Sometimes, when I am home alone, the red phone rings downstairs. It’s a rotary phone from eBay. I bid $63.13 for it two years ago because we needed a land line for our alarm system, and so why not get an old rotary phone, because how cool are we, with our disposable income and throwback tastes?
A Love Letter to Land Lines on the 40th Anniversary of Cellphones
Quest for Good Pick-Up Line Leads Man to Save Abducted Kids
Conor Grennan reunited Anish’s parents with their missing son, whom they had mourned every day for four years.
This was the miracle they had prayed for daily. Their son was alive and they would see him again.
350 such families would be surprised at how Conor got into the business of saving kids with Next Generation Nepal.
(READ the story in Brad Aronson’s blog)
Most Americans Think Teen Pregnancy is Getting Worse; Most Americans are Wrong
Teen births and pregnancies have plummeted over the past two decades, down 42 percent from 1990. Most Americans, it turns out, have no idea that we’re actually in the midst of a big public health success story.
Surprisingly, young adults ages 18-34 are most likely to be misinformed.
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Hero Man and His Dog Rescue Girls From Freezing River
A Fort Saskatchewan oil worker who rescued two young girls from the icy waters of the North Saskatchewan River credits adrenalin and his adventurous dog for saving their lives.
After hearing screams and seeing a girl floating down the river, Adam Shaw sprinted down to the shore with Rocky, his eight-year-old 110-lb Labrador retriever-husky.
Former Gang Member Becomes Star Student With 4.0 GPA
The first time Brayan ever held a gun, he pointed it at a woman stepping out of a gray Lexus and stole her purse — his initiation into an older cousin’s gang.
He was 12 years old at the time.
“I was losing control of my life,” said Brayan, now 17 and a 4.0 student at Scriber Lake High School in Edmonds, Washington.
Pakistani Woman Makes History in Daring Run for Parliament
A Pakistani homemaker from the conservative tribal area will become the first woman to run for a seat in Parliament from that region of the country.
Braving possible attack by Islamist militants, Badam Zari hopes to bring more government focus to the issues important to Pakistani women.
Round-up of Best April Fools Day Pranks on the Web
From Google to YouTube, Twitter to Netflix, companies tried to bait the public into falling for a prank on April 1.
Google always takes April Fools Day pretty seriously, and cats are usually involved. But this year Google poked fun of its Glass Project launching “Google Nose” for cataloguing smells.
YouTube produced a message that it had decided to shut down its website and delete all the videos.
How Does a Choreographer Propose Marriage and Beat This?
Kevin and Abby met as teenagers, performing together in the Summer Stage Shooting Stars. After college, they both returned as co-directors of the group.
What better way for Kevin to propose to Abby than with the Shooting Stars singing and dancing them into their engagement?
Giving Circle Funds Milwaukee Hmong Women in Death and Life
The Milwaukee Hmong women’s giving circle boasts an inspiring story of how it began and impressive progress over the course of its two years.
The circle grew out of an incident when a Hmong woman was killed by her estranged husband and there was no one to bury her. A group of Hmong women pooled their resources to pay for the woman’s burial.
From that experience and the realization that other women might face the same situation, the women decided to form a giving circle.
It has so far raised $15,000 to donate as grants to support women from this Asian ethnic minority.
Honest Homeless Woman in Canada Rewarded with New Home
A homeless woman in Calgary, who was living in a shelter, didn’t thing twice about turning in a purse she found containing $10,000 in cash.
The couple were so moved by such honesty that they rewarded her with $500. But also a fund was set up at a local bank that has received so many small donations from across Canada that the woman was able to move into a new apartment.
“It is really starting to feel like home. I am just so thankful to the people that donated money on my behalf.”
Recovering Drug Addict with Long Rap Sheet Jumps to Rescue Man in Subway
The recovering drug addict with a long rap sheet who had just sat down on the bench in a Philadelphia train station often wondered if he was a good person, and perhaps never considered that anyone thought he was a hero to anybody.
But there was no self-doubt when Christopher Knafelc’s instincts kicked in Thursday and he leaped onto the tracks to help a complete stranger he’d just seen flail and fall off the platform.
