A Los Angeles woman recently celebrated the first Christmas with her baby boy, Ryu, born to truly remarkable circumstances. Ryu developed outside his mother’s womb, and remained hidden for months behind an ovarian cyst that grew to be the size of a basketball. It was so unbelievable, the surgical/OBGYN team that delivered Ryu documented it […] The post Mom and Baby Beat 1-in-a-Million Odds to Survive the ‘Rarest of Pregnancies’ appeared first on Good News Network.

For the first time in a decade, Donna Kelce does not have a son playing in the NFL playoffs. Jason Kelce retired from the Philadelphia Eagles in 2024. Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs didn’t make postseason play for the first time since 2014. Mama Kelce may not have a son on the field, but that doesn’t mean she’s not still involved with football. As a mom of two Super Bowl champions, she’s spent lots of time watching football and making treats for those watching with her. This year, she teamed up with the Pillsbury Dough Boy for Pillsbury’s annual Bake-Off Contest. The Dough Boy and Donna recently revealed the top four contestants in the Sweet vs. Savory showdown. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pillsbury (@pillsbury) Donna Kelce Knows Her Way Around a Kitchen Donna Kelce shared her excitement about the Pillsbury Bake-Off in a news release. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the stands and on the sidelines, so I know that game day food has to keep up with the excitement,” Donna Kelce said. “You need something easy, crowd-pleasing, and packed with flavor so you can get right back to the action, and that’s why I’m such a fan of Pillsbury. I usually reach for something sweet, but this year’s Bake-Off recipes made it nearly impossible to pick a favorite. Whether you’re Team Sweet or Team Savory, the final contenders are built to score big on game day.” The two sweet finalists are Kickoff Kettle Corn Bars and Big Win Cookie Bark. For the top two savory recipes, we have Blitz It Beef Bites and Tailgate Pimento Swirls. “The Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest has always celebrated the creativity of home bakers who turn everyday moments into something special,” Michelle Odland, VP, Business Unit Director for Pillsbury at General Mills said. “Our final contenders really ran with this year’s theme and brought that game day spirit, transforming classic Pillsbury biscuits, crescents and cookies into recipes that deserve a spot at any MVP-worthy spread. We can’t wait to see who comes out on top!” Pillsbury will announce the winner on January 29. This story’s featured image is by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Glamour.

If government is supposed to be a bureaucracy that operates on behalf of the citizens, one couldn’t hope to find a better example than a yearly tradition at the state treasury of Iowa known as the “Great Iowa Treasure Hunt.” That makes it sound like there’s a big state tax refund buried in a field […] The post ‘Great Iowa Treasure Hunt’ Reunites Rightful Owners with Lost Assets, Returns $33 Million Last Year appeared first on Good News Network.

On a misty Thursday morning in the village of Pamohi in the northeast Indian state of Assam, children walk to school carrying two bags. One holds their books; the other contains 25 cleaned and sorted plastic bags and bottles. For these students, the latter is currency — their school, the Akshar Forum, a 100-student institution established in 2016, accepts plastic as tuition fees.  When the kids arrive at school, they queue patiently, chattering among themselves as they wait their turn to deposit their weekly “fees.”  “I wonder why, across Pamohi, people still don’t segregate their waste,” 15-year-old Piyush Kalita muses. “If only we figured out how to dispose of plastic properly, life would be very different.”  Piyush Kalita. Credit: Akshar Foundation Kalita is right. Assam currently faces a huge plastic waste disposal problem. Its capital, Guwahati, produces 500 metric tons of waste every day, of which less than a third is processed. The rest suppurates in landfills, leaching toxins and microplastics into the environment — or worse, is burned by those with few other options to generate warmth during the harsh winters.  Parmita Sarma, who co-founded Akshar Forum in 2016 with Mazin Mukhtar, an aeronautics engineer who gave up his job to work with disadvantaged families in the U.S. before returning to India, came up with a solution to the region’s plastic crisis: “Instead of waiving the tuition fee in our school, we decided to take it in the form of plastic waste,” she says. Weighed down by negative news? Our smart, bright, weekly newsletter is the uplift you’ve been looking for. [contact-form-7] The world over, there are projects that assign value to plastic, creating a financial incentive for communities to collect and keep the material out of the environment. Social enterprise Plastic Bank, which launched in Haiti and now also has branches across Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and Cameroon, incentivizes communities to collect plastic from ecologically-fragile zones in return for tokens that can be cashed in for money or food. They then sell recycled plastic to be used in packaging. New Jersey-based recycling business Terracycle helps schools raise funds by getting students to collect and recycle waste. And in Lagos, Nigeria, Morit International School accepts plastic bottles in lieu of tuition fees from underprivileged students.  However, plastics are practically indestructible, and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)  estimates that 300 million tons of plastic waste is generated annually. What’s more, says the UNEP, only 9 percent of the plastic waste ever generated has been recycled to date, and only 14 percent is collected for recycling now. The long-term sustainability of projects that monetize plastic therefore depends on how efficiently they are able to recycle and reuse it. Some reports suggest that Morit International School is literally drowning in the “fees” it has collected. The post The School Where Students Pay With Plastic Bags appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.