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Bethany Hamilton survived a harrowing shark attack that claimed her left arm and went on to become a champion surfer. Read about her story at Biography.com.

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Boyan Slat was just a regular Dutch high-school student when he went on a diving trip to Greece in 2011. Once underwater, he was surrounded by plastic waste. "There were more plastic bags than fish," he told MNN a few years back. "That was the moment I realized it was a huge issue and that environmental issues are really the biggest problems my generation will face."

Like many of us, Slat had heard about various giant garbage patches the world over, and he figured that someone, somewhere, was working to solve it. During his research after the Greece trip, he learned that there were a few cleanup ideas out there, but most of them relied on using nets to filter the plastic out of the water. Those nets also scooped up a lot of fish, turtles and other sea life, and weren't practical. So he developed his own solution.

"I finally decided to put both university and my social life on hold to focus all my time on developing this idea. I wasn't sure if it would succeed, but considering the scale of the problem, I thought it was important to at least try," Slat said.

Following a two-year feasibility study, Slat launched his garbage-collecting booms from San Francisco on Sept. 8 for a series of trials. This initial run is a test, according to the Ocean Cleanup website, probing for any issues before more booms ship out over the next few years. "All lessons learned will be applied to the subsequent system," the group explains, "as we will gradually deploy more systems until we reach full-scale deployment by 2020."

During the test runs, Slat's team made sure the booms passed five main tests:

U-shape installation

Sufficient speed through water

Ability to reorient when wind/wave direction changes

Effective span in steady state

No significant damage by the end of the test

Following several weeks of tests, the team reached a point where it had to decide whether to return to California for adjustments or head on toward the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Team members held a meeting on Oct. 2 and decided the current setup of booms - named "System 001" - was good to go.

System 001 arrived at the garbage patch Oct. 16, and its booms were quickly deployed back into their U-shaped formation, allowing Ocean Cleanup to begin its long-awaited mission. Slat tweeted on Oct. 24 that the system had collected its first plastic, noting it will "take a few weeks before real conclusions can be drawn."

Still, he offered a few early observations from the cleanup, reporting that "very small pieces seem to get caught too" and "no interactions with marine life observed." He added that some plastic items leave the system after being collected, an issue he says is being analyzed to understand why.

Slat's project has drawn skepticism from some scientists who see it as "well-intentioned but misguided," according to Science Magazine. But while it may still be too early to assess its effectiveness, the system has already evolved with impressive speed since Slat's fateful diving trip in 2011, and the testing so far has buoyed hopes that its ambitious goals are achievable. According to Slat's estimates, his booms will collect about half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within five years, and should collect about 90 percent by 2040.

A garbage-collecting coastline in the water

If the pilot project is a success, Slat plans to launch a bigger system to tackle the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. (Photo: The Ocean Cleanup)

The design works via massive floating booms that sit on top of the water and act like a mini-coastline. Just like beaches collect our plastic waste, the boom can passively gather plastic waste and pull it to its center. Once a month or so, a boat would go collect the garbage.

Slat's recent collection estimates have gone up due to a design innovation - specifically, iterative engineering. Instead of attaching the booms to the ocean floor, which was an engineering nightmare, they can be suspended in the ocean attached to anchors that float deep below. This would allow the booms to slowly move around, but not so much as would prevent them from doing their job. The booms would mostly be held in place by deep-water tides, which move at a slow but regular rate.

"The forces moving the plastic around are the same forces moving the cleanup systems. In other words, where the plastic goes, the cleanup systems automatically go as well, like plastic magnets. The concept is more feasible, and also more efficient at capturing plastic," explains the Ocean Cleanup site. Slat calls his new system a "fleet" of cleanup booms.

The whole thing is solar-powered, modular and flexible to move with the tides. Originally, "Slat had imagined one massive device, perhaps extending as much as 60 miles," writes Ben Schiller for Fast Company. But plans have changed as the project has grown. Now the plan is to reach a full fleet of 60 systems by 2020, with the help of corporate sponsors. "That constellation is more scalable and less risky, he says; if one device breaks down, there will still be 49 others operating at any time. Plus, they can be funded as cash flow allows, rather than all at once," continues Fast Company.

In case you missed it, the video at top is an animated preview of what the deployment is expected to look like.

Time is of the essence

Slat holds a piece of a mooring line that will be used in his solar-powered trash-collecting booms in the Pacific Ocean. (Photo: The Ocean Cleanup)

As Slat points out, only 3 percent of the plastics in his team's current surveys are microplastics. Most pieces are still large enough to easily fish out - for now.

"This is what scares me most," Slat says. "What will happen over the next few decades is that these large objects will start breaking down into these small and dangerous microplastics, increasing the amount of microplastics dozens of times - unless we clean it up. We must defuse this ticking time-bomb."

It's a huge job: In the Pacific garbage patch alone, scientists estimate 5 trillion pieces of plastic are floating around, some of it up to 40 years old. But Slat has done measurements, worked with scientists and used computer models to determine how much his booms can collect, and he's confident he can capture tons of plastic every year, and bring it back to shore.

And what to do with all the plastic waste that's recovered? Well, there's opportunity there. To help pay for the operation, this marketable plastic can be recycled into all sorts of stuff, from car bumpers to plastic logs to sunglasses and more.

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new information since it was originally published in June 2017.

Dutch inventor launches ocean cleanup mission

Boyan Slat's system has arrived at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it's already collecting plastic.

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Dutch inventor launches ocean cleanup mission

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Boyan Slat was just a regular Dutch high-school student when he went on a diving trip to Greece in 2011. Once underwater, he was surrounded by plastic waste. "There were more plastic bags than fish," he told MNN a few years back.

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My name is Xiuhtezcatl (shoe-tez-cot) Martinez and I am a 14-year-old indigenous environmental activist. My 11-year-old brother, Itzcuauhtli (eat-squat-lee) Roske-Martinez, is on his 30th day of a talking strike that has gotten the attention of kids and adults from around the world including actor Mark Ruffalo. His talking strike is a desperate act to get the adults who care about their kids' future to stand up and demand climate action now!

In Newark Liberty International Airport, a month ago after Itzcuauhtli and I spoke and performed at an environmental conference called "Where Do We Go From Here?" in upstate New York, Itzcuauhtli asked my mom and I, "Why should I go to school and learn a bunch of stuff if there is not going to be a world worth living in? The so-called 'leaders' are failing us because they are not taking action on climate change. Don't they realize we are facing a crisis that threatens everyone's future?" So, there in the Newark airport, he decided to quit speaking until world leaders take concrete action on climate change.

He hasn't spoken a word for a month now, and he has been getting hundreds of thousands of hits on our Facebook page and his website, www.ClimateSilenceNow.org. He also made a two-minute video called "Silent To Be Heard" to explain why he isn't speaking. He is calling for a Silent Strike on December 10, and more than a thousand kids and adults have vowed to join him for a day or an hour of silence, and the numbers are growing.

Mark Ruffalo, whom we met in New York at an indigenous ceremony before the climate march in September, called my brother's strike "brave and thoughtful," but he was concerned about him. Mark wrote in a letter to my brother, "I also am made heartsick by your despair, little one. Your silence is a symbol of the silence that will come from doing nothing. You are silent for species that will go extinct and for the countless lives lost in super hurricanes, droughts, floods and ecosystem failure due to the folly and inaction of our leaders."

My brother and I were raised in the Aztec tradition. We are also eco-hip-hop performers and youth directors of an international organization called Earth Guardians. HBO will be releasing a music video of our original song "Be the Change" on December 15 and highlighting our work in a climate change series called "Saving Our Tomorrow." Plus, we are co-plaintiffs in a youth climate lawsuit; the Supreme Court will consider our case on December 5, 2014.

When we heard the news of the recent, historic US-China climate deal, Itzcuauhtli wrote that "the deal was not good enough," explaining:

Scientists say we must cap carbon in the next year if we are going to avoid the worst of rising temperatures and climate disasters. If we wait another 15 years, which is when China said they would cap carbon, it's going to be too late.

Itzcuauhtli says he won't start speaking again until he sees a real commitment to climate action. He is asking people to join him in demanding that leaders:

1. Agree on and implement a Global Climate Recovery Plan to get us back to a safe zone of 350 ppm;

2. Massively reforest the planet to help absorb our excess carbon;

3. Support renewable energy solutions to replace the dirty fossil fuel industry.

In addition to everyone who is joining him on December 10 for his talking strike, several other youth have been committing to one to two hours of silence per day leading up to the day of the strike. A 12-year-old girl named Tusli Von wrote to Itzcuauhtli and has been silent for more than four days.

My brother's talking strike created a lot of difficulty in his school; his teachers were frustrated that he wasn't speaking. The school asked if my mom had considered home-schooling him and my mom took their advice. Itzcuauhtli's last day of school was Friday, November 22.

My brother wrote on Facebook last week that this is the hardest thing he has ever done "and even though it is a bumpy road, I am committed to doing this for all the children of the world because our future is at stake! Though I have lost friends at school, I have made many new friends from all over the world who have signed up to join me! I don't know where this road will take me, but I hope it inspires parents and adults to rise up to protect us. I hope it shows young people we have the power to change the world."

Itzcuauhtli is asking you to visit his website ClimateSilenceNow.org to sign up to join in silence "even for an hour!"; wear a green ribbon; and share the message #climatesilencenow #ourfuturematters #earthguardians with the link to his video.

He is planning more actions leading up to the UN summit in Paris on December 15 and hopes that the silence of children and adults from around the world will be a megaphone for all of us who are calling for climate action now!

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For Climate Justice, My 11-Year-Old Brother Stopped Speaking - and Started Being Heard

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My name is Xiuhtezcatl (shoe-tez-cot) Martinez and I am a 14-year-old indigenous environmental activist. My 11-year-old brother, Itzcuauhtli (eat-squat-lee) Roske-Martinez, is on his 30th day of a talking strike that has gotten the attention of kids and adults from around the world including actor Mark Ruffalo.

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A Washington school district is hailing a middle-school student as a hero after he guided a school bus to a stop when the driver slumped in his seat.

The bus was taking a number of students to Surprise Lake Middle School in Milton, Washington, when the driver became incapacitated Monday morning, falling back into his seat and letting go of the wheel, surveillance video released by the school district shows.

The bus kept going, guided by no one for seconds, the video shows. Then seventh-grader Jeremy Wuitschick, two seats to the back and right of the driver, jumped into action.

