Inspirational News StoriesExcerpts of Key Inspirational News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
The decades-old footage of a full-grown lion joyously embracing two young men like an affectionate house cat has made myriad eyes misty since it recently landed on YouTube. What is it about the old, grainy images that has attracted millions of clicks around the globe? Is it simply that a lion, whimsically named Christian, remembered the two men who raised it and then released it into the wild? It may be something more: the indelible image of a creature that could kill a man in seconds behaving like a pussycat with two men it obviously loves, smack in the middle of the African bush. The video is the work of Anthony “Ace” Bourke and John Rendall, two Australians who in 1969 were living in ... London. Nearly 40 years later, Rendall expressed astonishment that one video of his reunion with his former pet had drawn more than six million hits as of this writing. “Oh, my God,” Rendall exclaimed from Australia when told how popular the video has become. “If it’s made people more aware and more interested in conservation and the protection of the environment, we’re very pleased.” Back in ’69, Rendall was living on King’s Road, in the Chelsea section of London. The center of London’s counterculture at the time, King’s Road seethed with creativity and fashion. When a friend came back from a trip to Harrods, London’s famous department store, and told a story about her trip to the pet department, Rendall was understandably fascinated. “Harrods has always claimed that they could find anything,” he explained. “Anything you’d want, Harrods could get for you. ... There were these beautiful lion cubs.”
Note: To watch this highly inspiring three-minute clip, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adYbFQFXG0U.
A woman claims to have undergone a complete "personality transplant" after receiving a new kidney. Cheryl Johnson, 37, says she has changed completely since receiving the organ in May. She believes that she must have picked up her new characteristics from the donor, a 59-year-old man who died from an aneurysm. Now, not only has her personality changed, the single mother also claims that her tastes in literature have taken a dramatic turn. Whereas she only used to read low-brow novels, Dostoevsky has become her author of choice since the transplant. [Ms] Johnson, from Penwortham, in Preston, Lancs, said: "You pick up your characteristics from your donor. My son said when I first had the transplant, I went stroppy and snappy - that wasn't me. I have always loved books but I've started to read classics like Jane Austen and Dostoevsky. I found myself reading Persuasion."
Faith was curled up on the carpet beside her agent, Mike Maguire, who kept reaching down to hand her pieces of his chicken sandwich, when their waitress gave him an easy one. "What kind of dog is that?" asked Alicia Weedon, 16. With a flair honed in scores of such encounters, Maguire, a sports agent from Fairfax County, said simply, "A two-legged dog." The chow mix jumped up, her haunches tight and six-pack abs working, and began to walk. She's been on Oprah and Montel. She's been on Japanese and Korean TV and is scheduled to fly to Istanbul next month. Faith has that kind of effect on people. The 5-year-old was born with a shriveled left leg that flopped behind her and had to be removed and a legless, partial right paw with two nails she still hates getting clipped. There is an industry of rolling aids for disabled pets. But peanut butter on the end of spoon and tossed gummy bears got Faith up off her chest. Faith's owner, Jude Stringfellow, 46, said she gave up her job as a teacher in Oklahoma to take Faith on the road. Her son found Faith as a puppy, and the dog has grown into a calling and a job, Stringfellow said. She's considered starting a charity, but the idea has stalled, she said. She said that she does not keep records but that the money has been minimal and that she has passed it on to other charities. Her focus, she said, is spreading Faith's message. "I want people to understand that you can be imperfect physically and still be perfect through your soul, through your spirit," she said.
Note: For an inspiring five minute video of this amazing pup, click here.
