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How to Save An Elephant With CPR? Jump Up and Down on its Chest to Revive Her (Watch)

By
Andy Corbley
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A truly staggering effort saw a mother and baby elephant rescued from a deep concrete pit in Thailand, during which a veterinary team had to perform elephant CPR.

In torrential monsoon rains, groups of people were trying to help the mama escape with the aid of a cherry picker and thick strapping, but she remained in a defense posture on account of her calf.

Wildlife volunteers tranquilized the 10-year-old mother, but she hit her head on the edge of the concrete structure, knocking her unconscious.

After pulling her out with a hydraulic digger arm, dramatic footage shows the vets jumping up and down on her chest to revive her, during which time the one-year-old calf was helped to scramble out of the hole.

Mercifully, the mom woke up suddenly, after a three-hour rescue ordeal in mud, high grass and pouring rain. After the two cross the road and enter the forest, the lead vet can be seen nearly collapsing with relief.

WATCH The Rescue From The Sun…

SHARE This Important Elephant Health Advisory With Your Friends…

She Lost Her Hair Battling a Brain Tumor. Her Son Grew His Hair out to Make Her a Wig

By
Andy Corbley
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Melanie and Matt Shaha before. - Shaha Family.
Melanie and Matt Shaha before. – Shaha Family.

When an Arizona mom lost her hair during a third brain-cancer battle, a shaggy-maned son stepped up, shears in hand, to offer a solution.

Growing golden luscious locks out past shoulder length, he chopped it all off to provide a stylish hair piece for his mom.

Melanie Shaha doesn’t mind being sick, but she does mind looking sick. For 15 years you’d never have known that Melanie had a benign cancer tumor on her pituitary gland.

Two successful surgeries in 2003 and 2006 couldn’t get rid of the tumor permanently, and in 2017 she was prescribed radiation therapy. Three months after starting the new treatment, she lost all her hair.

“Not having hair, you stick out like a sore thumb and well-meaning people can say things that break your heart,” Melanie told TODAY.

SIMILAR: This Seventh Grader Donated All $15,000 of His County Fair Earnings to a Children’s Hospital

However, what started as a joke by Melanie’s 27-year-old son Matt around the dinner table in 2018 soon became a plan. Matt had recently graduated from a university with a dress code that limited hair length, and was looking forward for a bit of time au natural. He agreed he would grow his hair out to make a wig for his mom, who admittedly attempted to dissuade him as the inches accumulated.

Melanie and Matt after. – Shaha Family.

Then on March 21st, he chopped off 1-foot of hair that the family sent off to Compassionate Creations, a Newport Beach, CA hair piece company that made a new head of hair for Melanie.

“The color is spectacular and we had it cut and styled with a hairdresser,” she said, adding that it was something special to go through with her son. “Matt said it looks great on me. It sure fills your emotional cup.”

SHARE This Emotional Story With A Special Mom Or Son On Social Media…

The Strange Pink Glow Over Victoria, Australia Turned Out to Be Happy Cannabis Accident

By
Andy Corbley
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- Tammy Szumowsk
– Tammy Szumowsk

Last week, a eerie pink glow lit up the sky above a small town in Australia, sparking mild concerns about an alien invasion, or at least that the locals had missed the memo of Season 5 of Stranger Things being filmed nearby.

It was big enough to be seen from miles off and many residents took photos

“It was very bizarre,” said Tammy Szumowski. “I was on the phone to my mum, and my dad was saying the world was ending.”

The truth of the matter was a little more psychedelic—the pink glow was more like a “Purple Haze.”

Pharmaceutical company Cann Group confirmed to the town of Mildura in Victoria that the lights were coming from its local medicinal cannabis facility, where the blackout blinds had been left open.

WATCH: Watch An Astrophotographer Capture ‘Giant Red Jellyfish Sprites’ on Colorado Mountain

“Cannabis plants require different spectrums of light in order to encourage their growth,” said Rhys Cohen, senior communications manager at Cann Group Ltd. “A red spectrum light is often used. Normally the facility would have blackout blinds that come down at night, and will in the future block that glow.”

– Alexandra Talent.

News didn’t reach everyone in Mildura immediately, so they were left speculating until the following day.

Alexandra Talent described her horses as a little distracted, which was when she noticed as it got darker that they were fixated on the Purple Haze in the distance.

“The kids’ imaginations went wild and of course the topic of aliens was presented,” Talent told the Guardian. “My husband and I were a bit more optimistic.”

SHARE This Unexpected Story With Your Friends Before Putting On Some Hendrix…

100 Million-Year-Old Footprints of Giant Dinosaur Found at Restaurant in China

By
Andy Corbley
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- New China
– New China

Among the great fossil beds of the world, China is up there, and nowhere else on earth can boast as many fossilized dinosaur footprints.

However people might expect to find them in a remote desert, not among the tables of a courtyard eatery in a modern city.

The footprints belonged to a pair of sauropods—giant long-necked dinosaurs like brontosaurus that rivaled large whales for their length and weight. Found in a restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan Province, the establishment had been made atop farmland where the prints had been buried under soil.

Lida Xing, a paleontologist and associate professor at the China University of Geosciences, told USA TODAY reporting on the story that he and his team confirmed the existence of the footprints via 3D scans of the floor.

