By the time Cesar Gutierrez was 16, he had already gone to jail twice, experimented with gang life, sold drugs and ran away from home.
Today, the 22-year-old works at a popular Manhattan restaurant as a sous chef and has cooked with renown chef Daniel Boulud.
He entered a contest organized by Boulud and the non-profit Careers Through Culinary Arts — and won. The prize was a prestigious scholarship to train at one of the best culinary schools in Paris.
They came on their motor scooters by the hundreds.
The community of Contamana – a remote town in eastern Peru – came out in force on Wednesday when their local airstrip needed lighting for an emergency medical night-flight.
One of the biggest trends out there is sharing. People like Rob Gonzalez are making a living from renting out cars, formal clothes, rooms to vacationers, and even pets.
It has become the norm: People using online sites to share what they have – in the tangible world – with strangers.
Along with President Obama, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have decided to forgo portions of their salaries in solidarity with federal workers.
Like Obama, they volunteered to give their money to help reduce the deficit, or to foundations that benefit federal workers adversely affected by sequester legislation, which forced automatic government spending cuts.
Ted Komada, the music teacher who started a chess club nine years ago at Killip Elementary School, hoped to help the mostly low-income students build confidence.
Now, his chess team heads to the national finals, after having won five consecutive state championships in Arizona.
The club that began with only two kids now attracts one hundred and practices nearly every day.
Janelle Giannetta, 26 weeks pregnant with her first child, was fed up with her dog Louie Friday morning after he playfully jumped on her, scratching her face.
Hours later, the year-old golden doodle was a hero — credited with saving the Long Island woman and her baby.
Responding to incessant barking upstairs, Janelle’s husband found her stricken by a seizure with foam around her mouth.
Bogged down by a stagnating economy and sinking poll ratings, British Prime Minister David Cameron ventured into a new swamp when he waded waist-deep into mud to rescue a drowning sheep.
Cameron was on his way back from visiting a farmer near his weekend home in the Oxfordshire countryside last month when he heard bleating and spotted a ewe that had got stuck in the mud after following her two lambs.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Super Makh! Reappearing this year in the popular Egyptian comic publication Tok-Tok is a superhero comic with a social mission — to help women and girls stop their harassers.
Super Makh, the Egyption version of Superman, tackles the pressing issue of sexual harassment by using popular culture to affect change.
Dallas Wiens lost nearly all of his facial features following a terrible accident with a power line in 2008. After becoming the first American to undergo a full facial transplant, he started leading a burn patient support group, which is where he met the love of his life.
Over the weekend, Dallas married Jamie Nash, 29, in Forth Worth, Texas, at the same church where he had his accident.
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?
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)
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.”