"I was just sitting there when the bus driver, he looked funny. His eyes were bulging and he was sitting back, and his hands were kind of flapping around uselessly," Jeremy told CNN affiliate KOMO. "... I knew something was wrong."

Jeremy ran to the front and turned the wheel to the right, guiding the bus to the side of the road. Believing he couldn't reach the brake, he brought the bus to an eventual halt by taking the keys out of the ignition, he told KOMO. Other students used cell phones to call 911.

The bus had just pulled away from a stop and was going about 10 mph when the driver lost control, Fife School District Deputy Superintendent Jeff Short said. The bus hit a curb before Jeremy guided it to a stop outside an elementary school that is adjacent to Surprise Lake Middle School, CNN affiliate KIRO reported.

Jeremy and fellow student Johnny Wood gave the driver chest compressions after the bus stopped, according to the video and Short.

John McCrossin, the school district's director of student programs, was driving behind the bus and saw it veer, and he ran aboard and administered CPR until medics arrived, KOMO reported.

The driver, a substitute, was taken to a hospital "for some type of heart condition," Short told CNN on Tuesday. The district is withholding the driver's name at the request of his wife, who wants time to contact his relatives, Short said.

Short said he didn't have information to release about the driver's condition, except to say that he still was in the hospital Tuesday.

The children aboard the bus "did a fantastic job of reacting to a difficult situation," Short said.

"Turning the wheel to the curb and turning the bus off was perfect for that situation and for the safety of the kids," Short said. "We're proud of the kids and the way they acted in the situation."

Jeremy said he was acting on instinct, but also was inspired by a book in which a character was told to bring a bus under control by turning off the ignition, he told KOMO.

Catherine Wuitschick, Jeremy's mother, told KOMO that she is "incredibly proud of Jeremy."

"I always have been, but especially so today," she said.

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Student stops bus after driver slumps in seat

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A Washington school district is hailing a middle-school student as a hero after he guided a school bus to a stop when the driver slumped in his seat. The bus was taking a number of students to Surprise Lake Middle School in Milton, Washington, when the driver became incapacitated Monday morning, ...

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Going stroke for stroke with two adult swimmers, fourth-grader Johnny Wilson made history as the youngest person to ever swim San Francisco Bay from the legendary Alcatraz prison island in just under two hours.

CBS News correspondent Teri Okita reports that 9-year-old Johnny Wilson made it to the shore, telling himself, "I'm almost there. I'm almost there." His parents, classmates, teachers and friends cheered him to victory.

"Can you believe it? You did it!" his father exclaimed as he embraced him.

The 4-foot-9, 86-pound boy said the beginning was hardest because the water was so cold, and it was tougher than his twice-weekly training in the bay.

"It was a lot harder because it was a lot wavier," he said. "It was like I was protected by a coat or something."

During the swim Johnny's coach watched from a nearby boat and said Johnny has an inner drive not often seen.

"I didn't think it came from him, and all along it did," Rick Murray said. "In all of the training sessions, he wanted to go further and faster."

The 1.4 mile swim wasn't just for glory. It was Johnny's idea to raise money for charity - $30,000 in all.

"Give it to the Red Cross for Katrina Victims Fund," Johnny said.

History books say inmates at the island prison frequently drowned while trying to flee, but this escape from is one for the record books.

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Going stroke for stroke with two adult swimmers, fourth-grader Johnny Wilson made history as the youngest person to ever swim San Francisco Bay from the legendary Alcatraz prison island in just under two hours. CBS News correspondent Teri Okita reports that 9-year-old Johnny Wilson made it to the shore, telling himself, "I'm almost there.

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Industry giants say their case is misguided. But that isn't stopping a group of high school students from using the legal system to make environmental demands.

Alec Loorz turns 18 at the end of this month. While finishing high school and playing Ultimate Frisbee on weekends, he's also suing the federal government in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The Ventura, California, teen and four other juvenile plaintiffs want government officials to do more to prevent the risks of climate change -- the dangerous storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, and food-supply disruptions that scientists warn will threaten their generation absent a major turnabout in global energy policy. Specifically, the students are demanding that the U.S. government start reducing national emissions of carbon dioxide by at least six percent per year beginning in 2013.

Atlantic writers survey the biggest stories on their beats See full coverage

"I think a lot of young people realize that this is an urgent time, and that we're not going to solve this problem just by riding our bikes more," Loorz said in an interview.

The youth -- represented, pro bono, by the Burlingame, California, law firm of former U.S. Republican congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, a co-founder of Earth Day -- filed the suit, Alec L. et. al vs. Lisa P. Jackson, et. al, in May of last year. Defendants include not only Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson but the heads of the Commerce, Interior, Commerce, Defense, Energy, and Agriculture departments. This Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Wilkins, an Obama appointee, will hear arguments on the defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint.

While skeptics may view the case as little more than a publicity stunt, its implications have been serious enough to attract the time and resources of major industry leaders. Last month, Judge. Wilkins granted a motion to intervene in the case by the National Association of Manufacturers, joined by Delta Construction Company, Dalton Trucking Inc., Southern California Contractors Association, and the California Dump Truck Owners Association.

"At issue is whether a small group of individuals and environmental organizations can dictate through private tort litigation the economic, energy, and environmental policies of the entire nation," wrote National Association of Manufacturers spokesman Jeff Ostermeyer in an email. Granting the plaintiffs' demands, he added, "would carry serious and immediate consequences for industrial and economic productivity -- increasing manufacturing and transportation costs and decreasing global competitiveness." The manufacturers' legal brief says the restrictions being sought "could substantially eliminate the use of conventional energy in this country." It also argues that the plaintiffs haven't proved they have a legal right to sue.

The plaintiffs contend that they have standing to sue under the "public trust doctrine," a legal theory that in past years has helped protect waterways and wildlife. It's the reason, for example, that some state government agencies issue licenses to catch fish or shoot deer, particularly when populations are declining. The doctrine has never before been applied to the atmosphere, and it's a trickier prospect, not least because the sources of atmospheric pollution are so diffuse and wide-ranging, extending to other countries whose actions the United States may not be able to influence.

Defense attorneys have, in fact, have argued that the plaintiffs are essentially seeking for a court to make foreign policy decisions. To this, the plaintiff's attorneys counter that other nations' supposed inaction on climate change shouldn't be used as an excuse for the United States to do nothing. "That is like saying poverty exists everywhere, other countries have poverty, so it is ok for us to permit poverty," attorney Phil Gregory wrote in an email.

While teenagers serve as the public face of the lawsuit, the idea itself came from Julia Olson, an attorney based in Eugene, Oregon. Olson founded an organization called Our Children's Trust after watching the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth while she was seven months pregnant. Her idea to invite kids to become plaintiffs in a suit against the government was partly inspired by her colleague Mary Christina Wood, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program at the University of Oregon. Wood has spent her career studying the public trust doctrine, most recently devising a strategy she has dubbed Atmospheric Trust Litigation to apply that theory to the climate.

Wood told Olson about a case from the Philippines, where in the early 1990s a combative environmental attorney named Antonio Oposa represented 43 children, including some of his relatives, in a class action suit to defend the archipelago's small vestige of old-growth forest from logging firms. The children's case against the country's head of Environment & National Resources was ultimately upheld by the Philippines' Supreme Court, inspiring similar suits throughout the world.

Olson and other supporters of the suit believe that having kids as plaintiffs makes a particularly visceral appeal to adults to take action. Indeed, many of the adults involved said that their own children and grandchildren had inspired them. "Becoming a grandfather motivated me to speak out," said climate scientist James Hansen, the director of the U.S. NASA Goddard Space Institute and the man who first brought Loorz and Olson together. Hansen, in his free time, is a conscientious objector to U.S. energy policy who has been arrested three times at peaceful protests.

In support of the children's suit, Hansen has drawn up recommendations as to how the U.S. government can meet the greenhouse-gas reduction goals, through cuts in fossil-fuel-powered electricity and reforestation. "My talents are mainly in the sciences," he said, "but it just became so clear that no one is doing anything to prevent what is becoming scientifically a very clear picture. I didn't want my grandchildren to say that "Opa" (Dutch for "grandpa") knew what was happening but didn't do anything about it."

The tall, lanky Loorz is an especially compelling spokesman for the U.S. children's lawsuit. He became a climate activist at age 12, when, like Olson, spurred to action after watching An Inconvenient Truth -- in his case, twice in one evening. He went on to found an organization called Kids vs. Global Warming, and traveled the world, giving more than 200 speeches at schools and other venues to more than 100,000 people altogether.

The federal suit, which was first filed in California and then relocated to Washington, D.C., was initially coordinated with a dozen similar lawsuits against individual states. Four of those suits have been dismissed, while eight are still active, according to organization spokeswoman Meg Ward. With both the executive and legislative branches having been stymied on any major climate-change progress for more than two decades, the federal lawsuit represents a kind of Hail Mary pass, trusting that courts might bring about a speedier solution.

"The judicial branch is much less influenced by special interests such as the fossil fuel industry," said Hansen, who recalled that U.S. courts have succeeded in breaking such policy logjams in the past, including in the successful cases against tobacco firms and the enforcement of racial integration during the Civil Rights battles.

When it comes to climate change, however, it's unclear how far U.S. judges may be willing to proceed. In 2009, six states, New York City, and several land trusts sued utilities operating fossil fuel-powered electricity plants, in a somewhat similar effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The plaintiffs argued that the emissions' contribution to climate change constituted a "public nuisance," under common law. But last June, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked their effort. Writing for the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the U.S. Clean Air Act passed by Congress didn't allow for what she called a "parallel track" of enabling federal judges to control emissions.

While the adults continue their argument, Loorz says kids his age are much more worried about climate change than many of their parents might imagine. Indeed, one British survey found that children between the ages of 11 and 14 worry more about climate change (74 percent) than about their homework (64 percent). "I used to play a lot of video games, and goof off, and get sent to the office at school," he said. "But once I realized it was my generation that was going to be the first to really be affected by climate change, I made up my mind to do something about it."

It may seem ironic that the hyper-focused Loorz is one of the more than five million youth diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. In this case, however, Loorz contends that it's the grownups who are suffering from disabling distraction. He argues that U.S. politicians are so preoccupied by the lingering economic crisis and this year's presidential campaign that they're ignoring an environmental threat that could ultimately bring about devastating consequences.