They are believed to have been made 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, the last era of the dinosaurs before the Earth was struck by an asteroid around 65 million years ago. The animals were reckoned at 26 feet, or around 12 meters in length.

SIMILAR: Human Footprints Found in New Mexico Are 23,000 Years Old – Long Before the Ice Age Glaciers Melted

The restaurant owner has closed off the area of his eating space while research is being conducted.

China’s always rapid development means that paleontologists like Dr. Xing don’t always have the opportunity to survey areas before they are built on, so he recognizes the rare opportunity there in the back of the restaurant.

WATCH a video from New china explaining…

Make An IMPRESSION On Social Media With This Fortuitous Find…

“Holiness is an infinite compassion for others.” – Olive Schreiner

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Holiness is an infinite compassion for others.” – Olive Schreiner

Photo by: Jeet Dhanoa

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Livin’ Good Currency Ep. 19: Bill Glaser There’s an Entrepreneur Inside All of Us

By
Andy Corbley
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The Lesson: What makes an entrepreneur? Humanity. We are all entrepreneurs. Our entire lives are a sequence of people trying to sell us ideas, opinions, values, as well as goods and services. People are always creating—ideas, opinions, and objects of value. We do it to ourselves. We have to constantly sell things to our own minds—that we are strong, capable, handsome, beautiful, or the next pastime, the next 5-year plan, the next self-reinvention.

Notable Excerpt: “Every day we get out of bed and we just have a day, and the day happens. But it’s those days where we get out of bed and we set an intention of what kind of day we want to have, that’s what we manifest. And so it’s having the practice to make that a habit, and whether that’s starting the day saying, what kind of day do I want to have, or what do I want for my business, for my relationship, all those things are intentions, but you can’t just set the intention and wait for something to happen, that’s just a wish. But if you set the intention and then you take action, that is the formula for manifesting.”

The Guest: Bill Glaser has been a serial entrepreneur since the age of five, when he went door-to-door selling vegetable seeds and greeting cards to make money to buy toys. His career began as a financial advisor with storied Investment Banks before founding his own financial firm and then founding several companies as an entrepreneur. His latest booming venture, Outstanding Foods, celebrates plant-based foods and how addictively delicious they can be.

The Podcast: Livin’ Good Currency explores the relationship of time to our lives. It gives a simple, straight-forward formula that anyone can use to be present in the moment—and features a co-host who knows better than anyone the value of time (see below). How do you want to spend your life? This hour can inspire you, along with upcoming guests, to be sure you are ‘Livin’ Good Currency’ and never get caught running out of time.

The Hosts: Good News Network fans will know Tony (Anthony) Samadani as the co-owner of GNN and its Chief of Strategic Partnerships. Co-host Tobias Tubbs was handed a double life sentence without the possibility of parole for a crime he didn’t commit. Behind bars, he used his own version of the Livin’ Good Currency formula to inspire young men in prison to turn their hours into honors. An expert in conflict resolution, spirituality, and philosophy, Tobias is a master gardener who employs ex-felons to grow their Good Currency by planting crops and feeding neighborhoods.

D-Day Pilot Celebrated Turning 102 Attributing Longevity to ‘Art, Music, Good Food and the Finest Wine’

By
Andy Corbley
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- SWNS
– SWNS

A D-Day pilot celebrated turning 102, and attributes his longevity partly to a love of fine wine, among other pleasures.

Harry Gamper, who turned 102 on July 20th, missed his 100th birthday party due to lockdown, but made sure he had double the fun this year.

War hero and father of two, Harry served as an RAF pilot in World War II and won medals for his service in France and Germany including a Battle of Atlantic medal.

During his time in the RAF, Harry completed over 1,000 hours of flying time, taking the reins of Warwicks, Wellingtons and Catalina flying boats, and left the air force in 1946.

RELATED: US Honors 98-yo Irish Woman Whose Storm Forecast Fortuitously Delayed D-Day Landings, Changing Course of WWII

Harry had an Italian-themed birthday party, in memory of his late wife, Annalisa, who he enjoyed sun-soaked holidays in Italy with.

“Life is beautiful, and I’ve always lived it to the full,” Harry said. “I love art, music, good food and the finest wine. All of these things, and the people around you are what matter most in life.”

“I looked forward to my Italian feast and maybe a sing-along to some traditional Italian music.”

He was born in Surrey on July 20th 1920. The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest military action during the war, and last from 1939 right up to the final months in 1945, during which time 175 RAF fighters were shot down in anti-submarine sorties.

After retiring, Harry moved to a cottage in the village of Straiton, Ayrshire in the late 2000s, where he took up gardening and enjoyed the proximity to the coast.

SIMILAR: The US Army Replaced a Cake it Stole From Italian Girl in 1945

Harry described his D-Day memories as “incredible, I’ll never forget it.”

“For a whole week before D-Day, nobody was allowed off the aerodrome. So, something big was going to happen,” he said. “The [English] Channel was extraordinary – I think you could have almost walked across the Channel because every boat was going across it.”

