Daily good news about people, places, things, business, sports, technology and more...no wars, violence, gossip and car chases here - just the GOOD NEWSZ!
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Real life "Blind Side" to culminate in the Super Bowl for these two players who have overcome tough odds to reach football's world stage...
Patrick Willis, the San Francisco 49ers superstar linebacker, rose from from a life of poverty and into the ranks of great NFL players.
Michael Oher, starting offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, literally lived out the life depicted in the movie ‘The Blind Side’.
After spending years as teammates together at Ole Miss, these two young men will face off against one another in Super Bowl XLVII. ABC World News interviewed each of them, both at Super Bowl XLVII Media Day and in Willis’ home town.
ABC also spoke to their adoptive mothers, to get a glimpse into the reactions of these women’s friends, family and neighbors.
Kid shows off his moves dancing to "Its Tricky" during a timeout in an NBA game...
So, we think this kid can dance.
Usually, children are humiliated when their parents dance in public. But in this clip where a little boy was caught breaking it down on the "old school dance cam" at a Pacers vs. Rockets NBA game, his mom appears slightly embarrassed by her son's killer moves. Oh, how the tables have turned.
On the other hand, it's safe to assume that she is amused and very proud because her kid ROCKS. And, if he wants to continue his '80s dance party, we have the perfect partner for him.
(Huffington Post)
These pranksters do some good to help feed the homeless...
When we read the title of this video some alarm bells went off: what kind of monsters would prank homeless people? But as it turns out, pranksters Tom Mabe, Roman Atwood and Dennis Roady had something much sweeter up their sleeves. The "prank" itself was to concoct a story that would get a restaurant to deliver pizza to a homeless couple sitting on the corner. But the goal was apparently to go viral doing something nice for someone.
Not exactly what we think of when we think of prank videos, but we'll take it. There are certainly more involved ways to help the homeless, but if "feeding the homeless" becomes the new "planking", we'd call that a great big win. Nice work, guys.
(Huffington Post)
26 students and faculty from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn., will sing at the Super Bowl
Twenty-six students and faculty from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., will sing America the Beautiful during the Super Bowl XLVIIpregame show, according to NFLspokesman Brian McCarthy (via USA Today).
The announcement comes after 20 students and six adults were tragically shot and killed at the school on Dec. 14.
The students and faculty will perform before Alicia Keys sings the National Anthem on Sunday in what will undoubtedly be an emotional moment for everyone watching.
Coastal and other high risk property owners in MA have more choices for insurance coverage with new competition driving prices down
Competition in the state’s car insurance market has yielded an unexpected benefit: Thousands of residents who once had to buy expensive home coverage from the Massachusetts FAIR Plan are increasingly able to find policies through other insurers, saving them hundreds of dollars a year on premiums.
The FAIR Plan, known as the insurer of last resort, provides home insurance in high-risk areas, including neighborhoods that have high crime rates or sit perilously close to the ocean. Home insurance companies have traditionally been reluctant to do business in such locations.
Seniors putting their work ethic, talents and knowledge to good use helping others at ReServe Inc.
Since high-tech entrepreneur Alan Greenfield retired, he has filled his days with trips, dance classes, and volunteer work. Yet the engineer with a degree from MIT is most excited about his new $10-an-hour job helping low-income families file their tax returns and maximize their refunds.
“Help when you can, that’s my personal philosophy,” said Greenfield, 65. And it was “nice to find something that paid a little bit of money, too.”
A special service for some very special people - limo rides to the hospital for kids with cancer.
Sometimes, we really do entertain angels unaware. Michael Fischer is one. Several years ago he came up with a way to bring a little hope to cancer-stricken children by providing limo rides for those whose parents didn't have a car, when it was time for then to take their cancer treatments. The idea is called Drops of Hope.
Fischer, who not only is the founder of the organization, but is head chauffeur, told me the idea for Drops of Hope came to him after he remembered that as a child, he had a friend who died of cancer.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Indian girl, Chanda Zaveri, flees arranged marriage, heads to Boston and becomes a millionaire - "If you want something and you don’t have ifs or buts, you will get it," she added. "No matter what."