"Sometimes I do ask myself, like is there really any chance to solve this problem?" Loorz acknowledged. "I feel a lot of despair sometimes, but when I talk to Dr. Hansen, he says there is still hope, so I have to trust that he knows more than I do about this."

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An Inconvenient Lawsuit: Teenagers Take Global Warming to the Courts

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Industry giants say their case is misguided. But that isn't stopping a group of high school students from using the legal system to make environmental demands. Alec Loorz turns 18 at the end of this month. While finishing high school and playing Ultimate Frisbee on weekends, he's also suing the federal government in U.S.

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Mory Sanberg makes bag lunches for the homeless people in her city.

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New York (CNN) -- Her teachers knew she loved to doodle on her tests and homework, but no one thought Olivia Bouler's drawing skills would raise more than $110,000 to help birds affected by the Gulf oil spill.

The 11-year-old wrote to the Audubon Society and told them she had an idea that could help raise money.

"I am a decent drawer, and I was wondering if I could sell some bird paintings and give the profits to your organization," the letter said.

The idea got some attention.

"Many people are outraged and don't know where to vent that because they can't drive to the beach and help. So what Olivia has done has set a beautiful example by using her skills and creating an initiative that is fruitful for everyone," said

Delta Willis, the senior communications manager for The National Audubon Society.

It was an innovative idea, but no one expected her efforts to pull in more than $90,000, and a $25,000 donation from AOL, after it signed on to host her initiative as part of AOL artists profiles.

Olivia has promised to send original paintings to her first 500 donors who helped her raise $25,000. She's completed about half of them and plans to spend her summer sending out the remaining paintings.

She's a resident of Islip, New York, but her father grew up in Orange Beach, Alabama, and she visits her grandparents as well as her cousins in Louisiana. Aside from her family, Olivia knew that the birds were also suffering from the oil spill in the Gulf.

Olivia's mom, Nadine, said AOL contacted them after the initiative's Facebook page "Save the Gulf: Olivia's Bird Illustrations" caught the attention of media outlets. The AOL Artists profile page launched June 8, and donations have poured in over the past week. The Facebook page has more than 21,000 fans.

Delta Willis has worked on conservation issues for 30 years and was amazed by Olivia's success.

"This is new to have this kind of outpouring of a response, it's very unique," Willis said. "In my experience, I've never seen an outpouring like this. It's a beautiful gesture."

Olivia said that John James Audubon, the French-American ornithologist who painted and described the birds of North America in his book "Birds of America," was her inspiration.

Although Olivia says she took "one little class" on drawing, she has created about 180 paintings of different birds.

After giving money to Olivia's initiative, donors can e-mail the receipt to Oliviasbirds@aol.com and they will receive one of five prints selected from the original paintings she has created.

Most of her drawing experience comes from doodling on tests and homework. When Olivia sits down to make a painting, she leafs through the "Cornell Lab of Ornithology Handbook of Bird Biology" or the National Audubon Society Field Guide and reads facts about the birds.

Olivia, who said she wants to attend Cornell University and be an ornithologist, told CNN that she became interested in birds at age 4 after she read a book on the topic. She's been hooked ever since.

Olivia loves to go bird watching and names the American Kestrel and the Blue Jay as two of her favorites.

The National Audubon Society had the first volunteers on the ground after they were called to the Gulf Coast by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Willis said. Members will use the donated money to support volunteers, staff and stock rehabilitation centers, and find transportation for the birds.

Although they are limited by regulations stipulating who can touch the contaminated birds, volunteers can help transport the birds in containers to rehabilitation centers and patrol beaches looking for injured birds.

To donate to Olivia's initiative, click here.

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Girl uses art to raise funds for birds in Gulf oil spill

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New York (CNN) -- Her teachers knew she loved to doodle on her tests and homework, but no one thought Olivia Bouler's drawing skills would raise more than $110,000 to help birds affected by the Gulf oil spill. The 11-year-old wrote to the Audubon Society and told them she had an idea that could help raise money.

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BORIS HORVAT/AFP/Getty

In a dimly lit corner of a Paris bar a delighted young divorcée describes in a soft voice how she spent the day throwing snowballs for the first time in her life. That is not remarkable. This is: Nujood Ali is just 10 years old — and was, until recently, the youngest known divorced person in the world.

Slender with thick hair and a shy smile, Ali made headlines in Yemen last April when she walked out on a man more than three times her age, to whom her father had married her off. It was an act driven by terror and despair. ( See the top 10 crime stories of 2008.)

Nujood's ordeal began last February, when the family gathered to celebrate her wedding to a motorcycle deliveryman in his 30s. She first set eyes on the groom when she took her marriage vows. After spending her wedding night with her parents and 15 brothers and sisters, Nujood was taken by her new husband to his family village, where, she says, he beat and raped her every night. After two nightmarish months he allowed her to visit her parents, who rebuffed her pleas to end the marriage.

Nujood finally found her moment to escape one day, when her mother gave her a few pennies and sent her out to buy bread. Instead she took a bus to the center of the capital, Sanaa — a city of 3 million people — where she hailed a taxi and asked to be taken to the courthouse. She had never been inside a courtroom but had once seen one on television, she says, and knew it was a place where people went for help. There she sat silently on a bench, uncertain as to what to do, while crowds of people scurried past, scarcely glancing at the quiet child. It was only once the courthouse emptied during the lunch recess that the judge noticed her and asked why she was there. "I came for a divorce," she told him. Horrified, he took her to his house to play with his 8-year-old daughter, and granted the divorce two days later.

Nujood's story might have ended there, had it not caught the attention of reporters from Sanaa's newspapers, then of journalists from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Last November, New York City–based Glamour magazine gave Nujood its Woman of the Year award in a splashy Manhattan ceremony with fellow honorees that included Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. Now Delphine Minoui, a French reporter for Le Figaro, has ghostwritten Nujood's autobiography.

Asked how she spent her week in Paris, Nujood's eyes widen as she says, "I saw the Eiffel Tower; I saw the Seine." Shaken by the testimony of violence during her divorce trial, Yemen's lawmakers raised the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18. Two other girls in Sanaa — one age 9, the other 12 — have since sued for divorce, while an 8-year-old in Saudi Arabia has won a divorce suit, apparently inspired by Nujood's tale. Nujood says she hopes to ignite a far broader movement of girls to quit their child marriages, adding, "They should not be scared of their fathers or their husbands."

That might be easier said than done, especially in cultures where a girl's honor is held as supremely important. Minoui, who has spent considerable time with Nujood, says the girl still risks attacks from male relatives who believe she has sullied the family's reputation. But her fame appears to have protected her from that possibility for now. ( Read about what divorce does to kids.)

Nujood says she thinks only about learning now — hardly the typical response from a 10-year-old child. As though she has no time to lose, she cut short her stay in Paris this week — including canceling a press conference — saying she wanted to get back to school. She says she ultimately hopes to work for women's rights in Yemen; in Paris she discussed the problem of child marriage with France's Human Rights Minister, Rama Yada, and Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara. And Nujood says she has already chosen her future career: "I want be a lawyer."

Nujood's services would be welcome. Despite Yemen's laws against child marriage, about 52% of Yemen's girls marry before the age of 18, often as the second or third wives of far older men. Worldwide, child marriage has been slow to change, according to UNICEF's "State of the World's Children" report released last month. About 49% of South Asian women in their early 20s were married before the age of 18, according to statistics gathered by UNICEF, which links early marriage to high rates of infant death and maternal mortality in very poor countries. "Often families marry off girls very young because they want to protect them, not realizing the dangers they face," says Stella Schumacher, a UNICEF child-protection specialist in New York. "It requires a change of social norms. Legislation is not enough." ( Read "Selling Brides: Native Mexican Custom or Crime?")

Laws were certainly not enough to win redress for Nujood. Although her father and ex-husband were arrested for arranging an underage marriage, both were released within 10 days. Nujood's father, an out-of-work laborer, told the judge he simply wanted to shield his daughter from possible violence on Sanaa's streets. Nujood's ex-husband slipped out of sight last summer as the media attention grew. A sympathetic friend reimbursed him for the dowry of about $250 that he had paid to Nujood's father. Asked by a reporter in Paris if she hopes to meet her Prince Charming one day, Nujood sat back in her chair, crossed her arms and said bluntly, "I no longer think about marriage."
See the top 10 news stories of 2008. See the best and worst Super Bowl commercials of 2009.

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Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com

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In a dimly lit corner of a Paris bar a delighted young divorcée describes in a soft voice how she spent the day throwing snowballs for the first time in her life. That is not remarkable. This is: Nujood Ali is just 10 years old - and was, until recently, the youngest known divorced person in the world.

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Iqbal refused to go back to the carpet mill where he had worked because he knew his rights as a citizen. Although a child labor law existed in Pakistan, it was not enforced. Soon, speaking out against the mills, he gained international attention.

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In trying to silence this Pakistani schoolgirl, the Taliban amplified her voice. she is now a symbol of the struggle for women's rights all over the world

Illustration by Sliman Mansour for TIME

Ayesha Mir didn't go to school on Tuesday, Nov. 27, the day after a security guard found a shrapnel-packed bomb under her family's car. The 17-year-old Pakistani girl assumed, as did most people who learned about the bomb, that it was intended for her father, the television news presenter Hamid Mir, who often takes on the Taliban in his nightly news broadcasts. Traumatized by the near miss, Ayesha spent most of the day curled up in a corner of her couch, unsure whom to be angrier with: the would-be assassins or her father for putting himself in danger. She desperately wanted someone to help her make sense of things.

At around 10:30 p.m., she got her wish. Ayesha's father had just come home from work, and he handed her his BlackBerry. "She wants to speak to you," he said. The voice on the phone was weak and cracked, but it still carried the confidence that Ayesha and millions of other Pakistanis had come to know through several high-profile speeches and TV appearances.

( PHOTOS: The Malala Effect: Dreaming of a University Degree)

"This is Malala," said the girl on the other end of the line. Malala Yousafzai, 15, was calling from the hospital in Birmingham, England, where under heavy guard she has been undergoing treatment since Oct. 16. "I understand that what happened was tragic, but you need to stay strong," Malala told Ayesha. "You cannot give up."

