“Luna” was only a week old when found lost and alone on a California beach. Weighing just two pounds at the time, she was taken in by Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, where people have been teaching her the ways of the world — an otter’s world – how to swim, how to groom, and how to eat.
How to be adorable, however, comes naturally.
As part of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Otter Program, six to eight animal care experts will give her round-the-clock attention until she’s eight months old.
“Our animal care team is teaching the pup how to be an otter,” said Tim Binder, Vice President of Animal Collections at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.
Over the past 25 years, nearly 700 sea otters—adults and pups—have come through the program, which rescues, treats and releases injured otters; raises and releases stranded pups through a surrogacy program; provides care for sea otters that can’t return to the wild; and conducts scientific research.
Luna is on track to graduate with a diploma in ottering.
The largest population of mountain gorillas in the world has grown to four times the size of its once-dwindling number, as poaching has become virtually non-existent among the magnificent apes of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nearly 1,000 gorillas live in the park now, quadruple the number from 30 years ago, and a very special organization is to thank for the population boom.
Set up by governments and conservationist in 2005 to totally overhaul the failing park’s management, The Virunga Foundation battled the root causes of poaching by creating jobs and doing what governments normally do, like building new schools, businesses, and a $22 million hydroelectric project that will provide electricity and 1200 local jobs over the next three years.
The foundation also raised the salaries of honest park rangers to unprecedented levels — $200 a month, eight times the average salary in Congo – to ensure loyalty among the workers.
The changes led to a dramatic decline in poaching and since 2007, only one gorilla has been killed in the park.
The gorillas themselves have contributed to greater peace in the region, too.
The Virunga park’s bordering countries — Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda — have long mistrusted each other, but agree on one thing – the value of the gorillas and the hundreds of millions of tourism dollars brought in every year.
Working together to protect gorillas has led to cooperation on other issues that will bring peace not only to the apes but the humans in the three nations, as well.
An elderly South Carolina woman didn’t realize her house was on fire until two teenage neighbors pulled her out of the burning building.
Logan Campbell and step-brother James Brown were startled by an exploding electrical transformer in the middle of the night. When they went to check it out, they realized it had set fire to their neighbor Pearl Mabry’s house.
“I’ve known her my whole life, and she’s helped my grandma raise me. I’d do anything for her,” Brown told WBTW News.
What he and Campbell did was race into the burning house.
The 89-year-old Mabry was still asleep as the building was going up in flames all around them. She said she wasn’t even sure why the were helping her out of the house until she was outside.
It helps her stand out in the crowd every Monday when she serves a hot meal to the homeless in town, which she’s been doing for years.
Murphy says she was out of her “comfort zone” and nervous about asking the manager at a fried chicken restaurant for unsold food when she first started.
“I’m trying to figure out how to ask him,” Murphy told WGHP news. “‘There are these people in this camp, and I wanted to see if — do you ever have any leftover chicken?’”
Blurting out that question got the manager onboard with her idea. She’s been picking up chicken from that restaurant ever since – and more restaurants have started donating their unsold food as well.
And with that, getting over a case of butterflies in her own stomach helped Murphy put food in hundreds of hungry ones.
(WATCH the WGHP News video) — Photo: WGHP video – Story Tip: Kelly Harrington
United Parcel Service (UPS) has committed to buying 46 million gallons of renewable diesel made from waste oils and animal fats, delivering on its promise to cut petroleum-based fuel use by 12% in the next two years.
Renewable diesel produces up to 90% less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional diesel. That means the deal could prevent more than 51,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.
The UPS decision comes as other companies are looking for alternatives to oil based fuel. United Airlines recently invested $30 million into a company that makes aviation biofuels and FedEx is planning to use at least three million gallons of renewable jet fuel every year starting in 2017.
(READ more at the New York Times) – Photo: frankieleon, CC
On July 2, Cecil, a 13-year-old male Southwest African lion, was killed in a hunting expedition in Zimbabwe.
A main attraction at the Hwange National Park, Cecil was shot with a cross bow by an American dentist who was led by a licensed local game-hunter.
Whether he believed he had the proper permit or not, people around the world were horrified and began signing a Care2 petition, which led to significant victories for animal rights groups, as well as creative tributes to the lion.
Before the petition gained traction, most people outside Zimbabwe had no idea that Cecil existed.
Within 24 hours, the black-maned cat’s death was an international news topic and the petition has since gained more than one million signatures.
“The petition demanding justice for Cecil was the fastest growing petition Care2 has ever seen in our 17 year history. It absolutely took off and this topic clearly resonated with people worldwide,” said Care2 CEO Randy Paynter.
