It’s beena tough week in the news for gay teens. Reports of relentless bullying and suicide have made many wonder what can be done.
Hollywood is stepping up to use the power of celebrity to tell kids who feel isolated and under siege that things really do get better.
Also, a surprising number of encouraging signs are also coming from the television industry that indicate gay teens are going to be okay.
When Becky Taylor gave her husband a cuddle she had no idea the loving gesture would end up saving his life.
For as the doctor from Sheffield pulled her partner Steve, 44, near to her she realised there was something wrong with his heartbeat.
(READ more at the Daily Mail)
Nearly 200 kinsmen, friends and others paid their respects as a 28-year-old soldier killed during World War II was finally buried in his native soil Sunday.
“We can’t help but feel a little sad, considering how long it’s been – 66 years ago today – that Clayton gave his life for this country. We’re also delighted that his earthly remains are back in the United States of America and in this community.”
(READ the story at the Sun Herald)
Gardens that grow on top of city buses? That’s right.
Bus Roots started as the twinkle in the eye of NYU graduate student Marco Castro Cosio, as a way to “reclaim forgotten space, increase quality of life and grow the amount of green spaces” in New York City.
Casio calculates that a public transit bus has a surface of 340 square feet, and the MTA fleet has around 4,500 buses. If we grew a garden on the roof of every one of the 4,500 buses in the MTA bus fleet, we would have 35 acres of new rolling green space in the city. The equivalent to Four Bryant Parks.
(READ more in TreeHugger.com)
Since Friday afternoon, the Good News Network servers have been off-and-then-on — but mostly off. Apologies!
The GOOD news: The problems started when we moved the site to a new server, in order to allow pages to load faster. So, when it all gets sorted out, our website should be faster, and, I hope, less prone to these server problems.
Thank you for your patience. (Note to newcomers: I normally post four or more stories each day, but the most recent days do not reflect that due to long blocks when the site was inaccessible to editors.
With my fingers crossed and kissed… Geri
Thanks to a Food for Education program, the United States will donate 11,000 tons of rice, vegetable oil, yellow peas and lentils valued at more than $21 million for projects to help feed 390,000 children in Haiti and Afghanistan, it was announced Friday.
The food is being made available under the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which supports education, child development and food security in low-income, food-deficit countries that are committed to universal education.
To date, the Food for Education Program has provided meals to more than 22 million children.
Thanks to a Food for Education program, the United States will donate 11,000 tons of rice, vegetable oil, yellow peas and lentils valued at more than $21 million for projects to help feed 390,000 children in Haiti and Afghanistan, it was announced Friday.
The food is being made available under the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which supports education, child development and food security in low-income, food-deficit countries that are committed to universal education.
To date, the Food for Education Program has provided meals to more than 22 million children.
For Victor Perez, an unemployed construction worker, alertness paid off last week. Mr. Perez saw a news report about a girl kidnapped by someone in a red and white pickup truck Monday afternoon. When he left his home later that day, he saw a truck like the one in the news report and decided to follow it.
His improbable car chase resulted in the recovery of an 8-year-old girl abducted in Fresno, Calif. “This guy is a true action hero,” said California’s governor.
“I just took that chance to follow the truck and told my cousin to dial 911, while I gave chase, and just to make sure if it wasn’t him,” he told the CBS Morning News.
(READ the story in the CS Monitor)
Millions of Americans have lost their jobs over the past three years. While many have sent resumes, a growing number of displaced workers are striking out on their own, finding creative solutions not just to their own unemployment but to problems they believe can be fixed by creating new businesses.
“This is truly a remarkable time to become an entrepreneur,” said Darren Hardy, publisher of Success magazine.
Stephen Chen, for instance, took matters into his own hands and saw unemployment as an opportunity. He and two friends founded GreenSoul Shoes, a business that manufactures sandals from recycled tires. Chen and Iris Chau (pictured above) were laid off from their jobs at Wall Street Firms.
