At the beginning of May, Swiss athlete Ernst Bromeis attempted to become the first person to swim the 1,230-kilometers of the Rhine river, from its source in Tomasee, Switzerland, through 6 countries, to its mouth in Holland. The idea to swim an average of 50 kms per day for one month through strong currents, rapids and swirls, in ice-cold […]
Olga Kotelko is 91 years old. At the age of 77 she decided to start track and field sports. Today Olga is a gold medal winner in several disciplines, including sprinting, jumping and hammar throwing, having won 600 gold medals in her age category since she started competing internationally. She’s also a multi world record […]
Recently the Boston Globe profiled the work of Qiamuddin Amiry, President and co-founder of non-profit organization, the Afghan Scholars Initiative, which enables students from Afghanistan to attend American high schools and universities. Raised in Kabul, having himself won a scholarship to a high school in Hong Kong, Amiry decided to find a way to bring higher […]
Photographer Paul Nicklen wants to connect people to the environment. His photos tell people what’s happening in the Arctic and Antarctic. For instance, sea ice is disappearing, affecting polar bears, microorganisms and a host of other creatures and their food chain. With it, an entire ecosystem is disappearing. Yet one picture of a bear dying […]
Quite a bit has been written about this young lady in the past few weeks, but she’s definitely worth mentioning again, for her positive attitude. Samantha Kittle has a brain tumor and she has decided to tell the world about the experience in her blog, www.alieofthemind.com/As described in the Guardian on 26 April, “Moving, graphic, […]
Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) was a Polish musician who restored the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. As a child in Poland, Wanda excelled at the piano, which she studied at the Warsaw Conservatory. She also studied composition in Berlin and later taught in Paris. In 1925 Wanda Landowska set up the École de Musique Ancienne […]
LifeGate puts the environment at the center of doing business. One of its projects, Impatto Zero (Zero Impact), which lowers carbon emissions through reforestation, has created over 20 million square meters of new forests since the Italian company was founded in 2000 by entrepreneur Marco Roveda. Another LifeGate activity is LifeGate Engineering, which advises residences, businesses and public […]
Although gunmen raided her hospital in Somalia destroying equipment and records, Dr. Hawa Abdi’s compound continues to offer a refuge to thousands. The clinic, school and feeding program she built on her property over three decades help an estimated 100,000 people find relative safety from the fighting and poverty in Somalia, not far from Mogadishu. […]
Founded in 1976, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) describes itself as “thought leaders driven by a passion to alleviate poverty and rectify injustice in the world.” The Center “reduces global poverty by investing in the lives of women and girls.” In particular, ICRW works with girls and boys in their communities to […]
Launched in 2008, Mozambique’s biggest circulation weekly @Verdade, which reaches more than 400,000 people in that south-eastern African country, is the nation’s first high-quality, free newspaper. According to its founder, Erik Charas, “@Verdade was really created to bring out good values and positive morals as well as to raise our society to the levels we […]