WISH Harry A Happy Birthday On Social Media…

Gardening Can Lift Your Mood Even if You’ve Never Done it Before and Have No Mental Health Issues

By
Andy Corbley
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University of Florida
University of Florida

There’s a deep satisfaction that arises from tending a garden, so deep that it can enliven even those who don’t need to be, and even those who don’t know how, a new study shows.

A pilot, randomized-controlled trial of indoor group-based gardening courses were compared with art classes as way to see if the moods of healthy women with no history of prescriptions for depression or anxiety could be improved.

It’s not everyday a study looks at healthy women with no symptoms of anxiety, depression, or mood swings, but if an effect can be observed scientifically where the margin for improvement is the slimmest, that suggests robust potential for those in whom the margin for improvement is much larger.

“Therapeutic horticulture,” Univ. of Florida press pointed out has been used since the 19th century.

READ MORE: Increasing Tree Cover on City Streets May Be Like Community ‘Superfood’ —Improving Health by 33%

“Past studies have shown that gardening can help improve the mental health of people who have existing medical conditions or challenges. Our study shows that healthy people can also experience a boost in mental wellbeing through gardening,” said Charles Guy, principal investigator on the study from the University of Florida.

Thirty-two women aged 26-49 participated in either the art group, involving printmaking or drawing, or the gardening group, which involved learning about how to sow seeds, transplant different kinds of plants, taste even edible plants.

“Both gardening and art activities involve learning, planning, creativity and physical movement, and they are both used therapeutically in medical settings. This makes them more comparable, scientifically speaking, than, for example, gardening and bowling or gardening and reading,” Guy explained.

Both groups demonstrated a small increase in mood, with gardening improving feelings of anxiety a more so than art. Both also demonstrated dose dependency—the more they gardened or drew, the greater the perceived therapeutic effect.

CHECK OUT: Good Gardening Week 3: Which Are Your Go-To Plants or Flowers? — Share Tips and Photos

Why gardening might have this effect is anyone’s guess. Humans have been interacting on a very sophisticated level with plants for millions of years, long into our previous evolutionary forms. The development of horticulture and agriculture changed our society forever, and studies have shown that leaf-green as a color is soothing to the mind.

Whatever the reason may be, the participants not only said how much they enjoyed the gardening courses, but how they plan to continue growing long past the end of the study.

CHECK OUT Our Brand New Weekly Gardening Discussion Thread…

TikTok Creators Have Been Banned From Sacred Sites In Nepal For Being ‘Nuisances’

By
Andy Corbley
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Nepal shrine - Yogesh Maharjan; TikTok selfie - Apostolos Vamvouras
Nepal shrine – Yogesh Maharjan; TikTok selfie – Apostolos Vamvouras

Describing them perfectly as “nuisances,” Buddhist monks in Nepal are banning TikTok video creators from using their country’s religious heritage as a stage for the popular social media app.

There’s nothing that detracts from the beauty of a sacred place more that when a sizable fraction of the visitors endlessly use it as a social media backdrop.

To this end Nepal has decided that enough is enough. Containing many of the holiest sites in Buddhism, security companies and Buddhist groups from the capital Kathmandu and elsewhere are enforcing “no TikTok” zones around all sacred sites.

This has, since 2021, included visitor infrastructure including “No TikTok” signs, installing CCTV cameras to help watch for TikTokers, and hiring security to ask anyone found TikToking to please leave.

READ ALSO: Army of Nepal Cleans Up Mount Everest by Collecting Two Tons of Trash and Debris

“Making TikTok by playing loud music creates a nuisance for pilgrims from all over the world who come to the birthplace of Gautama Buddha,” Sanuraj Shakya, a spokesperson for the Lumbini Development Trust, told Rest of World. “We have banned TikTok-making in and around the sacred garden, where the main temples are located.”

Some of these influencers, Rest of World adds, bring with them hordes of adoring fans or curious passersby, creating serious disturbances in otherwise quiet places of meditation and Sanga.

RELATEDD: Instead of Visiting Eiffel Tower, This Couple Visited an Orphanage in Nepal

TikTok is the most popular social media app in Nepal, and one creator with a few hundred followers in Kathmandu doesn’t begrudge the monks and police from asking TikTokers to leave, saying that what makes the app great is not over-exploitation of famous landmarks, but being creative.

The bans have so far been implemented in Buddhist pilgrimage sites at Lumbini, Kathmandu’s famous Boudhanath Stupa, Gadhimai temple in Bara, and Ram Janaki Temple in Janakpur.

SHARE On Social Media About This Good News Social Media Ban…

25-Year-Old Runs into Burning Home and Saves 5 Kids–Gets Rewarded With $500K and ‘New Lease on Life’

By
Andy Corbley
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A man is being honored by a city as a hero after he charged into a house that had turned into a raging inferno to rescue a young girl.

A late-night argument was his girlfriend had a disgruntled 25-year-old Nicholas Bostic out driving aimlessly around his town when he saw the house completely engulfed in flames.

Running inside, his cries allegedly woke 4 children and a family friend from their sleep. The oldest of five, 18-year-old Seionna Barret, had gathered together her siblings and prepared to go down the stairs from the second floor where they encountered Nick.

Once outside however, Seionna told Bostic that her 6-year-old sister wasn’t with them. Running inside through the back door, Bostic described the fire in the Lafayette, Indiana home as having created a “black lagoon” of smoke on the ground floor.

