No longer locked in one big war, Iraq has become a land of a hundred little wars — tribal disputes that lead to bloodshed. But, victory through negotiation is becoming more common, thanks to the mediation movement spawned by Harvard Law School guru Roger Fisher, coauthor of the 1981 book “Getting to Yes.’’ The Boston area has become a global hub for teaching conflict resolution theory and practice for uses in law, diplomacy, and business in farflung places.
A total of 73 municipal officials and tribal sheiks from across Iraq underwent intensive training from Conflict Management Group, the nonprofit consulting firm launched by Fisher in 1984 that is now part of the international development and relief group Mercy Corps.
TOMS Shoes was founded on a simple premise: With every pair you purchase, TOMS gives a pair of new shoes to a child in need. Using the purchasing power of individuals to benefit Ethiopian children in need.
Since its founding in May 2006, American internet entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie has given over 150,000 pairs of shoes to children through the One for One model.
The business plan calls for giving over 300,000 pairs of shoes in 2009.
TOMS Shoes was founded on a simple premise: With every pair you purchase, TOMS gives a pair of new shoes to a child in need. Using the purchasing power of individuals to benefit Ethiopian children in need.
Since its founding in May 2006, American internet entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie has given over 150,000 pairs of shoes to children through the One for One model.
The business plan calls for giving over 300,000 pairs of shoes in 2009.
A low-cost health care clinic in Goshen, Ind., has come up with a business plan that allows patients to pay for treatment with something other than money. At the Maple City Health Care Center, patients can help pay off their medical bills by performing community service.
Last fall, when the unemployment rate in Elkhart County, Indiana, topped 10 percent, clinic workers began noticing that patients weren’t showing up for appointments. Turns out they couldn’t even come up with a few bucks for an office visit.
So James Gingrich, the clinic’s medical director, decided to tap his patients’ skills and resources instead.
Peugeot last week unveiled in London its radical rethink on electric urban cars, the BB1, during a 5-stop world tour, saying the car’s inspiration is a zippy Vespa scooter.
The four adults are positioned with the rear seat occupants’ legs wrapping around the front seat, in the same way that a passenger sits behind the driver of a motorbike.
The small car, not yet in production, has a solar cell-covered glass roof to power the AC and innovative reverse opening doors.
With a turning radius of just 3.5 meters and a mere 8 foot in length, it zooms about in traffic — and into parking spots — with great agility.
Read more in this UK Sun story, and watch the promo video below….
For a cyclist, getting “doored” by a parked car is a usually painful and sometimes expensive collision, occuring when someone in a parked car opens the door in the path of a bike.
In an attempt to minimize such accidents, the District of Columbia has fortified the invisible line that separates drivers and cyclists on its busy 15th Street in Northwest, with more than a half-mile of yellow posts, in the city’s first attempt at walling off a bike lane from cars.
A Harley-riding Wisconsin senior has been given the National Franciscan Peace Award for 2009, an honor previously given to Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. Don Ryder works as the Wausau city safety director, but it is his work on a life-saving water project in drought-ridden Africa that earned him the prestigious prize.
Women no longer need to trek 15 miles to collect dirty water from a stream, thanks to Mr. Ryder, the Secular Franciscan church-goer who raised money and coordinated the digging of new wells to provide clean, fresh water for their tribes in Kenya.
The Maasai village of Saikeri accepted Don’s first gift of water and watched as the workers drilled down 400 feet to strike water for the first time.
“The people were jubilant,” said Ryder, who the proud Maasai warriors named “Lemayian,” the Blessed One.
It has made a tremendous difference in their lives. Now the tribes can plant seeds rather than rely on livestock as their main source of food. To ensure future success, two young men from the village were sent to school to learn how to maintain the diesel engines and pumps, and to learn drip-irrigation farming.
Several wells have already been drilled, at a cost of between $45,000 and $65,000 each — the first one delivers water to 5,000 Maasai and their 100,000 cattle. The second well is providing running water for a school, and soon for a clinic, but more wells are needed.