The new Web video from Matt Harding, accidental professional dancer, is up, and it is spectacular, a cry of life and brotherhood and joy. As Harding toured the world ... filming the third installment in his "Where the Hell Is Matt?" video series, you might have thought that the trick would have played itself out. An ordinary guy doing a kind of running-in-place dance at 69 earthly locales with an ethereal song as soundtrack shouldn't be endlessly endearing and deeply inspiring. But this music-video-length wonder works in surprising ways, especially amid the predominantly crass environment of YouTube. Part of the charm of the video (also at Harding's own wherethehellismatt.com) is his new twist for it. At each stop on his latest set of travels, Harding invited locals to come dance with him. In Chicago, that meant more than 100 people bobbed up and down in front of The Bean sculpture. In Poria, Papua New Guinea, it was a handful of people in full tribal garb accompanying Harding. The collection of disparate peoples doing essentially the same pointless yet joyful thing is a reminder of what's universal in humankind. The teasing glimpse of so many gorgeous spots is a goad to renew your own passport and get moving. Part of the charm comes from the unadorned simplicity of Harding himself—he just looks damned happy to be wherever he is—and the delight that is his story. A video game designer disaffected by the industry's trend toward violence, he quit his job in early 2003 and began traveling. At the suggestion of a friend, he used the video function of a point-and-shoot digital camera and taped himself dancing at all his stops.
Note: Don't miss Matt's inspiring five-minute video available here. For a New York Times article on this fun piece, click here.
In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project. She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open. But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has helped her to this day. "I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing," said Osborn, now 66, of Providence, R.I. "I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected." Scientists reported ... that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience. Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had. The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called "magic mushrooms." It's illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries. The project made headlines in 2006 when researchers published their report on how the volunteers felt just two months after taking the drug. The new study followed them up [to] a year after that. Fourteen months after taking the drug, 64 percent of the volunteers said they still felt at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction, in terms of things like feeling more creative, self-confident, flexible and optimistic. The questionnaire answers indicated lasting gains in traits like being more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate.
Note: For lots of exciting reports on new health research, click here.
Peace campaigners have welcomed reports that the US military has withdrawn its last nuclear weapons from Britain. The Federation of American Scientists said in a report 110 nuclear bombs were removed from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The US military said it was policy not to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons at Lakenheath. Kate Hudson, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), said: "We would like official confirmation from the government that this has happened." She added: "We believe an open admission will be a confidence-boosting measure for future disarmament initiatives." The report's author, Hans Kristensen, said the move had happened in the past few years. Mr Kristensen, an expert on the US nuclear arsenal, said the withdrawal of the bombs [is] part of a general strategic shift since the end of the Cold War. The Suffolk base has been the site of many protests over the years, mainly due to the claims that nuclear bombs were stored at the base.
The elusive concept of a "good" death has become a hot topic, inspired by the leave-takings of two great communicators, the Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain and the American computer science lecturer Randy Pausch. It is also the subject of a new book, The Art of Dying, a nod to the medieval texts Ars Moriendi that set out [advice] for dying. The authors, Dr Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick, argue that, obsessed with prolonging life, we have lost the habit of helping people to die a good death. "Hi-tech around the deathbed is sometimes more concerned with the feelgood factor of the relatives and the medical profession, who need to feel they have done everything they can, than with the peace and comfort of the dying," they say. We are very good at making sure that when people die they are as comfortable and pain-free as possible, they add, but not so good at catering for, and teaching others to care for, the spiritual needs of the dying. So it is time for those dying and those around them to think about where and how they want to die. "Our fear of death and love of life," say the Fenwicks, "mean that we seldom prepare either for death itself or the process of dying. So although all of us will die, hardly anyone is prepared to 'die right'?." By "right", they mean pain-free and in an untroubled frame of mind. A "good death", they say, is the death a person wanted - whether surrounded by family at home, in a hospice with professional carers, or even alone. But 67 per cent of people die in hospital among staff untrained and unequipped to answer their emotional, social and spiritual needs.
Note: For a highly inspiring 12-minute video by Prof. Randy Pausch about his impending death and gratitude for life, click here.