But after checking all the bedrooms on the second floor, he still had not found the youngster.

RELATED: A Hero Just Passing By Saves Young Mom and Son From Dying in Wyoming House Fire

“He moved to a window to exit the house when he heard a child’s cry coming from downstairs,” write city reporters who spoke with the rescuer. “Nicholas [had] an inner dialog with himself. He knew he was there to get that child out, and even though the fire and smoke downstairs frightened him, he would not quit.”

Wrapping a t-shirt around his mouth, he crawled through the blackness, following the sounds of the girl’s cries.

He then found her, proceeded back through the smoke, ran upstairs, smashed a window with his bare hand, and jumped down onto the lawn where a fire and rescue team had arrived and were beginning work to put out the fire.

Bostic suffered 1st degree burns, a serious cut on his arm, and smoke inhalation, and would be airlifted to a hospital—the child was completely unharmed.

CHECK OUT: ‘Lemon Aid’ From a Kind 10-year-old Soothes Sad Neighbors After House Fire

A GoFundMe was made for Bostic’s medical bills by his cousin, which shattered the $100,000 goal by amassing $556,000 for a hero whom the city plans to honor at the next Lafayette Aviators minor league baseball game.

Bostic says the experience brought him a “new lease on life,” that has him ready to play football or drift a sports car. Indeed he spent enough time in that burning house to have several lives flash before his eyes.

WATCH him explain the experience…

LIGHT Up Social Media With This Amazing Rescue Story…

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night.” – J. G. Ballard

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night.” – J. G. Ballard

Photo by: Josh Hild

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Dutch Are Reducing Waste By Fixing Broken Objects With Online Local Barter Network-And You Can Too

By
Good News Network
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Finding someone who can fix a broken piece of furniture, mend clothing, or repair a family  treasure has become easier thanks to a new online platform.

The guilder is a repair exchange platform, enabling the repair of broken objects with local knowledge, skills, and tools—but without any money being exchanged.

Objects like chairs, benches, tea pots, bikes, and backpacks have all be successfully repaired since the guilder went live at the start of 2022.

Based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, design graduate Ollee Means created the platform as a way to tackle waste, and believes “every object is worth repairing”. His studies had a strong focus on sustainable design, which included design for repair and refurbishment.

Ollee recognized that while a design that enables repair is important, the skills to undertake the repairs are also required in order to realize a regenerative economy.

“Being able to fix and repair things is a valuable skill, which many communities around the world are beginning to lose. People are willing to pay more to buy something new, rather than find a way to repair the existing. This creates a lot of waste, and is not sustainable. I began the guilder to make it easier to find people in your area who can repair things.”

The guilder enables good deeds to be swapped, with the value of the exchange being left open for individuals to negotiate. In this way we see a chair leg being fixed in return for a dress alteration—or a vacuum cleaner repair swapped for a hair cut.

Currently, repair exchange chains via the guilder have been carried out in Eindhoven and Amsterdam, but the platform is scalable, and has been set up in a way that any community can start using it.

“The system aims to keep repair exchanges local so that travel is reduced, reinforcing the knowledge in the community and serving to reduce the idea that getting something repaired is difficult”.

RELATED: German City Diverts Goods From Landfills, Repairs Them, Then Sells in ‘Department Store for Reuse’

Not so long ago it was common to fix household objects yourself—from clothing to furniture and even cars. In addition, most small towns would have had a cobbler repairing shoes, and specialized shops for fixing TVs and vacuums.

Nowadays, many manufacturers make products un-reparable. Car engines are sealed so you can’t tinker with them, and electronic goods are glued closed making them difficult to get into and put back together. The “Right to Repair” movement is fighting against this by seeking legislation to make it mandatory for manufacturers to produce repair manuals, enable easy dismantling, and ensure spare parts are available for ten years. The European Union has already voted in favor of Right to Repair, with the first reforms being introduced in 2020 as part of key steps in achieving a circular economy.

LOOK: Historic Microsoft Decision Allows Easier Repair of Devices After Shareholders Pressure to Be More Responsible

With new legislation in place, products will be designed for repair, leading to improved opportunities to extend the lifetime of the things we buy. Ollee has an ambitious goal. “I’d like to enable 1 million objects to be repaired in my lifetime. The guilder will be part of this story. I want it to become a well-known platform where people will go to arrange repairs.”

The guilder has proved to be a successful concept so far. The number of repairs completed continues to grow and word of mouth has been an effective way to advertise the service. I asked Ollee why he thinks it’s been such a hit “There’s a clear need for the platform, and I think people like the novelty factor of connecting with the person who they make the repair exchange with.”

Ollee will take part in Dutch Design Week 2022 in October. He’s already started working on a podcast where design professionals will discuss opportunities and blocks around designing for repair, and people will share their experience using the guilder. Read more about exchange repair chains that have been enabled by the guilder at theguilder.org.

ALSO: This Glasgow Repair Shop is on a Mission to Fix Our Throwaway Culture

SHARE This With People Worldwide So They Can Begin Repairs in Their Towns…

From Beer to Biogas: Creating Green Energy Using Brewer’s Grain Farm Waste

By
Joe O'Neill
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A Pennsylvania farm has partnered with a nearby microbrewery to create an alternative fuel produced with brewer’s waste and organic matter.

