As China’s Li Na tossed the ball while serving at match point in the French Open final, a cry from a fan in the stands pierced the silence at Court Philippe Chatrier.
Distracted, Li stopped and let the ball drop. The words of support were in Mandarin: “Jia you!” — which loosely translates to “Let’s go!” After so many years of “Come on” and “Allez” and “Vamos,” there’s a new language on the tennis landscape.
Li became the first Chinese player, man or woman, to win a Grand Slam singles title.
A boy of nine has become the youngest trained pilot to fly solo in a hot-air balloon.
The New Mexico boy floated for 29 minutes, landing perfectly after two years of training. “Showing maturity well beyond his years,” news reports say, his parents, both licensed pilots, prepared him for the trip.
(WATCH the video below or read the story at Telegraph)
Both daughters are alive today because the parents had faith that a new baby would turn out to be an unlikely organ match and able to donate bone marrow to her older sister, saving her from leukemia.
(WATCH the video and interview from MSNBC)
A group of more than 200 Japanese seniors are volunteering to clean up the mess left in the Fukushima nuclear power station.
All over the age of 60, and many retired engineers, they are taking responsibility for the nuclear power plants which their generation erected.
They say they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young.
Destruction of the world’s rain forests has declined by 25 percent in the three most important regions — the Amazon, the Congo and the Borneo Mekong — during the last decade, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
A school’s “mileage club” started in 2009 with the idea of handing out charms as an incentive for kids to run during recess has surprised everyone.
Officials at Orchard Grove Elementary in Frederick, Maryland report that as kids ran, fitness scores rocketed and disciplinary problems dwindled.
A buff Army sergeant has been honored by cops in Florida for foiling a bank robbery while on vacation with his family.
Sgt. Eddie Peoples, 34, was at a Bank of America before a fishing trip with his two sons when a gunman walked in and demanded cash from the tellers.
The decorated Iraq vet played it cool until the thug pointed the gun at his son.
The news that the NHS is piloting an eight-week course in gardening and vegetable growing to help combat depression is very welcome.
The process of growing some of your own food can have a restorative effect on mental health. Being part of the natural world, sowing, watering, weeding, pruning, harvesting and eating the plants helps to re-establish one’s individual connection with our planet, its seasons and rhythms.
There is, too, enough light exercise to boost endorphin levels.
Rais Bhuiyan, shot in the face by Mark Stroman in a shooting rampage motivated by the 9/11 attacks, is now leading the effort to prevent his attacker from being executed next month in Texas. He cites his Muslim faith as a key reason for his campaign for a commutation of Storman’s death sentence.
Bhuiyan began collecting signatures late last year on a petition asking the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Stroman’s death penalty sentence to life in prison without parole through his website, World without Hate.
Aelita Andre is a Russian abstract painter who has already been compared to Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Jackson Pollack — and she is just four years old.
Her parents both paint as a hobby and from the start gave her all the canvas and tubes she needed to express to her heart’s content. Anyone who watches the little girl paint can tell she loves to fling the colors and tell her own stories.
The surrealist painter had her first show when she was one year old and has another show in New York on June 4.
WATCH the video below and read more about her at the website: www.aelitaandreart.com.
Aelita Andre is a Russian abstract painter who has already been compared to Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Jackson Pollack — and she is just four years old.
Her parents both paint as a hobby and from the start gave her all the canvas and tubes she needed to express to her heart’s content. Anyone who watches the little girl paint can tell she loves to fling the colors and tell her own stories.
The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards honors outstanding young do-gooders in America each year. Ten middle and high school students selected this year from more than 29,000 applications each received a $6,000 cash prize and $5,000 donation to the charity of their choice.
One inspiring winner is a young artist Jeffrey Hanson, a junior at Horizon Academy in Roeland Park, Kansas, living with neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition that causes severe loss of vision.
He has raised more than $225,000 for various charities by selling and donating original paintings and other artistic creations over the last five years.
(READ Jeffrey’s story in USA Today) – Read about more winners here…
Disposable diapers are one of the biggest contributors to overflowing landfills, piling up at a rate of 1 ton of trash per kid per year. And the worst part is the time it takes for disposable diapers to break down — 500 years.
But now, a scientist named Alethia Vázquez-Morillas from the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City has found a way to turn that 500-year span to a mere 4 months, by using oyster mushrooms to accelerate the breakdown.
General Electric is again giving eco-entrepreneurs a chance to take their ideas to the next level. GE’s ‘Eco-magination’ contest is encouraging socially responsible businesses to submit their ideas on how to accelerate green technology with the chance at receiving funding for their projects.
The first installment of the $200 million challenge — the “Powering the Grid” competition — wrapped up last November, with 12 ideas each receiving $100,000 in funding. GE was so impressed with one company’s idea that they recently announced plans to acquire the provider of real-time power line monitoring technology.
About 1 in 150 babies are born infected with a common virus that can cause permanent hearing loss, but newborns aren’t routinely tested to see if they have it. That could change if a pediatrician at the University of Alabama in Birmingham has his way.
He’s the leader on a new study that found that a simple saliva test can identify babies at risk.
You might think that spell check technology would make us less likely to care about developing our spelling abilities. But, since its widespread adoption in the mid-1980s, participation in the Scripps National Spelling Bee is up 74 percent.
The crack spellers are doing last minute studying in Washington, DC today and 65 percent of this year’s participants are public school students. (Five of the last six national champions are, too.)
To watch them in action, check out this year’s championship match on ESPN on tonight.
(READ the full story by Liz Dwyer)
For the first time ever, a painting is being made into a ‘living wall’ outside the National Gallery.
With more than 8,000 live plants, General Electric has brought a masterpiece to life with a version of Van Gogh’s famous painting A Wheatfield, with Cypresses as part of the Gallery’s carbon reduction plan.
Situated on the western side of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, the painting will be grown throughout the summer and autumn, remaining in place until the end of October 2011.
For the first time ever, a painting is being made into a ‘living wall’ outside the National Gallery.
With more than 8,000 live plants, General Electric has brought a masterpiece to life with a version of Van Gogh’s famous painting A Wheatfield, with Cypresses as part of the Gallery’s carbon reduction plan.
Situated on the western side of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, the painting will be grown throughout the summer and autumn, remaining in place until the end of October 2011.
If you are happy, your state is likely to recover from the recession more quickly.
That’s the finding of new research that determines that economic recessions are weaker, expansions are stronger, and recovery is faster in U.S. states where people are more optimistic.
The research findings, from the University of Miami School of Business Administration, are particularly unique because they reflect a cause and effect between happiness and economic prosperity, not an effect where economic prosperity is making people happier.
Unprecedented growth continued for Kia Motors America in May with the brand posting its best-ever monthly sales of 48,212 units – a 53 percent increase from May 2010, and a 2.4-percent increase over the previous record set last month.
The Korean car company’s year-to-date sales in the U.S. are up 44 percent over last year, boosted in part by a vehicle built in America, its best-selling Sorento.
