy Family in Saskatoon.
The artwork by Sarah Hall consists of solar panels embedded in brightly colored, hand-painted art glass. Once it is connected, the cathedral will be able to use the solar power produced by the art installation to offset its own power consumption.
(READ the story, with PHOTOS, from the CBC)
With the highly successful recycling habits of Swedish households – they sent just 4% of their waste to landfills in 2011 – comes the enviable problem of running out of trash to burn in their national waste-to-energy program.
Waste incineration provides heat for 810,000 homes and electricity for a quarter million homes, according to Swedish Waste Management.
The rest of Europe has plenty of trash to spare, so the Scandinavian country is importing eight hundred thousand tons for use in its power plants.
(LEARN more from this report at Public Radio International)
Drugmaker Pfizer Inc. has agreed to provide hundreds of millions of doses of its lucrative vaccine against pneumonia and meningitis at a fraction of the usual price for young children in poor countries.
The deal to provide 260 million shots of its Prevnar 13 vaccine for a few dollars each is Pfizer’s third agreement under an innovative cooperative government-business program.
(READ the AP story from CBC News)
Just two months ago, Brett Nedens wasn’t sure this day would come, or whether he’d want to witnesses it if it did. Harvest time.
Across much of Montana, the transformation from a desperate, drought-stricken landscape to fairly average conditions has been nothing short of miraculous for many farmers and ranchers. Two thirds of the state has near or above-average soil moisture after late spring rains in May and June erased what appeared to be a second year of drought.
A woman in Queens discovered the honesty of blue-collar workers from a recycling center this week after she accidentally left $5,000 in an old refrigerator her husband dropped off there.
She returned to Atlantic Recycling in South Ozone Park in a panic early Thursday and explained to a worker what happened.
“Tow truck driver Fred Alsterberg hunted for the fridge, but couldn’t find it amid the piles of scrap metal and car parts,” explained the New York Daily News.
But he didn’t give up and found the bags of cash. He even contacted the local media to help find her — and was rewarded when Magda Castillo was found and reunited with her savings.
(READ the story, w/ photo, from the NY Daily News)
Hello Good News Network fans!
I will be in Vancouver on business this week and am meeting with GNN fans on Tuesday at 5PM in a downtown hotel.
If you’d like to come enjoy refreshments and conversation with the founder of our positive network, email Geri here.