The Dickinson College Farm in Pennsylvania joined with Molly Pitcher Brewing Co. and other local farms to create large quantities of sustainable biogas from materials that would otherwise be discarded.

“In a nutshell, biogas is where we take organic waste materials and convert them into methane,” says Matt Steiman, the farm’s livestock operations manager, citing livestock manure, brewery waste and food waste as the fuels for the process.

In a typical week, Molly Pitcher uses more than 1,000 pounds of brewer’s grain to produce beer at its brewery in Carlisle. Rather than allowing the spent grain to make its way to a landfill, Steiman collects it and brings it to Dickinson’s farm, where the magic takes place.

A digester transforms it into clean, burnable methane gas. It’s a huge win for the farm, as they can now create enough methane to power their own operations and those of a neighboring daily farm—and have enough left over to sell back to a utility company. But it’s also a win for the environment.

RELATED: Guinness is ‘Brewing Good’ by Cutting Carbon Footprint of its Barley Farms

“Now we’re not just brewing beer,” says Tim Fourlas, founder of the brewery and its head brewer, “but we’re also trying to help the environment and hopefully lessen the carbon impact that we have as a brewery.”

Watch their video to see how it’s done…

DRINK to the Future – Share This on Social Media…

“Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.” – Dōgen Zenji

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.” – Dōgen Zenji (13th-century Buddhist priest and writer)

Photo by: Prasesh Shiwakoti (Lomash)

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

7 Healthy Habits Can Almost Halve Our Risk of Dying From Stroke and Protect Against Alzheimer’s

By
Good News Network
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SWNS

Seven healthy habits can almost halve people’s risk of suffering a life-threatening stroke, according to new research.

They include being active, eating better, losing weight, quitting smoking and maintaining normal blood pressure.

The others are controlling cholesterol and reducing blood sugar. They have been dubbed ‘Life’s Simple 7’—and also protect against heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

Lead author Professor Myriam Fornage, of Texas University in Houston, said their study confirmed modifying lifestyle risk factors can even offset a genetic risk of stroke.

Cardiovascular diseases, including strokes, are the world’s biggest cause of death globally.

Fornage and colleagues tracked around 11,500 people in the US aged 45 to 64 for an average of 28 years.

Participants were given a ‘stroke polygenic risk score’—based on blood tests that identified mutations linked to the condition. Those who scored highest and had the worst cardiovascular health had the highest lifetime risk of 25 percent.

But for those who had practiced Life’s Simple 7 it fell by 30 to 45 percent, regardless of their level of genetic risk. It added up to nearly six more years of stroke-free life, for the 6% of cases that occurred in this group.

POPULAR: Microscopic Robots Made from White Blood Cells Could Treat and Prevent Life-Threatening Illnesses

The American Heart Association put together the checklist of 7 factors for optimal heart health.

The findings in the Journal of the American Heart Association offers hope for a possible screening program.

“We can use genetic information to determine who is at higher risk and encourage them to adopt a healthy cardiovascular lifestyle, such as following the AHA’s Life’s Simple 7, to lower that risk and live a longer, healthier life,” said Prof. Fornage.

Strokes happen when a vessel is either blocked or bursts, cutting off blood supply to parts of the brain.

RELATED: Vitamin D Could Help Protect Women Against and Even Reverse Ovarian Cancer

Almost 800,000 people in the US are struck down each year and 137,000 die.

Stroke reduces mobility in more than half of survivors aged 65 and older, but it also occurs in younger adults. In fact, almost four-in-ten hospitalized patients are under 65.

Learn more at the source: UTHealth Houston.

SEND This ‘Simple 7’ Secret to Friends You Love on Social Media…

When Antibiotics Failed, She Found a Natural Enemy of Superbug Bacteria to Save Husband’s Life

By
Judy Cole
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UC San Diego

Tom Patterson was dying in a U.S. hospital from a massive bacterial infection he’d contracted while traveling in Egypt. Doctors gave him a prognosis of days.

Fortunately, his wife, Steffanie Strathdee, happened to be an infectious disease epidemiologist, who was not going to give up searching for the needle in a haystack required to cure him.

Strathdee spent agonizing months in a bedside vigil at the UC San Diego hospital in 2016 where she served as associate dean of global health science. “I had this conversation that nobody ever wants to have with their loved one,” she recalled during a health and wellness event co-sponsored by CNN.

“I said, ‘Honey, we’re running out of time. I need to know if you want to live. I don’t even know if you can hear me but if you can hear me and you want to live, please squeeze my hand.’ I waited and waited, and all of a sudden, he squeezed really hard.”

From that moment, Strathdee was determined to find a cure—even if it meant turning conventional disease intervention on its head.

After sifting through mountains of medical research, she finally found something that gave her hope: phage treatment. Phages are naturally occurring viruses that literally eat bacteria.

Strathdee reached out to the Tbilisi, Georgia researcher whose work she’d discovered online and learned that although the protocol isn’t mainstream, long-term studies conducted in the U.S. and abroad had already indicated the treatment showed promising efficacy in some cases.

