Feed aggregator

12-year old Victoria Grant explains why her homeland, Canada, and most of the world, is in debt. April 27, 2012 at the Public Banking in America Conference, Philadelphia, PA. For more information see http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org.

Blueseed, the startup ship that will bring Silicon Valley to the open waters, is quickly gaining steam among entrepreneurs. The company recently released a report announcing that it already has 133 startup firms interested in becoming tenants of its floating city.

Of this group of interested entrepreneurs, 38 percent say they would be ready to move in now and 30 percent say they would be ready to set sail within the next six months.

The idea behind the company is to provide tech startups with an atmosphere in which they can perfect their products and produce new ideas in the company of like-minded individuals. The main draw is that the “city” will float on international waters, making it possible for tech professionals all over the world to stay close to the hub of innovation—Silicon Valley.

Because the vessel will sit only 12 miles from the coast of San Francisco, international entrepreneurs will only need tourist or short-term business visas, not tough-to-get work visas, to stay on board. By creating more space for foreign workers, the company’s creators hope the ship will fill a big void in the U.S. economy.

“Instead of reinventing the wheel, Blueseed will extend Silicon Valley to the world, fueling innovation, economic growth, and job creation that would otherwise not exist due to immigration restrictions,” the company states on its website, also providing the example that each year, the U.S. has 38,000 new graduates in computer science but creates a massive 144,000 job openings in the field. Blueseed, its creators claim, will help fill that gap with international workers who were previously unable to stay in the U.S. for lack of a work visa.

The company also says that its ship will help workers in the U.S. by providing jobs for Americans ranging from vessel crew to legal advising.

Investors, entrepreneurs, engineers and developers will be able to live and work on the ship for a monthly rate of $1,200 per person, a price that includes living quarters and office space. Ferries will be available daily to transport the professionals back to San Francisco daily.

While the company has yet to purchase a ship for the endeavor, it has drawn up a few vessel ideas. It is set to take off by third quarter 2013.

See the full story on SmartPlanet’s website here

Global warming threatens the future of Peru’s poorest coffee farmers, but one brand thinks it has found an answer on the financial markets.

In the foothills of the Andes, in the Sierra Piura region of Peru, the problems faced by coffee farmers are clear. Up to 6,600 farmers produce here for the Central Piurana de Cafetaleros co-operative (Cepicafe), growing 4,000 tonnes a year of the finest Peruvian coffee on family plots scattered across the mountainside. Together, year in, year out, they bring in this special harvest, the arabica coffee cherries, which are painstakingly picked by hand, processed and dried in the sun.

However, thanks to “weather change”, a continual topic of conversation in the area, the harvest is unpredictable. Last year, there was too little rain in the region. This year there has been a deluge: in some areas an increase of 500% on the “norm”.

“I still think coffee is worthwhile,” says 47-year-old Gusto Regis. “It’s not yet as bad as 1983.” That was when the El Niño weather system hit, and landslides and flooding drove his family away to find work labouring in an adjoining region. “Of course we had no land and no money so we needed to come back. I don’t know what we would do if we had to leave again.”

In the neighbouring village, Alejandro Reyes Ruiz talks his co-farmers through a giant diagram he has drawn explaining likely “weather changes”. Paul Santos Santos, 24, a trainee teacher, sings an instructive song about climate and coffee. I explain that where I’m from not everybody thinks that climate change exists. “They should come here and try to grow coffee,” Alejandro says.

Peru is rated among the top three nations likely to be most affected by climate change in the world by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia.

Read the full story on the Guardian’s website here

Thousands of children will get ‘top-up’ classes to prepare them for transition to secondary school

Seventy thousand primary school leavers will take part in intensive two-week summer schools this year to keep them from falling behind during the six-week break.

Nick Clegg will announce tomorrow that the “top-up” lessons will be provided to children from poor backgrounds by two-thirds of secondary schools, as part of a drive to highlight the coalition’s family and children’s policies.

Also this week, ministers will announce plans to offer extra help to students with disabilities or learning difficulties who are leaving full-time education, to prepare them for work. The Independent on Sunday revealed last month that Mr Clegg had taken charge of family policy as part of his efforts to stop bright, disadvantaged children from being routinely overtaken by those from well-off families.