(READ more about entrepreneurial successes at ABC News)
Sean Penn’s charity efforts in Haiti have been given a boost former U.S. President Bill Clinton has donated $500,000 to the actor’s cause.
The “Milk” star founded the J/P HRO Haitian Relief Organization in the wake of the January earthquake and has spent months helping to rebuild the Caribbean nation.
(READ the story in Peace FM Online)
A big-hearted Queens cabbie saved the day for Swiss tourists who left a bag loaded with money, IDs, and valuable electronics in his cab last week.
The loss could have stripped the couple of their ability to return to Switzerland. Cabbie Kashmir Singh, 50, drove all the way back to their Bed and Breakfast with the bag.
“He’s our humble hero!” said Daniel Hasler, a Swiss software engineer on vacation with his wife in New York City.
“The mere fact that this man took it upon himself to personally return the purse showed great human spirit.”
(READ the story w/ photo in the NY Daily News)
Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill last month that calls for all heating oil used in New York City to contain 2 percent biodiesel by 2012, using plant oils or animal fats instead of crude oil.
Although 2 percent seems immaterial, the biodiesel would replace approximately 20 million gallons of petroleum that New York usually consumes annually.
The new law also requires residents and utilities use low-sulfur fuel, a cleaner burning fuel source. The bill meets one of the 14 air quality programs from PlaNYC 2030, a plan to improve New York City’s urban environment.
(READ the story in Washington Square News)
John Lennon would have celebrated his 70th birthday on Saturday. Here’s a list of ways you can honor his memory this weekend — and later this year: An overview of what’s planned to mark the occasion.
(READ the story in USA TODAY)
Rick Snyder is something unusual: a moderate Republican who is winning his race without the slash-and-burn tactics dominating political races elsewhere. He doesn’t back down from his commitment to forging a political common ground.
During town hall meetings across Michigan, Snyder avoids divisive topics. He launches no offensives against the Democratic Party or its unpopular office-holders in Lansing and Washington.
At a recent town hall meeting in a conservative section of West Michigan, Snyder challenged the right-leaning base of the GOP with the candor that has become his trademark. “If you step back for a minute and you look at what people are actually saying, if you peel and pull that back, about 50 to 80 percent of the time there’s a common ground that we don’t disagree on,” he said. “The thing is that we’ve got a system today that says, ‘Let’s fight about the 10 percent on the extremes.’ My view is, ‘Let’s advance the 50 to 80.”
One attendee managed to combine two of the most polarizing issues in American politics—abortion and gay marriage—into a single question. Snyder spent less than ten seconds addressing both issues and then said, “To be open with you, when I’m out campaigning, I actually don’t spend much time on social issues… my primary focus is on jobs, the economy, restructuring our government, because we’re suffering so badly here.”
Snyder, who is 52 years old, is a venture capitalist and former Gateway computer executive who lives in the liberal enclave of Ann Arbor. He has never occupied public office before. For him, merely holding a citizens’ meeting in small-town Ottawa County is something of an experiment. In dramatic contrast to nearly every other Republican candidate to win a gubernatorial primary nationally this year, Snyder owed his victory less to the GOP’s conservative base than to independents and Democrats.
The state’s open primary process allowed Democrats to cross over and vote for Snyder, giving him momentum that has carried into the general election. “A third of Snyder’s votes came from Democrats and independents,” says Craig Ruff, a public policy consultant and former GOP gubernatorial adviser. “He still would have won without them. But with them, he made it look like a cake walk.” General election polling indicates that many of those voters may cast similar ballots in November. Independents are breaking overwhelmingly for Snyder and surprising percentages of Democrats indicate that they’ll vote for him or at least have a favorable opinion of him.
Since the primary, Snyder has largely relied on an ad campaign portraying him as a “tough nerd” to propel him into a double-digit lead in his race against Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, the Democratic nominee. He spent early and extravagantly on advertising—largely out of his own pockets—but vowed that he wouldn’t take any money from political action committees.
