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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Tawanda Jones is using dance to empower the youth of Camden, New Jersey, one of the poorest cities in the country.
Through Jones’ precision drill team program, more than 4,000 children have learned discipline, respect, and community service — and all of them have graduated high school.
When Ben, a mixed German shepherd, was separated from the love of his life, he showed there was no distance too far that would prevent him from reuniting with her.
After he was adopted from the Indiana Humane Society, Ben went on a 10-mile trek in the middle of winter to find his way back to Jade, a 1-year-old mixed German shepherd.
A San Diego woman first formed a bond with a Chinese goose at Miramar Lake 20 years ago. After a 10-year break, she went back to the lake to see if he was still there.
She named him Blanco. As soon as she pulled up in the car she recognized him. She got out and said, “Blanco?”
“His telescoping neck shot up in the air and it was like I never stopped seeing him.”
When most people think about protein, they think of meat, eggs, cheese and Greek yogurt. But every whole food contains protein, says vegan writer Alisa Rutherford-Fortunati.
From your morning banana to your evening salad, finding plants packed with protein is easy to do.
Plant-based foods are also cholesterol-free, mostly high in fiber, and alkalizing to the body rather than acidic. This helps increase oxygen and protect calcium.
Baxter Holmes, a Boston Globe sports reporter, tweeted a photo after last night’s Celtics game that will tug at your heart strings (and perhaps encourage a little more gratitude for your own heart).
After Jeff Green scored the winning basket with a fraction of a second left in the game, he went over to hug the doctor who performed heart surgery on him just one year earlier.
Green said of his perfectly executed play, “That was for him.”
(READ the story in the Boston Globe)
Thanks to Carole Sargent for submitting the link!
After she declined to play and all her coworkers won a million dollars in the Powerball Jackpot, the administrative assistant of a real estate company, who was hired just three weeks ago, found out why the group calls itself a “family”.
None of them hesitated to share a portion of their $83,000 net winnings with ‘the new girl’.
Having not yet reached her first payday the coworker felt she had to opt-out of the pool. That’s when the lottery coordinator of the office in Plantation, Florida said, “You know, if you don’t play we are going to win.”
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from WHAS)
It had been a normal Sunday night for Dawn Ward, a waitress at the Olive Garden restaurant in Lubbock, Texas.
Then, a married couple were seated and Ward thought they deserved ultra-generous care.
“They said they had a special event happening and they wanted to spend it here at Olive Garden,” Ward said. “And so I inquired what it was and they said that he was going to be deployed the next morning.”
Our son, who moved to LA last month, was on the Redondo Beach pier and saw a guy wearing our GOOD HAPPENS shirt!
Andy walked up, introduced himself and they shared a wonderful moment of connection!
He told David that I lived in Virginia, and he only just moved to the area. He’s still looking for a job, and a room to rent, if you know of anything 🙂
In her final days of fighting cancer, Katelyn Norman, 14, of Campbell County, Tenn., created a bucket list.
She wanted to slow-dance at her prom and learn to drive, so her high school organized ‘Light the Night for Kate,’ preparing an elegant evening with all her favorite things and lining the road with candles for her to drive home.
The prom’s theme last night was “Katie in the Sky with Diamonds” and thousands of people lined Highway 63 to hold candles in honor of the courageous girl.
(READ the story in the NY Daily News)
You’re broke, you struggle with bills, then out of nowhere you find $30,000 in cash which only you will ever know about because the money belongs to someone who is dead. What do you do?
Carol Sutor of Bristol, Pa., was in that situation on Thursday and decided to return the money to the family of the woman who had spent years saving it.
“I had to give it back,” she said. “I believe in karma, whatever I do will come back to me, good or bad.”
While messing around and building things on his deck one day, Todd Bol took a dollhouse-size structure and turned it into a free community library that would have global impact.
He started a movement called Little Free Library, a nonprofit that seeks to place small book exchange boxes in neighborhoods around the world.
The idea has taken off, growing from 100 libraries in 2011 to 6,000 libraries in 2013.
You can find plans for building one of these boxes on their website, www.littlefreelibrary.org.
(READ the story, w/ photos, from Houzz.com)
Thanks to Susan Carr for sending the story!
It’s an unlikely pair of protégé and mentor that led Matthew Pakkala to go from street-savvy school dropout to focused high-achiever.
It’s a tale of a boy’s childhood overshadowed by addiction and mental illness at home and of a school principal who – as much a guardian angel as educator – helped him survive it.
A social enterprise founded by former gang members has helped to end a 20-year turf war in Birmingham.
The One Mile Away organization is the outcome of a feature-length documentary of the same name, just released nationwide in England.
One of Britain’s youngest Internet entrepreneurs has hit the jackpot after selling his top-selling mobile application Summly to search giant Yahoo.
17-year-old Nick d’Aloisio may be getting several million dollars for his news-summarizing program, if British newspapers are to be believed.
D’Aloisio taught himself to code at age 12 to create products for Apple’s new App Store, according to the Associated Press.
Imagine driving along and seeing someone standing in the road frantically waving their arms. Would you stop?
It’s a good thing Ryan Cornelissen did stop. He was the calm presence needed in a crisis to revive a newborn who was not breathing after a man’s wife had given birth in the car.
The Macomb County Sheriff’s Office Emergency Operations Center responded to Ryan’s 911 call on March 16, 2013.
Dispatcher Steven Kukuk guided Ryan so he could save the newborn’s life.
(LISTEN to the 911 call below, or read the story from the Macomb Patch)