It was one of the few times Malala had called anyone in Pakistan since she was flown to England for specialized medical treatment after a Taliban assassin climbed onto her school bus, called out for her by name and shot her in the head on Oct. 9. Her brain is protected by a titanium plate that replaced a section of her skull removed to allow for swelling. But she spoke rapidly to the older girl in Urdu, encouraging her to stand up for her father even if doing so brought risks. As an outspoken champion of girls' right to an education, Malala knew all about risk - and fear and consequences - when it comes to taking on the Taliban. "The way she spoke was so inspirational," Ayesha says. "She made me realize that my father was fighting our enemies and that it was something I should be proud of, not afraid." The next day Ayesha returned to school. And with that call, Malala began to return to what she seems born to do - passing her courage on to others.

In trying, and failing, to kill Malala, the Taliban appear to have made a crucial mistake. They wanted to silence her. Instead, they amplified her voice. Since October her message has been heard around the world, from cramped classrooms where girls scratch out lessons in the dirt to the halls of the U.N. and national governments and NGOs, where legions of activists argue ever more vehemently that the key to raising living standards throughout the developing world is the empowerment of women and girls. Malala was already a spokesperson; the Taliban made her a symbol, and a powerful one, since in the age of social media and crowdsourced activism, a parable as tragic and triumphant as hers can raise an army of disciples.

( MORE: The Other Girls on the Bus: How Malala's Classmates Are Carrying On)

She has become perhaps the world's most admired children's-rights advocate, all the more powerful for being a child herself. Her primary cause - securing Pakistani girls' access to education - has served to highlight broader concerns: the health and safety of the developing world's children, women's rights and the fight against extremism. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is now the U.N.'s special envoy for global education, declared Nov. 10 Malala Day in honor of her and the more than 50 million girls around the world who are not at school. Nearly half a million people have signed petitions on Change.org to nominate her for the Nobel Peace Prize. That is not how the Taliban intended things to turn out.

If Malala decides to continue her crusade, hers will be a platform backed with financial means and wired with well-connected allies. "She'd be great as both a fundraiser and a public speaker," says former First Lady Laura Bush, who's spent years campaigning for women's rights in Taliban-controlled areas. Several funds and initiatives have been founded, including at least one that Malala and her father will directly influence once she has recovered. However, a return to Pakistan, where Malala would likely be most effective, would be fraught with danger. The Taliban have on several occasions sworn to target her again.

Long before she was an activist, Malala Yousafzai was a model student. By the time she was 21⁄2, she was sitting in class with 10-year-olds, according to a close family friend and teacher at the school founded by Malala's father. The little girl with the huge hazel eyes didn't say much, but "she could follow, and she never got bored," says the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous for fear that she too might become a Taliban target. Malala loved the school, a rundown concrete-block building with a large rooftop terrace open to views of the snowcapped mountains that surround the Swat Valley. As she grew older, she was always first in her class. "She was an ordinary girl with extraordinary abilities," says the teacher, "but she never had a feeling of being special."

(Interactive Timeline: The Making of a Heroine)

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Runner-Up: Malala Yousafzai, the Fighter

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Ayesha Mir didn't go to school on Tuesday, Nov. 27, the day after a security guard found a shrapnel-packed bomb under her family's car. The 17-year-old Pakistani girl assumed, as did most people who learned about the bomb, that it was intended for her father, the television news presenter Hamid...

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The debate over what went wrong with the response to Hurricane Katrina will rage for months, if not years. But disasters also bring out the best in many people. The stories of Americans pitching in to help each other, without regard to color or...

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from scrubbing floors to ivy league: homeless student to go to dream college - cnn

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From scrubbing floors to Ivy League: Homeless student to go to dream college - CNN

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Dawn Loggins, 18, was homeless last year. Yet she worked hard -- both as a student and as a janitor. She's now going off to the Ivy League.

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by Darlene

"The hats that you sent to me me not only brightened my day, they brightened my life."

Anthony Leanna four years ago at the very young age of 10 started his own community service project called the "Heavenly Hats Foundation." Heavenly Hats donates brand-new hats to cancer patients and other medical patients who lose their hair due to cancer or any other medical condition.

Anthony decided to start "Heavenly Hats" after he spent a lot of time in hospitals when his grandmother had breast cancer. He saw so many of the patients that did not have any hair and wanted to do something to help. "I wanted to provide comfort, warmth and kindness to people who were going through a very tough time in their life," said Anthony.

As of today's date Anthony and his "Heavenly Hats" program have donated over 50,000 brand new hats (almost $1,000,000 worth of head wear) to more than 150 hospitals and clinics and thousands more have been sent to individuals in need.

Anthony requests and receives donations of hats from individuals, businesses and he organizes hat drives around the country by school groups and other youth groups and organizations. Each hat is inspected, as they have to be brand new due to the already lowered immune systems of the recipients. He then bags the hats all individually and then boxes and ships them out to either the hospital, clinic or individuals. It is the goal of Heavenly Hats to help as many people in need as they possibly can.

For more information regarding the "Heavenly Hats Foundation" please visit his website at: www.heavenlyhats.com

Extra Info

Anthony has been featured on the CNN Lou Dobbs Show, for America's Bright Future. He has been featured in 3 books, "Consideration" by Capestone Press, "Volunteering: The Ultimate Teen Guide" by Kathryn Gay and "Stronger Than Cancer" by Connie Payton.

Anthony has also received the National Caring Award, Jefferson Award, Gloria Barron Award for Young Heroes, Angel Soft Angels in Action Award, Daily Points of Light Award, Lands' End Born Hero Award, and several others.

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"The hats that you sent to me me not only brightened my day, they brightened my life." Anthony Leanna four years ago at the very young age of 10 started his own community service project called the "Heavenly Hats Foundation."

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Where did you spend the holidays? With your family? By a tree? Warmed by a cozy fire?

What about in a cardboard box in frigid temperatures, with nothing more than a 40-year-old sleeping bag and a warm hat?

"It was like every other day," said Peter Larson, 17. "It just happened to be Christmas."

Larson isn't homeless. But thanks to Larson's work "Sleeping Out," there are hundreds of Americans who spent the holidays under a warm, safe roof.

When he was just 6, Larson's cub scout group, led by his father, Bruce Larson, spent one night sleeping inside tents in the cold Minnesota winter. They were inspired by Bob Fischer, who years earlier started sleeping outside every night of the holiday season to heighten awareness about homelessness and to raise money for the county's impoverished residents through the area's Interfaith Outreach and Community Partners.

Unlike the other scouts, however, Larson wasn't thankful to pack up his sleeping bag and take his shivering body inside. He wanted to do it again, and again, and again.

"I was only in first grade," Larson said, "but when Bob said that $500 could keep a family in their home for a month, I thought 'Hey! I can do that.'"

That year, Larson failed. He only raised $100. The next year, however, he trudged through the snow with a cardboard box, determined to raise awareness of homelessness and double the amount he raised.

Those hundreds of dollars grew to thousands. By the beginning of high school Larson's annual goal was $100,000 and he was sleeping outside 45 days a year to raise it, no matter what the elements.

"A few years ago it was minus 23 degrees outside," Larson, now a senior in high school, recalled. "The people at IOCP called me to say that I didn't have to stay out, but homeless families wouldn't have a place to go, would they? Yeah, it was really, really cold, but I made a commitment and if I didn't stay out, IOCP wouldn't have the help and a family might not have a home."

Jill Kohler of IOCP estimates that Larson's work has touched over 1,000 families in Hennepin County, Minn.

"Now, it takes $672 a month to keep a family in their home," Kohler said, "and it would take over $3,000 a month and a lot of turmoil to have them out and in a homeless shelter. But, it isn't just about housing. It's about transportation to work, education, and employment services. You have to take a more holistic view to have a long-term impact. And Peter has touched families in all those ways."

Makida Abdulahi of Minnesota knows that the impact is real. An immigrant from Ethiopia and the mother to several young children, Abdulahi feared that her American dream would be shattered when the father of her children left, a daughter developed severe asthma requiring frequent hospitalizations, and she lost her job.

Abdulahi turned to IOCP and was moved into a new, stable home, where mold did not make her children sick, and was given GED and career training to work in phlebotomy.

Because of IOCP's desire to protect the anonymity of those it serves, Larson did not meet anyone he helped until several years ago.

Minnesota Teen Sleeps Out in Frigid Weather to Help Homeless

"Peter lives in the middle of our service area," Kohler said. "He's helping families that he interacts with every day. Neighbors. A few years ago we took him to meet one of the families that he helped. He walked into a home, very ethnic, very different from his, but one where the family was safe and provided for because of him, where there were children coloring at the table."

That chance to meet and realize the impact that one individual can have on his community had a much greater impact.

"It's not like a soup kitchen," Larson said, "You don't get to see people and meet them and talk to them, for their own sake. To finally get to meet them, and to see other kids, it was just amazing."

The family was Abdulahi's, and they were equally amazed.

Abdulahi was shocked and touched when she realized that it was a boy who saved her and her children's chances at happiness.

"I don't know how to explain what he did," she said. "He was just a little boy and it surprised me so much. My God, it's really wonderful. We have a home where my children are safe and healthy and because of Peter I don't have to worry about them. He took a burden off my shoulders, and for my children took them out of a very, very stressful situation and showed them a beautiful world. They're inspired and they talk about Peter all the time, how they want to be good and help like him."

While they may not raise thousands of dollars, the executive director of IOCP, LaDonna Hoy, said that there are at least a thousand people like Larson, out to Sleep Out and make a difference.

"Peter has become our figurehead," Hoy said. "He's provided the energy and the enthusiasm, but each year we have around 1,000 people sleep out, and since Peter some of those have been as young as 3. But most of those are for one night and more than a thousand dollars raised is very, very rare."

Oddly enough, even though his "Sleeping Out" started from being a Cub Scout, Larson isn't technically the model boy scout one would predict.

"He didn't stay with that," his mother Joni said. "He's just not the kind of kid who is motivated by merit badges or grades or awards. But if he deems something to be important, he goes at it with his entire heart...I've seen him with ice on his body and snow on his box...I wouldn't stop him. You have to step back and let your child figure out what touches them, and with Peter it comes from the heart, not because he's supposed to."

This year is Larson's last sleeping out before he leaves for college in California. So far, he has raised over $120,000 this year, which will impact at least 60 families. He will be sleeping out until Dec. 31 and you can donate here.

Do you know of someone who's Bringing America Back? Tell us here.

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Minn. Teen Raises $120K Shivering for the Homeless

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Where did you spend the holidays? With your family? By a tree? Warmed by a cozy fire? What about in a cardboard box in frigid temperatures, with nothing more than a 40-year-old sleeping bag and a warm hat? "It was like every other day," said Peter Larson, 17.

