Inspirational News Stories

Excerpts of Key Inspirational News Stories in Major Media

Below are highly engaging excerpts of key inspirational stories reported in the mainstream media. Links are provided to the original stories on their major media websites. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These inspirational stories are ordered by date posted to this list. You can explore the same stories listed by order of importance or by article date. Enjoy your inspirational reading!

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.

As war rages between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it is hard to envision an end to the conflict. For decades, though, a growing movement of Palestinian and Israeli women has not only envisioned a peaceful coexistence, but also demanded it. Just three days before Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack, thousands of women from two peacebuilding groups gathered at Jerusalem's Tolerance Monument. Israelis from Women Wage Peace carried blue flags, and Palestinians from Women of the Sun flew yellow ones. Members of the two groups traveled to the Dead Sea–believed since ancient times to have healing qualities–and set a table. Women from both sides pulled up chairs as a symbol of a good-faith resumption of negotiations to reach a political solution."We, Palestinian and Israeli mothers, are determined to stop the vicious cycle of bloodshed," reads the preamble to their campaign, the Mother's Call. This campaign ... involved aligning around a single agenda that demands a political solution within a limited time frame. They set the table to show the importance of dialogue and women's involvement in decision-making. Ensuring women's participation isn't about equity or fairness. It's about winning the peace. A quantitative analysis of 156 peace agreements over time ... found that when women are decision-makers–serving as negotiators and mediators–the probability of an agreement lasting at least two years increased by 20 percent.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.

Seeds of Peace has, for over 30 years, been bringing young people together across lines of difference from the United States and more than 25 other countries. Over 8,000 of these young leaders have now spent part of a summer at the Seeds of Peace Camp, engaging face-to-face in the hard work of dialogue. Connection is an antidote to division and violence. Instead of avoiding or attacking those you disagree with, seek out opportunities to go deeper. Enter conversations with genuine curiosity and practice ways to regulate your body and emotions in order to stay open to listening, even when met with opinions with which you fiercely disagree. Polarization typically results in pressure to take sides: to be ‘pro' one group necessitates being ‘anti' the other. The goal of dialogue isn't to validate all sides but to increase our capacity to hold multiple truths and redefine the ‘sides' altogether. Any path forward will require us to first imagine beyond our current realities. Seeds of Peace creates spaces like our camp that allow us to imagine and practice a version of the future that has yet to be born into existence. Doing so is messy and often challenging, but it also expands our ideas for what's possible and inspires people to work towards realizing it in their communities. As our alumni declared upon returning home after experiencing living together, "We refuse to accept what is when we know what can be." "The wish to not have to deal with the other is an illusion," wrote one of our alumni in the Middle East recently. "And I hope this realization becomes a source of strength rather than weakness. That inevitably, we have to find a way to make this work for all of us. Otherwise, it will work for none of us."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

MANNA [is a] nonprofit that provides free, medically-tailored meals (MTMs) and education about how nutrition affects health conditions to Philadelphians who need it. Last month, the journal BMC Nutrition released research ... showing that its clients achieved a "significant decrease in malnutrition risk" and meaningful changes in conditions like diabetes and hypertension. "This is the first of its kind," explains Jule Anne Henstenburg, PhD, director of The MANNA Institute. "There has never been research involving an in-depth evaluation of a functioning medically tailored meal program." Of the clients at risk for malnutrition when starting the program, 56 percent experienced a clinically significant reduction in malnutrition risk by program finish; 62 percent of clients with hypertension reduced their blood pressure by five or more units; among clients with diabetes, median hemoglobin A1C dropped from 8.3 percent to 7.7 percent, indicating improved blood sugar control. Body mass index (BMI) remained stable or decreased for 88 percent of clients who started the program with obesity. Clients can be referred to MANNA either by their medical care provider or through their health insurance plan. The majority of MANNA's clients are low-income, a population that often lives in food deserts, where healthy food is already hard to come by, and health literacy (the kind of insight needed to understand medically complex diets) can be low. "I see MANNA as the pharmacy for your prescription diet," [Chief executive officer of MANNA Sue] Daugherty says. "Imagine getting a prescription for your high blood pressure medicine and not having a pharmacy to fill it – that's what happens every day when folks are discharged with complex diets." The top five illnesses MANNA serves are heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV / AIDS and congestive heart failure. Originally created in 1990 to provide comfort foods to patients with AIDS, MANNA overhauled its menu and began expanding its reach to anyone with a life-threatening illness 10 years later.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.