There is something inherently nerdy and nonpartisan about the economic and fiscal plan that is at the core of Snyder’s campaign. Armed with his accounting background and the trio of University of Michigan degrees (BA, MBA and JD) , Snyder acknowledges the complexity of the state’s economic and fiscal challenges without making them seem insurmountable.
He vows to make sense out of the state budget, making budgeting decisions based on long-term return on investment—whether that means spending less money or more. Snyder says that recent state cuts to mental health services, for example, were short-sighted and have done more long-term harm than good. He says the across-the-board program cuts that Michigan and other states have leaned on heavily in recent years are “a management failure because that means you don’t know your job well enough to say, ‘This is more important than that.’ It’s a cop-out.”
A surprising number of tea partiers are quietly supporting Snyder, even if he wasn’t their first, second or even third choice in the Republican primary election. “He is a businessman, and when he was working at Gateway he successfully grew their business,” says Roger Hensley of Kalamazoo. And even if Hensley doesn’t agree with some of Snyder’s more moderate positions, he’s setting those aside in this race. “The way I look at it,” he says, “is that if you have people who are suffering, none of that does them any good.” Some tea partiers also appreciate the hard line Snyder has taken against special interests. “In hindsight, I think it was smart that he didn’t come around begging for our vote,” says Tony Dugal of Kalamazoo. “We’re a special interest, too.”
(Source: Stateline.org)
Rick Snyder is something unusual: a moderate Republican who is winning his race without the slash-and-burn tactics dominating political races elsewhere. He doesn’t back down from his committment to forging a political common ground.
During town hall meetings across Michigan, Snyder avoids divisive topics. He launches no offensives against the Democratic Party or its unpopular office-holders in Lansing and Washington.
At a recent town hall meeting in a conservative section of West Michigan, Snyder challenged the right-leaning base of the GOP with the candor that has become his trademark. “If you step back for a minute and you look at what people are actually saying, if you peel and pull that back, about 50 to 80 percent of the time there’s a common ground that we don’t disagree on,” he said. “The thing is that we’ve got a system today that says, ‘Let’s fight about the 10 percent on the extremes.’ My view is, ‘Let’s advance the 50 to 80.”
I saw my first Post-It note from Operation Beautiful in the University bathroom at UNC Charlotte. On that day, I was feeling tired and discouraged. I went into the bathroom and found a random note on the mirror that read, “You are beautiful!” It was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. The note was signed, www.operationbeautiful.com, so I vowed to go to the website.
Caitlin Boyle is the creator of the ingenious project designed to encourage women anonymously through positive messages planted on Post-It notes in public places. These random notes typically encourage a positive body image or outlook by including phrases like “You are beautiful inside and out” or “Scales measure our weight, not our worth.”
Operation Beautiful (OB) is part of a new movement of positive body image campaigns launched to boost the self-esteem of countless women, including those recovering from anorexia and bulimia.
Last year I wrote an article about OB as part of my Good News Network column, The Mental Health Minute. The article generated such interest that I decided to follow-up in greater depth. What follows is my interview with OB chief, Caitlin Boyle:
GNN: Tell me a few “success stories” from Operation Beautiful. For example, have girls suffering from anorexia or bulimia contacted you and told you how OB helped in their treatment or recovery?
CB: My favorite story is Vit’s. A teenager in Canada, Vit was in a treatment center for severe anorexia. Her doctors were concerned that it was going to eventually kill her. She slipped into the bathroom to throw up her lunch and found an Operation Beautiful note on the stall. The simple message – “You are good enough the way you are” – made her pause and reconsider her destructive behavior. She followed up with me a few months later and said she was out of the hospital and healthier than ever. Vit knew a stranger posted the note, but she felt like the timing was a message from God.
GNN: What inspired you to start Operation Beautiful? Has positive body image always been an area of interest for you?
CB: I was inspired to start Operation Beautiful after having a really bad day; I wanted to do something small and simple for someone else to make me feel better! I have definitely always been interested in showing people how they can be more positive in their life.
GNN: Do you feel that the media is largely responsible for women’s negative body image, or do women simply need to learn to be more supportive of one another?