The long journey that women walked, 15 miles one way through dangerous wilderness, is now relegated to storytelling elders for sharing in song and dance the tales of earlier hardship. The stories will someday include the birth of a hospital, if Ryder’s mission continues.
Ryder and his wife, Yvonne, have a long history of working with the poor and marginalized. Volunteering with the Catholic diocese, the couple helped build a church and repair homes in Kenya. After returning home, they heard about the worsening drought that was hitting hard the Maasai people.
“The lack of rain over several years was devastating herds of cattle and the people whose livelihood depended on the livestock,” said Ken Beattie, a minister from Wisconsin’s La Verna Secular Franciscan Region who nominated Ryder for the award.
The problem worried Ryder for a time until he finally decided to do something, after opening the Bible to get an answer about his discontent regarding the drought. His finger fell to a passage in the Gospel of John, where Jesus says, “I was thirsty and you gave me drink.” His church parish offered to help make his vision a reality so he and his friend Romey Wagner set about raising the money to build a well.
He told more Secular Franciscans, who jumped on board, and soon they were booking speaking engagements to talk to schools, churches, and Rotary Clubs. A young couple donated $2,000 while school children collected coins. Donations started pouring in from coast to coast, he said.
A Harley-riding Wisconsin senior has been given the National Franciscan Peace Award for 2009, an honor previously given to Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. Don Ryder works as the Wausau city safety director, but it is his work on a life-saving water project in drought-ridden Africa that earned him the prestigious prize.
Women no longer need to trek 15 miles to collect dirty water from a stream, thanks to Mr. Ryder, the Secular Franciscan church-goer who raised money and coordinated the digging of new wells to provide clean, fresh water for their tribes in Kenya.
The Maasai village of Saikeri accepted Don’s first gift of water and watched as the workers drilled down 400 feet to strike water for the first time.
“The people were jubilant,” said Ryder, who the proud Maasai warriors named “Lemayian,” the Blessed One.
For over three decades, Singapore has quietly and tirelessly campaigned to upgrade their self-described third-world “spitting, gum-chewing” citizens to first-class citizens who “smile, speak good English…and perform spontaneous acts of kindness.”
This weekend, Singaporeans were handing out yellow daisies for free to symbolize their government’s latest campaign to improve the national character.
As the children’s show Sesame Street celebrates its 40th anniversary this month, one cute and cuddly Muppet on its South African edition helps combat and raise awareness about HIV/AIDS.
Bright yellow and shy, Kami, the first HIV-positive Muppet, helps educate kids in South Africa about the disease and, having lost her own mother to AIDS, helps many children to cope with the health crisis.
South Africa is believed to have the highest number of people infected with HIV in the world — an estimated 5.7 million people. Approximately 280,000 of those infected are children 14 and younger and there are 1.4 million orphans in the country due to AIDS.
Canadian researchers have pioneered a new way to mend a patient’s breastbone after open-heart surgery, using a Superman-strength glue that cuts healing time and reduces pain.
The technique uses a state-of-the-art adhesive called Kryptonite that rapidly bonds to bone and accelerates the recovery process.
“We can now heal the breastbone in hours instead of weeks after open-heart surgery, with patients making a full recovery and getting back to full physical activity within days instead of months.”
With over 15 percent of the population unemployed, the 2,000 residents in Wilmington, Ohio have faced tough economic times, many relying heavily on a local soup kitchen daily for their only hot meal.
When celebrity chef, Rachel Ray, heard that the soup kitchen was about to close its doors, she decided to help out in a big way.
She and her crew provided a Thanksgiving dinner along with an inspirational entertainment tribute for the whole town, serving 900 pounds of turkey, 700 pounds each of mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, and 400 pounds of green beans. The Sunday dinner also included stuffing, brussels sprouts, gravy and pumpkin pie.
Not only did Rachel’s crew decorate the hall with hay wagon, harvest vegetables and candle centerpieces in the colors of the season, they bought new appliances for the kitchen, redesigning the entire work space with a productivity make-over.
With over 15 percent of the population unemployed, the 2,000 residents in Wilmington, Ohio have faced tough economic times, many relying heavily on a local soup kitchen daily for their only hot meal.