$1 million! Three Friends Honor Long-time Pact to Split Lottery Winnings
Three long-time chums who made a pact to split the pot if one of them ever won the lottery got their payday last week, Georgia Lottery officials announced on Thursday.
“I was just as tickled for them as I was for myself,” Kenneth Wilson told NBC News. “We just had a verbal agreement and I felt like that had to be honored.”
To make a good story even better, one of the friends had cracked open a fortune cookie on that day in early March when Wilson bought the ticket. His fortune? “You’re going to win the lottery.”
(READ the story from NBC News)
Vital Medicine Rides Coke’s Distribution Network Into Remote African Villages
Simon Berry is piggybacking on Coca-Cola’s distribution system to bring life-saving medicine to the places that need it most.
You can buy a Coke pretty much anywhere on Earth. Thanks to a vast network of local suppliers, Coca-Cola has almost completely solved distribution, getting its product into every nook and cranny where commerce reaches.
There are places in the world where it’s easier to get a Coke than clean water. In the 1980s, Berry was an aid worker in Zambia, and when he looked at Coke’s success, he saw an opportunity.
Second Time Around: How to Find and Embrace a New Career After 50
When you’re in the cockpit on final approach and suddenly have to abort your landing and try again, it’s called a “go-around.” It can be a little scary at first, but with a little planning and some patience, it is painless. The same is true for your career after age 50. You’re all set to glide into retirement when from out of nowhere, you’re forced to change course professionally. I know the feeling better than most people because it happened to me.
Ever since childhood, I’ve been fascinated with airplanes. I was lucky enough to make flying my career as a private jet captain for nearly 30 years. My career took me to more than 40 countries on five continents, and I loved every minute of it. Then, I began to experience intense pain that made sitting for long periods of time impossible, and I soon started having serious health problems that threatened both my pilot status and my life.
Good News in the Job Market: Recovery, Growth, Optimism Spike in March
Employers around the world are more optimistic about business growth and think more money will be spent on talent development this year. That’s according to a Right Management survey of more than 2,000 senior human resource executives in 14 countries from government, non-private and private companies.
In the United States, the number of job openings spiked again in March according to the online job database SimplyHired.com.
Pope Washes Feet of Inmates for Easter
The day before Good Friday, Pope Francis continued what has been a ritual for him, but something no other papal leader before has done. He disregarded church tradition and washed the feet of two girls — a Serbian Muslim and an Italian Catholic — along with ten other young inmates at a nearby juvenile detention center.
While his predecessors washed and kissed the feet of priests in famous basilicas, Francis chose to kneel down before young offenders at the Casal del Marmo Penitentiary Institute for Minors, including two young women – the first time a pope included females in the Easter rite.
As US Housing Industry Gains Momentum, Other Sectors Follow
Residential construction, remodeling, moving, gardening and furniture buying add up to about 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product — which is why the upward momentum in housing, which continues to gain steam, is such a powerful boost to the economy.
But it’s not just that. By year end, U.S. homes will collectively be worth $3 trillion more than they were at the bottom of the market. “And that will provide a significant boost in consumer spending” — $100 billion in extra spending this year, to be exact, says one expert.
Saudi Arabia To Allow Women’s Sports Clubs
Saudi Arabia is to license women’s sports clubs for the first time, al-Watan daily reported, in a major step for an ultra-religious country where clerics have warned against female exercise.
Last year the conservative Islamic kingdom, where women must have permission from a male relative to take many big decisions, sent women athletes to the Olympics for the first time after pressure from international rights groups.
No Longer In Disguise, Female Pakistani Can Train as Squash Champion
Pakistan’s top female squash player used to have to pretend she was a boy. When Maria Toorpakai’s secret was finally revealed she had to choose between the sport she loved and her family’s safety.
Former world champion Jonathon Power received a letter from the athlete and decided to visit to learn who this passionate girl was.
He ended up rescuing her, calling her the “Rocky” of the squash world. With her father’s blessing, he brought her to Canada to train, and make her a professional champion.