In some African countries, a lack of reliable electricity is to blame for hundreds of deaths each year during childbirth.
Dr. Laura Stachel witnessed this tragic truth during a trip to Nigeria five years ago and with the help of her husband, a solar energy educator, did something about it.
They are now delivering a solution: solar energy in a suitcase.
“It’s a hard life, let me tell you,” says 89-year-old Ed Bray. “You ain’t never lived hard until you go through what I’ve been through.”
Bray served in World War II. He was at Normandy on D-Day and has two Purple Hearts.
Today, the soldier in him still refuses to surrender.
“I want to read one book,” he says. “I don’t care if it’s about Mickey Mouse. I want to read one book before I die.”
Recently, he got to do just that — a moral takeaway for anyone who thinks they’re too old to do something.
(WATCH the beautiful video below or READ the story from CBS’s Steve Hartman)
To increase the city’s dismal recycling rates, Houston’s government is trying something else: One Bin for All. It will collect all trash together in one bin and then convert it to biofuel.
Instead of trying to overhaul local culture and regulation, the city is working on an ambitious plan to build the first total material resource recovery facility in the U.S.–an innovation that would allow residents to toss all their trash into a single bin, let technology do all the sorting, and emerge in the end with usable products.
For his 11th birthday, Sam isn’t begging for the latest video game or Lego set.
Instead, the kindhearted Massachusetts boy decided to continue his personal tradition of forgoing birthday gifts in favor of what he prefers — that his family and friends make donations to the New England Saint Bernard Rescue.
That’s where his family found his pal Lady Jane 7 years ago.
The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station.
Danny called me that day, frantic. “I found a baby!” he shouted. “I called 911, but I don’t think they believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get down here and flag down a police car or something.”
What neither of us knew, or could have predicted, was that Danny had not just saved an abandoned infant; he had found our son.
(READ the story in the New York Times)
A Congressional resolution has been introduced in the US House of Representatives to recognize a Pakistani doctor, who helped CIA trace Osama bin Laden, as an American hero.
Dr Shakil Afridi was arrested by Pakistan government three weeks after Laden was killed in the US raid for helping to access the al-Qaeda leader’s compound in Abbottabad.
For the few Latino students living in Lincoln, Nebraska in the 1960’s, the school’s expectations were low.
The high school counselor told Linda Hernandez and her sister not to worry about taking the SAT or ACT tests “because we were Hispanic women, [and] all we would do is have babies,” Linda told StoryCorps.
“So we went home and we told our parents, and my mother went in the back room and cried,” Linda says. “And then that’s when my brother said, ‘Uh-uhn, it ain’t happening.’
Former surgeon general C. Everett Koop died Monday in New Hampshire at age 96. Koop is justly renowned for his role in the tobacco wars of the 1990s. His repeated warnings that tobacco use was deadly and increasing among children anchored a series of famous congressional hearings that led to warning labels, bans on Joe Camel-type advertising and regulation of tobacco.
But Koop was also a pivotal figure, and probably saved just as many lives, because he broke a deadlock in the Republican Party that had stopped Congress from addressing the rampaging AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
(READ the story in the Washington Post)
Longtime Good News Network viewers will not be overly-amazed by the dramatic helicopter rescue of a deer trapped on thin ice in the middle of a frozen Canadian harbor.
Ian Waugh spotted the doe and fawn struggling out on the ice and notified the Department of Natural Resources. He said the doe struggled for hours, trying to stand up on the slippery ice but she kept falling.
A few hours later, Waugh spotted a DNR helicopter near the mother and the alarmed fawn ran to shore as the chopper descended. He was amazed by what happened next and captured it on camera.
The solution described as “brilliant” in the CTV report was identical to the one used in two other ice rescues — in 2007 and in 2010 when an Oklahoma TV news chopper pilot saved a doe and a calf from icy peril three years apart.
Watch those here.
(WATCH the latest video below)
Longtime Good News Network viewers will not be overly-amazed by the dramatic helicopter rescue of a deer trapped on thin ice in the middle of a frozen Canadian harbor.
Ian Waugh spotted the doe and fawn struggling out on the ice and notified the Department of Natural Resources. He said the doe struggled for hours, trying to stand up on the slippery ice but she kept falling.
A few hours later, Waugh spotted a DNR helicopter near the mother and the alarmed fawn ran to shore as the chopper descended. He was amazed by what happened next and captured it on camera.
Tom Wargo’s life changed when he saw an elderly woman sharing her only daily hot meal with a cat.
“That cat was her only friend, giving her reason to get up in the morning and giving her a reason to live,” Wargo said. She couldn’t afford pet food, so Wargo dd something about it.
The world’s third largest paper company, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), announced earlier this month an immediate end to all natural forest clearing in its supply chains in Indonesia.
The company’s pledge to stop making paper from the pulped remains of some of the last virgin rainforests, along with its improved transparency, will help protect endangered Sumatran tigers and orangutans and also the region’s indigenous peoples, many of whom depend on forest resources for their livelihoods. Most importantly, the move responds to the threat of climate change because it protects forested peatlands that store massive amounts of greenhouse gases.
APP’s announcement, the result of 12 months of on-the-ground field work by the non-profit group, Tropical Forest Trust (TFT), and lengthy negotiations between Greenpeace and APP’s management, could set a serious precedent for the rest of the industry.
