Gary Neville, the Manchester United football star who recently welcomed 30 young homeless men to stay in a landmark building he owns, must have liked how it felt to be generous toward the most needy. He has now taken two more giant steps this month to make their winter stay more comfortable in the northern English city.
The old Stock Exchange building in Manchester is set to be turned into a boutique hotel and will undergo major renovation beginning February.
Manchester Angels, the homeless advocates who led the squatters to first occupy the uninhabited building, were telephoned by the owners, Neville and another “Man U” football legend, Ryan Giggs, and told they were welcome to stay the winter.
On Wednesday, the group posted a heartwarming update about the latest kindness from Neville on Facebook.
“He is paying for electricians; plumbers; builders and other tradesmen to come and install temporary shower units; bathrooms; toilets; lighting etc so that the building is habitable over the winter period.”
Later in the week, they also reported:
“Gary Neville is arranging for Hotel Football Old Trafford to make an evening meal for the homeless men on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays so that they get a well-balanced nutritious meal three times a week from his chefs. Thank you Gary.”
Another post on October 22 heaps praise on Gary Neville’s brother-in-law for “all he is doing to make this work.”
“In 5 days he’s gone from being a property developer to a counsellor; psychiatrist; housing advisor; negotiator; caterer; and recovery worker. Such a genuine down-to-earth bloke who’s not intimidated by pressure and handles situations perfectly.”
Did you hear the recent tragic news that a pharmaceutical company CEO who bought the rights to a drug immediately jacked up the price 5,000 percent?
Well, guess who just came to the rescue for thousands of patients who were being forced to pay $750, instead of the earlier $13?
A rival drug company CEO who just announced his company would begin to offer the pill for just a dollar.
Martin Shkreli, 32, an American hedge fund manager and founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased the marketing rights to the life-saving drug called Daraprim for $55 million this summer. There were virtually no competing manufacturers for the drug, which is used to treat patients with toxoplasmosis, some cancers, and AIDS, when Turing became the sole supplier in August and raised the price.
Following public outrage over the apparent price-gouging, Imprimis Pharmaceuticals CEO Mark Baum on October 22 announced his company would start selling a competing drug for just a dollar per pill.
Part of Imprimis’s mission statement is to battle skyrocketing drug prices in the U.S. and to create compounded drugs at a cheaper price for consumers.
Baum said he would also be looking at the rest of the FDA’s 7,800 approved generic drugs on the market and see if they could create cheaper alternatives for others as part of a program called Imprimis Cares.
Imprimis’ alternative isn’t the exact same drug as Daraprim, but will contain the same active ingredient — pyrimethamine.
“It is indisputable that generic drug prices have soared recently,” Baum said in a release from Imprimis. “While we have seen an increase in costs associated with regulatory compliance, recent generic drug price increases have made us concerned and caused us to take positive action to address an opportunity to help a needy patient population.”
Doctors are now free to prescribe the Imprimis version for patients — potentially saving them thousands of dollars.
“Some drug prices are simply out of control and we believe we may be able to help control costs by offering compounded alternatives, which is aligned to our corporate mission of making novel and customizable medicines available to physicians and patients today at accessible prices.”
Photo by Bill Brooks, CC – Prescribe Some Good News for Your Friends, Share It…
Every year between June and October, millions of wildebeest migrate from the Serengeti in Tanzania to Kenya in search of food. The annual migration also includes half a million gazelle and 200,000 zebra.
In the past it has been difficult to plan a trip to ensure a front row seat for the dramatic display. But now, a mapping app called HerdTracker is making that easier, and bringing LIVE video streaming to people at home around the world via the web.
This is the second year that experts in the field have added commentary and video streaming to live Twitter feeds from locations along the great migration.
Carel Verhoef, who developed the app, is a safari guide who has lived in Tanzania for ten years. He led hundreds of tours to see the wildebeest migration and has developed a deep understanding of (and appreciation for) the animals.
Wildebeests, also called gnus, are a genus of antelopes native to Africa, belonging to the family which also includes cattle, goats, sheep and other even-toed horned animals.
The migration has just completed for 2015 but take a look at one of the best videos of the year that was sent in by Kevin Twiddy who captured the crossing of the Mara River at the Main Crossing Point on October 5. On the annual trek, the animal risk death by drowning, especially after heavy rainfall, or from crocodiles that await their next meal.