Is 90 the new 50? Not yet, aging researchers say, but medical breakthroughs to significantly extend life and ease the ailments of getting older are closer than many people think. "The general public has no idea what's coming," said David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School professor who has made headlines with research into the health benefits of a substance found in red wine called resveratrol. He said scientists can greatly increase longevity and improve health in lab animals like mice, and that drugs to benefit people are on the way. "It's not an if, but a when." Sinclair said treatments could be a few years or a decade away, but they're "really close. It's not something (from) science fiction and it's not something for the next generation." Robert Butler, a pioneer of aging research who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for the book Why Survive? Being Old in America, [said] that "people live longer and better by having a sense of purpose." He said that while medicine and biology are important for longevity, having friendships and close relationships also have a big impact. Richard Weindruch, a professor at the University of Wisconsin ... studies how extremely low-calorie diets affect aging. Sinclair said that based on Weindruch's work, he set out a decade ago to find the genes involved in caloric restriction and find a pill that can provide the benefits "without you feeling hungry all the time." He described how his research found that mice given large doses of resveratrol "live longer, they're almost immune to the effects of obesity. They don't get diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's as frequently. We delay the diseases of aging."
Dr. Frank Artress, the former Modesto cardiac anesthesiologist turned African bush doctor, has found little time to eat since his story went around the world a month ago. Artress nearly died from high-altitude pulmonary edema while on a 2002 trek up Mount Kilimanjaro, prompting him and his wife, Susan Gustafson, to make a 180-degree life change. They sold everything they owned and moved from Modesto to Tanzania to administer health care in one of the poorest nations in the world. They wanted to give back to the people who ran Artress down the mountain on a stretcher while singing Swahili prayer songs. Every year since, the couple have spent one month in the United States, fundraising at house parties and collecting checks from friends and family. The donations helped them open a small clinic last month in Karatu, where they have already treated patients with broken bones and chronic seizures. In recent weeks, interest in their work has multiplied as Artress' story, about the social power of the individual, has spread on the Internet. The outpouring comes as philanthropy is becoming more personal, through microloans or community service projects in public schools. With technology exposing the plight of the world's poor, volunteerism is on the rise and the Bay Area tops the list of the most-generous regions. Two decades ago, bookstores were filled with best-sellers about how to make a million. Today, books such as Three Cups of Tea and Mountains Beyond Mountains are best-sellers that inspire humanitarian activism and are helping raise millions of dollars for charity.
Ten-thirty p.m. in East Oakland. Sirens and gunshots ... punctuate the air. Dozens of homeless people are gathered beneath a street lamp - some in wheelchairs, some drunk, some ranting furiously to themselves. Then the Preacherman appears. Everything stops. And then, for the next half hour, there is church in the street ... where the homeless and even many criminals don't usually hang out this late at night. The Preacherman is Vincent Pannizzo, but most who come to his sermons don't know his name. Or that he was working on a doctorate at UC Berkeley when he dropped out nine years ago to begin preaching. Or that he comes from middle-class comfort in New Jersey, did a three-year hitch in the Army and once dreamed of being a history professor. To his street flock, Pannizzo is simply "the Preacherman," who shows up seven nights a week, rain or not, to gently sermonize and hand out sandwiches, blankets and the few dollars he makes through day labor. "I'm not nuts," Pannizzo said with a chuckle ... standing in the unusually tidy camp he keeps with a half-dozen other homeless people. "I'm basically just a regular guy. But at one point I began really reading the Scriptures, and they really blew me away. God gave me faith. This is what I must do." His transformation began when, as a history Ph.D. candidate, he began reading the Bible in one of its ancient Aramaic-language versions. Pannizzo said he didn't start sleeping outside until four years ago, when he decided the best way to reach his audience was to live like it. So he sold his collection of 300 scholarly books, turned in his apartment key and hit the street.
Wadded-up tissues littered Rishel Middle School's gym floor as tough teenagers sobbed, hugged their peers and told gut-wrenching stories about their lives during an all-day session intended to break down barriers. One 13-year-old said he was abandoned by his parents and that he lies awake at night scared by sounds of gunshots outside his window. A 15-year-old girl talked about attempting suicide and urged anyone with similar thoughts to reach out for help. And a teacher tearfully warned students about their actions by revealing he was a bully when he was younger – until the person he tormented tried to kill himself. The confessions were shared ... as part of "Challenge Day," a nationally recognized anti-bullying program that travels to schools around the country. Challenge Day promotes self respect and acceptance, and inspires students to become positive leaders. [The] 20-year-old program [was] designed by Yvonne and Rich St. John-Dutra. "We want to create a world where every child feels safe," said Rich St. John-Dutra. The program, which was featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." The events combined ice-breaking routines to get students to drop their guards with soul-searching exercises designed to reveal their true selves. Students wept as their troubles tumbled out - from worries about their parents, medical problems within the family, troubles with gangs, and battles with alcohol and drugs. Students later apologized to others who they had put down or teased over the years. "This is going to change people," said Eddie Castillo, 13. "I never knew people had problems with their families and their brothers and drugs. I never saw that sensitive side until now."