An Indian girl who took a blind leap to escape an arranged marriage has returned home a millionaire.
In 1984, 17-year-old Chanda Zaveri met a couple on Park Street in Calcutta who offered her a different fate from "most Marwari girls" of her age, according to India's Telegraph newspaper. If Zaveri found herself in Boston, they said, she would have their help.
"I had no money, just a pair of diamond earrings," said Zaveri, whose parents had arranged her marriage. "I sold it, got myself tickets on British Airways and landed in Boston."
New African President Joyce Banda auctions jet to feed those in need in her country
In her latest effort to improve relations with donors, Malawi’s president has decided to auction off her 14-seat jet and use the funds to help the poor.
Joyce Banda, Africa's second female president, has never stepped foot onto the presidential jet that her predecessor bought –- a decadent purchase that outraged donors enough to cut back significantly on their funding, the BBC reports. Now,Banda is auctioning the jet, which cost about $13.3 million five years ago, and will use the proceeds to provide basic needs for her constituents who need it most.
Coca-Cola's new ad campaign "Let's Go Crazy" featuring random acts of kindness...
Giving out $1,000 to strangers is a bit bananas. But that’s the exact level of crazy Coke sought out to feature in its campaign promoting random acts of kindness.
The company’s latest ad from its “Let’s Go Crazy” campaign follows around a real-life do-gooder who high-fives each person she passes and another man who builds swings across San Francisco because “we forget to laugh as we grow older.”
The ad also shows a man doling out $1,000 to complete strangers who can’t stop smiling and the “Secret Gardener” in Cape Town who plants trees in the middle of the night in places that are need of some cheering up.
“People call me ‘crazy’ and ‘weird’ and ‘strange,’" she said in her video profile. “But it’s cool. I like it.”
(Huffington Post)
83 year old homeless veteran receives new boots from warmhearted police officer
EL PASO, Texas, The temperatures may have dropped below freezing Thursday night, but the warmest part in the city was created by the kind actions of one of El Paso's finest at the Lowe's Home Improvement store in far east El Paso.
Useful tips to save on your families monthly cell phone bill...
U.S. families spend an average of $139 a month on cellphone
usage — or $1,668 a year — up from $127 a month in 2009, according to J.D.
Power and Associates. And according to Validas, a company that helps decipher
mobile phone bills for companies, 80 percent of us are paying our cellular
providers for services we don't even use.
That's extra money going toward text messages you don't send
or minutes you don't use. Of course, the Verizons and AT&Ts of the world
aren't likely to be forthcoming about that, but Validas' Vera service will.
Americans have a tremendous amount of waste when it comes to food - here are some tips to make your groceries last longer
ABC News’ Amy Robach reports:
Rebecca Dickinson’s food bill amounts to approximately $300 a week and more than $1,400 a month.
It’s a significant bill and challenge for the wife and stay-at-home mother of two who makes breakfast, packs school lunches and cooks dinner four times a week for her family. But how much of that food goes to waste?
To find out, ABC News’ “Real Money” team followed the Morristown, N.J., family for a week with cameras set up in the refrigerator and the pantry. The family’s trash was even weighed to see what they bought in the grocery store, what they made for meals and what they threw away.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Doctors and engineers at Mass General Hopital help to develop tiny camera in a clear capsule that patients swallow instead of being sedated
You can get an X-ray to see your bones, an MRI to see your brain, and a CT scan to see virtually everything else. But getting a glimpse of the gastrointestinal tract (the esophagus, stomach, and intestines) is a little more invasive. Endoscopes have been able to provide doctors with a picture of their patients' insides, but they have their limitations: For instance, the person performing the endoscopy needs extensive training on guiding the camera down the patient's throat. It's also a time-intensive procedure that requires the patient to be sedated.
A group of doctors and engineers working at both Ninepoint Medical and Massachusetts General Hospital developed a new endoscope that gets around these hurdles by thinking small. As reported in a recent study in Nature Medicine, they miniaturized the endoscope to fit the imaging equipment into a clear capsule patients can swallow.
