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If you're the richest man in the world, what would be the most satisfying part of your life? Well, Bill Gates says it's having kids and playing with them!... posted on Jul 11, 1424 reads

Chirping Birds
The chirping of two pet canaries from beneath the rubble of a destroyed house in Bam saved two children after the birds attracted the attention of rescue workers, Iran's official news agency reported Tuesday. "The two children were stuck in the debris next to their broken bird case," the IRNA news agency said. "After hearing the birds singing, rescue workers went to the location and were removing ... posted on Jan 15, 1248 reads

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The Canadian Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans recently announced that it has authorized the killing of 975,000 harp seals during the next three years. ... posted on Mar 24, 1366 reads

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It doesn't look like much. A drab, gray piece of plastic, about five inches long and three inches wide. Yet this "simputer" may hold the key to bringing information technology to Third World countries. Among other things, the Simputer will translate text into a local dialect so even illiterate rural communities can leverage the power of web!... posted on Apr 23, 962 reads

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Rick Woodbury starts every morning with silent meditation in a small Tibetan Buddhist temple in Spokane. His prayers call for an end to sickness, war and suffering, but since he doesn't know how to do those things, he decided instead to create an environmental traffic-busting car. ... posted on Jul 31, 1005 reads

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Albertsons, Inc. has announced that over the next twelve months the company's associates and their families plan to contribute at least one million volunteer hours!... posted on Jun 26, 510 reads

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For a modern tour of an ancient perspective on the causes of all our suffering and the path to liberation, visit this interactive tour of the Wheel of Life.... posted on Mar 30, 515 reads

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The U.S produces 19% of the world's trash. The annual contribution includes 20 billion disposable diapers, 2 billion razors and 1.7 billion pens. (Source: E-magazine)... posted on Apr 13, 634 reads

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Recycling one ton of paper saves: 17 trees, 6953 gallons of water, 463 gallons of of oil, 587 pounds of air pollution, 3.06 cubic yards of landfill space, and 4077 kilowatt hours of energy. ... posted on Dec 27, 1060 reads

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18 million courses of antibiotics are prescribed for the common
cold in the US per year. Too bad colds are caused by viruses. 50
million unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed for viral respiratory infections. Source: Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC)... posted on May 10, 531 reads

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Homeopathy is based on the idea that "like cures like" and that administering a highly diluted form of the substance causing the illness will stimulate the body to recover its health. Recent research by chemists in South Korea supports that counter intuitive premise.... posted on Jun 20, 740 reads

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If every commuter carried just one more passenger daily, we'd save 600,000 gallons of gasoline and keep 12 million pounds of pollution out of the atmosphere every year. Source: Sprint ... posted on May 1, 2182 reads

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Every person in the United States receives junk mail that represents the equivalent of one and a half trees a year. Source: Environmental Systems of America
... posted on Apr 27, 937 reads

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The three wealthiest people (and their families) in the world have more assets than the combined wealth of the 48 poorest countries. (Source: United Nations)... posted on May 24, 827 reads

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Later this month, watch as five planets - Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and Mars - will all line up.
... posted on Apr 23, 449 reads

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As a child in Singapore, William Tan had to be carried around on someone's back. Having lost his legs to polio, and too poor to afford a wheelchair, he built up a determination to conquer this disease. Now, a student at Harvard, William is in a race to save children from polio.... posted on Apr 26, 934 reads

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War may be raging in the Middle East, but in this New York neighborhood, Jews and Muslims are getting along just fine.
... posted on May 2, 1246 reads

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Have you heard the parable of the blind men and the elephant?
... posted on May 16, 476 reads

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Saddened to hear that foster kids had to carry their belongings in trash bags, 9-year old Aubyn Burnside decided it was time for a change. She founded Suitcases For Kids and has so far collected 25,000!... posted on May 11, 684 reads

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Kevin is ready to be "caught" being kind. He's been hoping all month. That's what happens at Rosewood Elementary School in March. Benevolent spies are everywhere, watching for kindness, catching and rewarding it when a good deed occurs.... posted on May 9, 1289 reads

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An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens. In a matter of days, curiosity alone is enough to teach these kids basic computer skills, suggesting that simple access can help to bridge the digital divide.... posted on May 15, 694 reads

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According to Business Week, the average CEO made 42 times the average blue-collar worker's pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990 and a staggering 531 times in 2000. (Source: AFL-CIO "Executive Paywatch")... posted on Jan 24, 914 reads

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These purple carrots not only look cool – they're good for you, and completely natural.... posted on Jun 6, 1118 reads

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Ever confused by highway signs? So was this California artist. But unlike most people, he took matters into his own hands in a very unusual, and successful, effort to make life a little less confusing for his fellow travelers.... posted on Jun 8, 975 reads

Monks Dot Com
Father Bernard needed some ink cartridges for their monastery, the Cistercian Abbey. What he ended up with was a dot-com business -- LaserMonks -- that sold printer supplies worth $2000 in 2002. By the end of last year, they had over half a million dollars in sales and an incredible fundraiser for the monastery! "Why buy it from Office Depot or Office Max?" Rev. Bernard McCoy said, eyes twinklin... posted on Mar 9, 2631 reads

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A healthy 3-month-old girl who came into the world weighing just 9.97 ounces spent her first full day at home. Determined to live, her doctors believe she is the tiniest human being on record to survive, and think she'll be just fine.
... posted on Jun 14, 962 reads

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Consider a simple experiment: shine a light through two parallel slits and look at the screen. Quantum physics shows that a single photon (particle of light) can interfere with itself, as if it travelled through both slits at once.... posted on Mar 26, 1052 reads