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In 1995, when he was 12 years old, Craig Kielburger read a newspaper story that changed his life. Another 12-year-old boy, Iqbal Masih in Pakistan, had been murdered for bringing the world's attention to the terrible conditions endured by children working in the carpet-making industry. "I saw him as a hero for speaking out about child labor," says Kielburger." I suddenly understood that a young person can make a difference."

Kielburger set out to educate himself about human rights, and became so passionate about it that his parents reluctantly allowed him to accompany Alam Rahman, a Canadian human rights worker, on a trip through South Asia. There Kielburger saw, first-hand, the personal horrors behind child labor issues. He wrote about this experience in a book Free The Children.

Kielburger came home to Canada determined to find some way to help the children he had met. With a group of friends, 12-year-old Kielburger founded Kids Can Free The Children.

"One of the greatest problems facing Free the Children, no matter what our accomplishments, is the stereotype that young people are naive, or that we're too young to understand these problems, or that we're idealistic, as if it's something that should be outgrown eventually." Members of Free the Children are taught how to educate themselves on issues, because "it's the way they can sit on the same level as an adult and debate with a head of state or world leader: You have to ground activism experience in academics."

While working to change adult attitudes, FTC focuses on empowering youth. "If you expose young people to the issues of poverty, war, violence and child labor, it's not as if you're taking away their childhood. Young people see it in the world," says Kielburger. "We know there are social injustices. FTC is trying to help young people not just close their eyes and feel [powerless], but to realize that they do have a positive role to play through very simple, very concrete, actions. Maybe it's a petition, or a letter-writing campaign, or a small fundraiser like a bake sale or a car wash. But it empowers them to realize they can make a difference on some level. And it teaches them that even small actions can help change the world. It creates a sense of civic responsibility, a duty, a sense of global citizenship. It's planting that seed."

In 2001, Free the Children focused on education, resulting in the publication of its book, Take Action!: A Guide to Active Citizenship, written by Craig Kielburger and his older brother, Marc. A combination of how-to and testimonial passages, Take Action! "puts into one book everything we've learned in the past 7 years." It will be used in school curricula and by chapters of FTC throughout the world.

Believing education to be one of the best ways to fight child labor, Free the Children established "Friendship Schools," linking schools in developing countries with ones in North America, Europe and industrialized countries around the world. In all of these schools, it was children who saw the need and worked to find solutions, which included:
· collecting and distributing supplies for over 100,000 school and health kits. (An additional 9,000 kits, blankets and warm clothes were recently shipped to help war-affected children in Afghanistan);
· raising money and helping to build more than 300 rural schools. (2,000 school kits, desks and chairs, and 3,000 text books were recently sent to Sierra Leone to help locals open their new school in Freetown. Students there include many former child soldiers).

As FTC grew, Kielburger traveled the world, meeting with heads of state and Nobel Prize winners, receiving international awards, sharing his convictions with global leaders and appearing on television shows like 60 Minutes and Oprah, which brought FTC recognition and support.

"Of all the well-known people I've met, the person who inspired me the most would be Mother Teresa," says Kielburger. Physically smaller than the 12-year-old boy, "she had this incredible power about her...because she had such a big heart. I asked her how she kept her hope in the face of so much poverty and she said 'we must always realize that we can do no great things, only small things with great love.' You have the spirit of Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela inside you. No matter what your gifts, no matter what your talents, kids can help change the world."

Kielburger says he found true heroes among the street children and child workers he met in poor countries. "They impress me the most because they never give up hope. They have this amazing spirit about them, and this amazing sense of friendship where they take care of each other. They've taught me more than any meeting with a celebrity or world leader ever could."

Free the Children has grown into the largest international network of children helping children, with more than 100,000 youth involved in 35 countries. The campaigns focus on child-labor issues, children and poverty, war-affected children, education and children's rights. Its further accomplishments include:

· shipping more than $2.5 million dollars worth of medical supplies to Free the Children medical clinics in developing countries;
· supporting alternative-income programs to enable children to leave work and go to school;
· addressing the needs of children involved in war, especially child soldiers;
· establishing two rehabilitation centers in India to help free-bonded child laborers move back into society;
· creating the "Youth Ambassadors for Peace Project;"
· maintaining a speaker bureau, through which Kielburger and FTC spokespersons have spoken to more than 1 million people.

Young people at FTC chapters throughout the world research problems, identify needs and create projects to bring about positive change in the world.

Presently Kielburger is moving away from his role as spokesperson for FTC, leaving them with the infrastructure. "The next generation of 12-year-olds won't have to rediscover the tools to effective advocacy and can take it all to the next level, according to the vision of the members," he says. "I look at 12-year-olds now who are getting involved in our work and they've either gone through our camps or seminars, or they've volunteered overseas, or they've had a chapter in their school, and quite honestly they're a hundred times more empowered and they have an incredibly bolder vision than we did when we were 12."

FTC's theme for 2002 was "Peace and Conflict." In response to recent events, FTC launched a year-long Embracing Cultures Tour. This project began in New York in September of 2002. Teams of young people went into 150 schools across America to present their message of global activism, to provide leadership training and to encourage participation in projects. Participants also put their handprint on a banner for peace, which was displayed at international youth conferences and presented to the United Nations on September 11, 2003.

Kielburger acknowledges that young people may have a different definition of peace. At a recent Nobel Peace Prize forum, young people challenged the U.S. senators, congressmen, past laureates, and famous adults on the stage.

"Peace is a culture that we create by putting it in the curriculum for young people, through creating this next generation where young people get a chance to go across borders, across cultures, to learn more about each other's life, to create a global community, learn about opportunities for helping others," says Kielburger, "It's investing in peace and tolerance training, ending the gap between rich and poor."

In 1999, Craig and Marc Kielburger started a partner organization for people ages 18-30 called Leaders Today. Its primary focus is using their specially designed curriculum in Global Leadership Programs and to offer volunteer travel opportunities in developing countries. Craig Kielburger is very excited to open Peace Centers in Kenya and Ecuador, "where young people from around the world, especially from post-conflict zones, can go through this intensive training to become Ambassadors of Peace." Jane Goodall says, "Leaders Today is a shining example of the power young people possess to change the world."

Kielburger's personal goal is to attend college and work in the field of peace and conflict studies. He would love to work with the United Nations or an NGO, working with nations on the brink of war to help to end conflicts before they actually begin. He would also love to work with countries that are post-conflict, reaching out to help children, especially child soldiers, with the rehabilitation process.

"The first person who showed me it doesn't matter how old you are to make a change was my older brother, Marc. When he was 12, he did a science-fair project. He got really excited and started collecting signatures for a petition to ban products that were harmful to the environment. I remember watching him and thinking how amazing it was [that] he's changing the world...and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Then, when I read that article when I was 12, I thought about Marc... and how he was able to make a difference. If it wasn't for his example, I don't know if I ever would have taken that next step. Because he did it, I felt that I could do it too. My older brother is definitely my hero."

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In 1995, when he was 12 years old, Craig Kielburger read a newspaper story that changed his life. Another 12-year-old boy, Iqbal Masih in Pakistan, had been murdered for bringing the world's attention to the terrible conditions endured by children working in the carpet-making industry.

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Ryan Hreljac helps build wells for clean water in Africa.

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helping the homeless -- one 'step' at a time - cnn

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Helping the homeless -- one 'step' at a time - CNN

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For 13-year-old McClain Hermes, the inspiration to impact her world began in 2009, after her father showed her a magazine article about a shoe recycling program. "We decided (that instead of) recycling them, we would collect them and give them to people that needed them," she says.

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Gerson Andres Florez Perez was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize at age 16.

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Anne Frank was a Holocaust victim and author. She wrote: “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart. ”

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The mother of an 8-year-old boy killed in a fire says she is very proud of her son, who rescued six people from the blaze but died when he ran back to try to save two older relatives.

Tyler Doohan is being remembered as a hero as investigators work to determine what started the devastating fire at a mobile home in suburban Rochester, N.Y.

"It makes me so proud that he went the way that he did," Tyler's mom, Crystal Vrooman, told CBS affiliate WROC. "He made it big, he made it really big and I'm really proud."

Tyler was spending the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend with his grandfather and other relatives when a fire broke out in the grandfather's mobile home in Penfield early Monday morning.

Tyler woke six people, including two other children ages 4 and 6, and escaped, but he died when he ran back into the burning trailer to help his grandfather and another relative, officials said.

"I went to go pick him up and they told me he was down at his friend's house and I said, 'Well, he doesn't have school tomorrow. Grandpa can bring him home tomorrow. He can stay an extra day.' And then the next morning I had cops at my door," Vrooman told the television station.

Tyler died along with his grandfather and another, adult male relative. The victims had not been formally identified and the second man's relationship to Tyler wasn't immediately clear.

Several pets also died in the fire, including a dog, cats, a rabbit and hamsters, officials said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, but initial findings indicated the fire began accidentally as a result of an electrical problem, WROC reported.

At least one firehouse plans to pay tribute to the boy at his funeral, the date for which had not been set.

"He saved six people. They all would have died if he hadn't woken up," Chris Ebmeyer, chief of the volunteer fire company in Penfield, a suburban town of 36,000 residents, told the Associated Press.

The fire chief said nine people were staying at the 14-foot-by-60-foot trailer when the fire started around 4:45 a.m. Monday. Tyler woke up when the blanket covering his sleeping 4-year-old cousin caught fire, Ebmeyer said.

Supporters of the family have started an online fundraising campaign on YouCaring.com to help raise money for the funerals.

Vrooman said Tyler was a fun-loving child who enjoyed life.

"He just wanted to have fun," she told WROC. "He never wanted to grow up and now he doesn't have to."

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Mother of boy killed in upstate N.Y. fire: "I'm really proud"

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The mother of an 8-year-old boy killed in a fire says she is very proud of her son, who rescued six people from the blaze but died when he ran back to try to save two older relatives.

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Jason Crowe was awarded the Culture of Peace Award at the 2000 World Peace Ceremony held in Tokyo, Japan.

In 1997, a friend sent Jason Crowe an article that would transform him from ordinary 10-year-old kid into peace activist.

It was the story of Vedran Smailovic, principle cellist of the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, who witnessed the massacre of 22 neighbors in a bread line during the Seige of Sarajevo in 1992. Vedran's response was to play his cello amid sniper fire for 22 consecutive days in the crater left by the fatal mortar shell. Crowe was deeply moved to action. He called it his "awakening."