Seven years after Bernie Madoff defrauded his investors out of billions, the majority of his scam victims are going to get the rest of their money back, reports CNBC news.
More than 1,200 people with valid claims who invested up to $1.16 million “will get it back,” following a new bankruptcy filing Tuesday morning.
His defrauded clients, which included the elderly and charities, have already been paid back with $7.6 billion, thus far.
Madoff himself is serving a 150-year sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina.
Good News Network has just debuted new APPs that deliver non-stop ‘good news’ stories from around the world.
Our FREE apps – released for iPhone and iPad this week, and for Android earlier this month – give you nothing but the good stuff, stories about the environment, health, animals, charities, governments, kindness and do-gooders.
Navigate the fast interface of this completely “native” app wherever you are—even in an airplane or on the subway without cell service, since the articles are automatically cached.
You can opt for push notifications so the latest good news pops right up, and share the stories on your social media apps with a single tap. Readers can also save their favorite articles to come back to read them later.
I’ve wanted to make a Good News Network app for years… Now people can easily keep up with ‘what’s going right’ in our world.
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After 16 years of hosting “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart and his family said goodbye to New York City–and ‘hello,’ to life on a farm.
The Stewart family now includes four dogs, two pigs, rabbits and guinea pigs, among numerous other pets.
Jon’s wife Tracey is promoting her first book called Do Unto Animals, How We Can Make Their Lives Better, which extols the virtues of every creature, including bugs and bats, and living a vegan lifestyle.
But what has Jon been doing for the last two months?
Besides basking in the string of victories that landed his beloved NY Mets in the baseball championships, his new rural rhythm, 50 miles outside the Big Apple, in New Jersey, includes driving the kids to school, taking them to the car wash, and stopping for smoothies.
“He has become the mayor of the smoothie bar,” Tracey told CBS–and, she wasn’t joking.
“I don’t miss it for a moment,” said the happy, bearded former fake-news host.
“The joy is in creating it, in growing it, and evolving it,” said Stewart, of his life on the Daily Show. “When it becomes rote or redundant, then you feel like, ‘I’m not really adding a lot of value to this anymore.’”
He admits he still works and gets to write and feel creative, but with a flexible schedule–and no suits, ties, or shaving, anymore.
To keep up with life on the Stewarts’ farm, check out their Facebook page, “The Daily Squeal” named after the little piglets who live there.
(WATCH the pair videos below from CBS This Morning) – Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur, via CBS video
In 2007, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched an initiative to plant a million trees in 10 years. This week, officials reached their goal — two years ahead of schedule.
The one-millionth tree, an eight-year-old, 25-foot-tall lacebark elm, was planted Tuesday in the Bronx. Leaders behind the greening effort say they finished ahead of schedule because so many people were willing to volunteer.
A half-dozen poor neighborhoods, which were devoid of trees and reporting high rates of asthma, were singled out for mass plantings as a part of a city-wide environmental plan focused on creating new parkland and battling climate change. The trees would filter urban air pollutants and provide shade that keeps concrete and asphalt streets from heating up.
Three-quarters of the trees planted as part of the MillionTreesNYC initiative were added to existing parks, but others sprouted along streets, at schools and churches, outside of private businesses, and in people’s backyards.
City Hall teamed up with actress and singer Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project to raise $30 million toward the tree plantings. Over the course of the MillionTreesNYC initiative, the city expanded its number of trees by 20 percent.
The storybook and character are part of Sesame Street’s new autism project, “See Amazing in All Children.” It launched online Wednesday and features a free, downloadable app with videos and stories to help kids understand autism.
Sesame Workshop has partnered with 14 education and autism groups to share their project in schools. The show’s producers are waiting for reaction from the autism community before putting Julia on the broadcast. Image credit: Sesame Workshop
When InStove first started out, their “green” stoves were written off as “patio furniture.”
Years later, these multi-purpose, biomass cook stoves are feeding thousands of children across Haiti while ensuring the safety of the cooks who prepare the meals.
The latest stove to arrive in Haiti is dedicated in the memory of my grandmother, Lucy, who passed away in June. She was a beautiful, warm-hearted woman who always made sure everyone was fed–and often took pans out of the oven with her bare hands (as we all gasped).