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Trash is our biggest product. Packaging consumes 40% of the paper used in Germany and 1/4 of the plastics used in the US.... posted on Jun 25, 571 reads

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He has walked 1,000 miles...across the desert...barefoot...twice. He has swum a crocodile-infested river while being shot at. He has lived four years in one refugee camp, nine in another. And he hasn't given up on finding his parents, though most likely, he is an orphan. He is Santino Lual, 22, one of 10,000 or so "Lost Boys of Sudan," now living in Seattle. ... posted on Jul 3, 1315 reads

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A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.... posted on Jun 29, 358 reads

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When the dot-coms went bust, Silicon Valley's unemployment rate sky rocketed. But so did applications to Peace Corps, which went up by 12%. Dot-commers out of a job are making most of their time off and enaging in social change. "Upgrade your memories, download the world":... posted on Sep 18, 2185 reads

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"My hair was standing straight up when she played," said someone from the audience. "I could not breathe when she finished," said another. Debra Sayer's brilliant piano performance ended to explosive applause and teary eyes. Debra is blind.... posted on Jul 2, 433 reads

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Leonardo Diaz had given up hope. The novice climber was lost in a snowstorm, and didn't have any more prepaid minutes on his cell phone to call for help... then the phone rang... a telemarketer!... posted on Jul 13, 1450 reads

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The owners of the car wash were baffled. Thousands of dollars were disappearing from the change machines, but how? Accusations were "flying" all over the place and nerves were on edge... until they caught the thieves on camera... birds!... posted on Jul 11, 926 reads

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In the developing world, fertility rates vary in inverse proportion with literacy rates. For example, Afghanistan, with a female literacy rate of only eight percent has a fertility rate of 6.9 per 1,000 population. Thailand, in contrast, has a literacy rate of 88% and a fertility rate of 2.6/1,000. Source: United Nations... posted on Jul 16, 1247 reads

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Contrary to the stereotype, nearly eight in ten Silicon Valley residents say they gave money or property to charity (78%) and 49% volunteered in the community. ... posted on Aug 5, 1304 reads

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Journalists are often exposed to many compelling situations. Leslie Griffith, news-anchor on San Francisco's top-rated newscast, ran into 9-year old Mitchell on an assignment in Oakland and then ended up adopting him.... posted on Jul 19, 2092 reads

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The Business Plan Archive collects Internet boom time business plans. It's a great example of learning from our past and our mistakes.... posted on Jul 20, 1272 reads

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Two teenagers find 4000 dollars in cash. They were tempted to keep the money but then did the "right thing" and turned it in. They each received a reward for their honesty.... posted on Jul 27, 1026 reads

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Kindness of strangers. When are people more likely to help someone in a chance encounter on a city street? Researcher Rober Levine finds that small cities are the big winners! Squeezing too many people into too small a space leads, paradoxically enough, to alienation, anonymity and social isolation.... posted on Apr 30, 1227 reads

Something To Sing About
When Charice was just 4 years old, her mom discovered her talent for the first time. "She thought the radio [was] playing. In the small Filipino village where Charice lived as a child, there wasn't much to sing about. When Charice was 3 years old, she says she remembers seeing her father fly into a fit of rage and take out his anger on her mother. But after being on Oprah in May, now at the age of... posted on Oct 25, 3690 reads

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Horrified by the extreme poverty he witnessed on a trip to India, artist Mark Henson created a painting to depict the vulgar contrast he saw between material excesses and destitution. See his painting, Sharing the Wealth.... posted on Aug 16, 1467 reads

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At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the international community adopted Agenda 21, an unprecedented global plan of action for sustainable development. But the best strategies are only as good as their implementation. Ten years later, the Johannesburg Summit now offers an exciting opportunity for today's leaders to adopt concrete steps and identify quantifiable targets for better implementing Agenda 2... posted on Sep 3, 806 reads

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Having been bullied as a sensitive child in the segregrated South, nine year old Vernon Kitabu Turner vowed "to become the protector of the weak," giving himself to the art of self-defense "with no less devotion than the samurai of Japan." With 'a mind like water,' he is now able to defeat the greatest of opponents -- with a single finger -- leaving them unharmed and himself with a heart full of ... posted on Sep 5, 1217 reads

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A study conducted at the University of Michigan Research Center and published in the March 1998 Issue of American Health found that volunteering, more than any other activity, dramatically increases life expectancy.... posted on Sep 13, 944 reads

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An Austrian farmer's life was saved by his clever dog, "Tschibsi", who ran 2 km, found help and returned with a rescue helicopter!... posted on Nov 6, 1005 reads

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At age 9, Melissa Poe wrote a letter to then President Bush which, through her own efforts, was reproduced on over 250 donated billboards across the country. The response to her plea for help was so overwhelming that Poe established Kids For A Cleaner Environment (Kids F.A.C.E.) in 1989. There are now 300,000 members of Kids FACE worldwide and is the world's largest youth environmental organizatio... posted on Aug 30, 645 reads

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Years ago, Brad Wolgamott met a man who changed his life. Now a retired, but still young, multimillionaire, Wolgamott is trying to have the same kind of impact on children from his community. A baseball diamond, rock-climbing wall, rope bridge and trout pond are part of the environment he's created to help kids reach their own dreams.
... posted on Oct 8, 908 reads

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Researchers have shown how emotions, such as fear, travel along separate paths through the brain and are more likely to interfere with a person's efforts to focus than simple distractions.
... posted on Sep 7, 756 reads

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Do all rappers spend their time writing lurid and obscene lyrics? Far from it - these two are publishing kids books with a positive message: ... posted on Sep 27, 968 reads