"Hospitals are the ugliest places in the world," says Jacques Herzog. "They are a product of blind functionalist thinking, while neglecting basic human needs." Welcome to Zurich's remarkable new children's hospital, the Kinderspital – or "Kispi" for short – a 14-year endeavour to revolutionise how we think about the architecture of healing. It is not trying to be a fancy hotel, like some private hospitals. It is just a place where simple things like the quality of light and views, the scale and proportion of spaces and the texture of materials have been thought about with immense care, and honed to make the experience as pleasant as possible for everyone. The firm [Herzog & de Meuron] completed an impressive, yet oddly undersung, rehabilitation clinic in Basel in 2002, and is now building a huge amoeba-shaped hospital in Denmark as well as a terracotta-clad ziggurat teaching hospital in San Fransisco. "I am totally convinced that architecture can contribute to the healing process," [Herzog says]. The 600-strong practice has been quietly tackling the topic of healthcare for the last two decades. Kispi ... is unlike any other hospital. The rooms have a more domestic feel than typical hospital rooms, like being in the attic of an alpine chalet. They have big picture windows and clever window seats that can be pulled out to become beds, giving weary parents a place to sleep. Having a sloped wooden roof and natural light makes a huge psychological difference when you're lying in bed staring at the ceiling all day. Fun porthole windows at child height can be opened for natural ventilation, while every room has an en suite bathroom. Wooden floors add a sense of warmth in contrast to the usual stark vinyl – and they're just as hygienic, coated with ultra-hardwearing polyurethane. "We've tried to make the architecture address the curiosity of children," says Christine Binswanger, partner in charge of the project.

Note: Don't miss the incredible photos of this children's hospital at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.

Nine years ago, Cecilia Llusco was one of 11 Indigenous women who made it to the summit of the 6,088 metre-high Huayna PotosĂ­ in Bolivia. They called themselves the cholitas escaladoras (the climbing cholitas) and went on to scale many more peaks in Bolivia and across South America. Llusco takes enormous pride in being an Indigenous woman and always goes up mountains wearing her pollera, a voluminous traditional floral skirt. Her belief in the strength of others, particularly women, is steadfast and reassuring. Though he cannot speak or hear, Asom Khan has so much to say. When I arrived at his shelter in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, he was quick to dig out his art books so I could see his drawings, to show me the photos he takes with his phone, and to tell me his story through the makeshift sign language he has developed. Photography has allowed Asom to communicate to the world what it is like to live in a refugee camp, where he has now spent almost half of his life. [Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh's] determination to stand up for victims of injustice in Iran is resolute. For decades she has fought for justice, defending children on death row, child victims of domestic abuse and prominent activists. The government has been relentless in its efforts to crush her spirit, but Sotoudeh refuses to give up hope. Some question how, as a wife and mother, she could risk imprisonment, after she was sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes for her human rights work in 2019. But her husband and children's support is unwavering: "People say life is precious, don't sacrifice your family life, but human rights and freedom are also valuable and precious."

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Time banks offer an alternative, powered by 21st-century technology, to the U.S. dollar. About 70 exist across the country – some with a few members, others with hundreds – to give value to work that members say often goes uncompensated in a traditional market economy. The Silver Spring Time Bank formed in 2015 and has about 300 members, said co-founder Mary Murphy. Last year, she said, 1,000 hours were exchanged for basic home repairs, dog walking, cooking and tailoring, among other services, without the exchange of money. "You get to save that money that you would have spent," she said. "You get to meet somebody else in your community and get to know that person. That's a bonus." Edgar S. Cahn, an 84-year-old law professor who had worked on civil rights and anti-poverty legislation in president Lyndon B. Johnson's Justice Department, suffered a heart attack in 1980. He said doctors gave him two years to live, with "maybe two good hours a day. I thought: What do I do with two good hours a day?" he said, having beaten doctors' expectations by nearly four decades. "I have to teach people to value themselves ... We're all trained as human service professionals: 'How can I help you?'' " he said. "None of us is trained to say: ‘How can you make a difference?' I need you as much as you need me." Cahn became a proselytizer for what he called the "time dollar" – a currency in which an hour of work is worth an hour of work, whether it's performed by a maid, a mechanic or a mechanical engineer. In 1995, he founded the D.C. nonprofit TimeBanks USA, which developed the software used by many time banks around the world. Time banks can serve as small-business incubators and a way for seniors to remain active after retirement.

