Inspirational and good news.
Ashai.com has a groovy article about Japanese executives helping out charities. The article points out that in Japan “philanthropy is still below the levels in the United States and Europe” but that is starting to change.
Corporate talent is helping out NGOs and charities with talent and money. Japanese NGOs generally rely on membership fees and a few projects that generate revenue, so philanthropy is needed.
Researchers have found a way to essentially reprogram adult skin and bone cells so they will revert to an embryonic stem cell. This new discovery may lessen the debate surrounding stem cell research since stem cells are currently generated from discarded fetuses.
Scientist hope to use stem cells to create specially made transplants; other benefits also come from stem cell research.
Thanks Lucasz!
North Korea is reported to be willing to stop its nuclear program. 
They will continue to make use of nuclear reactors, although the Bush administration is demanding they stop that too.
International talks have been more successful than previously thought and are moving along rather amiably. The North Koreans and Americans have been using diplomatic channels to create a good atmosphere for the upcoming talks.
Acclaimed writer and journalist Hunter S. Thompson was remembered by his friends and loved ones this month with a ceremonial firing of a cannon containing his ashes. The ashes were sent off from a 150ft tower topped by a red fist with two thumbs – the symbol of Thompson’s free-wheeling, first-person gonzo journalism, and were accompanied by explosive fireworks. Hunters wife Anita commented that Thompson always enjoyed explosions. These included many that he himself let off (firing guns at his secluded Colorado ranch, igniting smoke-bombs in the lavatory of his local pubactor, and lets not forget the final explosion which took his life in February).
Johnny Depp, who portrayed Hunter in the film ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, donated the cannon for the ceremony and friends in attendance were instructed to remember him afterwards with the clink of ice in whiskey.
This is one of the coolest conclusions to a life that I have ever witnessed and certainly puts a positive spin on the end of exsistance for such a literary marvel. Talk about going out with a BANG!!
The fundamental ineffeciency if farming has always been that crops die at the end of season. This requires huge investments in organic matter removal, tillage, replanting and large quantaties of fertilizer, water and pesticides. The top 25 producing crops in the world are annuals but researchers at the lands institute want to change all that by switching to perrenial crops modelled after prarie grasslands. Grasslands are the most effecient self regulating ecosystems on the planet, requiring little input of materials, with incredible resilence to harms.
Researchers have been able to create stable ecosystems that requires less than 1/100 of the energy and inputs (no pesticides required the plants take care of themselves) with yields comparable to least productive farmland nowadays. The big difference being the land institute farms are sustainable the least productive farmlands exponentially require more resources and are suseptible to collapse.