The community of Laramie, Wyoming came together with strangers across the country in a touching tribute to a US soldier who never got the chance to finish a project which was to become a significant gift for his wife.
Before being deployed to Afghanistan with the National Guard, Captain Bruce Hays paid an auto mechanic $17,000 to transform the rusty shell of 1959 Chevy truck into a surprise gift that would remind his wife of fond memories with her father, who drove the same model.
Scooby, the two-year-old bull terrier of Staffordshire, dubbed Scotland’s saddest dog, was back to his bubbly best yesterday after being found a new home.
Last week, the Daily Record revealed how Scooby had been in kennels for so long she was “dying of depression”.
When you think of Olympic heroes, you think of those gold-medal winning performances. That record-setting swim race. The lightning-fast relay. The winning gymnastic routine.
But a new video ad from Procter & Gamble puts the spotlight on an entirely different hero: The Olympic mom.
They are the ones who got up earlier than everyone else to feed and drive their little athletes to pre-dawn practices for all those years. The ones who logged millions of miles chauffeuring to games and competitions; the ones who sat on the sidelines and in bleachers and cheered louder than anyone else.
“We are in an era now, for the the first time, when we can foresee the end of the AIDS epidemic.” said an expert speaking about the new pill, Truvada, a drug to prevent HIV infection in healthy people that was just recommended for use by a US advisory panel.
Studies from 2010 showed that Truvada reduced the risk of HIV in healthy gay men – and among HIV-negative heterosexual partners of people who are HIV-positive – by between 44% and 73%.
An unemployed man down on his luck was browsing in a Columbus thrift store for items he could restore and resell when he spotted a Picasso poster with the word “Exposition” written across the front, some French words, and the image of a warped round face.
He paid $14.14 for what he saw as a nice commercial print.
Some Internet searches later — and a closer look at markings on the lower right area — and he sold what’s believed to be a signed Picasso print for $7,000 to a private buyer.
(READ the AP story from CSNEWS)
A Yugoslavian-born custodian at New York’s Columbia University will be trading in his uniform for a cap and gown this weekend when he graduates with honors after working on his degree for 12 years.
Gac Filipaj, 52, will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in classics with honors from Columbia’s School of General Studies.
He fled to the United States from war-torn Yugoslavia in 1992, leaving behind his parents and siblings. Arriving in New York speaking virtually no English, he asked where the best school was and his friend pointed him to Columbia.
(WATCH the video below, or READ the story from ABC News)
A Yugoslavian-born custodian at New York’s Columbia University will be trading in his uniform for a cap and gown this weekend when he graduates with honors after working on his degree for 12 years.
Gac Filipaj, 52, will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in classics with honors from Columbia’s School of General Studies.
He fled to the United States from war-torn Yugoslavia in 1992, leaving behind his parents and siblings. Arriving in New York speaking virtually no English, he asked where the best school was and his friend pointed him to Columbia.
A pit bull named Lilly is being hailed a hero after she pulled her unconscious owner from the path of a freight train last week, and was severely hurt in the process.
An engineer of a westward-bound freight train saw a dog pulling a woman away from the tracks in the early hours of May 3.
The dog had been adopted to help the woman with her alcohol addiction.
Weeks after coming under fire for using excessive energy for cloud computing, Microsoft announced it will become carbon neutral across all of its operations starting July 1.
The software giant pledged to turn green all of its data centers, software development labs, air travel, and office buildings.
Joining several zoos experimenting with computers and apes, a Miami zoo is letting its six orangutans use an iPad to communicate as part of a mental stimulus program to keep them from getting bored or depressed.
Orangutans are extremely intelligent but limited by their physical inability to talk. The devices help them communicate with humans who don’t know their sign language, but they also provide fun and enrichment, especially favorite apps like DrawFree and Flick Kick Football.
Joining several zoos experimenting with computers and apes, a Miami zoo is letting its six orangutans use an iPad to communicate as part of a mental stimulus program to keep them from getting bored or depressed.
Orangutans are extremely intelligent but limited by their physical inability to talk. The devices help them communicate with humans who don’t know their sign language, but they also provide fun and enrichment, especially favorite apps like DrawFree and Flick Kick Football.
US highway deaths declined again last year, reaching their lowest rate, when compared to miles driven, since record-keeping began in 1921, according to government data. Overall, traffic fatalities have plummeted 26 percent since 2005. –Associated Press
A 32-year-old British woman paralyzed from the chest down has finished the London marathon after 16 days of walking with the help of a “bionic” suit.
Although Claire Lomas was not eligible to receive a medal, more than a dozen runners donated theirs, in a touching tribute after an Olympic rowing champion launched a Twitter campaign to get her one.
She walked almost two miles per day saying that her spinal cord injury “didn’t change who she was inside.”
Her inspiring effort also raised $150,000 for spinal research.
(WATCH the ABC video below and READ the story with photos in the UK Sun)
Sometimes big companies actually do good things for their employees during bad times. And keep on doing it, quietly, without making a fuss.
United Technologies Corp., a hard-nosed industrial conglomerate that makes things like aircraft engines and elevators, reached an unusual milestone: spending $1 billion on a program to send its employees to college.
At 108 years old, Alice Herz-Sommer is the world’s oldest survivor of the holocaust. During WWII she survived a Nazi concentration camp in Prague while most of her family was exterminated. But through it all she was smiling and thankful and looked for the good.
She still plays piano every day, a lifelong talent she credits as saving her from the war.
The film producer responsible for the Hangover films teamed up with a young inmate to create an innovative college program that allows hundreds of prisoners to study and live together in prison. It rewards good behavior and those who want to learn.
So far 75 inmates have graduated and those who finish the program are far less likely to return to their troubled ways — a three percent recidivism rate, compared to the average 60 percent.
(WATCH the video from ABC News)
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There is an extraordinary sign on the outside of a well-tended West Yorkshire vegetable garden: “Help yourself.”
It is part of the expanding “sharing revolution” across the UK. Sweet corn grown around town is for all to take, orchards planted to bear fruit is free for the taking. Commuters can snip fresh herbs from pots outside the railway station.
It’s all kept weeded by an army of local people who give up an hour or so on the occasional Sunday.
“Community empowerment, social enterprise, co-operative, it has various titles, but it’s quietly getting huge,” said Mike Perry of the Plunkett Foundation, a thriving national organization supporting such enterprises nationwide.
(READ the story in the Guardian)
Near the junction of the New Jersey Turnpike and Interstate 80, not far from the conga line of traffic grinding toward New York City, lies a body of water that was once a garbage dump, a murky soup of stinking refuse and plastic bottles.
But after a recent renaissance, that body of water, Overpeck Creek, and the new park abutting it have become a destination for rowers from New York City.
Three years ago, Bear was a 100-pound Shiloh German shepherd nobody wanted at a Texas shelter.
Monday, he was given the 30th National Hero Dog award by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for rescuing Debbie Zeisler from numerous seizures since his adoption. Even without formal training, the dog can sense each and every episode before it happens.
The 5 year-old dog from Milsap, Texas is a living testament to how being kind to animals can deliver the ultimate reward.
Three years ago, Bear was a 100-pound Shiloh German shepherd nobody wanted at a Texas shelter.
Monday, he was given the 30th National Hero Dog award by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for rescuing Debbie Zeisler from numerous seizures since his adoption. Even without formal training, the dog can sense each and every episode before it happens.
The 5 year-old dog from Milsap, Texas is a living testament to how being kind to animals can deliver the ultimate reward.