Note: Read more about the potential of time banking. Explore more positive stories like this in on reimagining the economy.

When 94-year-old Bob Moore died in February, Bob's Red Mill not only lost its founder but also the face of the company, literally – he's on every package. But in 2010, the natural foods company initiated a process that would help prepare it for Moore's eventual passing. Moore, who founded the whole-grain food company in 1978 and turned it into a global empire, decided to transfer ownership to its more than 700 employees. By 2020, Bob's Red Mill was entirely employee-owned. "By becoming 100% employee-owned, we knew that when Bob passed that we would control our future," Trey Winthrop, the company's CEO since 2022, [said]. Moore said he frequently fended off large corporations that wanted to buy them out. But because of the employee-ownership program, Winthrop, who has worked at Bob's Red Mill for 19 years, said he did not have to worry about an external threat coming in and trying to buy up shares. Bob's Red Mill is one of about 6,500 American companies that operate with an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP. The largest majority employee-owned company in the US as of November is Publix, a Florida-based supermarket chain. Winthrop ... said being employee-owned boosts employee engagement and retention. He said it creates a two-way street of communication, where the company can share financials with employees and workers are given a voice, in part through being active in committees.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on reimagining the economy.

Imagine. You heard the on-the-hour radio news bulletin while you got dressed that morning. You glanced at headlines on your phone on the way to work. You read the paper while you waited for your coffee in a cafe. Each encounter was, typically for the mainstream news, filled with death and doom. But after each snippet, you also heard or read a warning: ‘Too much negative news may cause a distorted view of reality and harm your mental health.' Since the mandatory health warnings for majority-bad news media outlets were introduced, you've been much more aware of balancing your media intake so that you get a wider perspective on problems and progress. For the first time, you've really thought about it. Less doomscrolling, and more conscious solution-seeking. You're surprised at how much you accepted negative news to be normal, and how much better your mental health has felt as a result of the shift. This is the vision of Seán Wood, CEO of Positive News. The news media amounts to, he points out, an overarching shared story of how the world is. "The impact of that is obviously significant," says Wood. "While it's important to highlight problems so that society can course-correct ... Positive News shows that there can be a more balanced way of understanding the world, that keeps us informed, but allows people to engage more because we see a bigger picture, we see potential solutions and opportunities to contribute, we see the human potential."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.

Since the coup in Burma three years ago, over 3 million people have been displaced and thousands have been killed. Not only was there heavy fighting between resistance forces and the Burma Army, but the Burma military regularly attacked civilian populations. Local pro-democracy resistance groups, the Karenni National Defense Force (KNDF) and Karenni Army, asked us to provide medical support as they tried to push the Burma Army out of the town of Shadaw in Karenni State. We went to help treat any wounded from the battle. 33 Burma Army soldiers were brought out of the camp. We told them, "Don't be afraid, we're not going to hurt you. See, this is what the people of Burma have been facing these last three years. For the ethnic people it's been over 70 years! The cause of the dictators is lost. Please give up on that idea, rooted in force, control, greed, and hate. We are not better than you. God has made us to love each other and help each other. We'll take care of you, but we first have to survive this attack together." As the jetfighters came in, screaming over us and releasing their bombs just over our heads, I gathered the couple to me with both of my arms and shielded them with my body the best I could. Our team followed my example, shielding their former enemies with their own bodies. One of the wounded had lost a lot of blood so one of Rangers, named Barnya, volunteered to give his blood to the Burma Army soldier. He lay down and looked straight at his former enemy as he gave the blood. The medics ... administered the transfusion, saving the soldier's life. This was blood given for the enemy out of love, not spilled by the enemy in hate.

Note: Don't miss the powerful pictures of those providing medical care in the jungle to victims of this conflict at the link above. This article was written by the director of Free Ranger Burma and former US Army Special Forces officer David Eubank. Free Burma Rangers is a humanitarian service movement for oppressed ethnic minorities of all races and religions in the Burma, Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Sudan war zones. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.