However, with more than 10 million-trillion-trillion unique phages on the planet, identifying a handful that specifically fed on the Acinetobacter baumannii afflicting Tom was a task akin to finding one tiny star in a huge galaxy.

The deadly superbug is nicknamed Iraqibacter because wounded combat troops sometimes contracted it in Iraq—and it ranks No. 1 on the World Health Organization’s list of dangerous pathogens. Undaunted, Strathdee quickly began networking to get Tom the treatment he so desperately needed to survive.

LOOK: Bride and Groom Betrothed to History After She Wore a Wedding Dress Made From the Parachute That Saved Him

Help from Texas A&M, the FDA, and the U.S. Navy

Her first task was appealing to scientists to track down and purify samples of phages that fed on the specific strain of bacteria that was killing Tom. Texas A&M University biochemist Ryland Young, who’s been tracking phages for more than four and a half decades, was eager to help. Researchers from the U.S. Navy soon signed up for the mission as well.

Strathdee’s plea to the FDA to fast-track a “compassionate use” order allowing doctors to implement an experimental treatment was granted in record time. A scant three weeks later, Tom was injected with his first intravenous dose of a purified “phage cocktail” from the team at Texas A&M. Seeing no negative effects, he received his second IV dose, courtesy of the U.S. Navy, two days later.

The miraculous results were like something straight out of an episode of House (minus the fractious Hugh Laurie character, of course). Not long after his second phage IV push, Tom, who had become comatose, was able to raise his head and kiss his daughter’s hand.

UC San Diego

A Promising Phuture for Phage

Tom Patterson is thought to be the first U.S. patient with a systemic superbug infection to be successfully treated via intravenous phage therapy.

RELATED: Newlyweds Become Medical Researchers To Find Cure For Wife’s Severe Genetic Prion Disease

Since Patterson’s recovery six years ago, in conjunction with Dr. Robert “Chip” Schooley, the eminent UC San Diego infectious disease specialist who spearheaded her husband’s care, Strathdee has opened the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH), a facility that treats and counsels patients afflicted with drug-resistant infections.

With Schooley set to launch clinical phage trials in the insidious antibiotic-resistant bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa that’s associated with cystic fibrosis, Strathdee is also working to establish a worldwide “phage library” with hopes of streamlining the process of sourcing, purifying, and cataloging a curated collection of infection-specific phages.

While there are lingering and sometimes debilitating effects from his battle with the superbug, these days Patterson is living a happy and productive life, for which both he and Strathdee are profoundly thankful. “We’re not complaining! I mean every day is a gift, right?” Strathdee told CNN. “People say, ‘Oh, my God, all the planets had to line up for this couple,’ and we know how lucky we are.”

(To learn more about this couple’s amazing story, read their memoir: The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband From a Deadly Superbug.)

DON’T Quit Sharing This Story of Triumph on Social Media…

Your Inspired Weekly Horoscope From Rob Brezsny: A ‘Free Will Astrology’

By
Good News Network
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Our partner Rob Brezsny provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)

Here is your weekly horoscope…

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week of July 23, 2022
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
A Leo astrologer I’ve known for years told me, “Here’s a secret about us Lions. No matter what happens, despite any pitfalls and pratfalls, my ego will stay intact. It ain’t gonna crack. You can hurl five lightning bolts’ worth of insults at my skull, and I will walk away without even a hint of a concussion. I believe in myself and worship myself, but even more importantly: I trust my own self-coherence like I trust the sun to shine.” Wow! That’s quite a testimony. I’m not sure I fully buy it, though. I have known a few Leos whose confidence wavered in the wake of a minor misstep. But here’s the point of my horoscope: I encourage you to allow a slight ego deflation in the coming days. If you do, I believe it will generate a major blossoming of your ego by August. And that would be a very good thing.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Virgo poet Claude de Burine described how one night when she was three years old, she sneaked out of the house with her parents’ champagne bucket so she could fill it up with moonlight. I think activities like this will be a worthy pursuit for you in the coming days. You’re entering a favorable phase to go in quest of lyrical, fanciful experiences. I hope you will make yourself available for marvels and curiosities and fun surprises.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
There is a distinction between being nice and being kind. Being nice is often motivated by mechanical politeness, by a habit-bound drive to appear pleasant. It may be rooted more in a desire to be liked than in an authentic urge to bestow blessings. On the other hand, being kind is a sincere expression of care and concern for another. It fosters genuine intimacy. I bring these thoughts to your attention because I think that one of Libra’s life-long tasks is to master the art of being kind rather than merely nice. And right now is an especially favorable phase for you to refine your practice.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
You sometimes feel you have to tone down your smoldering intensity, avert your dark-star gazes, conceal your sultry charisma, dumb down your persuasive speech, pretend you don’t have so much stamina, disguise your awareness of supernatural connections, act less like a saint and martyr in your zealous devotions, and refrain from revealing your skill at reading between the lines. But none of that avoidance stuff usually works very well. The Real You leaks out into view. In the coming weeks, I hope you won’t engage in any of the hiding behavior I described. It’s a favorable time to freely pour forth your Scorpionic blessings.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
There could be interesting and important events happening while you sleep in the coming nights. If a butterfly lands on you in a dream, it may mean you’re prepping for a spiritual transformation in waking life. It could be a sign you’re receptive to a breakthrough insight you weren’t previously open to. If you dream of a baby animal, it might signify you’re ready to welcome a rebirth of a part of you that has been dormant or sluggish or unavailable. Dreams in which you’re flying suggest you may soon escape a sense of heaviness or inertia.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
How to be the best Capricorn you can be in the coming weeks and months: 1. Develop a disciplined, well-planned strategy to achieve more freedom. 2. Keep clambering upwards even if you have no competitors and there’s no one else at the top. 3. Loosen your firm grasp and steely resolve just enough so you can allow the world to enjoy you. 4. Don’t let the people you love ever think you take them for granted. 5. Be younger today than you were yesterday.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
In the next seven to eight weeks, I’d love for you to embody an attitude about intimacy articulated by author Hélène Cixous. Here’s her aspiration: “I want to love a person freely, including all her secrets. I want to love in this person someone she doesn’t know. I want to love without judgment, without fault. Without false, without true. I want to meet her between the words, beneath language.” And yes, dear Aquarius, I know this is a monumental undertaking. If it appeals to you at all, just do the best you can to incorporate it. Perfection isn’t required.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
I periodically consult a doctor of Chinese Medicine who tells me that one of the best things I can do for my health is to walk barefoot—EVERYWHERE! On the sidewalk, through buildings, and especially in the woods and natural areas. He says that being in direct contact with our beloved earth can provide me with energetic nourishment not possible any other way. I have resisted the doc’s advice so far. It would take the soles of my feet a while to get accustomed to the wear and tear of barefoot walking. I bring this up, Pisces, because the coming weeks will be an excellent time for you to try what I haven’t yet. In fact, anything you do to deepen your connection with the earth will be extra healing. I invite you to lie in the sand, hug trees, converse with birds, shout prayers to mountains, and bathe in rivers or lakes.