Photo by Nick Moses
Many people gift InStoves in someone’s name as a way to honor their memory; individuals and organizations raise money to buy the stoves at cost, and donate them to developing countries overseas. Currently, they are being used in hospitals, clinics, schools, refugee camps, and orphanages.
The “Lucy Stove” recently landed at El Shaddai Ministries, an organization that feeds, houses, and educates 200 orphans in the Cambry, Sud region.
Before the InStoves arrived, cooks were preparing food over dirty, open charcoal burners, breathing fumes for hours each day while cooking hundreds of meals. Additionally, the unsustainable charcoal used for cooking was made from dwindling forest resources in Haiti, which has a 97% deforestation rate—it was costing the orphanage $400 each month.
Now, the kitchen can sustainably cook on sticks collected on the property and in the vicinity, feed thousands of kids and community members over its lifetime, and save them money on their energy bills.
And, just like grandma’s invulnerable hands, no one will ever be burned by it.
InStove also sent an autoclave unit to the El Shaddai Ministries clinic—a health facility which previously had no way to safely sterilize medical equipment or waste.
The mere task of cooking food overseas is a larger problem than you’d think: nearly three billion people worldwide cook on inefficient, biomass fires, contributing just as much to global climate change as car tailpipes do.
InStove’s design reduces the amount of fuel needed by up to 90 percent, the equivalent to the carbon footprint of up to 2.7 American households.
And, because the stoves are all vented to outside the kitchen, the cooks can breathe easier.
“This is exciting,” said one of the cooks at El Shaddai. “Now I can wear my church clothes to work!”
The Lucy Stove itself was also made with love—InStove founder Fred Colgan, 71, and his co-founder, Damon Ogle, put the finishing touches on the stove together this past July. The two men hadn’t worked side-by-side on stoves since the first 50 were shipped out to Darfur six years ago.
Ogle had recently finished treatment for throat cancer, but still decided to drive down to the factory facility in Oregon to help out.
In the beginning, when Colgan, then a 65-year-old retired carpenter, met Ogle, an engineer with a new stove design, they both shared a common vision to help some of the world’s poorest people.
“I asked him if he thought it was something we could take to the world and serve poor people with as a nonprofit,” Colgan told Good News Network. “I guess we were in the right place at the right time, just two stubborn old guys who wanted to make a difference.”
Colgan and Ogle immediately got to work hand-building prototypes of a stove that featured a combustion chamber made of stainless steel surrounded by lightweight insulation. At operating temperature, which can reach 1100 degrees Celsius, the stove literally “burns up the smoke,” and captures over half the energy generated by the fire.
Currently, there are InStoves located around the world, including 100 in North Darfur and 100 in South Darfur being used to feed 200,000 children. Colgan trained many of those cooks himself.
(WATCH the video below or visit InStove.org to learn more)
Scientists in Australia accidentally stumbled on a substance that can remove toxic mercury from the sea. It’s called limonene, and can be found in any orange peel.
Dr. Justin Chalker, a professor of Synthetic Chemistry at Flinders University, and his team, were working with sulfur and limonene to create a red, rubber-like polymer. When they began running tests to measure its potentially harmful impact on the environment, they discovered quite the opposite — the substance can suck mercury right out of water.
Mercury pollution plagues much of the world’s oceans, and cleaning it up has been difficult and expensive. The element, regulated by the EPA, is emitted into the air during the burning of fossil fuels. It eventually falls into water where it contaminates food supplies and can poison marine life. Eating fish and seafood tainted with mercury has been linked to serious health problems in humans.
The inexpensive polymer could potentially make large-scale cleanups of mercury affordable because it is made from industrial waste.
“So not only is this new polymer good for solving the problem of mercury pollution, but it also has the added environmental bonus of putting this waste material to good use,” Chalker said.
Sulfur is a byproduct of the petroleum industry, which throws out 70 million tons of the substance every year.
On top of that, the citrus industry produces 70,000 tons of limonene every year that it cannot use.
A high-tech mouthguard promises to be a game changer for treating and preventing sports-related concussions.
FITGuard, a device that alerts coaches immediately if a player should get medical attention for a head injury, comes from the mind of a former college athlete who suffered his own brain injury while playing college rugby in 2011.