By the early 1990s, extremist Hutu propaganda had started to spread in newspapers and on the radio, radicalizing Rwandans. Over the course of just 100 days [in 1994], about 800,000 Rwandans, primarily Tutsi, were killed. On April 22, 1994, [Hussein] Longolongo recounted, he and an armed group of men entered a chapel where dozens of Tutsi were hiding. "We killed about 70 people," he said. "I was brainwashed." Eventually, more than 120,000 Hutu were arrested on charges of participating in the genocide. In prison, [Longolongo] was forced to take part in a government-sanctioned reeducation program. He initially dismissed much of what he heard. "But as time went on, I became convinced that what I did was not right," he told me. Longolongo also participated in more than 100 of what were known as gacaca trials. Gacaca–which roughly translates to "justice on the grass"–had historically been used in Rwandan villages and communities to settle interpersonal and intercommunal conflicts. Now the government transformed the role of the gacaca court to handle allegations of genocide. Many survivors were initially reluctant. "They would say, ‘How can you forgive those people?'" [Albert] Rutikanga told them that these conversations weren't something they should do for the perpetrators. "Forgiveness is a choice of healing yourself," he would say. "You cannot keep the anger and bitterness inside, because it will destroy you."

Note: Read how a Rwandan woman forgave the man who killed her husband during the 1994 genocide and allowed his daughter to marry her son. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

Seven first responders from across the US traveled to Mexico seeking a therapy they hoped would transform their lives. Over the course of three days a team would guide them through ceremonies with psilocybin, the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT and tobacco. The retreat ... offered a chance at healing that had eluded the first responders through years of counseling, medication and meditation. The US is in the midst of a mental health crisis, and it is particularly acute among first responders – including police, firefighters and paramedics – who are at greater risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and suicide. A wide body of peer-reviewed research from scientists across the world has found that supervised use of psychedelics, such as psilocybin, can be a powerful tool to treat symptoms of depression, PTSD and other conditions. During the days-long event, [Angela Graham-Houweling] took psilocybin and later five doses of 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful psychedelic. The ... session was grueling, she said, describing it as one of the most difficult things she'd ever done. She felt a sense of tranquility and a less frantic, reactive brain. "Two weeks [later] I still was able to be calm with [my son] and everyone. I remember thinking: ‘Wow, is this how everyone else gets to feel all the time?'" That sense of peace and the tools Graham-Houweling gained during the retreat, such as practicing mindfulness and staying aware of her emotional state, changed her. She felt better.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on psychedelic medicine.

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds: "What does love mean?" The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." -Rebecca, age 8. "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." -Billy, age 4. "If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate." -Nikka, age 6. "Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen." -Bobby, age 7. "You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." -Jessica, age 8. Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

Each link of that paper trail carries a handwritten message of love and kindness. These 360,000 chain links were created with used paper – homework assignments, old tests, artwork, paper bags, cereal boxes – by students from schools in all 50 U.S. states and on all continents. You get the gist of this colossal undertaking by Kids for Peace, a global nonprofit based in Carlsbad. Instead of stretching the paper chain from Carlsbad's Pacific Rim Elementary School to Westfield UTC, however, they arranged the strands into a giant heart on the football field. This paper chain project, more than 18 months in the making, came to fruition on Nov. 13, World Kindness Day. "It was started because of the pandemic," explains Jill McManigal ... who co-founded and heads Kids for Peace. Students, isolated for months at home, needed to find ways to connect and to remain optimistic during this uncertain time, she says. "By doing this paper chain, they were symbolically connected." The recycled paper "love links" were written in several languages, including Chinese, Farsi, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Swahili and Tagalog. One message read "love" in Braille. Messages sent from other states and from abroad were stapled and assembled into chains by local student volunteers. Among thoughts shared were: "You're loved," "Kindness matters," "Have faith," Care for each other," "Have a good day," "All we need is hope," "Stay Strong!," "Be the source of someone's joy" and "Learn to dance in the rain."