A group of doctors and engineers working at both Ninepoint Medical and Massachusetts General Hospital developed a new endoscope that gets around these hurdles by thinking small. As reported in a recent study in Nature Medicine, they miniaturized the endoscope to fit the imaging equipment into a clear capsule patients can swallow.
Minor league baseball player making a major difference to our troops by sending 300 baseball gloves overseas.
Vance Albitz, a 24-year-old minor league shortstop in the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization, showed his support for American soldiers abroad by sending them baseball gloves and balls.
“I read where the soldiers over there get lonely and bored,” Albitz said to ESPN last week. Thinking of how he played with the Memphis Red-Birds last season, he said, ”I feel that way sometimes, you know? New town, new team all the time. And I’m just playing baseball. These guys are putting their lives on the line for us. I just thought somebody ought to thank them for it.”
The idea came to Albitz when he read an article in which a soldier was asked what he would most like to have sent to him and answered, “Two gloves and a ball."
Soldier who lost four limbs gets a double arm transplant.
On Facebook, he describes himself as a "wounded
warrior...very wounded."
Brendan Marrocco was the first soldier to survive losing all
four limbs in the Iraq War, and doctors revealed Monday that he's received a
double-arm transplant.
Those new arms "already move a little," he tweeted
a month after the operation.
Marrocco, a 26-year-old New Yorker, was injured by a
roadside bomb in 2009. He had the transplant Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital
in Baltimore, his father said Monday.
Quick thinking 9 year old saves her mom from diabetic attack while driving.
A fast thinking 9-year-old Illinois girl was able to help guide her mother to safety after the woman suffered a diabetic attack while driving at speeds of up to 70 mph.
Jennifer Sheridan, 42, was driving her daughter Aleksandra to McDonald’s in Frankfort, Ill., after the two had attended a high school basketball game on the evening of Jan. 18. Sheridan, who has type 2 diabetes, had a diabetic attack when her blood sugar suddenly dropped. She told ABCNews.com that she was not aware of what was happening.
An everyday hero that helps US Veterans in their last moments...sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference.
ST. PETERSBURG --
After years of serving their country, members of America's military can receive care from nurses and doctors at St. Petersburg's Bay Pines Veterans' Hospital.
When the end comes to a soldier's, Marine's, airman or sailor's life, one volunteer stands out like no other.
Chuck Mirasola started volunteering at the facility in 1995.
About eight years ago, the 71-year-old Army veteran felt a calling to the Hospice unit there.
Bill Gates has a measured plan to fix the world's problems...
Bill Gates in his own words from the Wall Street Journal:
We can learn a lot about improving the 21st-century world from an icon of the industrial era: the steam engine.
Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book "The Most Powerful Idea in the World." Among the most important were a new way to measure the energy output of engines and a micrometer dubbed the "Lord Chancellor" that could gauge tiny distances.
Such measuring tools, Mr. Rosen writes, allowed inventors to see if their incremental design changes led to the improvements—such as higher power and less coal consumption—needed to build better engines. There's a larger lesson here: Without feedback from precise measurement, Mr. Rosen writes, invention is "doomed to be rare and erratic." With it, invention becomes "commonplace."
This 96 year old has no plans on slowing down...
MARSHFIELD —
Five years ago, I stood on a pier on the South River and watched in wonder as 91-year-old Natalie Loomis pushed off in her yellow kayak for a glorious paddle behind her home.
“I love to be on the water,” she said in the video, her vibrant voice filling the air. “I love to go up the marshes and see the wildlife. There’s a freedom; there’s a joy in being on the water that you can’t equal.”
It was a magical moment, proof anew of exhilaration into one’s 90s.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Police Chief donates kidney to a complete stranger
The e-mail that Nancy Gleason received last September was lengthy: a last-ditch plea from a distant relative, writing to ask if she knew anyone who might be willing to donate a kidney to a stranger.
Gleason clicked the "forward" button and typed in her husband's e-mail address. Her e-mail was just one line long: "We're both O-positive. I'm in if you are."
Eight months later, Chief Joe Gleason of the West Goshen Police Department was heading into surgery at the Mayo Clinic, about to give a major organ to a woman he had met two days before.
