On Jan. 12, Haitians solemnly marked the three-year anniversary of the catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that decimated their homeland.
Today, a few of the tent cities and shacks that housed refugees are gone, but many remain. For the respected San Francisco developer Sherman Balch, the work is just beginning.
“We want to give the Haitians employable skills,” Balch said. “It comes down to if you want to alleviate poverty, you’ve got to give them jobs. … They need to learn a trade.”
On Jan. 12, Haitians solemnly marked the three-year anniversary of the catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that decimated their homeland.
Today, a few of the tent cities and shacks that housed refugees are gone, but many remain. For the respected San Francisco developer Sherman Balch, the work is just beginning.
“We want to give the Haitians employable skills,” Balch said. “It comes down to if you want to alleviate poverty, you’ve got to give them jobs. … They need to learn a trade.”
With the first massive snowstorm of the winter having buried cars and mailboxes across America, some are recalling the good things that come with snow emergencies.
We have been programmed to despise winter weather and retreat back into our homes. Yet snow deserves a second look. Blizzards bring us together.
Winter tasks bring us outdoors to work together, under the wide open sky, often chatting with and helping our neighbors.
Nine-month-old Flipper the kitten was born with a twisted spine that makes it impossible for him to stand up — or walk about without dragging himself laboriously.
But little Flipper’s life was changed forever by cat-lovers from a high school robotics club in Colorado.
The team built a special kitty chariot for the partially paralyzed cat, who is now scampering around the animal shelter with ease — and made him more adoptable too.
Nine-month-old Flipper the kitten was born with a twisted spine that makes it impossible for him to stand up — or walk about without dragging himself laboriously.
But little Flipper’s life was changed forever by cat-lovers from a high school robotics club in Colorado.
The team built a special kitty chariot for the partially paralyzed cat, who is now scampering around the animal shelter with ease — and made him more adoptable too.
To Laura King, her three children were acting normal while enjoying dinner at an Italian restaurant in their hometown in Washington state.
But staffers of the restaurant were so impressed with her children’s table manners during their Feb. 1 dinner that they thanked her kids and gave the family of five free ice cream.
Chinese welcomed the arrival of the Year of the Snake with raucous celebrations on Saturday. Practitioners of the ancient art of feng shui say the New Year ahead will see financial markets slither higher as optimism grows.
People born in the year of the snake are believed to be thoughtful and stylish yet complex characters.
For many Chinese people, taboos abound during this period. Crying on New Year’s Day means you will cry for the rest of the year, and washing your hair signifies washing away good luck. And don’t clean on new year’s day, for you will be sweeping away good fortune in the year ahead.
(READ the story from Reuters)
–Learn more about the 2013 Year of the Snake at HanBan.com
A call for help from a homeless veteran turned into an outpouring of support as dozens of leather-wearing bikers stepped up with baby supplies just two weeks before the expected birth.
Bakersfield Harley Davidson collected the donated supplies. The Armed Forces Support Riders helped donate and delivered the materials. Those groups all came together to help the 32 year-old veteran; who became homeless just six months after leaving the military.
(WATCH the video below)
A call for help from a homeless veteran turned into an outpouring of support as dozens of leather-wearing bikers stepped up with baby supplies just two weeks before the expected birth.
Bakersfield Harley Davidson collected the donated supplies. The Armed Forces Support Riders helped donate and delivered the materials. Those groups all came together to help the 32 year-old veteran; who became homeless just six months after leaving the military.
Pilgrims and tourists visiting the Vatican received a special treat Saturday, when some 4,000 members of the Knights of Malta marched in procession celebrating the group’s 900th anniversary.
The order’s mission is humility and charity and had its start in the 11th century, with the creation of an infirmary in Jerusalem that cared for people making pilgrimages to the Holy Land during the Crusades.
In the past five years, the financial industry has taken a drubbing with plunging profits, allegations of improper behavior, and customer backlash against rising fees.
But various sources list one bank as a best place to work, and its practices may provide a blueprint to other companies on how to keep workers engaged even during tough times.
Umpqua Bank is known as the “world’s best bank”.
Pakistani youth leader Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi has a plan to counter the relentless message of violence spewed forth by radical Islamic groups in his country. Zaidi is using a fleet of rickshaws emblazoned with peace slogans and decorated with colorful designs similar to those found on many trucks and buses in the country.
Before the retiring NFL football star Donald Driver caught a flight out of town closing a 14-year career of record-breaking performance in Wisconsin, he made one last stop. He surprised a 78-year-old woman, a Green Bay Packer fan and cancer survivor who wanted nothing more than to hug her hero.
Typically, post office lines breed anger and frustration. But at the head of this queue on the campus of Penn State University in State College, Pa., you’ll find nothing but joy.
“My mission is to make them have a little bit of levity on the way out and say, ‘Hey, it’s not so bad after all,'” says Mike Herr.
To that end, Mike lives by a simple motto: if you can’t say something nice about someone, you’re just not looking hard enough.
Even if it’s only how nicely they filled out their forms. And he’s been like this with just about every customer, every day, for 38 years.
(WATCH the video from Steve Hartman below, or READ the story from CBS News)
Typically, post office lines breed anger and frustration. But at the head of this queue on the campus of Penn State University in State College, Pa., you’ll find nothing but joy.
“My mission is to make them have a little bit of levity on the way out and say, ‘Hey, it’s not so bad after all,'” says Mike Herr.
To that end, Mike lives by a simple motto: if you can’t say something nice about someone, you’re just not looking hard enough.
From a cursory glance, with the recession sending thousands of unemployed millennials back to mom and dad’s house, it would seem that anyone born within the last 20-odd years is in bad shape.
But according to the results of a new study (and contrary to the opinion of anyone claiming that “the good old days” have come and gone), each new generation is happier than ones that came before it. What the heck do they have to be so smiley about?
(READ the story in Greatist.com)
Talk about the ultimate space jam.
The song is called “I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing),” and it’s billed as the first space-Earth musical collaboration. It’s a very long-distance project from Canadians Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies and Chris Hadfield, who currently commands the International Space Station.
The song premiered Friday morning as a prerecorded video — Hadfield performing on the space station with Earth floating outside his window and Robertson in a Toronto studio with a collegiate glee club and the other members of Barenaked Ladies.
The Amazon rainforest is less vulnerable to die off because of global warming than widely believed because the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide also acts as an airborne fertilizer, a study showed on Wednesday.
The boost in growth due to the CO2 this century is likely to exceed any damaging effects of rising temperatures, it said.
Madonna is auctioning her tour costumes to benefit those affected by Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey.Some of the outfits the singer donned on her MDNA Tour, including the much-photographed majorette costume and caged basque, will be included in the auction, according to New York Post.
Madonna visited some of the hard hit neighborhoods in the Northeast after the storm.
(READ the story from Music-News.com via Noise 11)
– Photo credit: David Shankbone, 2008 -GNU
Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants fell 4.6 percent in 2011 as more generators were switched to cleaner-burning natural gas and renewable sources from coal, according to new data from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Power plants account for one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