When celebrity chef, Rachel Ray, heard that the soup kitchen was about to close its doors, she decided to help out in a big way.
She and her crew provided a Thanksgiving dinner along with an inspirational entertainment tribute for the whole town, serving 900 pounds of turkey, 700 pounds each of mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, and 400 pounds of green beans. The Sunday dinner also included stuffing, brussels sprouts, gravy and pumpkin pie.
Not only did Rachel’s crew decorate the hall with hay wagon, harvest vegetables and candle centerpieces in the colors of the season, they bought new appliances for the kitchen, redesigning the entire work space with a productivity make-over.
Vladimir Putin has made headlines by championing the endangered Siberian tiger — posing with a cuddly cub and placing a tracking collar on a full-grown female in the wilds of his country’s Far East. Now Russia is helping plan an ambitious program it hopes can double the global tiger population by 2022. – AP
Australian scientists are poised to begin a three-year trial on a revolutionary surgery to help cancer victims regrow their breasts.
The experimental stem cell breast-growing technique – called Neopec – could replace breast reconstructions and implants for cancer victims within years.
Scientists from the Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery in Melbourne will implant fat cells, which will multiple rapidly within a biodegradable shell and be shaped into the breast she lost during cancer surgery.
The new technique has already been proved in pigs, which grew new breasts in just six weeks.
There can be few experiences more exciting than regaining one’s sight after being blind. Kiriana Thackeray knows the feeling.
A young mother who went blind suddenly when her baby was just seven months old has had her sight restored by a Wellington surgeon in an operation believed to be a New Zealand first.
She had not seen stars in the sky since she was 17. And being reunited with her daughter, Te Amorangi, was “like seeing her for the first time.”
In an effort to stem a massive bee die-off, government scientists have developed honey bees with a genetic ability to fight back aggressively against Varroa mites which have decimated bee hives since 2004, killing one million colonies in North America in 2007 alone.
U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers have uncovered the genetic trait that allows honey bees to more easily find the parasitic mites and literally toss them out of the hive. Normally, the colony would eventually be killed off if the mite infestation were left alone.
In an effort to stem a massive bee die-off, government scientists have developed honey bees with a genetic ability to fight back aggressively against Varroa mites which have decimated bee hives since 2004, killing one million colonies in North America in 2007 alone.
U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers have uncovered the genetic trait that allows honey bees to more easily find the parasitic mites and literally toss them out of the hive. Normally, the colony would eventually be killed off if the mite infestation were left alone.
Japan pledged this week to provide $5 billion in aid to Afghanistan over the next five years to and to speed the delivery of $1 billion for economic assistance to Pakistan pledged in April.
The $5 billion will cover reconstruction programs such as support to Afghan police forces, vocational training for former Taliban soldiers, and agriculture and rural development.
When you’re traveling this holiday season, you can enjoy free WiFi at 47 participating airports and on every Virgin America flight now through January 15, 2010.
Thanks to Google and its wireless partners, loggin-in during holiday travel will be free at airports around the country including Las Vegas, Houston, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free WiFi indefinitely.
Over 100 million people will pass through the participating airports between now and January 15, 2010. See the full list of airports at FreeHolidayWifi.com.
No longer locked in one big war, Iraq has become a land of a hundred little wars — tribal disputes that lead to bloodshed. But, victory through negotiation is becoming more common, thanks to the mediation movement spawned by Harvard Law School guru Roger Fisher, coauthor of the 1981 book “Getting to Yes.’’ The Boston area has become a global hub for teaching conflict resolution theory and practice for uses in law, diplomacy, and business in farflung places. 
Ryder and his wife, Yvonne, have a long history of working with the poor and marginalized. Volunteering with the Catholic diocese, the couple helped build a church and repair homes in Kenya. After returning home, they heard about the worsening drought that was hitting hard the Maasai people.
With over 15 percent of the population unemployed, the 2,000 residents in Wilmington, Ohio have faced tough economic times, many relying heavily on a local soup kitchen daily for their only hot meal. 