Gleason, 55, who has led the West Goshen department since 2011, gives new meaning to the term unassuming. Ask him to talk about himself and he'll smile and say he just doesn't like to. Married to Nancy for 30 years, a father of three, he worked his way up from traffic cop to chief of police over a 31-year career.
Why Gratitude makes us healthier...
Our world is pretty messed up. With all the violence, pollution and crazy things people do, it would be easy to turn into a grouchy old man without being either elderly or male. There's certainly no shortage of justification for disappointment and cynicism.
But consider this: Negative attitudes are bad for you. And gratitude, it turns out, makes you happier and healthier. If you invest in a way of seeing the world that is mean and frustrated, you're going to get a world that is, well, more mean and frustrating. But if you can find any authentic reason to give thanks, anything that is going right with the world or your life, and put your attention there, then statistics say you're going to be better off.
Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans come home to serve again as teachers with new program Teach for America
(CBS News) WASHINGTON - In December, the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent. For vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the rate was 10.8 percent. But a new initiative is aiming to lower that number by placing veterans in the classroom.
Tenth-grade history teacher Brian Thompson brings a little something extra to the classroom, especially when the subject matter turns to war.
"I felt that way when I was in Afghanistan - we looked at each other as brothers," he told students.
One World Trade Center in New York City...former site of the Twin Towers takes shape as a sign of our Nation's Freedom
Still in a raw state, it’s already cause to celebrate. The nearly $4 billion, largest, most fought-over piece of the puzzle in downtown’s epic skyline restoration turns out to be a gentle giant, graceful and humane as the Twin Towers were not.
Architectural eggheads will sneer at it, but the masses will just as surely love it.
Include me in the common rabble.
What scant pleasure the old towers afforded lay in their tacky duplication. The thumbs-up tuning fork lent their banal bulk a semblance of wit; imagine how utterly awful one of them would have looked without the other.
The new One World Trade Center requires no identical sibling to draw stares or smiles. Although we won’t see it whole for another year, my heart lifts from every vantage point — from narrow Fulton Street, where it thunders skyward beyond the shabby old storefronts; from the Brooklyn Heights Esplanade, revealing its prideful place in the lower Manhattan panorama; and from beneath the Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo, a perspective that invites the Frank Gehry-designed 8 Spruce St. into a surprise pas de deux.
One World Trade Center’s prominence in the downtown pantheon is more plainly perceived from the New Jersey shore. Stand on the Exchange Place pier and see how comfortably it fits amidst stubbier neighbors. The sight also teases and delights riders on the No. 7 and F trains, motorists on the Long Island and Brooklyn-Queens expressways and the New Jersey Turnpike, party animals on Williamsburg’s Wythe Hotel terrace, and air travelers over Newark and the Verrazano Bridge.
We all had to come to terms with the hole in the skyline left by the 9/11 terrorist attack — even Tony Soprano emerging from the Lincoln Tunnel missed the twins. But during nearly 10 years when little above-ground progress was visible, we almost got used to it. Millions of New Yorkers disliked the boxy monoliths arrogantly imposed on the once eloquent lower Manhattan skyline. We yearned to replace them with something better, but until the day came, life would go on just fine without their oppressive mass and parallel shadows which on winter days seemed to stretch to Coney Island.
After years of false starts, the day has come. One World Trade Center’s steel topped off months ago at its full 1,368 feet. (Its vaunted 1,776-foot height includes the yet to be completed spire). The tower is pretty but not prissy; much loftier than the structures around it but respectful of them; and different enough to stand out in the crowd that is the lower Manhattan mash-up of old and new.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Pilot deploy's airplanes parachute and 3 lives are saved...
DANBURY, Conn. (WTNH) -- Danbury airport officials say a
plane was trying to land and the pilot called saying he suffered engine trouble
5 miles away and then the plane crashed with 3 people on board. The plane had a
parachute and News 8 talked to first responders and a mechanic about how it
ultimately saved lives last night.
11 year old girl writes a response to President Obama's inaugural speech...
Barack Obama made history on Monday when he became the first president to speak about the Stonewall uprising and the gay rights struggle during an inaugural speech.
While many in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community were thrilled with the mentions, an 11-year-old transgender girl named Sadie wondered why the President didn't directly address trans people, too.