Note: For one of the most inspiring video clips ever, watch an incredibly moving 15-minute clip from an Emmy-award winning documentary on Challenge day. Learn more about this amazing program on the Challenge Day website.
There is a moment of foreshadowing at the end of “Battle at Kruger,” the eight-minute African safari video that has drawn more than 30 million views on YouTube. David Budzinski, a tourist from Texas, has just recorded a stunning scene straight out of a wildlife documentary. A small pride of lions and a crocodile have pinned down a cape buffalo calf, prompting an angry herd of buffalo to fight off the predators and save the babe. A fellow traveler remarks, “You could sell that video!” After returning home, Mr. Budzinski tried, but National Geographic and Animal Planet were not interested. Only after the battle — alternately terrifying and heart-warming — became one of the most popular videos in YouTube’s history did the buyers come calling. Last summer the National Geographic Channel purchased the television rights to the video, and on Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern time, it will devote an hour to a documentary deconstructing the drama. Adhering to the short-form spirit of YouTube, the complete tale concludes in slightly more than eight minutes. Mr. Budzinski tried unsuccessfully to sell it to television networks. “They all told us the same thing — they don’t accept any footage from amateurs,”he said. For almost three years the film essentially sat on the shelf. But a year ago, when Mr. Schlosberg used YouTube to share the video with a friend — it was easier than making a DVD copy and mailing it, he said — “Battle at Kruger” started spreading virally on the Internet. Before long, National Geographic [called].
Note: To watch this amazing 8-minute clip of a highly unusual battle between lions and water buffalo, click here.
At age 21, [Nisha] Mehta has five people -- all older than she is -- working under her. And her boss says the sky's the limit. This is a seismic change in a country where women have, until recently, been restricted to traditional family roles. And it's a change that has transpired within one generation in one household. Mehta's mother never went to college, doesn't work and cannot make major decisions without the consent of her husband. Mehta says she has no desire to live the way her mother does -- and her mother has actively encouraged her not to follow in her footsteps. Mehta is conducting an interesting -- and seemingly effortless -- balancing act between two very different worlds. On the one hand, she lives at home, as most unmarried Indians do, in a tiny, two-room apartment. She shares a pull-out couch with her little brother. On the other, she is financially independent and also insistent that she will not submit to an arranged marriage, as the vast majority of young Indians do. Mehta says she wants a "love match." But, she says that she'll get her parents' consent before marrying and that she won't marry anyone from outside her community. The changes going on in India right now -- the breaking down of old barriers of gender, religion and caste -- are incredibly exciting. But it's important to realize that these changes -- as of right now, at least -- are only affecting a minority. India's exploding middle class is estimated to be 300 million people -- roughly the size of the U.S. population! -- But there are still 600 million people living on less than $2 a day.
Note: For video clips of this fascinating series of interviews with 21-year-olds from around the world, click here.
When Rick Hoyt was 15, he communicated something to his father that changed both their lives. "Dad," the mute quadriplegic wrote in his computer after his father pushed him in a wheelchair in a five-kilometer race, "I felt like I wasn't handicapped." Rick, now 37, has had cerebral palsy since birth. But he has always been treated simply as one of the family, included by his now-divorced parents in almost everything brothers Rob and Russell did. "They told us to put Rick away, in an institution, (because) he's going to be nothing but a vegetable for the rest of his life," his father remembers. "We said, 'No, we're not going to do that. We're going to bring Rick home and bring him up like any other child,'" says Dick Hoyt, 59, a retired lieutenant colonel with the Air National Guard. "And this is what we have done." For more than 20 years, Dick has either towed, pushed or carried Rick in a string of athletic challenges including every Boston Marathon since 1981 and, most recently, last month's Ironman Triathlon World Championships in Hawaii. But mental determination and physical stamina tell only part of the Hoyt story. A message of independence and acceptance typed by Rick on his computer complete the picture: "When I am running, my disability seems to disappear. It is the only place where truly I feel as an equal. Due to all the positive feedback, I do not feel handicapped at all. Rather, I feel that I am the intelligent person that I am with no limits. I have a message for the world which is this: To take time to get to know people with disabilities for the individuals they are."