Anthony Gonzales once took a hit to the head so hard during a game that he couldn’t remember which team he was on—in fact, he didn’t even know he was hurt. His teammates eventually realized something was wrong and pulled him from the game, but he cut it dangerously close. Unfortunately, Gonzales’ experience is pretty standard in college sports: athletes report less than half of their potential concussions to coaches and remain in the game when they should be treated to prevent permanent brain damage.
After recovering, Gonzales started thinking about a way to improve the system. He and fellow Arizona State University graduate Bob Merriman created FITGuard to let coaches and trainers know instantly if a player has likely suffered a concussion. Merriman calls it the brain’s equivalent of a car’s “check engine light.”
The mouthguard is packed with sensors that measure the force of a blow to the head and calculates the chances of a concussion. LED lights in front change from green to red to alert the wearer and others around him if the hit was hard enough to warrant immediate medical attention.
Even if the chances of a concussion are low, FITGuard continues monitoring for symptoms for several minutes, sending a steady stream of information to a smartphone or tablet app to let coaches and parents know if the player should be pulled from the game for medical treatment.
The FITGuard is expected to be on the market sometime next year and will cost around $100 per mouthpiece.
(WATCH the FITGaurd video below) — Photo: FITGuard video
The Teal Pumpkin Project was developed in an effort to encourage households to make the holiday more inclusive for kids who are allergic to nuts, chocolate, soy, wheat, and milk. About two kids in every classroom are at serious risk of being exposed to those foods, yet candy sold in bulk usually does not have ingredient labels or allergen warnings.
As an alternative, people taking the Teal Pumpkin Pledge can buy non-food treats for mere nickels at the dollar store, spooky gifts like glow sticks, bubbles, kazoos, spider rings, stickers, and vampire fangs.
Even toys can be a tricky road, though—Play-Dough, for example, contains wheat while other toys may contain common allergens like latex.
Alternatively, the Bay Area Allergy Advisory board has posted these handy lists of allergen-free candy.
Over 100,000 households in all fifty states have painted their pumpkins teal to signify allergy awareness for the coming Halloween season. The #tealpumpkinproject website also has lots of flyers, signs, and gift ideas that can be downloaded for free.
For those planning to hand out regular candy along with allergen-free treats, it’s advisable to keep them in separate bowls (and remember which is which).
When a doctor grew concerned with patients being put on waiting lists because they could not afford treatment, he started his own clinics — and treated 100,000 people, whether they could pay or not.
Dr. Daniel Ivankovich founded the nonprofit, OnePatient Global Health Initiative, in 2010, so he could provide health care regardless of insurance or people’s ability to pay.
It’s allowed him to open three clinics is some of the poorest and underserved parts of Chicago, Illinois and to make medical trips to Haiti to help people abroad.
He now performs 600 surgeries every year for people who couldn’t otherwise afford it — and has treated 100,000 patients for other conditions through his OnePatient clinics.
“We never turn away a patient,” Dr. Ivankovich told CNN. “The greatest thing we give them is hope.”
His work has made Dr. Ivankovich one of CNN’s Top Ten Heroes of the Year.
You can vote for him as your choice for Hero of the Year at CNNHeroes.com. The network will announce the winner at their annual televised award show December 6, and present the 2015 winner with $100,000 for continuing his or her good work.
A lonely, elderly gentleman’s phone call to a radio station turned him into a star, and put a youthful smile on his face.
Bill Palmer called into BBC Radio Solent in Southhampton, UK because he just wanted someone to talk to. The 95-year-old man’s wife had to go into a nursing home recently, and he had no one at home to keep him company.
Radio host Alex Dyke suggested they talk in person, and sent a taxi to Palmer’s house to pick him up and bring him to the studio.
When Palmer shared his story with listeners (listen to the full segment here), the phones lines “lit up” — as they say in the radio biz — and the gentleman had plenty of new friends wanting to talk to him.
The video clip below was posted on the station’s Facebook page and earned many positive comments.
“Well done, Alex,” Pamela Kynes posted. “What a truly heartwarming wonderful thing to do.”
“That brought a tear to my eye,” Tracy Riggs commented.
One caller offered to round up a ukulele band to play music for Palmer and several asked the station to give him a weekly slot on the air.
Palmer was overwhelmed by the outpouring of kindness, and while listeners couldn’t see the smile on his face in the studio, they sure heard it in his voice on the air.