As a result, trophy hunting was officially suspended in Cecil’s home country, Zimbabwe.
Additionally, Zimbabwe has suspended the hunting of lions, leopards and elephants in the area where Cecil was killed, until further notice, the country’s wildlife authority said Saturday.
On Friday, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez announced that he will be introducing a bill in Congress, the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large Animal Trophies Act (CECIL), to curb the sport killing by Americans of species that are proposed to be listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
Other good news has announced by three major airlines, who have banned the transportation of buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion, or rhino “trophies.”
American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta have all implemented this new policy, effective immediately.
Heartwarming tributes have surfaced as well, like the TY Beanie Baby company’s new Cecil the Lion, created in memory of the beloved cat.
Ty has pledged 100% of profits from the original sale to WildCRU, the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit of University of Oxford in England.
“Hopefully, this special Beanie Baby will raise awareness for animal conservation and give comfort to all saddened by the loss of Cecil,” said Ty Warner.
Also on the topic, Aaron Blaise, an animator who worked on Disney’s Lion King, created a speed paint tribute video in honor of Cecil.
“As you may be able to tell I am a HUGE animal lover and it drives me crazy when I see these beautiful creatures destroyed for no good reason,” Blaise wrote.
“In fact, I’ve decided to get personally involved and hopefully our efforts can help educate people and prevent these horrible things from happening in the future. It’s not much, but hopefully it will make people think.”
When the Smithsonian Institution took the small step of launching a Kickstarter campaign to save the spacesuit Neil Armstrong wore on the first moonwalk, there was a giant leap of donations.
The museum reached its half-million dollar goal to “Reboot the Suit” in just five days — so it raised the goal to $700,000 to also restore the suit Alan Shepard wore (pictured left) on another historic mission–America’s first manned space flight.
The campaign is the largest project any museum has tried on the crowdfunding site. It is also a way for the Smithsonian to let individuals play a part in preserving a piece of history.
It turns out that spacesuits are pretty delicate — they’re breaking down from age. It’s been 46 years since Armstrong first set his boot on the moon’s surface and 54 years since Shepard’s flight.
The money will pay to repair the suits (pictured right), put them on pubic display, and preserve them for years to come. The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Alison Mitchell tells Good News Network it means creating climate-controlled display cases and custom-built mannequins to support the suits.
Eventually, they’ll be the centerpiece of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s “Destination Moon” exhibition.
She says the donations will also pay for creating a 3-D scan “of the spacesuits, helmets and gloves and the production of an online 3-D model.”
The Smithsonian will also research the best ways to preserve the suits, create a webcast about them, and publish work on the cleaning and preservation of spacesuits.
While the Smithsonian gets some federal money, it doesn’t pay for all the Institution’s projects. They have always relied on donations for major restoration projects but this was the Smithsonian’s first effort at crowdfunding.
More than $620,000 given by nearly 8,000 people provided the lift-off to their Kickstarter campaign, which still has 13 days to go.
(WATCH the Kickstarter video or READ more at the Washington Post) — Photos: Smithsonian Institution; NASA
Launch This Story To Your Friends, Share It Below…
At Christine Quinn’s Pennsylvania wedding in May, one of her bridesmaids was her 89-year-old grandmother.
Nana Betty was hesitant at first, worried that she wasn’t as “young and pretty” as the other bridesmaids—but the sassy senior happily donned the same dress as the other ladies in the bridal party–and even joined them in the party bus on the big day.
“She had the entire wedding party laughing with her words of wisdom and funny comments throughout the day,” the bride told Huffington Post. “It was amazing.”
Shelter residents are harvesting organic produce to nourish themselves while growing their skills for an eventual return to the workforce.
The Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless started its rooftop garden in 2009 to teach homeless people about urban farming and organic food production.
Now the gardeners harvest from 80 beds that grow various greens, vegetables and fruits. The scope of its sustainable agriculture initiative includes beekeeping, with 1,300 bees for pollination and producing honey, and collecting rainwater to irrigate the crops.
Shelter resident-volunteers tend to the garden as part a partnership with Truly Living Well – a training program that also distributes fresh produce to farmer’s markets and local restaurants.
In addition to harvesting food for the homeless, the program provides volunteers with training in garden planning, plant selection, food storage and a whole ‘crop’ of invaluable skills to prepare them for careers in urban farming.
After a four-year-old lost his iPad to a thief, he soon discovered that he had a former boxing champion in his corner.
When Howard Davis, Jr. and his wife saw the video of a boy in Tamarac, Florida, getting the gadget snatched from his hands, they decided to stop by to provide relief, and a little lesson.