"Sadie was so proud of President Obama for including the gay community in his inaugural address on Monday; however, she felt like the trans community wasn't included," Sage, Sadie's mother, told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. "That inspired her to write her own 'speech.'"
High school sweethearts reunite after 62 years!
More often than not, the person sitting next to you on the plane is nothing more than your armrest competition. But in the case of independent filmmaker Danielle Lurie, the man sitting next to her just happened to have the sweetest story.
Watch this grandma's reaction when she finds out her daughter is pregnant...
Who's having that baby? Clearly, it's a family affair, based on this grandma-to-be's amazing reaction to her daughter's clever pregnancy announcement. We love her celebratory declaration: "We're having a baby!"
Kid President gives an inspiring pep talk...
"Who do you know who needs some encouragement?" That's what Kid President, the "self-appointed voice" of our childrens' generation asks in his latest video, which we're going to go ahead and call his masterpiece. (That's high praise considering an earlier KP favorite of ours included oratory such as: "You grown-ups can invent stuff too. You just have to stop being boring.")
Night Strike - everyday heroes volunteering every week to help out the homeless
Meet a group of young volunteers dedicated to helping Portland's homeless. Hundreds of them gather every week under the Burnside Bridge, and they call it Night Strike.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
One "tweet" by son changes everything for this mom's struggling Portland bookstore...
One "tweet" changed everything for Roberta Dyer, owner of a small bookstore in Portland, Oregon. As Broadway Books approached it's 17th year, the economy tanked while online shopping continued to spread like wild fire.
Dyer feared her store would not survive the winter season. After a conversation with her son Aaron, he decided to take matters into his own hands and reach out to the online world in a desperate attempt for help.
Man risks his own life to rescue teen in flash flood...
An Australian rescuer put his own life on the line Friday when he dove into raging floodwaters to save a struggling teen.
An unnamed 14-year-old was playing in a creek in Rockhampton, Queensland with a friend when he lost his footing and was swept up in the flash flood, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. As the boy clung to a tree, a rescuer dove in, brought him to safety, but then the hero was dragged more than 300 feet downstream, according to Courier Mail.
Crazy shot from mid-court by computer technician wins Lebron James Foundation contest -receives $75,000!
MIAMI — A 50-year-old computer technician from McHenry, Ill., made a half-court shot to win $75,000 and a hug from LeBron James.
As part of a contest sponsored by James' foundation, Michael Drysch hit a hook shot from midcourt between periods of Friday's game between the Miami Heat and Detroit Pistons.
Lose your ring on the beaches of Cape Cod - no problem just give the Ring Finder a call
DENNIS, Mass. (AP) — A lone figure, up to his chest in the cold ocean, waves a strange magic wand, seeking treasure. Why does he dare challenge King Neptune for the fruits of the deep?
‘‘The quest,’’ said Richard Browne. ‘‘It keeps me off the streets and out of the bars.’’
Browne, of South Yarmouth, is a member of Ring Finders, a group of metal detector specialists spread throughout the world who offer their services to folks who lose precious stuff.
‘‘They give me a call and I go out anywhere on the Cape and find it for them and return it to them for nothing,’’ Browne said. ‘‘Two years ago, I returned 22 rings and this past year, 10.’’
Successful real estate tycoon has given over $120 million dollars away...
Harold Grinspoon decided to splurge 10 years ago and bought a boat. While other multimillionaires sail 150-foot yachts, Grinspoon launched a 17-foot whaler, which his wife described as a “floating bathtub.” It sank not long afterward.
It was one of the last times he bought a big gift for himself. “I don’t like to spend my money frivolously,” said Grinspoon, 83, of Longmeadow.
He made his millions in the real estate business and has since used that expertise in philanthropy, funneling contributions from his foundation to programs that deliver results and have the potential to grow. Since its founding in 1993, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation of West Springfield has given more than $120 million to Jewish causes, identifying undervalued assets in the Jewish community and revitalizing them through partnerships that bring in more money and resources.
From Hollywood to Cambodia...Hollywood mogul leaves it all behind.
