Today's Featured Good News
Program inspires kids of all backgrounds
The W.E.B. DuBois Institute is an innovative summer study program that seeks to address economic disparity.
Fed Ex steps in to save Gulf sea turtles
Wildlife officials on the Gulf Coast are trying to save a generation of threatened sea turtles by transporting every turtle egg via Fed Ex to the Atlantic Coast of Florida, where the hatchling turtles can swim in clean water. NBC's Mark Potter reports.
'Star Wars' star visits sick kids
R2-D2 takes a spin around the pediatrics unit of a Maine hospital. WABI reports.
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Japan's Rice Field of Dreams
(Celia Hatton, CBS News) Rice farming has sustained the people of northern Japan's Inakadate village for two thousand years. Today, the ancient rice fields are the source of food and art. Up close, the stalks of rice look like any other found in a rice paddy. CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton reports there are several varieties planted here, each with different colored leaves. Combine them together and an enormous 15,000 square foot image is revealed. Every year, a local art teacher produces a computerized sketch. It's transferred onto a grid, and mapped with thousands of dots. It's then painstakingly recreated - point by point onto the rice field.
Afghan puppy rescued by soldier finds new home in Highland Village
(Lindsey Bever, Morning News) Seven months ago, the wild puppy roughing it in a small guard shack on a mountain in eastern Afghanistan knew only of unforgiving weather and the promise of combat. But Wylie's three-month journey to America has opened her eyes to a brand-new life. "When I took her outside for the first time, she laid her chin on the grass and looked around," said Steve Rodems, stepfather of Army Reserves Staff Sgt. Hannah Schlegel, who rescued Wylie from eastern Afghanistan. "She had never seen or walked on grass. She had never smelled flowers or looked at trees. It was a very sweet moment." Now, the recently domesticated adolescent pup is fitting in nicely in Highland Village.
Run DMC pal Orville Hall's Hollis Famous Burgers serves food and hip hop in equal parts
(Joanna Molloy, New York Daily News) When Run DMC rapped their way from Hollis, Queens, to the top of hip hop in the 1980s, Orville Hall was right behind them. "I met Jam Master Jay in music class," Hall recalls. "He played tuba, and I played the snare drum. Jay and I became best friends." Unlike the Jam Master, Hall's talents were on the business side of rap: He translated street trends to companies like Adidas, J Records, and Fila. He could have moved to SoHo forever, but the old neighborhood tugged. "I saw the deterioration," says Hall, 46. "These are my friends' kids. What are they living in? There are no community centers, no Police Athletic League." We walk down Hollis Ave. and the kids fist-bump Hall as he passes. We stop at a park near PS 192. "Run DMC did their first show under that tree. Here on 205th is where they wrote 'My Adidas.' "It occurred to me that these kids don't know the great history they're walking in," Hall says. "This is the most influential neighborhood in rap music."
This wheelchair is nothing to sniff at
(Maggie Fox, Reuters) A device that detects the subtle movements needed to sniff air through the nose or mouth can steer a wheelchair or allow completely paralyzed people to type messages, Israeli researchers reported on Monday. One patient wrote letters to her family for the first time since she had a stroke, while others used the device to surf the Internet or steer a wheelchair. While no replacement for a true brain implant that would allow users to control devices with thoughts alone, the "sniff controller" works better for many patients than eyeblinks or other methods of communicating, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Inspired by his sons but delayed by success, playwright releases novel
(Sarah Hoye, CNN) It's better late than never. Nearly 40 years after coming up with the idea, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Howard Fuller Jr. released his first novel in June. The children's book, "Snatch: The Adventures of David and Me," was promised to his sons when they were children. "This sort of got put on the back burner," said Charles Fuller III, now a master mechanic, while visiting his father at his apartment near downtown Philadelphia. "Here it is." "I'm glad it's finished," laughed David Fuller, now a youth counselor, from across the kitchen table. "It's a real good story, a real good story. I'm glad I was in it." The acclaimed writer promised his sons he would create a story where they were heroes in a historical adventure set in antebellum New York, before slavery was abolished.
War vet saves gal after fall from ferry
(John Doyle, Candace Amos and Jennifer Bain, New York Post) An Afghanistan war vet dived into New York Harbor early yesterday to save a woman who had slipped from a ferry and been pulled under a pier near Wall Street. "I saw her head disappear under the water, and she was gone for a good 60 seconds," said former Navy sailor Nicholas Przybyla, of Brooklyn. Danielle Julia DiMonda, 33, fell into the water at 1:10 a.m. while disembarking from a NY Water Taxi on her way home from a Governors Island concert. "He saved my life. People don't do that -- but I guess some people do," DiMonda, a social worker from Manhattan, told The Post.
Scientists inch towards finding 'God particle'
(Daniel Flynn, Reuters) Scientists working with particle accelerators in Europe and the United States said on Monday they may be closing in on the elusive Higgs Boson, the "God particle" believed crucial to forming the cosmos after the Big Bang. Researchers from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project near Geneva said in just three months of experiments they had already detected all the particles at the heart of our current understanding of physics, the Standard Model. Rolf Heuer, director-general of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) which runs the LHC, told the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris experiments were progressing faster than expected and entering a stage in which "new physics" would emerge.
Hawaii transplant patients celebrate new life at games
(Gene Park, Honolulu Star-Advertiser) There's a lot 71-year-old Herbert Endo has been able to do since his successful kidney transplant eight years ago. He can walk, he can run. He still runs his family's electrical contracting business. He has an OK game of golf, albeit with a high handicap. He can knock back a glass of wine or a couple of beers now and then. He's also been able to participate in the biennial U.S. Transplant Games. This year's event, in Madison, Wis., will be Endo's fifth. "Hell, yes," Endo said when asked whether the national sporting event is life-affirming. "You learn a lot just going to the games, talking to the other patients, what medication they take, what medication the doctors have stopped giving them." The U.S. Transplant Games, an Olympic-style competition, is organized every two years by the National Kidney Foundation. This year the foundation celebrates 60 years and will be holding its 20th Transplant Games.
Capturing the world's oldest living things
(Dean Irvine, CNN) Rachel Sussman is a time traveler. For the last few years, the American photographer has journeyed across the globe on a mission to bring back images of the world's oldest living organisms. In her ongoing project, Sussman has traveled to the primal landscapes of southern Greenland, the timeless high-altitude Andean deserts of South America and even under the ocean. "[The project] is a celebration and record of our past, a call to action now, and also a barometer of our future," she told CNN. Sussman began her time-traveling trips in 2004 while visiting the island of Yakushima in Japan to see a reportedly 2,200-year-old tree. On her return to the U.S., the idea to photograph an example of other long-living ancient species germinated and grew.
Nine senior couples say 'I do' once more at Southlake living facility
(Melissa Repko, Dallas Morning News) Two by two, nine couples walked down a flower petal-strewn aisle on Saturday and exchanged vows. For a day, the Isle at Watermere, an assisted-living facility in Southlake, transformed into a wedding hall. Complete with a groom's cake and bouquets, the couples renewed their wedding vows and celebrated marriages that have weathered more than 50 years of challenges and joys. About 150 family members, friends and fellow Isle residents attended. "I'm with them day in and day out, and I see how strong their relationships are,"" said Amy Pearce, community life director, who was wedding planner for the event. "I know I'll be crying today."