Scott Poynton, the executive director of TFT, says the agreement globally represents a possible tipping point for using the influence of advocacy groups such as Greenpeace to affect the role of the private sector. The key is to hammer out a strategy for how industry can do the right thing while surviving economically.
APP’s commitments show other producers worldwide—whether they sell pulp and paper, palm oil, soy, or beef—that it is possible to run a business without destroying humanity’s habitat.”
In today’s announcement, APP outlined a set of policies—part of its agreement with TFT— that will end its role in the practice of destroying forests to make room for tree plantations. The company also pledged to respect the rights of forest-dwelling communities and bring all third-party suppliers into line with its sustainability efforts. The new policies, which went into effect February 1, apply to all of the company’s operations around the world, its suppliers in Indonesia as well as its paper mills abroad, including those in China.
TFT has a proven track record of designing deforestation-free supply chains for companies worldwide—from a timber company in the Republic of Congo to a shoe retailer in the European Union. Most notably, TFT has shaped “no deforestation” policies for the food powerhouse Nestlé and the world’s second-largest palm oil producer, Golden Agri-Resources—in 2011, TFT successfully helped GAR launch a Forest Conservation Policy. TFT is now using this same model in working with APP to change the way it supplies its mills with fiber—the building block of the company’s internationally-produced and distributed paper products. Half of TFT’s 100-member team is based in Indonesia, where they work directly with suppliers feeding into global supply chains.
“With little hope that world’s governments will ever agree on a climate change treaty, companies have a huge role to play in reducing emissions, and deforestation has always been a primary target,” says Poynton. “We will closely support and monitor APP to make sure its contribution is realized.”
(More information from the Guardian and TFT)
A tiny puppy born disabled could not put any weight on her front legs. Not only was she subject to bullying by other puppies in the litter, she was getting bruised by falling on her legs.
It was fate that the dog’s caretaker decided it would be best to bring her to work — at a nursing home. The dog named BeeBee became a moving inspiration to the elderly residents there who were going through their own health issues.
Not only that. One of the employees asked her son to work with fellow students at his technical school to come up with a device to help BeeBee get around.
(WATCH the inspiring video from USA Today)
A tiny puppy born disabled could not put any weight on her front legs. Not only was she subject to bullying by other puppies in the litter, she was getting bruised by falling on her legs.
It was fate that the dog’s caretaker decided it would be best to bring her to work — at the nursing home. The dog named BeeBee became a moving inspiration to the elderly residents there who were going through their own health issues.
Never underestimate first-graders.
Jonah Pournazarian, 7, is best friends with Dylan Siegel, 6. Jonah has been diagnosed with glycogen storage disease type 1B , a rare liver disorder that doesn’t have a cure. Dylan decided to raise money for research to help his friend. Late last fall, he hatched a plan.
His parents wanted to do a typical lemonade stand effort, but he looked at them and said, “I want to write a book.”
Never underestimate first-graders.
Jonah Pournazarian, 7, is best friends with Dylan Siegel, 6. Jonah has been diagnosed with glycogen storage disease type 1B , a rare liver disorder that doesn’t have a cure. Dylan decided to raise money for research to help his friend. Late last fall, he hatched a plan.
His parents wanted to do a typical lemonade stand effort, but he looked at them and said, “I want to write a book.”
The University of Engineering and Technology in Lima, Peru, decided to pull off a clever engineering stunt to attract a new class of techie do-gooder students: create a billboard on the Pan-American Highway that generates potable water out of thin air.
It almost never rains and villagers nearby are challenged by the lack of fresh water. But atmospheric humidity, regularly as high as 98%, is thick with potential droplets.
Using five generators at the site, the billboard has already produced thousands of liters of free water in its first three months.
(WATCH the video below or READ the story in Fast CoExist)
An 18-year-old trekking through the ice and slush Friday in Indianapolis determined to arrive on time for a job interview 7 miles away left quite an impression on a restaurant owner who is not used to seeing such a work ethic in someone so young.
When Jhaqueil Reagan asked how far it was to the thrift shop at 10th and Sherman, he was told it was at least six more miles. When the man suggested he take the bus, the youngster just said thank you and kept walking.
Later, the restaurant owner, Art Bouvier, was driving down the same road and saw Reagan still walking in the freezing temperatures.
An 18-year-old trekking through the ice and slush Friday in Indianapolis determined to arrive on time for a job interview 7 miles away left quite an impression on a restaurant owner who is not used to seeing such a work ethic in someone so young.
When Jhaqueil Reagan asked how far it was to the thrift shop at 10th and Sherman, he was told it was at least six more miles. When the man suggested he take the bus, the youngster just said thank you and kept walking.
Later, the restaurant owner, Art Bouvier, was driving down the same road and saw Reagan still walking in the freezing temperatures.
You can not help but laugh while watching “Nothing but two minutes of goats yelling like humans”, the original video montage that went viral last week racking up almost 9 million views on YouTube.
Some of these goats sound so much like people that the clips have spawned spin-off videos featuring Taylor Swift and Bon Jovi songs accented by the goats screaming in agreement.
See for yourself and share it on Facebook or Twitter using the buttons above…
