This week, the Kennedy Center is celebrating 50 years of American promotion of the arts.
People forget how much goodness is fostered in society by culture and entertainment.
In Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times”, one of his shorter novels often taught in schools, Mr. Sleary, who runs a circus, says people need to be amused. They can’t always be working or learning. They’re not built that way. By the end of the story, we know Sleary is right.
The first shipment of donated hay made its way to a Yellowstone County ranch to help save hundreds of starving horses in what could be one of the largest animal abuse cases in Montana history.
Hay — 100 tons — was donated by the Valley M Ranch in Red Lodge and hauled to the Home Place Ranch where investigators say horses were left without food, water or veterinary care by the ranch’s former owner.
Offers to help the horses were pouring in from around the world.
(READ the KULR story at MSNBC)
That crazy idea simmering on the back your brain could nab you a bag full of cash.
If it’s awesome.
The newly formed Toronto Chapter of the Awesome Foundation is now accepting wild ideas and crackpot schemes. The best of the bunch will get a paper bag stuffed with $1,000.
“It’s about turning random flashes of half-baked genius into reality,” says Matt Thompson, the Toronto chapter’s Trustee of Awesome.
(READ the story in the Toronto Star)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has once again topped 12,000 — a level not seen since the summer of 2008, when the deepening financial crisis was on the verge of bringing the bull market to its knees. Stock analysts say it can provide investors with a much-needed psychological boost.
Also more confident, the American consumer may have resolved to be more optimistic about the U.S. economy this year. The consumer confidence index shot up this month to its highest level in 8 months.
(READ stock news at SmartMoney.com and consumer report at The Atlantic)
An original grant of $30 million made by the U.S. Agency for International Development back in 1995 to assist the economic transition in Albania after the fall of the Soviet Union has born fruit — enough so that in a ceremony last week, half the money was returned to the U.S. Treasury with thanks to the American people.
The Albanian-American Enterprise Fund (AAEF) used the money to promote private sector development in Albania by investing in a wide array of private enterprises and providing management advice, training, and best practices to companies. The Fund has completed approximately 62 investment transactions with over 32 Albanian companies, contributing an estimated $725 million to the GDP and creating over 3,500 jobs.
An original grant of $30 million made by the U.S. Agency for International Development back in 1995 to assist the economic transition in Albania after the fall of the Soviet Union has born fruit — enough so that in a ceremony last week, half the money was returned to the U.S. Treasury with thanks to the American people.
The Albanian-American Enterprise Fund (AAEF) used the money to promote private sector development in Albania by investing in a wide array of private enterprises and providing management advice, training, and best practices to companies. The Fund has completed approximately 62 investment transactions with over 32 Albanian companies, contributing an estimated $725 million to the GDP and creating over 3,500 jobs.
Volunteers from across the country are rebuilding oyster reefs along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline, hoping to revive oyster beds weakened by the BP oil spill and decades of overharvesting and human encroachment.
Donning boots and gloves, 550 volunteers descended on Mobile Bay over the weekend with 16,000 bags of oyster shells, reef building material to complete the first in a series of shoreline habitat projects aimed at restoring Alabama’s Gulf coast.
Volunteers from across the country are rebuilding oyster reefs along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline, hoping to revive oyster beds weakened by the BP oil spill and decades of overharvesting and human encroachment.
Donning boots and gloves, 550 volunteers descended on Mobile Bay over the weekend with 16,000 bags of oyster shells, reef building material to complete the first in a series of shoreline habitat projects aimed at restoring Alabama’s Gulf coast.
The vast and ancient wetlands between the Tigress and Euphrates rivers in Iraq is considered by some to be the original Garden of Eden.
It teemed with wildlife and small fishermen until the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein drained the great wetlands turning them to desert, as political retribution against his enemy, the Marsh Arabs.
Since Saddam’s overthrow, a remarkable restoration effort has led to stunning success in the Mesopotamian Marshes. (For background, read the 2006 story in the Good News Network.)
In the last year, a BBC film crew witnessed the return of rare birds — by the thousands — as they documented what they called the largest restoration of habitat in the world and followed one man who grew up on the river and returned to help resurrect it.
“This year, with the help of ornithologists from BirdLife International, they counted a single flock of rare marbled teal on the lakes, numbering at least 40,000 birds. Marbled teal only live in the region, and across the border in countries such as Turkey. The drying of the wetlands under Saddam caused the population to fall so significantly that it is now considered Endangered.”
The film aired on PBS’s Nature, is a production of Aqua Vita Films and the BBC in association with WNET.
WATCH the preview below from NATURE and see the full documentary from PBS here.
Read the UK news story last week when it was broadcast on the BBC… Also, UK residents can view clips on BBC, here. (Thanks to contributor Jason Stamp, for sending the link!)
The vast and ancient wetlands between the Tigress and Euphrates rivers in Iraq is considered by some to be the original Garden of Eden.