(WATCH the BBC RadioSolent video below) — Photo: BBC Radio Solent, Facebook
Bill phoned BBC Radio Solent. He was upset, lonely and missing his wife.Alex decided to invite him in.We sent a cab to pick him up, have a listen to what happened next.
An online art movement is transforming fashion-obsessed dolls into confidence-boosting toys for young children everywhere.
Australian artist Sonja Singh kicked it off with her Tree Change Dolls.
Ever since she began rescuing Barbies, Disney princesses, and Bratz dolls from second-hand stores and repurposing them into make-up free “outdoorsy” characters, artists around the world have been following her lead.
Bobby Jean, an artist in Spokane, Washington, has decided to transform the heavily made-up Bratz dolls who don revealing outfits into companion characters for under-represented groups of kids.
In the video below, she creates a doll without hair in a hospital gown that could comfort a child during her chemotherapy sessions. She plans to auction the doll to raise money for a children’s cancer research hospital.
A Canadian artist named Wendy Tsao has been auctioning her reimagined dolls to raise money for charity as well.
She converts Bratz dolls into cultural role models like author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, and Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, as part of her Mighty Dolls art project.
Tsao wanted kids to have alternatives to fashion and fantasy role models.
“There are real-life people who are heroes, too, with inspiring stories of courage, intelligence, strength and uniqueness,” Tsao wrote online. “Could children learn about and be inspired by them through toys?”
Warrick Dunn delivered 64 touchdowns in his National Football League days, but he’s made 145 single parent families the biggest winners of his career.
Dunn started Homes for the Holidays right after he signed his first pro contract in 1997, designed to help single parent families realize the dream of home ownership. Last month, Xeniya McBroom and her daughter became the 145th family to move into a home thanks to Dunn.
McBroom had to take a financial management course to qualify for Dunn’s help and, although it isn’t free, she’s buying the house from Habitat for Humanity with a zero percent loan.
Dunn’s charity provided the $5,000 down payment to let McBroom and her daughter move in to their new home in Tampa, Florida. Without the help, home ownership would have been out of reach for her and the 144 other families Dunn has helped.
Homes for the Holidays was inspired by his mother, a single parent who raised him and five younger siblings but never got to own her own home.
The former running back for Atlanta and Tampa Bay thinks of her with every new homeowner he helps.
(WATCH Warrick Dunn Charities’ 150th family’s story below) — Photo: KTVT video
The “future” isn’t what it used to be for this famous pair of time travelers who landed in 2015, one more time. On their first trip, during the film Back to the Future II, there were flying cars, hoverboards, and the Chicago Cubs had won the World Series.
Actors Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd were met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation from the studio audience last night as they arose from their time traveling Delorean on the stage of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
The two reprised their roles as Marty McFly and Doc Brown on the perfect day: October 21, 2015 is the exact date the famous movie characters in 1985 chose to arrive in a futuristic Hill Valley in the wildly popular “Back to the Future” sequel.
The veteran actors Fox, 54, and Lloyd, who turns 77 today, took fans ‘back in time’ for the best ten minutes of laughter this current space-time continuum could offer.
Wait ‘til they hear the Cubs were eliminated in the play-offs.
(WATCH the Jimmy Kimmel video below) – Photo: Jimmy Kimmel video
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Only a mother would notice a need like this one and respond with such compassion.
As refugees from Syria continue to flow into Europe by the thousands, an American mom observed that luxuries like baby carriers and slings were scarce in scenes of fleeing families.
One crowdfunding campaign later, and 1400 baby carriers are being gifted to mothers seeking asylum in Greece.
Cristal Logothetis, a Californian who was once an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. herself, created the fundraising page to ask for used baby carriers or donations to buy more.
To date, more than a thousand donors have contributed $40,000, and the campaign has created a surge of donated baby carriers from mothers around the globe.
Come mid-December, a team of volunteers including Cristal will be distributing the carriers to refugee families around the Greek islands.
“Mothers have to walk hundreds of miles with babies and toddlers in their arms; a task that is physically strenuous to say the least,” says Cristal on the Indiegogo fundraising page. “Kos is only the beginning of a long and arduous trip for Syrian refugees, so we want to make sure their lives are a bit easier with baby carriers that will lessen the weight and free their arms!”
InStove also sent an 