Note: For much more information about the amazing Hoyt family, click here. And for an incredibly eye-opening eight-minute video on the world from the eyes of an amazing autistic woman, click here.
Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died ... at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102. Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. He earned his Ph.D. ... in 1929, when he was just 23. It was during his work on the ergot fungus, which grows in rye kernels, that he stumbled on LSD, accidentally ingesting a trace of the compound one ... afternoon in April 1943. Dr. Hofmann’s work produced other important drugs, including methergine, used to treat postpartum hemorrhaging, the leading cause of death from childbirth. But it was LSD that shaped both his career and his spiritual quest. “Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom,” Dr. Hofmann told the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in 1984. “I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.” Dr. Hofmann became an impassioned advocate for the environment and argued that LSD, besides being a valuable tool for psychiatry, could be used to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place in nature and help curb society’s ultimately self-destructive degradation of the natural world.
Dr. Frank Artress looked down at his fingers. His nail beds were turning blue. He was running out of oxygen near the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. A cardiac anesthesiologist, Artress knew the signs of high altitude pulmonary edema. He knew there was a 75 percent chance that he would perish on Africa's highest peak. Artress led his wife to a rock, and they sat together above the clouds. Then it hit him. He wasn't afraid to die; he was ashamed. He had lived only for himself - practicing medicine in a Modesto hospital, traveling with his wife, purchasing luxury vacation homes and collecting art. He felt as if he had nothing to show for his 50 years. He felt as if his life had been a waste. In that moment, Artress and his wife realized they were living for the wrong reasons. In that moment, everything changed. Some people dream of giving up the trappings of success and starting life anew, with a purpose, with a social conscience. For Artress and his wife, the idea suddenly seemed real. That day on Mount Kilimanjaro would lead the Modesto doctor and his wife to leave their comfortable life in California to become bush doctors, dedicated to easing the heartbreak of Africa. They knew their decision was the right one when they returned to their creekside ranch home in Modesto. The things they normally missed when they were away - the matching silver sports cars, the signed Mirós and Picassos, the full-throttle espresso machine and the swimming pool - no longer had any charm. That week, Artress quit his job at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto and Gustafson gave notice as an educational psychologist for the public schools. Then they sold everything ... and made plans to return to the foot of Kilimanjaro to administer medical care as a way of repaying the community that saved Artress' life.
Note: This inspiring story should be read in its entirety.
Can singing change history? “The Singing Revolution,” a documentary by James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty about Estonia’s struggle to end Soviet occupation, shows that it already has. The first part of “Revolution” provides a thumbnail sketch of 20th-century Estonian history, and it’s not pretty. This small nation was a satellite state of the former Soviet Union for much of that time, except for a brief period when the Germans controlled it. Under the Soviets, especially, Estonian culture was brutishly suppressed, but it welled up every five years in July, when Estonians gathered in Tallinn for the Estonian song festival, which often drew upward of 25,000 people. The images of these festivals are moving already; the force of the singers and the precision of their conductors are stunning to behold. But the emotion swells further when Estonians defy their occupiers by singing nationalist songs. This bold act reclaimed Estonian identity and set the stage for a series of increasingly daring rebellions under the Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who advocated glasnost and got more than he bargained for. Imagine the scene in “Casablanca” in which the French patrons sing “La Marseillaise” in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you’ve only begun to imagine the force of “The Singing Revolution.”
