8/1 - Gabrielle Giffords Returns to Congress
8/2 – Principal Opens Food Pantry After Learning 10% of Her Students are Homeless and Hungry
"Milk!" the boy said. "Are you kidding? We're going to have milk!" Fresh vegetables, too, growing in the school garden.
Students in need stop by the Health Center after school, pick up one of the ordinary-looking waiting backpacks and fill it with food. The great thing about the bag is its ambiguity.
http://www.baystateparent.com/...
8/3 - Archaeologists Uncover Biblical Ruin Inside a Palestinian City in the West Bank
http://www.artdaily.com/...
8/4 – Most Original Boy Meets Girl Story – Message in a Bottle
A 10-year-old Oregon boy scribbled a note on binder paper, stuck it into a bottle and tossed it into the ocean. A year later and 2,000 miles away, a 9-year-old girl exploring a Hawaii shoreline found the bottle floating in a tide pool.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
8/5 - SJ Fire Chief Honors 8-Year-Old Pool Rescue Hero
He saved a 3 year old and her grandfather
http://www.ktvu.com/...
8/6 – Is It a Coat, Is it a Sleeping Bag, Is It a Way Out of Homelessness? Yes.
http://www.fastcompany.com/...
http://detroitempowermentplan.blogspot.com/
8/7 - UCLA summer academy aims to steer foster children toward college
The kids live on campus, study, go on outings and for participating, they get laptops, flip cams and four UC credits.
http://www.latimes.com/...
8/8 – Driving services help senior mobility without spending public money
They recruit a roster of drivers large enough to guarantee seniors rides 24 hours a day, seven days a week. One of ITN’s successful initiatives is to allow elders free rides if they are willing to donate their cars to the program.
http://www.itnamerica.org/
http://stateline.org/...
8/9 - Microfinance Effort Matches Tiny Lenders with Kids Who Yearn for College Worldwide
Although microfinancing usually raises funds for small businesses, the Seattle-based non-profit Vittana has been helping students around the world graduate from post-secondary schools by asking donors to pay for their tuition. Like the business loans, money for education can immediately steer a family out of poverty. And, so far, the Vittana record has been stellar.
http://www.vittana.org/
8/10 - Man Raises Money to Offer Busloads of Veggies to a Neighborhood Without Produce
Steve Casey bought a bus and spent four years raising the $50,000 to turn it into a produce market on wheels that travels to the people. The Fresh Moves program now visits six locations that are described as food deserts twice a week.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
8/11 - Huge Cancer Breakthrough Cures 2 of 3 Leukemia Patients
New leukemia therapy destroys cancer by turning blood cells into "assassins"
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
8/12 – 98-Year-old Becomes First Woman Ever to Win 10th Degree Black Belt in Judo
http://www.sfgate.com/...
8/13 - Bears saved from forced vodka drinking
Ukraine's Environment Minister vowed on Wednesday to free all bears kept in restaurants for entertainment purposes and often forced to drink alcohol.
Go Bears!
http://old.news.yahoo.com/...
8/14 – From Lay-Off to Pay-Off
Workers Win Lottery After Getting Laid Off
http://www.cbc.ca/...
8/15 - Firefighters Rescue 1,000-Year-Old Tree From Drought
Just outside of Rockport, Texas, stands an ancient Live Oak affectionately known as 'the Big Tree'. For well over 1,000 years, that towering tree has offered its long, cool shadow for weary locals to wade in -- and now they're returning the favor. After managing to survive centuries of hurricanes, fires, floods, lumberjacks and wars, the Big Tree is getting a helping hand to live through its latest challenge: drought. Volunteer firefighters, many of whom played among the Big Tree's branches as children, have begun watering it with their hoses in hopes that it will be around for their children's children as well.
http://www.treehugger.com/...
8/16 - Racing Team Helps Boy Fulfill Dream: A New Bionic Hand
The downside? It works so well, he has "to do more chores."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
8/17 – MIT Brings Free Learning to Anyone with a Cell Phone
I've taken a few of their free courses on my computer, but they've moved beyond that now, offering an education to anyone with a cell phone.
http://ocw.mit.edu/...