He is determined to push ahead with policies including shared parental leave, extra help with childcare costs, flexible working and the Pupil Premium, which allocates additional funding to pupils from less well-off families and will be worth £2.5bn a year by 2015.

The Deputy Prime Minister is sensitive to the charge from Tory MPs that he is “obsessed” with policies that do not affect most people, and will say that Lib Dems in government “are not going to miss our chance to make Britain a better, fairer place”. But he will also point to “opportunities we cannot miss”, including reforming party funding and modernising the House of Lords.

Read the full story on the Independent’s website

The European Union and the United States have endorsed Algeria’s parliamentary elections as an important step toward reform, even as some opposition forces expressed suspicion that the vote was fraudulent.

The head of the EU observer team there, Jose Salafranca, criticized Algeria Saturday for not giving foreign observers free access to the nationwide electoral roll. He said officials running the elections had pledged more transparency.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton congratulated Algerians on expressing “their will.” She also applauded the high number of women elected.

Algeria’s main ruling party, the National Liberation Front, won 220 seats in the 462-seat legislative body. The National Democratic Rally, known by French initials RND, finished second to give the pro-government alliance a comfortable majority.

Opposition parties say the vote was rigged, and have encouraged foreign observers to hold officials to account.

Read this story on VOAnews

SoBi has built a GPS-enabled bike that you can find and unlock using your mobile phone. These bikes will be used to create an affordable and scalable bike share system that makes cycling more accessible and interactive.

Social Cyclists find and unlock bikes using their mobile phones, or unlock them by entering their account information directly into the keypad on the lockbox.

A central server verifies each unlock request and sends your pincode to the bicycle for confirmation on the keypad. Once the correct pincode is entered, the lock is disengaged and the server tracks the location of the bike.

When you are finished riding, slide the u-bar into the lock, and the bike notifies the server that the transaction is over and the bike is available.

See their website here http://socialbicycles.com/pages/about

At PositiveTV there’s always a debate about what is POSITIVE and what is not.

In this stunning TED talk, Jamie Oliver delivers a very hard hitting assessment of the dire state of health in the USA and UK.

The Positive News is that he is campaigning tirelessly to improve the health of the next generation.

So whilst you watch this, remember there is a solution..Jamie Oliver and ‘Food Revolution Day’ – May 19, 2012 http://www.foodrevolutionday.com/

TED says about this film…

“Jamie expresses his wish to teach every child about food and fight obesity. You can support his wish here… ” http://www.tedprize.org/jamie-oliver

Eco_Rally: RT @theLowCVP: Julia King: "Much cheaper to introduce ultra-low/zero emission cars now with subsidies than having to buy carbon credits ...

Eco_Rally: RT @theLowCVP: Julia King: "It wouldn't create chaos to let EVs drive in bus lanes. We need to pull all these policy levers to speed up ...

Eco_Rally: RT @theLowCVP: Phil Goodwin: cultural and behavioural shift of historic significance in terms of car use is happening. (ref: 'Peak car') ...

Eco_Rally: RT @theLowCVP: Ecodriving should not be an element of the driving test; it should be central to the way we teach people to drive - Julia ...

This taken from her Newspaper’s website..

Founder of the world’s first positive newspaper passes away

It is with great regret that we announce that our founder, Shauna Crockett-Burrows, has passed away.

A month short of her 82nd birthday – and having been invited to attend a garden party at Buckingham Palace at the end of May – Shauna died on 3 May in Shropshire, where she had been living during the past 17 years.

Shauna lived an extraordinary life and continued to work with Positive News, to which she was completely dedicated, right until the very end. She will be greatly missed by her family, her friends, her wide network of colleagues working for positive change in the world, and by myself and the rest of the team at Positive News.

The vast impact she had on the world is hard to measure. The ripples of inspiration from every single article she published, in the two decades in which she led Positive News, continue to spread. With each issue that she printed, people’s perspectives shifted, their conversations changed, new initiatives were inspired, and our idea of what kind of world was possible, expanded.

Although Shauna had progressively handed-over control of the paper during the past couple of years, the absence of her vibrant presence at Positive News will be acutely felt. As Positive News moves into its next phase, we will continue to hold her ethos of service, co-operation and love, at the heart of what we do.