The bravery of this "Cellist of Sarajevo" inspired Crowe's biggest dream: a tribute to the spirit of the Bosnian people in the form of the Children's International Peace & Harmony Statue, to be shipped to Bosnia as a gift from peace-loving people around the world, especially children.

"We will inherit the new millennium and we must voice our desire for peace and show the world we are willing to work for it. The statue itself will be our voice giving us a way to shout, 'Never again must mean never again'." Crowe's efforts to raise enough money to realize his dream have attracted the attention and support of celebrity/peace activists such as Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Irish folk singer Tommy Sands, rock artist Bono from the band U2, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul & Mary.

In 1996, Crowe had started The Informer, a "kids-for-kids" newspaper in memory of his grandmother. He began to use the newspaper to help disseminate information about his peace activism. He also started networking with students and teachers worldwide who were studying Bosnia and causes of war. He wrote an historical novel chronicling the life of three boys (Bosnian-Serb, Bosnian-Muslim and Bosnian-Croat) who were best friends before the war forced them to separate. Through faith in harmony and creative energy, the boys are reunited at the end of the war. Another book in progress, called Public Scrapbook of Courage focuses on the courage of Bosnian children as they faced their everyday lives during the war. It also documents children in other parts of the world who have stood up and taken action for the Bosnians. Proceeds from both books were donated to humanitarian aid for Bosnia and the statue project.

In 1998, Crowe participated in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Junior Summit, an online international forum which engages children to solve world problems. Of this event, he said, "There is no way to come away from this experience without knowing that, in spite of differences in race, color, national origin, social-economic status and religion, we are all the same beneath...at the level of the heart."

Crowe believes that the Internet puts a tool for bringing peace and harmony to the world into the hands of kids. "How can I adequately say that I have come to love and worry about youth (and adults, too) whom I have never seen in person and who come from such places as Jamaica, Lebanon, France, Ukraine, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, India, Nepal, Nigeria, Mexico, Bosnia and Argentina just to name a few? How is it possible to explain that these friendships made electronically are deeper than most of those I have with neighbors and schoolmates? For these experiences, I will always be grateful to MIT and the Junior Summit."

Crowe calls his parents, Cindy and Dennis Crowe, "the Great Facilitators" because of their tireless love and support. Another inspiration in Crowe's life was his beloved grandmother, who died of cancer in 1996. "I remember how she always believed in me and affirmed me," he recalled.

Nevertheless, Crowe has some concerns about the idea of the hero. "One concern is for the hero himself. If the person whom the title is bestowed upon is alive, it can destroy him just because it is a lot of baggage to carry around with you all the time. There is a lot of responsibility placed on a person who is given the title hero. Many times (through no fault of their own) their story grows and takes on mythological proportions and they really lose their own identity. It is very hard trying to be something that someone thinks you are and wants you to be. Mr. Smailovic has intimated these things. He says it is hard to go in a tavern because everyone starts singing about him or asking if he really did such and such.

The second concern is that using the term hero might actually discourage people from reaching out to do similar things. It may make the person called 'hero' seem larger than life and similar deeds would then seem totally out of reach for a normal, average person.

The third problem is more of a problem of degree. The focus needs to be on the deed and carrying on the work started by the hero. The true hero would want the focus to be on his work, not on himself."

Nevertheless, he says, "Maybe there is no such thing as a hero. There are just regular people who do courageous, heroic things. These things may be known to only one person and may never get publicized, but that doesn't make the deed less heroic."

Crowe has this to say to adults: "Listen to us kids, and don't say no when we want to try something new, different, unusual or creative. The trying will produce the yes or no. Give us help if we ask for it and believe in us. Don't give us the answers that work for you...give us the sources and some direction, but let us...discover the truth for ourselves."

Crowe offers advice for other kids wanting to make a difference:

"I think it's much easier than it looks. If your eyes are open you will see injustices, things that need to be corrected, things that need to be protected, things that need to be beautified, things that need to be cared for.... Also I would say don't be dissuaded. If you believe you can make it happen, don't take 'no' for an answer. Find youth and adults who believe in you and will help you. Try places like 4-H, Scouts and Youth Resources if you want to accomplish something at the local level. Lastly, I would say do what you can one step at a time. Often it is the individual steps we take on the path to the goal that do more good than the goal."

The Informer, Crowe's newspaper, is now distributed in 29 states and 15 foreign countries. In 1997, Crowe was honored at the United Nations Building in New York City, in a ceremony saluting seven youngsters from around the globe who have furthered the virtues of peace and tolerance through their creative talents. More recently, Crowe won the Swackhammer Peace Essay Contest with his essay "Youth at Work: Building a Global Culture of Peace."

In 1999, Crowe started Youth for Peace in the Year 2000. This organization had two fund-raising events, "The Chain of Hope" and "Harmony in the Park 2002," to raise money for the statue project. Crowe has raised nearly $25,000 toward the $50,000 needed for the peace sculpture.

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Jason Crowe was awarded the Culture of Peace Award at the 2000 World Peace Ceremony held in Tokyo, Japan. In 1997, a friend sent Jason Crowe an article that would transform him from ordinary 10-year-old kid into peace activist.

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disadvantaged girls change their communities by learning to code - cnn

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Disadvantaged girls change their communities by learning to code

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CNN Hero Abisoye Ajayi-Akinfolarin turned her vision to empower the disadvantaged girls of Lagos, Nigeria, into reality with GirlsCoding, a free program that seeks to educate -- and excite -- girls about computer programming.

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By the BBC's Richard Miron in Kabul

The weather has suddenly turned colder in Kabul. The sun is hidden behind the clouds and the jagged peaks of the mountains which overlook the city are thick with snow.

The street children are sheltering from the chill - huddling in doorways. One boy I often see charging around near the BBC office covers his head with his ragged and blackened jacket to give himself some relief from the cold.

There are numerous children who wait outside the door of the office hoping for some work. Most of them are shoeshine boys and I have got to know a number of them.

There is Mafouz whose serious face contrasts with his pink Mickey Mouse baseball cap, and Nasir - who is painfully thin, and constantly asks the same question: "Mister, how are you?"

And then there is Majid, with his brown curly mop of hair and cheeky smile.

My favourite is Nasim, a shy boy, who talks slowly in his carefully learned English. His sombre expression belies his young age - just 14. I have tried to give all the boys work and as a result my shoes have never shone so brightly.
Afghan poverty
They all have similar tales - a father dead either from the war or illness, numerous brothers and sisters, and a family dependent on their meagre earnings for their daily bread.

One day I asked Nasim if he would show me his home and introduce me to his family so I could understand his life and the life of the other street children here.

And so, awkwardly, he led me to his poor neighbourhood, barely a mile from the well-heeled district that houses the BBC office.

His home, like all the others in the area, is made of mud and straw. The road outside is just packed earth with a stream of noxious liquid running down the middle.

Nasim introduced me to his elder brother - who has not been able to work since he was injured in an American bombing raid a few weeks ago.

I also met his mother who showed me the family's one small bedroom in which six people sleep packed together. There was no furniture, no cupboards, no spare clothes left hanging, not even any glass in the windows - just cardboard. And no fire to keep them warm at night.
Family breadwinner
Nasim earns about 30,000 Afghanis a day - about $1 - cleaning shoes. With that he buys the basics for his family, mostly just bread and sugar. Rice, he told me, is a treat - and the last occasion he ate meat was a year ago.

I asked him how he felt about his situation. "I am happy and not happy," he told me. "Happy because I work, but not happy because I cannot earn enough to bring my family everything they need."

Nasim is not exceptional in this country - tens of thousands of children work on the streets of Kabul cleaning cars or shoes - toiling away in markets and workshops as their family's main breadwinners.

Life for children in Afghanistan is a battle for survival - in which many do not make it. The statistics are a tragic illustration of the effects of decades of war, misrule, and underdevelopment.

Three out of 10 children die before the age of five, and half all those who survive that long are severely malnourished. The United Nations estimates that 35,000 children will die this year alone from measles - simply because they have not been vaccinated.

In some parts of the country none of the children have been inoculated against disease and the even highest rate is a mere 30% in Kabul. The situation appears to be unremittingly depressing - yet it is the children who are also the greatest carriers of hope.

Future dreams

Nasim and his friends attend a school specially established for street kids. Every one of the boys is ambitious - they want to be translators, carpenters or drivers. Asking them if they feel hopeful for the future they all reply unhesitatingly - why not?

It is very humbling for a westerner used to the frivolities and luxuries of everyday life to be confronted by such difficulty yet such positive determination.

One day Nasim and his friend Majid - the small boy with the cheeky face - got hold of a rare treat - they had borrowed a football, so I challenged them to a quick game. They marked a couple of goalposts on the street with the worn wooden boxes containing their brushes and polish.

For half an hour or so we had a raucous kick around, in which I was resoundingly beaten. For that short time they were just children - out playing, having a good time, freed of their weighty responsibilities.

For me, it was one of the most enjoyable games I have played, and the most poignant.

I am about to depart from Kabul, and I do so with a sense of concern for the fate of Nasim and his all his friends. The peace here is fragile and the dangers are everywhere - from the cold to the landmines.

I have begun to say my goodbyes to them and they have thanked me for my custom. But I feel I owe them a far greater debt of gratitude for showing me that such strength of character can be borne by those so young.

And that - hopefully - bodes well for this country as it attempts to build a new future.

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BBC News | FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT | The brave children of Afghanistan

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By the BBC's Richard Miron in Kabul The weather has suddenly turned colder in Kabul. The sun is hidden behind the clouds and the jagged peaks of the mountains which overlook the city are thick with snow. The street children are sheltering from the chill - huddling in doorways.

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In 2010, he walked from Tampa to Los Angeles. Calling the trip "March Across America", he began the 2,478-mile walk on March 23, 2010. Bonner walked an average of 17-22 miles every day. During his walk, he gave gift cards to people in need.

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If you ever worry about the future of America, there is no need: it is in good hands. A high school student named Angela is proof of that. We think you'll agree she is nothing short of amazing. CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman met her on the road.

Born to Chinese immigrants, 17-year-old Angela Zhang of Cupertino, California is a typical American teenager. She's really into shoes and is just learning how to drive.

But there is one thing that separates her from every other student at Monta Vista High School, something she first shared with her chemistry teacher, Kavita Gupta.

