The Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics included a visual narrative, highlighting the many accomplishments of the British people over many centuries. The story included a segment celebrating the National Health Service (NHS).
The British, along with almost every other industrialized country in the world, have a universal health care system, in which care is provided for all, regardless of income.
South Korean archer Im Dong-hyun sees only blurred colors and lines when he peers toward the target about 76 yards away. It doesn’t stop the legally blind Olympian from hitting the grapefruit-sized yellow center – again and again and again.
He has 20/200 vision in his left eye and 20/100 vision in his right eye, meaning he is legally blind in his left eye and needs to be 10 times closer to see objects clearly compared to someone with perfect vision.
Haiti is planning the rollout of more than 7,000 new solar street lamps for the country, according to Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe.
It’s part of an infrastructure push Lamothe’s office said included an emphasis on the construction of new schools.
The Solar Electric Light Fund has been installing solar electric systems at healthcare facilities across Haiti, a project that could bring power to 170,000 Haitians.
The US Olympic uniforms may have been made in China, but the stadium lighting was made in America. A company called Musco, in Muscatine, Iowa has lit every Olympic game since 1984 — as well as center court at Wimbledon, the World Trade Center site and probably your kid’s sporting field. (Musco.com)
An Indonesian mountaineer who faced death threats while battling illegal loggers and a Bangladeshi lawyer who fought to keep old rusty ships from being dumped in her homeland are among this year’s winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards.
The six winners, announced Thursday, battled great odds to improve the plight of the poor in forest communities, Asian farmlands and exploitative industries. Working selflessly to create sustainable solutions to poverty, they are showing how committed leaders can truly transform millions of individual lives and galvanize progressive community action.
A survey of 6,500 children aged between 11 and 15 showed the numbers taking drugs, smoking and drinking alcohol had all fallen over the past decade.
29% had tried drugs at least once in 2001, compared with just 17% last year. Among 15-year-olds, the number fell from 39% in 2001 to 23% in 2011.
When five teenagers sat down and posed for a picture at Copco Lake in 1982, they didn’t plan on making it a tradition. But that’s what it became.
Every five years for the past three decades, John Wardlaw, John Dickson, Mark Rumer, Dallas Burney and John Molony have been meeting at the California lake and taking the same photo.
New Jersey Olympic swimmer Cullen Jones has a reason to swim.
He nearly died in the water. At age five, he didn’t know how to swim. Days after watching her son almost drown, she enrolled him in swimming lessons.
19 years later, after becoming an Olympian gold medalist in Beijing, Cullen is using his status to help battle the shocking statistic of Africa-Americans, especially children, who die every year in the water.
New Jersey Olympic swimmer Cullen Jones has a reason to swim.
He nearly died in the water. At age five, he didn’t know how to swim. Days after watching her son almost drown, she enrolled him in swimming lessons.
19 years later, after becoming an Olympian gold medalist in Beijing, Cullen is using his status to help battle the shocking statistic of Africa-Americans, especially children, who die every year in the water.
Three of the hospitals taking care of people wounded in the Colorado theater shooting said Wednesday they will limit or completely wipe out medical bills for the 22 victims.
Some of the wounded, many of them young, are uninsured and face mounting hospital bills.
Among the uninsured victims of the movie-theater attack is 23-year-old, Caleb Medley. His family and friends set a goal of raising $500,000 to cover his hospital bills and were nearly halfway there on Wednesday.
(READ the AP story from MSNBC)
Job openings grew again in July, as more than 190,000 positions opened up since June. The total number of job openings rose to 4,301,384, the highest so far this year, according to the Simply Hired trend tracker.
A rise in openings could mean hiring will pick up in the coming months. “It typically takes one to three months to fill a job,” reports the Associated Press.
Two cubs from one of the world’s most endangered species are being hand-reared at a Mexican zoo. The albino cubs were born in Loro animal park on Friday.
The Mexican-born cubs were born to white tigers especially imported into the Latin American country. ‘Loro’ zoo has been instrumental in helping preserve the endangered species with a specialist breeding programme to save the endangered big cats.
Two cubs from one of the world’s most endangered species are being hand-reared at a Mexican zoo. The albino cubs were born in Loro animal park on Friday.
The Mexican-born cubs were born to white tigers especially imported into the Latin American country. ‘Loro’ zoo has been instrumental in helping preserve the endangered species with a specialist breeding program to save the endangered big cats.
The first child in history to receive a trachea fashioned by his own stem cells has shown remarkable progress since the initial transplant two years ago, marking a new record for the novel procedure.
Ciaran Finn-Lynch, the now 13-year-old boy from the UK, is breathing normally and no longer needs anti-rejection medication, researchers reported in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Lancet.
The Obama administration unveiled plans Tuesday to ramp up solar energy production, offering incentives for solar developers to cluster projects on 285,000 acres of federal land in the western U.S and opening an additional 19 million acres of the Mojave Desert for new power plants.
When Barack Obama entered the White House, the country had no solar projects in the planning stages, said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who drew a sharp contrast with the country’s current rush to build plants.
A gifted musician who was shot in the head during the “Dark Knight” massacre last week will likely not sustain any major brain damage thanks to a birth defect that her pastor called “a miracle”.
The shotgun pellet reportedly entered her brain at the exact point of a barely-detectable defect – a tiny vein of fluid extending through her skull that only a CAT scan could catch.
Doctors said the bullet traveled through the vein, just missing the vital parts of Anderson’s brain.
(READ the story in the NY Daily News)
Christian Bale, the hero in the latest Batman film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” on Tuesday visited victims of last week’s mass shooting who were wounded in a Colorado theatre where the movie was premiering.
“The patients were really happy to meet Bale,” said a hospital official.
Bale, who also met with Gov. John Hickenlooper, told hospital officials he was visiting the injured but requested them not to tell the media.
Christian Bale, the hero in the latest Batman film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” on Tuesday visited victims of last week’s mass shooting who were wounded in a Colorado theatre where the movie was premiering.
“The patients were really happy to meet Bale,” said a hospital official.
Bale, who also met with Gov. John Hickenlooper, told hospital officials he was visiting the injured but requested them not to tell the media.
A shivering local artist in North Carolina ran to the thrift store to get a sweater during an outdoor showing of her artwork.
While there, she spied 2 large paintings for $10, perfect items to paint over and thus save herself the expensive cost of wholesale canvas.
What she didn’t know at the time was the origin of the bright abstract art, and how much money she would lose if she did lay brush strokes of her cat paintings on top.
A site called Imgur was designed to share photos with social networks and online communities.
Take a look at this amazing collection of photos depicting the beauty of mother nature and the best of human ingenuity. You can see the 48 photos in a larger slideshow at the Imgur site, here.
File photo, right, by Natanh vua Morguefile