ARIES (March 21-April 19):
You are entering the Season of Love’s Renewal. To celebrate, I offer you a poem by eighth-century Tamil poet Andal. Whatever gender you may be, I invite you to visualize yourself as the “Snakewaist woman” she addresses. Here’s Andal, bringing a fiery splash of exclamation points: “Arouse, Snakewaist woman! Strut your enchantment! Swoop your mirth and leap your spiral reverence! As wild peacocks shimmer and ramble and entice the lightning-nerved air! Summon thunderheads of your love! Command the sentient wind! Resurrect the flavor of eternal birth!”

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Tips to get the most out of the next three weeks: 1. Work harder, last longer, and finish with more grace than everyone else. 2. Be in love with beauty. Crave it, surround yourself with it, and create it. Be especially enamored of beautiful things that are also useful. 3. Taste the mist, smell the clouds, kiss the music, praise the earth, and listen to the moon in the daytime sky. 4. Never stop building! Keep building and building and building: your joy, your security, your love, your beauty, your stamina, your sense of wonder.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Gemini astrologer Astrolocherry says that while Geminis “can appear naive and air-headed to onlookers, their minds usually operate at light speed. They naturally absorb every surrounding particle of intellectual stimuli. They constantly observe their interactions for opportunities to grow their knowledge.” I believe these qualities will function at peak intensity during the next four weeks, Gemini—maybe even beyond peak intensity. Please try to enjoy the hell out of this phase without becoming manic or overwrought. If all goes well, you could learn more in the next four weeks than most people learn in four months.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Naeem Callaway founded Get Out The Box, an organization that mentors at-risk youth in low-income and rural communities. Here’s one of his central teachings: “Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tiptoe if you must, but take the step.” Even if you don’t fit the profile of the people Callaway serves, his advice is perfect for you right now. For the time being, I urge you to shelve any plans you might have for grandiose actions. Focus on just one of the many possible tasks you could pursue and carry it out with determined focus.

WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com

(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)

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“The media only writes about the sinners and the scandals, but that’s normal, because a tree that falls makes more noise than a forest that grows.” – Pope Francis

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “The media only writes about the sinners and the scandals, but that’s normal, because a tree that falls makes more noise than a forest that grows.” – Pope Francis

Photo by: John Salzarulo

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Berlin’s Derelict Airport Undergoes Transformation to Become a Sustainable Neighborhood

By
Andy Corbley
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The old Tegel Airport. - Tegel Project / Berlin TXL
Schumacher Quartier – Berlin TXL

With 580 acres of ex-airport real estate now available, the area is being dreamed of as a sustainable neighborhood of wide open green spaces, bike lanes, and affordable efficient housing.

After old Tegel Airport in Berlin was closed down in favor of a new, more modern one, workers started clearing the ground for the Schumacher Quartier, a project that has been brewing since 2017, and which seeks to address car pollution, housing shortages, and many other modern urban issues.

Schumacher Quartier will provide upwards of 5,000 homes for more than 10,000 people, together with the corresponding amenities such as schools, daycare centers, shopping facilities, and lots of greenery. A further 4,000 homes are planned for the neighboring districts.

The charter for the design incorporates the desires of housing for everyone, urban green space and public areas, an open educational landscape, climate-friendly and water-sensitive urban development, guaranteed environmentally-friendly mobility, and participation from the community members.

