“Russia has shut down a weapons-grade plutonium reactor as part of a deal with the United States to reduce the risk that loose nukes would get into the hands of terrorists. The Siberian plant founded by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, was turned off on Sunday, 45 years after it was started up to create plutonium for Cold-war era bombs.” (Reuters News )
Free Canvas Bags to First 6 Who Post Comment!
[UPDATE: I want to give three more away to US or Canadian viewers, so I’ll honor six winners altogether!] In honor of Earth Day I’m going to send a FREE canvas totebag, with the Good News Network slogan/website on the front, to the first three [SIX] people to post a comment at the bottom of this blog post.
After you post the comment, you can send me your mailing address (and name) and I will send to you this great Earth-friendly bag.
Welcome to listeners from KXYL in Texas, WJBC in Illinois, and KWNA in Nevada. I was a guest on these stations today sharing my Top 10 Earth Day news!
To post a comment, you need to be registered as a member. It’s free and easy filling out a quick form, here!
Organic Methods Pay Off for Beekeeper In Midst of Colony Collapse Nationwide
Though watching so many beehives nationwide fall to colony collapse disorder, Doug Schulz still has not lost a single bee to the epidemic, probably due to his old-fashioned organic methods. His labor-intensive beekeeping practices produce premium honey in Wisconsin, and carries on the tradition of his octogenarian mentor. (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal)
EARTH ALERT ’08: Top Ten Good News for the Earth
Happy Earth Day! Here are the top ten good news stories for the environment… Since the first Earth Day in 1970, air quality has improved dramatically, rivers are cleaner, and many endangered species have been rescued from the brink. As every first grader is taught in school, the environment rocks! Let’s look at 10 points of light in the news about our Earth.
#1) We can Breath Easier – The dramatic reduction in air pollution represents one of the greatest success stories in American government. Most Americans believe air pollution has been getting worse, but the truth is just the opposite: Air pollution levels have been dropping for decades. Since the first Earth Day, emissions from the most common air pollutants have decreased by about half, even while gross domestic product increased 195% and people increased their travel in cars by 178%. Los Angeles, for example, had nearly two hundred hazardous days every year for smog in the 1970s but now experiences less than twenty-five heavy-ozone days each year. Lead has been eliminated entirely from the air, thanks to the introduction of unleaded gasoline, while levels of carbon monoxide are down by 70%.
Europe achieved its goal of cutting pollution from coal-burning plants years ahead of schedule, reducing acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide by 65 percent since 1990. China is also surging ahead to curtail its pollution. In the last year it has increased fuel standards, closed ozone-producing checmical factories, invested in renewables, unplugged 253 coal-fired generators, and continued to spend its investment of $175 billion on environmental protection over 5 years. Rounding out the effort, thousands of citizens around the world aided in cleaning the air by planting a billion trees last year for the UN’s Billion Tree campaign.
Bionic Eye ‘Blindness Cure Hope’
“A ‘bionic eye’ may hold the key to returning sight to people left blind by a hereditary disease. Treatment is underway on first patients in the UK as part of a clinical study into the therapy.” (BBC Health News)
‘Youngest Inventor’ Patents Broom
“A boy of five is thought to be the UK’s youngest person to patent an invention after coming up with a labor-saving broom to help his father sweep leaves.” (BBC News)
Carter’s Encouraging Move for Peace in Middle East (Video)
“For some, former US president Jimmy Carter’s recent meeting with Hamas officials was a major mistake. Yet for the pragmatic few, it represents a measured step towards peace and should be taken seriously — the alternative is simply too depressing,” said an OpEd in the Gulf News on Sunday. Meanwhile, Carter said today that Hamas was open to a peace deal that recognizes Israel’s right to exist. (See the video or read text below)
Town Considers Deposit Charges for Bottles
Deposit charges that deliver cash in exchange for the return of used bottles and cans are being considered by the Minister for Waste. She has ordered a feasibility study after a call, by the group Protect Rural England, for a national offensive to clear the highways and byways of litter blight. (The UK Times Online)
Billionaire Texas Oilman Bets Big On Wind
A legendary Texas oil man is turning to wind power with a plan to spend $10 billion to build the world’s biggest wind farm. Next month 2,700 wind turbines will be dispatched to Texas eventually to “generate enough power for about 1 million homes — the equivalent of building two commercial scale nuclear power plants.” Other oil companies, too, are getting into renewable energy on a large scale…
Largest Successful Mind-Over-Matter Experiments in History
The first worldwide double-blind experiments to test the power of intention have produced extraordinary evidence that we can change the physical properties of plants and speed up their growth when we harness the power of ‘group mind’ over matter.
The studies have involved thousands of “intenders” around the world sending intention to targets under strictly scientifically controlled conditions through the Intention Experiment website and during individual gatherings around the world.
For these initial experiments, Lynne McTaggart, who has become an internationally recognized spokesperson on the science of spirituality as the author of the classic bestseller The Field, and, more recently, The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World, paired up with a team of scientists at the University of Arizona.