If you would like to offer any messages or tributes, I welcome you to email me directly: sean@​positivenews.​org.​uk, or you can comment below. Please indicate if you wish us to consider your tribute for publication.

If you would like to offer a donation in Shauna’s memory, to support the ongoing work of Positive News, please donate here: www​.positivenews​.org​.uk/​d​o​n​ate

A full obituary will be published in due course.

see Positive News’ Website here

Europe’s largest local food network is to receive almost half a million pounds of funding from the Scottish government to encourage more people to choose local and sustainably sourced food.

he Fife Diet, which has 3,000 active members, will use the £448,000 grant from the Climate Challenge Fund to measure their reduction in carbon emissions and launch an urban agriculture and forest gardening project in the region’s largest town of Kirkcaldy.

The network also aims to double its membership over three years, with people pledging to cut their carbon footprint in six ways: eating more locally and more organically, composting more and wasting less, cutting down on meat consumption and attempting to grow their own food.

Mike Small, project co-ordinator, said the funding gives the network time to plan for the long term: “It allows us three years to develop the project. Within that time we will be able to create growing spaces, which need time to be cultivated over the seasons, and also to collaborate with other projects.

The scheme will be publishing monthly carbon impact reports to give people a sense of collective action. “Rather than just have people join the diet for its feelgood factor, we want to get back to our core value; that this is about climate change,” said Mike.

Small explains that when people are asked at local Fife Diet meetings which five food items they couldn’t do without, they mainly compile the same list: coffee or tea, bananas, sugar, wine and chocolate. “People don’t list a long range of exotic fruits they can’t have, so we say have all that and also the staples you can’t get here, like rice.” With this in mind, the ‘dieters’ are allowed an 80:20 split, where ideally, four-fifths of their food is derived locally while the rest can be ‘imported’.

Any notion of the diet being some kind of puritanical back-to-nature movement can be dispelled by looking through the seasonal recipe books given to new members. Rather than subsisting on root vegetables and boiled beef, this spring’s edition offers taramasalata made with hard cooked roes from Iain Spink’s Arbroath Smokies stall at the Farmer’s Market, aioli with steamed asparagus, or wild garlic pesto made with Anster cheese.

A study into members’ eating habits found that on average they were eating seven portions of fruit and vegetables every day, higher than the recommended amount and four times more than the average Scot eats daily. Mike also notes a saving of around £20 a week on his own family’s food budget since his switch to eating local food.

Read the full story on Positive News’ Website

If this story can inspire someone you know, please share it with them!

Arthur Boorman was a disabled veteran of the Gulf War for 15 years, and was told by his doctors that he would never be able to walk on his own, ever again.

He stumbled upon an article about Diamond Dallas Page doing Yoga and decided to give it a try — he couldn’t do traditional, higher impact exercise, so he tried DDP YOGA and sent an email to Dallas telling him his story.

Dallas was so moved by his story, he began emailing and speaking on the phone with Arthur throughout his journey – he encouraged Arthur to keep going and to believe that anything was possible. Even though doctors told him walking would never happen, Arthur was persistent. He fell many times, but kept going.

Arthur was getting stronger rapidly, and he was losing weight at an incredible rate! Because of DDP’s specialized workout, he gained tremendous balance and flexibility — which gave him hope that maybe someday, he’d be able to walk again.

His story is proof, that we cannot place limits on what we are capable of doing, because we often do not know our own potential. Niether Arthur, nor Dallas knew what he would go on to accomplish, but this video speaks for itself. In less than a year, Arthur completely transformed his life. If only he had known what he was capable of, 15 years earlier.

Do not waste any time thinking you are stuck – you can take control over your life, and change it faster than you might think.

Hopefully this story can inspire you to follow your dreams – whatever they may be.
Anything is Possible!

To contact Arthur or Dallas Page about this incredible story, please visit http://www.ddpbang.com and contact them.

Both Dallas and Arthur are available for events to share their inspirational story.

For more information about DDP YOGA, visit http://www.ddpyoga.com

Some footage taken from a still to be finished documentary, http://www.inspiredthemovie.com

‘Today’s Good News’ was the first incarnation of Positive TV, all that time ago…In this film we interview Shauna Crockett Burrows, the founder of ‘Positive News’ newspaper. Tune in and be inspired, she was a huge inspiration for us!