It's a research paper Angela wrote in her spare time -- and it is advanced, to say the least. Gupta says all she knows is its recipe -- for curing cancer.

"Cure for cancer -- a high school student," said Gupta. "It's just so mind-boggling. I just cannot even begin to comprehend how she even thought about it or did this."

"I just thought, 'Why not?' 'What is there to lose?'" said Angela.

When she was a freshman, she started reading doctorate level papers on bio-engineering.

"At first it was a little bit overwhelming," said Angela, "but I found that it almost became like a puzzle, being able to decode something."

By sophomore year she'd talked her way into the lab at Stanford, and by junior year was doing her own research.

In a lab area, Hartman asked Angela: "Try and make it for a feeble mind, such as this one, to understand."

Angela: "So I made something that's an iron-oxide, gold dangle...

Hartman: "You lost me." (laughter)

Eventually, here's what he did get.

Angela's idea was to mix cancer medicine in a polymer that would attach to nanoparticles -- nanoparticles that would then attach to cancer cells and show up on an MRI. so doctors could see exactly where the tumors are. Then she thought shat if you aimed an infrared light at the tumors to melt the polymer and release the medicine, thus killing the cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely unharmed.

"I think it was more of a -- 'This is really cool, I want to see if it works' -- type thing," she said.

"And when you found out it did..." asked Hartman.

"That was pretty amazing."

It'll take years to know if it works in humans -- but in mice -- the tumors almost completely disappeared.

Angela recently entered her project in the national Siemens science contest. It was no contest. She got a check for $100,000 and promptly bought about a dozen more pairs of shoes.

"I got these shoes because they're purple and I didn't have purple yet," she explained.

Easy to forget, she is still high school. It's just her dreams that keep graduating.

"I'm excited to learn just everything possible," she said. "Everything in the sciences -- biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, even computer science -- to make new innovations possible."

Pretty big flats to fill. How will she top her cancer discovery? We can't wait.

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Calif. HS student devises possible cancer cure

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If you ever worry about the future of America, there is no need: it is in good hands. A high school student named Angela is proof of that. We think you'll agree she is nothing short of amazing. CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman met her on the road.

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Editor's note: Every weekday, CNN focuses on a handful of people in the news. This is a chance to find out more about what they've done -- good or bad -- what they've said or what they believe, and why we think they're intriguing.
(CNN) -- Charlie Simpson
He's no Wyclef Jean or George Clooney, but that hasn't stopped the British 7-year-old from raising more than £136,000 ($220,000) for victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Simpson, who's from Fulham, West London, started out hoping to raise just £500 -- around $800 -- for UNICEF's earthquake appeal by cycling five miles around a local park.

"My name is Charlie Simpson. I want to do a sponsored bike ride for Haiti because there was a big earthquake and loads of people have lost their lives," said Simpson on his JustGiving page, a fundraising site which launched his efforts. And with that simple call, messages of support flooded the site. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown helped to spread the message. His "Downing Street" Twitter alias said, "Amazed by response to the great fundraising efforts of 7 yr old Charlie Simpson for the people of Haiti."

Money raised by Simpson will go towards UNICEF's Haiti Earthquake Children's Appeal, which provides water, sanitation, education and nutrition as well as supporting child protection.
CNN: Boy, 7, raises $200,000 for Haiti appeal
Pernell Roberts
The actor, who played the eldest Cartwright brother on NBC's "Bonanza," died at his Malibu, California, home Sunday at 81, his lawyer said. Roberts is also remembered as "Trapper John, M.D.," the main character in a medical drama that aired on CBS for seven years, ending in 1986.

Roberts spent the first decade of his acting career on stage, including Broadway, before he moved to Hollywood to act in movies. His first film was "Desire Under the Elms," starring Sophia Loren and Burl Ives.

In 1959, he landed the role of Adam Cartwright, the handsome and smart son of rancher Ben Cartwright, played by Lorne Greene. Roberts left the long-running Western series after the end of the sixth season in 1965, although "Bonanza" stayed in production for another eight years. While the storyline kept open the possibility of his returning to the Ponderosa ranch, he never did.

Roberts, a native of Waycross, Georgia, spent much of his adult life "pursuing his dream of equality for all," according to a family statement released by his lawyer, Richard Stone. Roberts walked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the historic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama, the family said. "On the set of 'Bonanza,' he protested the use of all-white crews and guest stars, finding some support but never enough to satisfy his sense of outrage," the statement said.
CNN: 'Bonanza' and 'Trapper John' star dies
Tom Coburn
One of the more vocal critics of the $787 billion stimulus legislation is the senator from Oklahoma, who, along with Sen. John McCain of Arizona, released a report in December identifying the top 100 projects they considered to be wasteful, mismanaged or "silly and shortsighted."

When Congress was debating the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as the stimulus plan is officially known, Sen. Coburn said, "When the American people learn what this bill contains they will reject it. This bill is about spending money we don't have on things we don't need. We got into this mess by spending and investing money that didn't exist. We won't get out of this mess by doing more of the same."

In their report, Coburn and McCain criticized projects such as a $2 million plan to build a replica railroad in Nevada as a tourist attraction; $13.8 million for two rest stops along Texas highways, where travelers can relieve themselves and surf the Internet; and a $219,000 National Institutes of Health study to determine if female college students are more likely to engage in casual sex after drinking alcohol.

According to the senator's Web site, Tom Coburn was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 and served in the House between 1995 and 2001. After a successful business career, he received his medical degree from the University of Oklahoma Medical School. His official biography also notes that Coburn is a two-time cancer survivor who has delivered more than 4,000 babies.
Wall Street Journal: McCain, Coburn target 100 stimulus projects Coburn.senate.gov: About Sen. Coburn
Jammie Thomas-Rasset
Last June, a federal jury found the 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each for 24 songs -- a total of $1.92 million. Thomas-Rasset's case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said.

Attorney Joe Sibley said that the price tag on the songs his client downloaded was 99 cents. Wired.com reports that Friday, federal Judge Michael Davis reduced Thomas-Rasset's fine to $54,000 and said that the Recording Industry Association of America, which pursued the case against her, may have a retrial if it does not accept his ruling. Davis wrote that $1.92 million in damages "for stealing 24 songs for personal use is simply shocking."

Thomas-Rasset, who is married with four children and works for a Native American tribe in Minnesota, told Wired that she doesn't have the money to pay even the reduced fine, and that her house in Brainerd, Minnesota, is homesteaded and protected from a judgment. The RIAA said it was reviewing the decision.
Wired: Court reduces 'shocking' file sharing award
Grant Desme
The former Arizona Fall League's Most Valuable Player was scheduled to report for the first day of practice at the Oakland A's training camp next month. Instead, The San Francisco Chronicle reports, Desme has decided to join another team -- the priesthood.

Desme, a lifelong Catholic, said on a conference call, "I love the game, but I'm going to aspire to higher things." The Chronicle said his decision shocked A's managers, who asked Desme to have a conversation with the director of player development, Keith Lieppman, before making the announcement.

"He was right on the verge of fame and fortune and glamour, and he's denying all that," Lieppman said. "He's going in a totally different direction. Grant said it was a very powerful call, and that's much more important." Desme got a $432,000 signing bonus in 2007, and the team thought he'd become a starting outfielder in time. Desme said it will take ten years to become a priest, a process he compared to re-entering the minor leagues.
San Francisco Chronicle: Oakland A's prospect to enter seminary What makes a person intriguing? There are people who enter the news cycle every day because their actions or decisions are new, important or different. Others are in the news because they are the ones those decisions affect. And there are a number of people who are so famous or controversial that anything they say or do becomes news. Some of these people do what we expect of them: They run for office, pass legislation, start a business, get hired or fired, commit a crime, make an arrest, get in accidents, hit a home run, overthrow a government, fight wars, sue an opponent, put out fires, prepare for hurricanes and cavort with people other than their spouses. They do make news, but the action is usually more important than who is involved in the story. But every day, there are a number of people who become fascinating to us -- by virtue of their character, how they reached their decision, how they behaved under pressure or because of the remarkable circumstances surrounding the event they are involved in. They arouse our curiosity. We hear about them and want to know more. What they have done or said stimulates conversations across the country. At times, there is even a mystery about them. What they have done may be unique, heroic, cowardly or ghastly, but they capture our imaginations. We want to know what makes them tick, why they believe what they do, and why they did what they did. They intrigue us.

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Editor's note: Every weekday, CNN focuses on a handful of people in the news. This is a chance to find out more about what they've done -- good or bad -- what they've said or what they believe, and why we think they're intriguing.

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'Young Wonders' stepped up, changed the world - CNN

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Millions of young people want to change the world. Meet three kids who've done it.

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By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

NORWELL, Mass. — At the holidays, for a soldier at war, there's nothing like a phone call home. Brittany and Robbie Bergquist have provided more than $1.4 million worth of them - 24 million precious minutes.

The Bergquists are teenage siblings who didn't even own a cellphone in 2004, when they heard that an Army reservist faced a $7,600 bill for making calls home from Iraq.

They founded Cell Phones for Soldiers based on three ideas: Most people have an old, inactive cellphone lying around; they'd probably donate it to the right cause; and they'd agree that, as Brittany puts it, "Everyone has a right to call home."

In three years, an effort that began with a piggybank raid and a car wash has turned into a booming home front charity - one that has turned its founders' lives upside down and won them devoted friends throughout the military and beyond.

Cell Phones for Soldiers solicits unwanted cellphones, sells them to a recycler for about $5 each and uses the money to buy pre-paid phone cards that are shipped to the war zone.

"We take for granted our ability to call home and speak to our families," says Brittany, 16. "The troops don't do that. They appreciate what we're doing. That's what sparks us to do more."

During the past three years, CPFS has given out more than 400,000 phone cards, many in envelopes its young founders addressed, stuffed and licked themselves. "A lot of tongue paper cuts," says Brittany, who appeared with her 15-year-old brother Monday on ABC's daytime talk show, The View, to tout the program.

Their bottom-up initiative typifies how home front Americans support troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, says Morton Ender, a U.S. Military Academy sociologist who has studied how troops communicate with home.

In past wars, the government engineered support. Now it's mostly informal and decentralized, he says: "The things that have been most successful" - such as CPFS - "have just bubbled up."