Davis, who won a gold medal for boxing at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, says that when you get knocked down, you have to get right back up.
The little boy, identified only as Alejandro, is clearly elated, and once he’s old enough to understand how big a deal it is for a complete stranger, and an Olympic champion, to have helped, we’re sure that iPad will be all the more valuable….even 10 generations of new iPads later.
(READ more at the Sun Sentinel) – Photo: WTVJ video
After fleeing her homeland almost 25 years ago, Fadumo Dayib has decided she wants to be president of Somalia.
“I’m generally an optimist,” Ms. Dayib told Good News Network.
She certainly needs to be, since she’s the first female candidate in the nation and going up against some fiery opponents in a male-dominated country.
Her life story provides reason for optimism, too. She’s beaten enormous odds during her 42 years.
She learned to read at age 14, an impressive feat for any Somalian woman – and used that skill to earn a master’s degree in health care and public health, and a second one in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Dayib and her family left as refugees fleeing Somalia’s civil war when she was just a child, living briefly in Kenya before settling in Finland.
She returned to Somalia briefly as part of a U.N. mission to build clinics and provide health care in 2005, but left the country again when the U.N. deemed it was no longer safe to stay.
Always in the back of her mind, Dayib, now a mother of four, wanted to heal the wounds in her homeland and knew the changes would have to come from the top—which is why, having graduated from Harvard this spring, she is running next year to become the first woman president of her native country.
“Somalia needs a multidimensional approach to tackling issues,” Dayib told Good News Network. “But everything boils down to tackling poverty.”
Somalia is still recovering from more than 20 years of civil war and its aftermath, and the country lacks many basic services; but Dayib believes Somalia is poised for a brighter future.
This summer, U.S. President Barack Obama visited neighboring Ethiopia, another African nation rebounding after decades of strife and famine—Dayib herself points to Liberia and Rwanda as examples of African nations that have rebuilt themselves after civil war.
All three countries have been torn apart by factional infighting, but Liberiapo and Rwanda have been restoring civil order and a new government. She now sees Somalia following in their footsteps – establishing in 2012 its first parliament in two decades, and, next year, holding it’s first democratic presidential election since 1967.
She sees health care, sanitation, education and jobs as the building blocks to eliminating poverty and laying a new foundation for the nation. Though a 67% unemployment rate may be overwhelming, she believes Somalis could benefit greatly through access to micro-finance — small loans that help build simple farming, fishing or other businesses so people can lift themselves out of poverty.
Dayib also wants to end terrorism by inviting militants to the peace table.
“We can’t get out of the hole we’re in until we admit to the role we’ve played in the state the country is in,” she said.
Digging Somalia out of poverty will indeed require Somalis, long divided by internal fighting, to lay down weapons and work together.
Dayib wants a truth commission, similar to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up in 1996 following apartheid, which allowed victims of violence to tell their stories and the perpetrators who listened to be granted amnesty for their role. The Commission, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, healed many of the deep-seated wounds between whites and blacks in that country.
Boundlessly courageous, Ms. Dayib is unshaken by death threats from militants angry over the idea of a woman running for office. Despite the threats and painful memories of this place, Dayib believes she must return to heal the country’s pain while it still suffers.
“I’m a dreamer,” she said. “I dream of what Somalia could be like.”
A dreamer and optimist might be the last kind of person you’d expect to see running for president in the Horn of Africa, or it might be exactly what it takes to stay in the race.
(WATCH the video interview below and READ more at the Harvard Gazette) – Photo from Harvard.edu
On her first Father’s Day without her dad, 13-year-old Saige Seibold and her mother Sandy decided to “send a message to Heaven.”
They were stunned by the sudden reply.
John Seibold had passed away just a month earlier, and his wife and daughter (pictured left) visited his grave to release a balloon carrying their message.
The note asked whoever found it to contact Saige and “make her day.”
After returning home to Cement, Oklahoma, 25 miles away from the cemetery, Saige took a walk in the pasture where she used to spend time with her dad. There, caught on a barbed-wire fence, was the balloon and her note.
“I think I started crying,” Sandy told KFOR News. “It felt like a message from him.”
(WATCH the KFOR News video) – Photos: KFOR video
Launch This Sweet Story To Your Family And Friends…
Caught on cop cam: officer risks the wrath of a scared skunk to help free him from a yogurt container.
While Rochester, Michigan Officer Merlin Taylor was on patrol, his squad car pulled up near a skunk running in circles with his head stuck in a yogurt container.
Poor little guy—he was just hungry.