Scott Neeson's final epiphany came one day in June 2004. The high-powered Hollywood executive stood, ankle deep in trash, at the sprawling landfill of Stung Meanchey, a poor shantytown in Cambodia's capital.
In a haze of toxic fumes and burning waste, swarms of Phnom Penh's most destitute were rooting through refuse, jostling for scraps of recyclables in newly dumped loads of rubbish. They earned 4,000 riel ($1) a day – if they were lucky.
Many of the garbage sorters were young children. Covered in filthy rags, they were scruffy, sickly, and sad.
Clasped to Mr. Neeson's ear was his cellphone. Calling the movie mogul from a US airport, a Hollywood superstar's agent was complaining bitterly about inadequate in-flight entertainment on a private jet that Sony Pictures Entertainment, where Neeson was head of overseas theatrical releases, had provided for his client.
Friday, January 25, 2013
3 Homecoming king nominees agree to turn over the crown to one of their fellow students
Three homecoming king nominees unanimously decided to give the crown to a fellow student who suffers from a Williams Syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder.
Nominees Jesse Cooper, Drew Gibbs and Zeke Grissom of Community High School in Tennessee all agreed that the actual winner would hand over the crown to Scotty Maloney. According to students and teachers, Scotty is always so happy and just an overall amazing person.
Email posting "We Need a Mommy and Daddy" leads to the adoption of these 5 amazing kids from the same family...
It’s one thing to sponsor a child in need. But try actually inviting not one but five of them into your home and into your family.
This is the challenge that Scott and Lauren Sterling, of Blue Springs, Mo., have decided to take on. They’ve adopted five Peruvian orphans -- two girls and three boys ranging in age from 9 to 17. Overnight, their family doubled, and their lives changed drastically. This is just the beginning.
The Sterlings’ “crazy story” started in January 2011. According to Lauren’s blog, a friend of theirs met the five siblings in an orphanage near Pacasmayo, Peru. The siblings’ parents had died of tuberculosis six years earlier. The eldest, Yhonson, did not want to split his family up. The kids persuaded the Sterlings’ friend to send out a mass email. The subject line read “We need a mommy and daddy,” and pictures of all five were attached.
When Scott and Lauren saw the email, they noted how beautiful the kids were.
11 year old battling brain tumor gets the pop star treatment as she records her song and tells hers fans, “I’d like to thank everyone for all the nice things you have done for me, and one day when I’m famous I’ll throw a free concert for everyone. Taylor Swift inspired me to sing and I hope I inspire people, too.”
NORRISTOWN — Amy Hosmer loves Taylor Swift.
From the day she first heard her, Hosmer said she began mimicking her style.
While there are most likely millions of girls across the country who have done the same thing, there’s something that sets Hosmer apart — she was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was two years old.
Initially, doctors told her parents that it was unlikely that she would live long. However, radiation therapy prevailed and the tumor all but went away.
From the day she first heard her, Hosmer said she began mimicking her style.
While there are most likely millions of girls across the country who have done the same thing, there’s something that sets Hosmer apart — she was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was two years old.
Initially, doctors told her parents that it was unlikely that she would live long. However, radiation therapy prevailed and the tumor all but went away.
After a yearly check-up at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in November, doctors saw that the tumor came back.
But none of that has deterred Amy from following her dream of becoming a singer herself.
But none of that has deterred Amy from following her dream of becoming a singer herself.
These lottery winners look at the big picture as they give back to a small town
Huge Batman fan fighting cancer gets a call from actor Christian Bale who plays Batman in Christopher Nolan's Dark Night triology
Christian Bale made a special phone call to a Batman fan in hospital with leukemia.
The actor, 38, who plays the superhero in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, made eight-year-old Zach Guillot's dreams come true when he called the youngster in Seattle, Washington, and asked him about his interest in the DC Comic book character.
Watch as this child cancer patient becomes a supermodel for a day. "Don't dwell on the bad things. Think on the positive, and always be happy," 10 year old Briana Vega said.