Note: Don't miss the pictures of this incredible event at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

A video game is helping thousands of vulnerable young people turn their darkest moments into moments of creativity and hope that they can pass on to others. Apart of Me is designed to help children and young adults open up about their loss and trauma in a safe and supportive environment. The game, co-founded by Manchester psychologist Louis Weinstock, is now a charity and has helped 44,000 people in the UK, and 160,000 worldwide to understand and process their grief. Created in 2018, [Apart of Me] is designed for 11-18-year-olds who have been affected by a loss which is potentially impacting their mental health. Set on an island, users can play the 3D game anonymously as it introduces characters who each have a grief-related struggle they are finding hard to deal with. It is the user's task to help the characters find a way through and this is done by collecting objects, with each object informing the user about different aspects of grief, Mr Weinstock explains. The game also allows the user to ask questions they may feel scared or uncomfortable to talk about generally. "It gives young people an outlet to have those conversations that otherwise might be difficult to have," he added. Mr Weinstock said the original idea for the game came from young people themselves as "not all want to sit in a room with a stranger and talk about their feelings". He met with young people at a hospice who all expressed the idea of a game to help them with their bereavement.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.

A former 'true atheist' has come forward to tell his story of the dramatic near-death experience that made him a believer and left him with a 'deep sense of love.' Jose Hernandez, from Canada, said his journey to the other side began with a brutal accident as an electrical engineer tending to roadside power lines. When his colleague crashed their utility truck on January 6, 2000, the then 46-year-old Hernandez was left with multiple broken ribs preventing him from breathing as emergency medical technicians raced him to intensive care. Despite his disbelief in the afterlife, Hernandez said that he spent those moments of deep physical pain seeking help from a higher power. Hernandez said his consciousness was soon transported through a dark otherworldly portal that led to a mysterious transitional realm of living light and color. He spent three minutes clinically dead, came back but fell back into the same state for another two minutes, which he said felt like hours as he watched his lifeless body in the hospital. [A] spirit-like figure [offered] him words of comfort as he transitioned to 'the other side.' 'I heard the voice next to me say 'Think of the your body as a car, and that car has like five million miles on it, and there's nothing we can do to fix it anymore. So you have to now say goodbye to your body,'' he remembered. This realm allowed him to reconcile with his deceased father. 'It was even more amazing because me and my father had a very hard relationship,' Hernandez noted. 'We had a lot of clashes and I don't ever remember saying to my father in life, 'I love you,' or he to me.' But all that changed when they met again in this realm. When I met my dad on the other side,' he told the podcast, 'I realized sometimes we may not be able to say something here, [but] we're gonna be able to say it somewhere else.'

Note: Watch a video of Hernandes talking about his experiences. Read more about the fascinating study of near-death experiences. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.

Dannion Brinkley says he has seen the other side at least three times. Brinkley was a U.S. Marine and a successful businessman, not very interested in spiritual matters. That changed in 1975 when a bolt of lightning struck a telephone pole, traveled down the phone line, and slammed into his body melting the phone he was holding. "It went into the side of my head above my ear, it went down my spine," Brinkley said. He left his body, floated along with the ambulance as it raced to a hospital, and watched from above as doctors declared him dead. 28 minutes later he awoke in the hospital morgue. During those 28 minutes, Brinkley says his consciousness traveled through a tunnel, where he encountered a spiritual being of light, and underwent a grueling replay of his entire life. And then, in a flash, he says he was back. "If I didn't go to hell ... nobody's going to hell, okay," Brinkley said. "So, when you learn you don't die, when you learn you're a spiritual being, you're not going to go to hell. That's enough to inspire you to change." Brinkley put his beliefs into action. For decades, he's been counseling ... his fellow veterans, assuring them they have nothing to fear from death. He has spent tens of thousands of hours at the bedsides of the dying. He has been with more than 2,000 people as they passed on. His passion led him to create a program called the Twilight Brigade ... to ensure that no military veteran should die alone.

Note: Read more about the fascinating study of near-death experiences. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.

A 2021 study published in Explore suggests that past life experiences have been reported across various parts of the world. Children often begin recalling past life memories around the age of 2 and gradually stop discussing them by about 9, when they're well into their schooling years. Many children describe events, names, families or places from their alleged past life. Many also recall violent or unnatural deaths in their previous life, and about 20% participants mention an "intermission" period between lives, with an average gap of 16 months between a previous death and rebirth. Children can also display skills or behaviors they haven't been taught, such as xenoglossy (speaking a language they've never learned). Research on near-death experiences, published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, also suggests that survivors sometimes experience past-life memories, similar to those that young children in past-life recollection studies recall. Mr. David Moquin ... was in a coma and hospitalized with double pneumonia. "During that time, I experienced at least two events that felt like past lifetimes. The one that has haunted me for the past 24 years was that of burning to death in an airplane crash. Many years later a psychic told me that in my last lifetime I died landing a fighter plane on an odd single digit day in November 1944. I was born December 21, 1944," Moquin explains. "My daughter, hearing the recording of the reading, googled and found that Captain Fryer was the only pilot that died on an odd single digit day that November, and that he died trying to land his burning P-51 Mustang. My favorite plane has always been the P-51. The model sits on my desk. My daughter asked me questions and I seemed to know the names of my wing commander, squadron commander, mother and father."