It teemed with wildlife and small fishermen until the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein drained the great wetlands turning them to desert, as political retribution against his enemy, the Marsh Arabs.
Since Saddam’s overthrow, a remarkable restoration effort has led to stunning success in the Mesopotamian Marshes. (For background, read the 2006 story in the Good News Network.)
In the last year, a BBC film crew witnessed the return of rare birds — by the thousands — as they documented what they called the largest restoration of habitat in the world and followed one man who grew up on the river and returned to help resurrect it.
“This year, with the help of ornithologists from BirdLife International, they counted a single flock of rare marbled teal on the lakes, numbering at least 40,000 birds. Marbled teal only live in the region, and across the border in countries such as Turkey. The drying of the wetlands under Saddam caused the population to fall so significantly that it is now considered Endangered.”
The film aired on PBS’s Nature, is a production of Aqua Vita Films and the BBC in association with WNET.
WATCH the preview below from NATURE and see the full documentary from PBS here.
Read the UK news story last week when it was broadcast on the BBC… Also, UK residents can view clips on BBC, here. (Thanks to contributor Jason Stamp, for sending the link!)
You’re standing in line at your local grocery store and you see a customer scrambling through her purse to pay for her items…
It turns out, many Americans would step forward to help pay for the groceries, according to an ABC News team who employed actresses and hidden cameras in a New Jersey store to record customer reactions.
On the first go, within a matter of minutes, a woman in line steps forward to help the ‘distressed’ mother. “How much does she need?”
A construction crew plucked a woman from an Iowa river using a giant crane to reach the woman in surging waters, after her boat capsized over a dam.
See the dramatic (copyright) photos from the Des Moines Regsiter here.
WATCH the video report below…
(Note, source material has been removed by the source)
University graduate Caleb Barclay is on a mission to break cultural stereotypes throughout the world and cast a positive light on misinterpreted cultures.
He founded the Peace Frame Initiative after going overseas and experiencing firsthand being the subject of stereotyping. People saw him as a “gung-ho, war-hungry American.”
The experience inspired him to change these stereotypes in the best way he knew how — through videography and photography.
(READ the story at StatePress)
From Confucius to Oprah, people have preached compassion for centuries. But how often is it put into practice? Karen Armstrong believes religion should advocate for compassionate living, but often doesn’t.
Armstrong admits compassion isn’t a very popular virtue. “People often prefer to be right,” she says. And though she offers these 12 steps, it’s not a get-compassionate-quick scheme. “This is a struggle for a lifetime.”
(READ the book excerpt, and LISTEN to the interview at NPR News)
Three million people competed at fantasy football on ESPN.com this year. One man managed to rise above all of them, and he did it despite not having a computer. Or a place to live.
“My fantasy football was the one thing that kind of seemed to be going right at the time,” Harrington said. “There was a lot to be upset about, but the one thing that was steady and heading in a positive direction was the fantasy football. So I thought I might as well stick with it and ride it out. Thank God I did.”
He won the prize, worth $2,500 in cash to him.
(READ the story at Yahoo Sports)
Hours before the ousted president of Tunisia fled, a pilot about to fly to Lyons from Tunisia refused to obey an order to hold the aircraft and take members of the president’s family on board.
Captain Mohamed Ben Kilani was sitting in his cockpit at Carthage airport, Tunisia, when the order came through on the radio to take six more passengers.
The tiny Maguire daisy, which grows in the desert southwest of the United States, has been plucked from the edge of extinction after a 25-year conservation effort, US officials have announced.
The minuscule member of the sunflower family had dropped to just seven known plants when it was listed as endangered in 1985, but with numbers of the daisy now back up to 163,000 plants in 10 populations in Utah, it will be removed from the endangered species list, the Interior Department said Tuesday.
(READ the AFP story on Google News)
The government is calling for dramatic changes in school meals, upgrading the nutritional standards for the first time in 15 years.
The proposed rule, released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, would limit french fries, tater tots, sodium and calories and offer students more fruits and vegetables.
This is the “first major improvement” in the standards that “we’ve seen in a generation, and it reflects the seriousness of the issue of obesity,” says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
(READ the story in USA Today)
The British branch of PepsiCo, the umbrella corporation that makes Tropicana, Quaker Oats, chips and soda, has made an ambitious promise to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2023.
They’re also shooting for zero landfill waste; packaging that is entirely renewable, recyclable, or compostable; and zero water intake at their “main manufacturing sites.”
(READ the story in Inhabitat)
Angelina Jolie is to blame, really. Because of something she said to me in India four years ago, I have quit my 13-year career as an entertainment journalist, have given away almost everything I own, and at 43, have joined the Peace Corps.
Sean Smith worked as L.A. bureau chief of Entertainment Weekly. 18 months ago he applied to join the Peace Corps. He left this week for South Africa, excited to begin his 27-month commitment as an HIV/AIDS Outreach volunteer.
(READ the story in Newsweek)