MIAMI (WSVN/FOX) - A little girl battling cancer had her dream fulfilled when she got all dolled up and became a supermodel for a day. Briana Vega got all dolled up for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of South Florida's gala fashion show. Designer Rene Ruiz chose the 10-year-old because he was touched by her positive attitude while going through childhood cancer. "When I saw her at the Miami's Children's Gala, I said, ‘What can I do to make this girl's life special?'" Ruiz said. "She has such an incredible personality. Everything that she has gone through makes you fall in love with her." This past year has been tough on Briana and her family. She was diagnosed with leukemia last February. But the day of the fashion show was different. She strutted down the catwalk to the cheers of hundreds of people. "I just feel really lucky," Vega said. "I'm glad to do something fun before I go to the hospital. It was so awesome. Everyone was cheering for me, so it's like you're famous." She eventually had to come back to reality and is now at Miami Children's Hospital for treatment. She faces more chemo, but in true model behavior she is only focusing on the good stuff. "Don't dwell on the bad things. Think on the positive, and always be happy," Briana said.
Twitter campaign to get Owen Groessner on ESPN Sports Center goes viral after the player with Down's Syndrome makes his debut and sinks 2 three pointers!
Earlier today, ESPN producer Scott Turken did something he usually doesn’t do at 2:30 a.m. ET — he e-mailed his bosses.
He ended the note by writing: “Hopefully the story has legs and he can be a guest on SportsCenter.”
The “he” being referred to is Owen Groessner, who before last night was just a Rochester, Mich. middle-school basketball player who had not seen any playing time this season as his team’s final home game entered the closing minutes.
At 12:45 p.m. ET today Owen and his father, Chris, will be on SportsCenter — as co-anchor Kevin Negandhi tweeted this morning — just hours after Owen made his national debut on the 11 p.m. ET Wednesday SportsCenter.
Here’s what happened in the course of a few hours.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Autistic teen becomes Backup Deputy Police Officer thanks to this generous cop...
One police officer has an autistic teen saying, "I've got your back."
The pair star in a viral Facebook post that has been shared more than 300,000 times since Monday. In the photo, Jennings Police Officer Mike Hill stands next to Blaize, whose mother, Angie Richard, wrote in the post:
Meet the guy that plans on giving away $1000 a day for 2013 and beyond...
Ariel Nessel makes a lot of money, and he wants to give away
as much of it as he can. So late last year, the 39-year-old Dallas real-estate
developer decided to provide a $1,000 grant every day of 2013 and beyond to
support individuals’ small, grass-roots efforts.
Mr. Nessel has long been making regular gifts to charities
that focused on social justice, animal rights, and promoting plant-based diets.
Over the past five years, he says, he gave more than $700,000 in total.
By his mid-30s, however, he found himself longing for a
deeper philanthropic experience.
Grandparents are getting technologically savvy in order to keep up with their kids and grand kids lives...
(CNN) -- When my parents bought their first mobile phones about 10 years ago, I didn't think they'd ever get the hang of using them. Mom would answer my call from the front of the line at Starbucks and say, "Hello darling, yes I'll take the tall thanks, what is it, James do you have any cash?" all in one breath. My favorite were the random, cryptic one-word text messages like "I" or "soon" or "shirt."
Panera Cares Cafe officially opens in Boston...no prices and no cash registers just donation bins if you can afford to pay
The Panera Bread Foundation said its Panera Cares cafe
in Boston is now officially open.
A recent
Globe story described how this cafe differs from most others in a chain of
more than 1,600 restaurants: “There is no cash register at the Panera cafe near
Government Center in Boston. There are no prices either — just suggested
donations and bins to leave money, if you can afford to."
Two cancer survivors document themselves travelling across the country to show that there IS life after cancer...a road trip of hope.
Two cancer survivors, Evan Bartlett and Elijah Accola, embark on a journey across the West to show that there is life after cancer.
This documentary will explore what the cancer community offers, whether it is camps, support, and or success stories. It will follow the journey of two survivors as they embark on a journey across the West.It will be a road trip from Edwardsville, IL to California and back. On the road they will be couch surfing, and documenting all the new experiences they encounter. They will show how the cancer camps provide a positive environment, and that everyone has loving heart. The success stories will provide hope, and inspiration to all. By talking to survivors will show that there is a life after treatment.
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