The last thing John Kanzius thought he'd ever do was try to cure cancer. A former radio and television executive from Pennsylvania, he came to Florida to enjoy his retirement. "I have no business being in the cancer business. It's not something that a layman like me should be in, it should be left to doctors and research people," he told [CBS] correspondent Lesley Stahl. It was the worst kind of luck that gave Kanzius the idea to use radio waves to kill cancer cells: six years ago, he was diagnosed with terminal leukemia and since then has undergone 36 rounds of toxic chemotherapy. But it wasn't his own condition that motivated him, it was looking into the hollow eyes of sick children on the cancer ward at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "I saw the smiles of youth and saw their spirits were broken. And you could see that they were ... asking, 'Why can't they do something for me?'" Kanzius told Stahl. "And I said, 'There's got to be a better way to treat cancer.'" It was during one of those sleepless nights that the light bulb went off. When he was young, Kanzius was one of those kids who built radios from scratch, so he knew the hidden power of radio waves. Sick from chemo, he got out of bed, went to the kitchen, and started to build a radio wave machine. "Started looking in the cupboard and I saw pie pans and I said, 'These are perfect. I can modify these,'" he recalled. His wife Marianne woke up that night to a lot of banging and clamoring. "I was concerned truthfully that he had lost it," she told Stahl. "She felt sorry for me," Kanzius added. "I did," Marianne Kanzius acknowledged. "And I had mentioned to him, 'Honey, the doctors can't-you know, find an answer to cancer. How can you think that you can?'" That's what 60 Minutes wanted to know, so Stahl went to his garage laboratory to find out.
Note: This CBS News report was broadcast on 60 Minutes. To watch the video of the broadcast, click on the link above.
Mater Dei High School finished first and third out of 33 high school and college student teams from North and South America, shattering the miles per gallon record set last year by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Mater Dei's "6th Gen" car won the traditional fuel combustion category in the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas with [a] run of 2,843.4 miles per gallon. Mater Dei's other car in competition, "5th Gen" finished third with a Friday run of 2,383.8 miles per gallon. Mater Dei wins $10,000 for first prize, along with an additional $2,400 for internal combustion engine awards. The Eco-Marathon Americas, which began in 2007, is a gathering of college and high school student teams trying to drive the farthest distance using the least amount of fuel. Collectively, it's an effort to change the way the world uses energy. Each team uses a hand-built, high-mileage prototype vehicle at the California Speedway from vehicle design to management to financing, the student teams managed their vehicles from start to finish. In addition to being eco-friendly, the competition is also about giving the students an opportunity to gain practical experience in science, math, business and design.
Note: Why wasn't this remarkable news covered by any major media other than this NBC affiliate? For another astonishing, yet little-known engine invention by high school students, click here. For more on the repression of new energy inventions, click here.
It's no longer enough to live a greener life—now people are being encouraged to be environmentally friendly when they leave the Earth too. Cardboard coffins, clothes sewn from natural fibers, a burial plot in a natural setting. Green funerals attempt to be eco-friendly at every stage. "People are trying to think about what's the best way to live and with that, what's the best way to die," said Roslyn Cassidy, a funeral director for Green Endings, which provides eco-friendly funerals. Britain has been a world leader in eco-friendly funerals for years and a source of green burial products and ideas for countries like the United States, where the trend is just starting to catch on. Over the weekend in London, those in the business showcased their products and services at the Natural Death Center's Green Funeral Exhibition. The Natural Death Center provides a handbook that suggests environmental targets for cemeteries. "You can take any funeral and make it greener," said Michael Jarvis, the center's director. In a green funeral, bodies are not embalmed and are dressed in pure fiber clothes. Green campaigners say refrigeration or dry ice is a good alternative to formaldehyde, which can seep into the water system. Biodegradable coffins also differ from the traditional mahogany. Cardboard coffins—which are as thick as their wooden counterparts—can be decorated by family and biodegrade within three months. Small details are important for green funerals, such as using smaller cars instead of limousines in funeral processions. "What people are wanting is to know that they're doing the best they can both for their loved ones and for the environment," Cassidy said.
Note: For many more inspirational reports from major media sources, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.