They drift about on trade winds, marring Hawaii’s landscapes and posing threats to marine life.

Floating plastic bags can kill marine animals, such as green sea turtles (hono) that become entangled or ingest the buoyant trash, mistaking it for a jellyfish snack. Also, in addition to cluttering beautiful scenery in the Islands, non-biodegradable plastics and non-recyclable paper place avoidable burdens on landfills.

What to do? One by one, Hawaii’s counties have passed green-minded bills that ban businesses from distributing non-biodegradable plastic bags and non-recyclable paper bags. They’re also encouraging both residents and visitors to bring their own reusable shopping bags to stores and restaurants.

Bans are already in place on Maui, Kauai, Molokai, Lanai and, starting in January 2014, on the Big Island, too. Pending Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle’s signature on a ban bill backed by the Honolulu City Council, Oahu could follow suit in July 2015. With an Oahu ban in effect, Hawaii could become the first state in the U.S. with a statewide crackdown on non-biodegradable plastic and non-recyclable paper trash.

Read the full story on Hawaii Magazine’s website

Earth Day 2012

Earth Day was founded 42 years ago as a way to galvanize the environmental movement, which at the time was often fighting relatively local battles.

This film was created to inspire us as a Globe.

Remember.

The Tiniest Things Matter.

Summer is just around the corner, and for those who live in big cities, that means spring warmth will soon give way to searing heat. Green roofs can help regulate city temperatures, giving people, and the electrical grid, a much needed break.

Toronto is the first city in North America with a bylaw that requires roofs to be green. And we’re not talking about paint. A green roof, also known as a living roof, uses various hardy plants to create a barrier between the sun’s rays and the tiles or shingles of the roof. The plants love the sun, and the building (and its inhabitants) enjoy more comfortable indoor temperatures as a result.

Toronto’s new legislation will require all residential, commercial and institutional buildings over 2,000 square meters to have between 20 and 60 percent living roofs. Although it’s been in place since early 2010, the bylaw will apply to new industrial development as of April 30, 2012. While this is the first city-wide mandate involving green roofs, Toronto’s decision follow’s in the footsteps of other cities, like Chicago and New York.

Under the direction of Mayor Richard Daley the city of Chicago put a 38,800 square foot green roof on a 12 story skyscraper in 2000. Twelve years later, that building now saves $5000 annually on utility bills, and Chicago boasts 7 million square feet of green roof space. New York has followed suit, and since planting a green roof on the Con Edison Learning Centre in Queens, the buildings managers have seen a 34 percent reduction of heat loss in winter, and reduced summer heat gain by 84 percent.

But lower utility bills aren’t the only benefit of planting a living roof. In addition to cooling down the city, green roofs create cleaner air, cleaner water, and provide a peaceful oasis for people, birds and insects in an otherwise polluted, concrete and asphalt-covered environment.

Read this story on CrispGreen.com’s website here..

The US will make a profit from bailing out the nation’s banks and carmakers at the height of the financial crisis, the Treasury Department has said.

The bank bailouts may result in a return of $2bn (£1.3bn), the Treasury said in its latest projections for the government’s response to the crisis.

And the recovering auto industry has added 230,000 jobs as a result.

The recession was the worst since the Great Depression and $19.2tn of wealth was wiped out, it said.

“Although the economy is getting stronger, we have a long way to go to fully repair the damage the crisis has left behind,” the Treasury said.

“We are still living with the broader economic cost of the crisis, which can be seen in high unemployment.”

The vast majority of the projected returns – more than $179bn – come from the Federal Reserve’s huge investments and loans to banks.

The Fed and the Treasury together invested $182bn just to save insurance giant AIG.

Read the full story on the bbc’s website here

Battling cancer is a monumental struggle that takes shape in the smallest actions. Everyday activities take on new meaning in the face of cancer’s debilitating symptoms. Even making it to a cancer treatment center can be a challenge. That’s where the non-profit group Your Ride Is Here comes in.

The group provides transportation to and from treatment – often in some of the most exotic, expensive cars on the planet.

Ken Adams knows firsthand the difficulties of living with cancer. The Austin, Texas resident was lucky enough to have a ride to and from treatment, but he saw many other patients who were not as fortunate.

Thanks to the greatnewsnetwork.com for highlighting this lovely film