CB: There is a lot of negative messaging in our society. The biggest mistake we make is beating ourselves up for not looking like models or celebrities. 99% of images in magazines are ‘photoshop’ed in some way. It’s time we stop emulating or striving for a type of perfection that doesn’t even exist in the real world. It’s OK to look like a human! And yes, we do need to learn to be more supportive of ourselves and each other.
GNN: What do you think families can do to encourage a positive body image? What about schools?
CB: I think its important for mothers and fathers not to engage in their own Fat Talk in front of children and to encourage their children to be healthy and happy, not just a certain size. I also think schools need to try to teach more health-focused skills, such as cooking.
GNN: What would you say to encourage girls and women who are struggling with anorexia or bulimia?
CB: That everything they need is already inside of them. They just need to reach out to other people for help and find their own inner strength.
GNN: Do you know of any therapists or recovery programs that have used the principles of OB in treatment?
CB: Yes, many treatment centers and therapists have used OB in their group discussions and programs.
GNN: How many OB notes have you left, and what were some of your favorites?
CB: I have left hundreds probably. I always like to say “Scales Measure Weight, Not Worth.”
GNN: Are you partnering with other self-esteem and body image campaigns, such as the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty?
CB: I am a part of NEDA Awareness Week, a Confidence Coalition partner, and a featured organizer for Fat Talk Free Week with Tri Delta.
GNN: What has been your most rewarding experience with Operation Beautiful?
CB: I don’t think there’s been one huge moment of reward – its just the daily act of waking up each morning and reading such inspiring emails that keep me going.
GNN: Tell us about the Operation Beautiful book and where it is available.
CB: Operation Beautiful: Transforming the Way You See Yourself One Post-it Note at a Time
The Operation Beautiful book is available for pre-order on Amazon, is full of inspiring notes and stories from women who have persevered through difficult times — whether it be a divorce, bullying at school, an eating disorder, or running a marathon. The book explores the social and cultural reasons why Operation Beautiful is so popular with women of all ages and backgrounds, and includes tips on how women can transform their own lives through positive thinking.
Visit Caitlin’s website at www.operationbeautiful.com.
Read more of Cristina Frick’s Mental Health Minute columns here, under ARTICLES.
I saw my first Post-It note from Operation Beautiful in the University bathroom at UNC Charlotte. On that day, I was feeling tired and discouraged. I went into the bathroom and found a random note on the mirror that read, “You are beautiful!” It was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. The note was signed, www.operationbeautiful.com, so I vowed to go to the website.
Caitlin Boyle is the creator of the ingenious project designed to encourage women anonymously through positive messages planted on Post-It notes in public places. These random notes typically encourage a positive body image or outlook by including phrases like “You are beautiful inside and out” or “Scales measure our weight, not our worth.”
Operation Beautiful (OB) is part of a new movement of positive body image campaigns launched to boost the self-esteem of countless women, including those recovering from anorexia and bulimia.
In a rare act of conciliation by Israeli settlers Tuesday, a group of rabbis from Jewish settlements near the Palestinian town of Beit Fajar visited a mosque there that had been torched by arsonists and brought Korans to replace those burned in the blaze.
The attackers, who struck early Monday, left behind Hebrew graffiti and are suspected to be radical Jewish settlers.
One rabbi said, “I am sorry and ashamed.”
(READ the story in the Washington Post)
The ads are everywhere, “Sell your gold.” The offers are appealing, too, promising lots of cash for your unwanted jewelry.
But, before you sell your gold, take a look at this comparison study conducted by the Today show:
Gold jewelry of the same value — 21 grams of 14-karat gold — was offered to a number of different buyers to find out what they would offer for it. The results varied dramatically.
After getting a professional estimate on what the gold was actually worth, they received purchase offers that ranged from 90% of the value down to a paltry 8%.
“Our best offer was from sellyourgold.com — about 90 percent of the value on the gold market.”
(READ the article at MSNBC)