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When Marco de Kat starts planning his meals, he doesn't need to travel far for fresh food. Right outside his house is an 800 square metre plot with all sorts of produce – apples, pears, peppers, basil, beets and cauliflower, to name a few. Oosterwold, where de Kat has lived since 2017, is a 4,300 hectare (10,625 acre) urban experiment located east of Amsterdam, in a suburb of the city of Almere, where de Kat works as a municipal councillor. The area, which has about 5,000 residents and a growing waiting list, is completely self-sufficient. Residents can build houses however they like, and must collaborate with others to figure out things such as street names, waste management, roads, and even schools. But the local government has included one extremely unusual requirement: about half of each plot must be devoted to urban agriculture. Some, like de Kat, have turned their gardens into an Eden of sorts to provide for their own household unit. Other residents just plant a few apple trees or outsource by owning plots of land on site that are tended to by professional farmers. Others, such as Jalil Bekkour, have been able to capitalise on it. "I never had experience gardening my own food or anything like that," he said. But he taught himself how to garden, and three years ago he opened his own restaurant, Atelier Feddan, where 80% of the food is directly from Oosterwold. His newfound excitement for gardening and agriculture is palpable.

Note: Learn about the community-powered movement that's transforming yards into microfarms in Los Angeles. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing the Earth.

Portugal has a life expectancy nearly four years longer than the U.S. despite spending 20% of what the U.S. does on health care per person. According to the 2021 Global Security Index, which measures the ability to respond to pandemics, Portugal ranked third out of 195 countries in providing access to affordable health care. The United States ranked 183rd. Portugal has a national health care system, entitling every resident to free or very low-cost health care. It embraces innovative programs such as "social prescribing" that expand the boundaries of what is considered health care, while progressive laws on drug use and treatment have been credited with driving down overdose deaths, even as they rose in the U.S. In the 1990s, Portugal had one of the highest rates of heroin use and fatal overdoses anywhere. In 2001, the country not only decriminalized the use and possession of drugs, but also, in partnership with several non-governmental organizations such as Crescer, created a network of mostly free inpatient and outpatient treatment centers and mobile street teams that seek out drug users to provide medical care, clean needles, and support to enter addiction programs. Two decades later, drug overdose deaths have fallen sharply, from one per day to about 70 to 80 per year. New Jersey, with a smaller population than Portugal, sees 3,000 a year. HIV infection rates have dropped dramatically, too.

Note: Read our Substack to learn about social prescribing and other inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis ravaging the world. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing our bodies.

When large swathes of invasive seaweed started washing up on Caribbean beaches in 2011, local residents were perplexed. Soon, mounds of unsightly sargassum – carried by currents from the Sargasso Sea and linked to climate change – were carpeting the region's prized coastlines, repelling holidaymakers with the pungent stench emitted as it rots. Now, a pioneering group of Caribbean scientists and environmentalists hope to turn the tide on the problem by transforming the troublesome algae into a lucrative biofuel. They recently launched one of the world's first vehicles powered by bio-compressed natural gas. The innovative fuel source created at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados also uses wastewater from local rum distilleries, and dung from the island's indigenous blackbelly sheep which provides the vital anaerobic bacteria. The team says any car can be converted to run on the gas via a simple and affordable four-hour installation process, using an easily available kit, at a total cost of around $2,500 (Ł1,940). "Tourism has suffered a lot from the seaweed; hotels have been spending millions on tackling it. It's caused a crisis," Dr Henry, a renewable energy expert and UWI lecturer, [said]. The idea that it could have a valuable purpose was suggested by one of her students, Brittney McKenzie, who had observed the volume of trucks being deployed to transport sargassum from Barbados' beaches.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.

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.