They decided to test whether thoughts could make seeds sprout earlier and grow faster. In each instance the Arizona scientists prepared four sets of seeds — one set of seeds, and three controls — to eliminate chance findings. Prior to each study, the lab emailed McTaggart photos of all four sets of seeds.
McTaggart was scheduled to appear before many diverse audiences in a number of countries during the summer of 2007, which afforded her numerous opportunities to test this experiment in a variety of settings. She also successfully carried out this study on the internet, inviting her readers from around the globe to send intention to one of the chosen set of seeds.
Throughout the summer of 2007, the study was also run before audiences in Sydney, Australia, Rhinebeck, New York, and Hilton, Head, South Carolina, who were instructed, in each instance, to direct their thoughts to target seeds in the Tucson, Arizona lab.
In one of the series of experiments, the intention of a group as small as 100 was powerful enough to affect the growth of the seeds, which were nearly 3000 miles away.
The greatest effect of all occurred with the final study, which was conducted among a group of experienced Healing Touch healers. In this case, the seeds sent intention grew nearly twice as large as the controls.
In an earlier study, Lynne, working with the University of Arizona team, demonstrated that group thoughts can alter a basic physical property of geranium leaves: the tiny light — called biophoton emissions — emitted from all living things.
The results of the glowing intention were so strong that they could readily be seen in digital biophoton photographs using powerful CCD cameras.
Most recently, McTaggart, partnered with noted Russian physicist Konstantin Korotkov, carried out a successful Intention Experiment involving thousands of people from 80 countries around the globe, who were instructed to send love to a little vial of water in St. Petersburg, Russia. Sophisticated equipment later showed that this experiment changed it essential properties, specifically its light emissions. This result has vast implications about the power of thought to clean up the world’s polluted water supply.
McTaggart’s ‘global laboratory’ is now moving on to a ‘mini-Gaia’ which will involve constructing a little terrarium and asking readers to attempt to lower its temperature.
“If we find we have a significant effect, the implications of it — that our collective thoughts could tackle global warming — will be extraordinary,” she says.
She is also working with top scientists to design experiments to see if group intention can lower violence in certain hotspots in the world, raise the educational results in the US’s poorest districts and increase the availability of certain biofuels.
“Although the first experiments have ‘worked,’ it’s important to understand that all we have at the moment is an intriguing demonstration of possibility, and not one single definitive statement,” says Lynne. “Each scientific experiment must be replicated many times to be accepted as fact.
“But here is the first evidence that one good thought is all it takes to change the world.”
Lynne McTaggart is the award-winning author of five books. Wayne Dyer called The Field “the most profound and enlightening book I have ever read.” She was also featured in the film What the BLEEP!? Down the Rabbit Hole. Learn more at TheIntentionExperiment.com.
Abandoned Pup Rescued From Remote Island (Video)
A cocker spaniel named Snickers was rescued from a remote island in the Pacific Ocean thanks to efforts by a cruise ship and the humane society of Hawaii after his owners abandoned him when a rescue boat refused to take the dog onboard.
Extinct Javan elephants may have been found again – in Borneo
The Borneo pygmy elephant may not be native to Borneo after all. Instead, the population could be the last survivors of the Javan elephant race – accidentally saved from extinction by the Sultan of Sulu centuries ago, a new publication suggests.
Unarmed but Dangerous
Hello, my name is Tawana Williams. I know that my story will bless your viewers. I was born without arms in Wilson, NC. in 1963, due to the drug Thalidomide. The drug was given to pregnant women in the 1960’s to prevent morning sickness, but caused major birth defects in unborn babies. My mother was shocked when she saw me, her new baby, but she couldn’t help but love me.
My mother wrote a letter of desperation to the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. She needed to find a place for me to be trained to use my feet as hands, and we were poor. A couple of weeks later he wrote her back telling her of a place in Durham, NC. Called the Duke Cerebral Palsy Hospital, he told her to take me there, and that I would be taken care of. I was 11 ½ months old. I remained there for 4 ½ years.
During the summer just before the sixth grade, I begged mom to let me go to Public School. She was afraid for me, because she knew how mean and cruel others would treat me. Finally, she agreed, and she was right, I was picked on, laughed at, talked about, and humiliated on a daily basis for several years. I cried on the way home from school everyday.
In High School, the peer pressure was tough; all the kids that I wanted to be friends with were doing all the wrong things. It didn’t matter to me; I was willing to change from the good person that I was to fit in, by any means necessary. A so-called friend introduced me to marijuana, then to crack cocaine. The first time that I hit a crack pipe, it blew my mind, it made me forget that I didn’t have arms. I was hooked and for the next 10 years crack consumed me.
One day in August of 1991, after hitting rock bottom, I cried out to God and asked for help, I said to God, “kill me in my sleep, or deliver me from crack.” The next day, I was Free…
I am now on a mission to save the lives of people all around the world with my message of hope and inspiration. I have a daughter named April — my miracle child — who now has her own baby (see the video below to see how I fed her and changed her diaper using my feet). I authored a new book “Unarmed but Dangerous” which tells the poignant story of being born without arms, the miraculous birth of my daughter, and surviving the traumas of rape and drug addiction. Today, as an inspirational speaker, I encourage people to look beyond their circumstances and to accept God’s gift of freedom without limitations.