CPFS collects at least 50,000 phones a month, more than all but a few companies in the nation. The 7,000 drop-off locations range from AT&T retail stores and Liberty Tax Service offices to Fabulous Freddy's Car Wash in Las Vegas and Fine Line Auto Repair in Anchorage.

The organization sends about 25,000 one-hour phone cards overseas each month. This holiday season the Bergquists are working toward a bold goal: a phone card a month for each of the more than 185,000 U.S. servicemembers in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. That would cost about $750,000, half of all they've raised in three years.

But Bob Bergquist, the youths' father and CPFS overseer, says that with hundreds of millions of cellphones sitting in Americans' drawers and attics, "We haven't even scratched the surface."
Optimism and innocence
On the morning after Thanksgiving, when many their age are shopping or sleeping, Brittany and Robbie are sitting in a studio in a deserted office park near Boston.

They're doing 20 consecutive satellite interviews with local TV stations from Peoria to Santa Barbara. They've been up since 4 a.m., at the studio since 5:15, in front of the camera since 6:25.

Between interviews they yawn and stretch and tease each other. But when the interview begins, they're focused, hitting the same questions out of the park over and over with seeming enthusiasm. "This is how we get the word out," Robbie shrugs. "This is our fun."

They have other lives. Brittany's a junior at Norwell High School who's been a cheerleader since she was 6. Robbie's a sophomore at Boston College High School who was one of two sophomores this year to play varsity soccer.

Every interviewer asks: How did this get started?

It began one morning in 2004 in the sunny kitchen of the Bergquist family's colonial-style home in this suburb on Boston's South Shore. The kids were getting ready for school, as were their parents. Bob teaches middle school science, Gail special ed.

The TV was on, and there was a report about an Army reservist from Natick, Mass., who'd unwittingly racked up a cellphone bill from Iraq of more than $7,600. A call from Iraq to the USA costs $2 to $3 a minute, the teens found.

"We thought, 'That's not right!' " Robbie recalls. The troops had to pay for their own calls home? Didn't they have a right to call home? The teens had a cousin in Iraq; they knew how worried their parents were after they'd not heard from him for a while.

They ran up to their bedrooms, pulled the plugs out of their piggybanks, ran back downstairs and threw $14 on the table.

Bob Bergquist says he'll never forget the moment - their outrage over injustice, their optimism, their innocence: "I still get choked up."

They went to school and got classmates to contribute a total of $7. Then they went to the bank, opened an account (the bank manager kicked in $500), and began organizing bake sales and car washes.

Before they went further, the soldier's cellphone service provider forgave most of his debt. Even so, Brittany and Robbie wanted to help other troops phone home. They soon realized car washes and bake sales wouldn't raise nearly enough.

Then it hit Brittany: Some of her friends got new cellphones every six months. Her parents had six old ones around the house. They would ask for used cells, load them with pre-paid minutes and send them to the troops.

Next snag: The Pentagon told them that for security reasons, they could not send cellphones to Iraq. But by now the Bergquists had hundreds of them. So they kept their charity's name and chose a new tactic: recycling.

They came up with a perfect business model: They were asking people to do something that made them feel good and didn't cost them anything.

"It skyrocketed like wildfire," Brittany says. "Thousands of people wanted to support the troops, but they never had a way to do it."

The teens' feel-good story spread. Soon cellphones filled the Bergquists' garage, blocked their front hall, surrounded their white baby grand piano. Every day after school, they'd find scores of phone messages and e-mails, requesting cards or offering phones.

On Christmas Eve 2004, the teens stayed up till 4 a.m. addressing envelopes long after their parents had gone to sleep. "We couldn't keep up," Bob says.
AT&T joins the cause
Now things are better organized. There's a salaried bookkeeper and an 800-number for cellphone donors and those requesting phone cards. Most of the phones are mailed directly to the CPFS recycler in Michigan.

CPFS distributes its cards in various ways, often by request: to individual servicemembers abroad; to their relatives at home; to units for officers to distribute; and to organizations, such as CarePacks, that send gifts to troops.

The program keeps growing. Brittany sent a blind e-mail to a name she found on the AT&T website, and in May the company donated $300,000 in phone cards and became the teens' partner.

"It worked its way up the company," AT&T spokeswoman Susan Bean says. "It was such a cool idea, no one could say no."

Amazon, the online retailer, now inserts CPFS mailers for used cellphones in its shipments. Every few months, Enterprise Rent-a-Car turns over 200-250 abandoned cellphones. Several casinos in Las Vegas and Reno do likewise.

The Bergquists have learned to enjoy celebrity, including being recognized at the local mall - Robbie can't get over being asked for his autograph - and visiting the White House in 2004. (Brittany slipped on the floor as she stepped into the Oval Office to shake hands with President Bush.) Microsoft gave them an Above and Beyond Youth leadership award.

When Brittany and Robbie appeared Monday on The View, AT&T surprised each of them on the air with a $100,000 college scholarship. Next, they're scheduled to appear at the Army-Navy football game Saturday in Baltimore and the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on Jan. 1.

Brittany has turned out to be a natural publicist who calls a personal appearance "an opportunity." She hands out business cards: "Founder, Cell Phones for Soldiers."

Robbie, who started out very much the junior partner - "I wanted to support Brittany" - has grown into a relaxed, confident pitchman whose persona plays off against his sister's ardent sincerity.

They've learned to deflect questions about their feelings about the war. "We don't want to cause any controversy that would make anyone not drop off a cellphone," Brittany says.

This year, as usual, their Christmas will be swallowed up by CPFS' seasonal demands.

"We've accepted that at this time of year we have to double the amount of time we spend on the program," Brittany says.

During the past three years they've missed countless school games, dances and parties. Family dinners fall victim to conflicting engagements.

Brittany, who was student government president, had to quit for lack of time; this also is her last year as a cheerleader, even though she's in line to be captain as a senior.

"That will be hard," says her mother.
Parents brim with pride
Why do the teens keep pushing? "I think it's the gratitude they get," Bean says. "They've sort of gotten addicted to making a difference."

Brittany says they're energized by e-mails from Iraq that tell of long drives and long waits to reach and use a phone.

"We know that (our) sitting in front of a camera at 6 a.m. means more recycled phones and more phone cards for the troops," she says. "That's why we do it."

She talks about the time the family went to Esko, Minn., to give phone cards to a reserve unit leaving for Iraq. She watched the soldiers say goodbye to their families as they boarded buses.

"You see these big, strong guys, going overseas for a year to fight for us, and they're sobbing," Brittany says. "... It's hard to watch."

Bob and Gail Bergquist often are asked by other parents how they brought up such conscientious kids.

"We taught them to save bugs," Bob says.

When the teens were younger, the family put any bug they found inside the house on an index card, carried it outside and set it free.

"We tried to get them to be aware of their effect on other living things, to instill in them that there are other people in the world, and some are not doing so well," Bob says.

On Thanksgiving, at Brittany's last football game as a cheerleader, Bob saw her heading away from the field with something cupped in her hands. He walked over for a look: She was holding a ladybug.

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Teens help troops phone home - USATODAY.com

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Cell Phones for Soldiers was based on three ideas: Most people have an old, inactive cellphone lying around; they'd probably donate it to the right cause; and they'd agree that, as one of the teenagers who founded the effort puts it, Everyone has a...

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Courtesy of the Vento family

The parents of Xander Vento, a little boy who was forced under the water while saving another child at a neighborhood pool in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this week, say they are taking their son off life support.

Cris and Misty Vento released the following statement Thursday:
"We've made the extremely difficult decision to remove our precious son Xander from life support. We send heartfelt thanks to all of you who kept our family in your thoughts and prayers; we're appreciative of your love and support. We in some way hope our son's life serves as an inspiration. He was the angel in the pool who sacrificed himself to save another. And now he continues to give as an organ donor. We were blessed to have such a kind and caring boy as Xander who set an example for all of us and even now he will be saving lives by giving of himself."
Xander, 4, held a struggling 3-year-old girl above the water, and after becoming exhausted, slipped below the water's surface, the Associated Press reported. He was found at the bottom of the pool. After Xander was pulled from the water, rescuers did get a pulse from him, the Dallas Morning News reported, but he was unable to breathe on his own before they loaded him into a helicopter.

Xander was hospitalized at Cook Children's Medical center, where he fell into a coma. He had been on life support since Monday.

Adults were present at the pool during the incident, including an off-duty nurse who helped rescue the children, according to the Dallas Morning News. It wasn't clear where the adults were when the incident happened.

The 3-year-old girl, whose name has not been released, apparently swallowed water but never lost consciousness.

A fund has been established in Xander's name to help the family with medical expenses. Anyone wishing to contribute can do so online at https://www.wepay.com/donations/145080.

NBC News
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Hero boy, 4, dies after saving 3-year-old girl in pool

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Courtesy of the Vento family The parents of Xander Vento, a little boy who was forced under the water while saving another child at a neighborhood pool in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this week, say they are taking their son off life support.

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He was an average student from Hangu, a remote town in North Western Pakistan, but he has become a national hero.

Aitzaz Hasan, 14, stopped a suicide bomber from entering his school Monday and sacrificed his life to protect his fellow students.

"I saw Aitzaz trying to get hold of a guy and then there was a big explosion," said Habib Ali, who is a senior teacher at the school.

The target of the bomber was the morning assembly of approximately 450 students, Ali said.

"He was an average student, but was a bold child," the teacher said.

Today, in a statement Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recommended him for the highest civil award for bravery.

"Shaheed Aitizaz's brave act saved the lives of hundreds of students," the prime minister said in a statement.

Thousands of people thronged his home since the incident to praise his valor and to offer condolences to his family.

"He has left his family grieving, but has prevented many others from that fate," said his teacher, a sentiment echoed by his father earlier.

If it wasn't for Hasan's act of valor and quick thinking, the results would have been catastrophic.

Hasan is Pakistan's latest student to become a hero for standing up to terrorists.

Malala Yousafzai was 14 and an outspoken advocate of educating girls when a Taliban gunman boarded her school bus and shot her in the head and neck.

She survived and wrote a book "I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban" and has become a worldwide icon for her defiance.

Pakistan's schools are regularly targeted by terrorists and school enrolment figures have been dwindling.

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Teen Dies Saving Classmates From Suicide Bomber

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He was an average student from Hangu, a remote town in North Western Pakistan, but he has become a national hero. Aitzaz Hasan, 14, stopped a suicide bomber from entering his school Monday and sacrificed his life to protect his fellow students.