8/18 – Hero Flooded with Donations
A heroic New Mexico man who bravely rescued a 6-year-old girl from the clutches of a kidnapper is proof no good deed goes unnoticed. Now his two girls will get a college education.
http://www.nydailynews.com/...
8/19 – A Teenager is About to Change the Way We Collect Sunlight
On a winter hiking trip, he noticed a pattern in the tangled mess of branches above him, took photos of them and began to investigate "whether there is a secret formula in tree design and whether the purpose of the spiral pattern is to collect sunlight better."
He applied the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical principal found in nature, and arranged a pattern of solar panels.
http://www.amnh.org/...
8/20 – Black Lab 'Beau' can count, add and subtract — but don't ask him about pi
He counts, he adds and subtracts, he can do some division and has memorized square roots.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
8/21 – Art Blossoming Across Cairo Since Egyptian Uprising
A flowering of Egyptian art since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak is adding color to the capital Cairo and an upswing in business at the city's galleries, as the pride, anger, and optimism of a long-frustrated generation plays out on canvas.
Much of the street art reflects pride in the movement that united Egyptians across class and religion to put an end to decades of calcified politics and a gaping rich-poor divide.
http://safarkhan.com/...
http://uk.reuters.com/...
8/22 – Martin Luther King Memorial Opens on Washington Mall
http://www.mlkmemorial.org/
8/23 – Keep Aaron Cutting
Aaron Biber lost his wife last year. Born in Cable Street, he built up his businesses in Tottenham High Street over several decades and is a popular figure in the local community.
He arrived at his shop on Sunday morning to find the place smashed up, with windows broken and hairdryers looted. Even his kettle had been stolen.
http://keepaaroncutting.blogspot.com/
8/24 – Waste Water Makes Electricity Through Batteries
http://www.nsf.gov/...
8/25 – Last Surviving Ellis Island Ferry Transformed Into Historic Houseboat
Click to watch a beautiful slideshow.
http://inhabitat.com/...
8/26 – All of Canada Touched by Politician's Last Words
Facing Death With Optimism
Just before Jack Layton died, he wrote a letter to the Canadian people expressing his hopes for the future and showing optimism even in the face of death. His last words have resonated throughout the nation.
Click to read his inspiring letter.
http://www.cbc.ca/...
8/27 – Like it for Good - Greener social media: Turning Likes into Forests
A new website makes it super easy to help save the world, a little bit at a time.
How it works: each week the website posts up a new offering which pairs a green sponsor to a positive environmental action.
http://www.likeitforgood.com/
8/28 – Hunger Strike of 74-Year-old Activist Persuades India to Tame Corruption
An Indian reform activist agreed Saturday to end an 11-day hunger strike after Parliament expressed nonbinding support for parts of his anti-graft plan, ending a drama that had deeply embarrassed a government plagued by corruption scandals.
The 74-year-old Anna Hazare had demanded sweeping legislation to create a government watchdog, but said Parliament's move was enough to persuade him to begin eating.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
8/29 – Happy Feet Headed Home
http://www.thestate.com/...
8/30 – Gift of invention: Boy with Asperger's syndrome attends IUN med school workshop
He is about half the age of other students in the room. Yet 13-year-old Noah Egler is completely in his element, wearing powder blue medical scrubs and answering tough questions with absolute enthusiasm.
The boy was invited to the summer program, usually reserved for medical students, because of his keen passion for science. Noah was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism, when he was young.
Getting the chance to discuss bionic limbs with other scientists turned out to be the perfect place for him to focus and use his gifts.
http://www.nwitimes.com/...
8/31 – The Benefits of Adding Love to School Curriculum
As a social studies teacher in a Boston public high school for 14 years, Stephen Banno has developed a curriculum called the “Love Course,” that present "ancient cultural wisdoms coupled with the latest discoveries in modern science to address issues concerning love in our contemporary lives."
The class focuses on personal happiness, good relationships, how to flourish with others, friendship, marriage, the love of the environment, altruism, agapic love, and “random acts of kindness.”
Students have reported that in small ways, they have transformed themselves, their friends, and the school around them.
The importance of this course is best summed up by Maya Angelou: “I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Spreading love, kindness, happiness and altruism will go a long way to promote the changes we all wish to see in the world. And, as I remind my students, “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” (George Eliot)
http://odewire.com/...