My Mentor and friend Les Brown wrote the foreword. I’m also a poet, an artist, (I draw with my feet), and a vocalist. I travel to schools, churches, nursing homes, prisons, colleges, universities, sororities, day cares, corporate arenas, etc. to change the lives of people, by letting them know just how blessed they really are.
I convey these three points to my audiences:
- Use what you’ve got
- Don’t complain
- Do it yourself (and they’ve always been encouraged!)
When Geri asked me to answer the question, “Would you have chosen to be ‘average’ at birth, if given the chance to change your circumstances,” I answered No.
I wouldn’t change my circumstances if I could, because I now know that I was created in God’s image, and everything that he created was good. Today I have a good life. Though I’ve gone through so many challenges and adversities, they have made me strong, and I know Who I am, and Whose I am.
My grandma told me something at the age of 4, that has kept me. She said “You must not have needed arms, because God didn’t give them to you.” WOW! What encouraging words, because that makes me EXTRAORDINARY.
Visit Tawana’s website to learn more and find her book.
Say No to Cookie Dough! Raise Money for Youth Groups and Schools With Inspiration
Do you have way too much cookie dough in your freezer? Do you have magazine subscriptions that go unread month after month? A Seattle company has created an new way for private schools and church groups to raise money quickly. Seattle based Affirmagy recently launched a fundraising division called Positively Fundraising.
Negativity: The Number One Productivity Problem in the Workplace
Backstabbing, gossip, power struggles, worry and stress are signs that negativity has invaded your workplace. The end result is turnover, absenteeism, and low morale.
Now before you roll your eyes and say that all this attitude stuff is just touchy feely, let me present the facts.
Fact #1
It may not be healthy to be negative but it’s natural. Human beings think over 60,000 thoughts per day and 85% of those thoughts are negative. Think about the little voice in your head cursing traffic or saying things like, “I dread going to work,” or “I can’t stand my co-workers.”
Fact #2
What you focus on expands. Cognitive scientists and neuron-psychologists know that the brain actually changes as a result of where a person focuses his thinking. Negative habits create more negativity and positive thoughts create happier feelings which lead to health.
Fact #3
Feeling good is good for your health. The American Heart Association reports that feelings of appreciation increases circulation and smooth cardiovascular rhythms. Also, recalling an angry experience can negatively affect the immune system for as much as six hours? Illness due to headaches cost $50 billion annually in medical expenses and absenteeism according to the National Health Foundation. Employees have a difficult time producing when there is negativity and ill will in the workplace.
Fact #4
Relationships are either a source of renewal or a source of drama. It’s a fact, the number one reason an employee leaves a company is due to poor relationships with his direct supervisors. It is a fact that over 90 percent of workplace problems are people related. The Gallup organization found that no single factor more clearly predicts the productivity of an employee than the relationship with his direct supervisor.
Increase your workplace productivity by tackling the number one problem in most workplaces—negativity and stress.
Marlene Chism MA works with companies that want to stop the drama so that teamwork and productivity can thrive. She offers this How-To plan for decreasing stress and negativity in the office: The #1 Workplace Problem: Seven Tips for Reducing Stress and Negativity
Boom in Camps for Chronically Ill Kids
“Summer camps just for kids with chronic diseases are booming — places to finally meet someone else with Tourette’s tics or slice open a cow’s heart to see what’s wrong with their own. Now research suggests these special camps may offer lasting therapeutic value.” (Associated Press)
Dalai Lama Addresses 15,000 People in Seattle (Video)
The Dalai Lama used his last speech at the five-day conference in Seattle, Washington to talk about compassion. He says compassion is the seed for all good things in the global community, even though a little fight is sometimes necessary!
Students Bent on Fighting Racism and Encouraging Cultural Diversity
A group of students in Nova Scotia bring the fight against racism to their school by encouraging people to embrace cultural diversity organizing a mini-United Nations. (Truro Daily News)
Drug Rehab Project Gets Encouraging Results
In Ho Chi Minh City an pilot project investment of $105 million in rehabilitation and vocational courses for drug addicts has paid off with 71 percent of them finding jobs and 13,700 rejoining their communities. (Thanhnien News) Is it encouraging to see countries treating the effects of drug addiction as a public health issue rather than a personal problem?
World’s Oldest and Deepest Lake Saved by a Woman Honored Today for Activism
Concerned with Russian plans to route a major oil pipeline within 900 yards of pristine Lake Baikal, a woman led thousands of people into the streets; collected over 20,000 petition signatures; and summoned flash mobs to pass out cloudy bottles of water to raise awareness. The pipeline was subsequently rerouted and the woman today is in San Francisco to receive the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize, along with 6 other activists. The Chrisitan Science Monitor tells Marina Rikhvanov’s story. (Thanks to Steve G. for submitting the link.)
Baikal, also known as the “Blue Eye of Siberia”, is the world’s oldest and deepest — and largest — freshwater lake, home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world.