Officer Taylor boldly attempted to get the lid off of the skunk’s snout, risking exactly what happened at the end.
A thousand apologies go out to Good News Network fans who experienced our deluge of notifications that accidentally went out on August 4.
We had a problem when deactivating a WordPress plugin and so had to secretly republish all 366 On This Day in History columns.
Unfortunately, my tech team and I neglected to remember that notifications would be sent out for each one of these columns. Whomp.
Even though nothing looked different on our website, if you had previously signed up to receive notifications whenever a new article was published, you were inundated with notices on computers and devices. Again, we are so embarrassed and sorry about that.
If You Want To End Post Notifications…
Here’s how to turn these off. It isn’t something we can do on our website, because it is within your browser.
Go to Apple System Preferences
Go to Notifications
Scroll to find Good News Network and click to open
Change your display options or unsubscribe there
How To Resubscribe to Notifications…
From time to time, notifications may suddenly stop appearing. Though not normal, you can usually resolve this by resetting Safari.
Here is how you can do it:
– Open Safari browser
– In the upper-left menu, click on “Safari” -> “Reset Safari”
– Make sure all boxes are checked and click “Reset”
– Close Safari
– Select Finder, and from the top-left menu click “Go” -> “Go to folder”
– In the box that opens, enter the following: “~/Library/Safari”
– Delete the file “Configurations.plist.signed”
– Delete the file “UserNotificationPermissions.plist”
– Delete the file “LastSession.plist”
– Delete the file “History.plist”
– Open the folder RemoteNotifications and delete all the files within
– Open your trash can and “Empty” the trash
– Open Safari and visit www.goodnewsnetwork.org a couple times and you should see the prompt asking if you would like to subscribe for notifications.
Scientists have finally discovered why ovarian cancer frequently comes back after patients receive chemotherapy—and they’ve also found a way to potentially eliminate the recurrence rate for half of patients who have the disease.
A five-year study at the University of California at Los Angeles found that coupling chemotherapy with an experimental drug called Birinapant greatly improved survivability in laboratory tissue.
At the core of the problem is the way doctors test for ovarian cancer. One of the things they look for is a protein called CA125. Chemotherapy targets cells containing the protein and that knocks out the cancer.
The UCLA researchers found other cells, without the protein, that grow 700 times faster than the cells chemotherapy targets, allowing ovarian cancer to recur in more than 80% of people treated with chemotherapy alone.
“We found that these cells were like little time bombs, hiding from the chemotherapy and then later initiating tumor growth,” Dr. Sanaz Memarzadeh, a senior author of the study said.
Birinapant targets the cancer cells that do not contain the protein, and when coupled with chemotherapy, the combined treatment attacks the cancer on both fronts.
The researchers plan clinical trials on actual patients next.
Not everyone with ovarian cancer would benefit from this particular combination of therapies. The good news is these two types of cells are present in about 50% of ovarian cancer patients – who would be candidates for this dual treatment.
Researchers are looking at other biomarkers to see if they’ve been missing still other hidden cancer “time bombs.”
According to Cosmopolitan’s August issue, Fanny Packs are, once again, the “in” thing.
This is great news for GNN’s founder, Geri, who loved hers back in the day.
But recently, long since having ditched her clunky fanny pack, she found herself headed to an all-day concert festival and needed to literally go buy pants just for the cargo pockets. She had not gotten the memo about the fanny pack as an acceptable accessory.
Pitched as a great hands-free way to carry your cell phone, keys, and credit card to the gym or yoga, the spandex wrap pulls on over your hips and fits snuggly on top of pants or leggings.
If you’re heading to a concert, music festival, etc, and want to keep your hands free, this is a great option—you can probably tuck a water bottle into the band itself, too.
The product even has zipper pocket for a passport, and is made in America. Prices start around $26.00 on Amazon.
Who can honestly say they landed their dream job right out of college?
Kyle Jean-Baptiste can–and he’s making history twice by doing it.
Right after graduation, the 21-year-old tenor was cast in the Broadway revival of “Les Misérables” playing the roles of Constable and Courfeyrac. He was also cast as an understudy for the iconic role of Jean Valjean.
On July 23, Ramin Karimloo, who normally plays Valjean, gave Jean-Baptiste the chance to step into the spotlight in his absence.
In doing so, Jean-Baptiste made history as the youngest actor—and the first African-American—to perform the part on Broadway.
“Valjean has been a dream role for me ever since I got involved with music theatre,” the 6-foot-2 Baldwin Wallace University graduate told Cleveland.com. “I zoned out for a second because I couldn’t believe that I was in a Broadway show…in my dream show.”