SIMILAR: Abandoned Airport Turned into Sensory Experience Park Providing Green Refuge in Crowded Taiwan City

Over the past few years, cities around the world have snapped at the opportunity to turn large derelict spaces into new, innovative, sustainable neighborhoods.

It’s happening in Utah, Kuwait, Taichung, The Bronx, and probably many more locations.

The old Tegel Airport. – Tegel Project / Berlin TXL

“The Schumacher Quartier is planned in such a way that the streets and squares belong to the people again, rather than to cars,” said Constanze Döll, press secretary for the Tegel Projekt.

“We want to let people rediscover the public space… for socializing, playgrounds, places to relax and talk. Important locations in the neighborhood, like the kindergarten, school, bakery, supermarket, can be reached easily by foot.”

Next to the residential areas will be a commercial zone utilizing some of the old airport’s infrastructure called the Urban Tech Republic, ideal for tech sector entities to set up offices, and a huge city park stretching across 50% of the 5-square-kilometer space.

Another key feature will be the environmental-incorporations into the homes. All will be built from mass-timber construction that’s locally sourced. This should reduce the carbon footprint from construction by 80%. Rooftop gardens will be installed to absorb rainwater, and Fast Company Magazine reports there is to be something called a “sponge city” that will specifically soak up water from heavy rainstorms to be used in Quarter’s water supplies.

RELATED: A New Neighborhood is Being Built in Utah That Looks Like a European ‘One-Car Town’

The city park will be the location of an introduction program for 14 endangered species that are capable of living near urban environs, such as broad-winged bats and nightingale grasshoppers.

The first campus is slated to be finished in 2027, as work is still ongoing to clear existing debris, including an old World War II airfield around which hazardous waste disposal personnel have already cleared 5,000 defunct munitions such as artillery shells.

WATCH their artistic renderings…

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Wild Bison Return to UK After Thousands of Years – And Are Ready to Tear S*!# Up

By
Andy Corbley
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/ Wilder Blean / Kent Wildlife Trust
/ Wilder Blean / Kent Wildlife Trust

Wild European bison have been released in southeast England where they will roam unperturbed by humans on Great Britain for the first time in 6,000 years.

It’s the culmination of several years of planning by the Kent Wildlife Trust, which want to unleash the bison’s powers of creation and destruction upon a non-native woodland in order to create a more British landscape in the long run.

The target is West Blean Woods, as part of a project GNN reported on in 2020 called “Wilder Blean.” There stands a commercial forest of non-native conifer trees. The bison love gnawing on bark, which will act as a food source while they inevitably kill a fair amount of these invasive trees.

These deaths, combined with the trampling of their hoofs, and their habit of rolling around taking dust baths, will open up space in the canopy and the understory to allow light and native plants to take hold.

“The restoration of naturally functioning ecosystems is a vital and inexpensive tool in tackling the climate crisis,” said Evan Bowen-Jones, CEO at Kent Wildlife Trust (KWT).

“We want Wilder Blean to mark the beginning of a new era for conservation in the UK. We need to revolutionize the way we restore natural landscapes, relying less on human intervention and more on natural engineers like bison, boar and beaver.”

CHECK OUT: Irish Metalhead Turns His Ancestral Estate into Model of Rewilding: It Naturally Grew Into Biodiverse Eden

Known as a keystone species, similar to krill in the ocean, tigers in India, or bees in a meadow, bison provide services that allow the ecosystems they live in to operate at a much higher capacity in terms of ecosystem activity. In conservation terms, a keystone species is one that plays a role in the preservation of other species, and the ecology as a whole.

In an unexpected way, the attempted restoration of bison in the English ecosystem is more about halting England’s current species loss than it is about restoring some kind of Stone Age ecology to the island. Their fur makes them a kind of walking seed bank, dispersing seeds around as they change the shape of the forest through their habits.

All this provides habitat and food for insects and plants, the basis of the food web, onto which glom on birds, and larger species like deer, badgers, and fox.

“I cannot wait to see how the bison start to shape the Blean over a 5, 10, 20 year period as they settle into their new home and start throwing their weight around,” Tom Gibbs, a bison ranger at the site, told The Guardian.

European bison with calves – Pryndak Vasyl, CC license

A step up

Originally the plan was for the bison to come from Poland and the Netherlands, but Wilder Blean introduced a matriarch and two young females from Scotland and Ireland respectively where they lived in wildlife parks under strong human supervision.

A bull male will be brought over from Germany shortly after, and all animals will be collared with GPS tracking devices to monitor their preferred areas, which plants they feed upon, and more.

The total extent of the project at the moment is 200 hectares, or 440 acres, 110 acres of which will be available at the start after the bull arrives.

RELATED: Conservation Success for European Bison is ‘Living Proof’ That Ambitious Biodiversity Targets Work

The bison will soon be joined by other grazing animals, including Exmoor ponies, iron age pigs and longhorn cattle, whose ancestors, the auroch, would have roamed Great Britain around 3,000 BCE.

These herbivores natural behaviors complement the bison in managing the landscape.

The Brits will undoubtedly be hoping a more natural woodland, replacing the large blocks of conifers, will sequester more carbon and water, and help to keep the landscape and the climate that little bit cooler as they swelter under the current heatwave.

WATCH the matriarch claim her new surroundings…

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