Jean-Baptiste will continue as understudy for Karimloo, and then for Alfie Boe when he takes over the leading role in September.
The musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel about the survival of the human spirit premiered on “The Great White Way” 30 years ago, and it is the longest running musical in the world.
(WATCH him strut his stuff in this inspiring clip below, or READ more at Cleveland.com) – Photo: Kyle Jean-Baptiste Facebook
Take me out to the garrr-den! Take me out to the greens!
Forget peanuts and Cracker Jacks. A handful of Major League Baseball teams have started ‘farming the back 40’—and, in some cases, their sun-drenched stadium rooftops—to add healthier food choices to their concession menus while improving their operations’ sustainability.
In the process, these high-profile urban farms in Boston, Denver, San Francisco and San Diego are raising consciousness right along with their crops.
Take Boston’s Fenway Farms, for example, the newest of the four Major League growers. Its 1,800 square feet of raised beds are situated on the rooftop of the park’s front office, making them highly visible to most of the 37,000-some fans who regularly turn out for home games and other events at Boston’s legendary stadium.
Photos via Green City Growers on Facebook
“It’s wild. We’re really, really, really excited about this,” Jessie Banhazl, founder of Green City Growers, told The Christian Science Monitor as her company was ramping up Fenway Farms’ operation. “This particular project is the coolest and most widespread reach that we’ve ever seen with an urban agriculture project.”
Chris Knight, the Red Sox’s manager of facility planning and services, agreed. “We have such a platform here at this level of sports and at Fenway Park,” he said. “This is one way we can make an impact for the environment and nutrition.”
This melding of gardening and baseball all started in a pitchers’ bullpen. In 2012, the stadium chef for the San Diego Padres persuaded the team’s head groundskeeper to plant a dozen hot pepper and tomato plants in the Petco Park bullpen. The following year, the Colorado Rockies installed a 600-square-foot kitchen garden near Gate A at Coors Field in Denver. Then last year, the San Francisco Giants put in The Garden at AT&T Park, a 4,320-square-foot dining pavilion serving produce grown in several nearby gardens and a high-yield vertical farm.
Will the trend continue into other MLB cities? Time will tell. But Green City Growers’ Banhazl has already glimpsed the potential influence that Boston’s ballpark farm may have on just plain folks. She watched on opening day as countless kids ran up to the railing to see the growing beds for the first time.
“They’d say, ‘Oh my God, the Red Sox have a farm?’” she recalled. “‘We should do this, Mom!’”
Knock it Out of the Park by Sharing With Baseball Pals… (below) – Check out Green City Growers on FB
Not all formal state dinners have to be stuffy affairs with stiff toasts and stiffer collars. This one gave politicians and dignitaries a chance to move their hips to a traditional folk dance which is currently rocking African nightclubs.
U.S. President Barack Obama joined Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta to perform the traditional Lipala dance — with the help of the country’s hottest pop band, Sauti Sol — during a state dinner, July 25
“I looked to my right and saw the [Kenyan] President,” singer Bien Aime says in the band’s video below. “I looked to my left and saw President Obama. And I almost fainted.”
President Obama isn’t the first American leader to show off his moves on the continent. President George W. Bush got his groove on to music in South Africa on a 2008 visit.
“The Lipala dance is actually a dance that has been practiced by the Luhya tribe for the longest time ever,” band member Delvin Mudigi told the BBC.
Sauti Sol has been popularizing the traditional folk dance by mixing it with popular music, reports the BBC. Now that two presidents have been seen nationwide dancing to it, a hit was born.
Leonard Lasek set out some old books to give away, but didn’t realize one of those books — Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” — was a prized possession of his wife, Katie, until it was gone. Desperate to find it, he posted flyers around his Brooklyn, New York neighborhood.
“The book is extremely important to my wife.” The flyers read. “It was a keepsake from her mother and is irreplaceable,” he wrote. Neighbors shared photos of the flyers on Twitter and Instagram to help spread the word.
Ms. Blume found out about Lasek’s lament and started looking herself–and asking how she could contact him to offer help.
When they finally connected on Twitter, Blume offered to mail him an autographed copy of the lost book.
Oh no tragic! Will send signed copy. Not the same, I know. Let's hope it saves the marriage. Not sure I can find that cover but will try.
How to be adorable, however, comes naturally.
Whether he believed he had the proper permit or not, people around the world were horrified and began signing a Care2 petition, which led to significant victories for animal rights groups, as well as creative tributes to the lion.
Other good news has announced by three major airlines, who have banned the transportation of buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion, or rhino “trophies.”
