Inspirational News Stories

Excerpts of Key Inspirational News Stories in Major Media

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

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A French ban on the production and sale of cosmetics and most clothing containing polluting and health-threatening "forever chemicals" goes into force on Thursday. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are human-made chemicals used since the late 1940s to mass produce the non-stick, waterproof and stain-resistant treatments that coat everything from frying pans to umbrellas, carpets and dental floss. Because PFAS take an extremely long time to break down – earning them their "forever" nickname – they have seeped into the soil and groundwater, and from there into the food chain and drinking water. The French law, approved by lawmakers in February, bans the production, import or sale from January 2026 of any product for which an alternative to PFAS already exists. These include cosmetics and ski wax, as well as clothing containing the chemicals, except certain "essential" industrial textiles. It will also make French authorities regularly test drinking water for all kinds of PFAS. A handful of US states, including California, implemented a ban on the intentional use of PFAS in cosmetics beginning in 2025, and several other states are slated to follow in 2026. Denmark has banned the use of PFAS in food packaging since 2020. The European Union has been studying a possible ban on the use of PFAS in consumer products, but has not yet presented or implemented such a regulation.

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What if a ticket to the opera could also be a prescription against loneliness? In Hamburg, the nonprofit KulturistenHochZwei – a play on the words culture (kultur) and tourists (touristen) – is turning concert and museum visits into powerful social medicine. Founded in 2015 by Christine Worch ... the initiative pairs teenagers with older adults to attend cultural events – everything from symphony performances to plays and art exhibitions. For the seniors, many of whom live on limited incomes and might otherwise stay home alone, these shared outings are a way back into public life. "With the young people, I feel young again," one 85-year-old from Bramfeld in the northeastern part of the city said after a concert at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie. "They're so kind and respectful. Everyone talks badly about youth these days, but these students are wonderful. We even exchanged phone numbers. I hope we can go again soon." The idea is as elegant as it is effective. Seniors who fall below the income threshold – â‚Ź1,350 ($1,575) per month for individuals or â‚Ź1,750 ($2,040) for couples – receive free tickets to cultural events. But instead of attending alone, they're matched with a "culture buddy" aged 16 or older, recruited through partnerships with local schools. For the young volunteers, the outings are a crash course in empathy and human connection. The teenagers commit to at least three cultural outings per school year and receive a certificate for their volunteer service.

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At Boyle County High School, locally-raised beef marinated in cumin is heaped onto corn tortillas with queso, guacamole, sharp red tomatoes, and vibrant lettuce. It's just one of many meals the teens at Boyle get to enjoy, and a far cry from the days of fruit cups, pan pizza, and skim milk, days which everyone involved are happy to see gone. According to Lex 18 News, some 150 Kentucky farms sell their produce to around 90 state school districts thanks to a pandemic-era grant that supplied the state with $3.2 million for the purpose. It's clear from the attitude of Boyle County School District Food Service Director Cheyenne Barsotti that the move-to-local has affected far more than just the hungry teens' excitement for lunch hour: it's changed the whole way the school approaches food. Barsotti's cafeteria staff may just cook from scratch at times depending on what produce is available. The cooks feel safe trying out new recipes. Several students told the NBC-affiliate that the fajitas were a 9.5 out of 10. Under the new direction of American health policy, the USDA Dietary Guidelines have featured, for the first time in their history, a focus on protein over carbs–and real food, that is to say, food which spoils and doesn't come out of a box, over all others. Even though [the initial] grant money has been halted, the program has enlivened so many that school districts are trying to maintain the new direction, the new attitudes, and the new menus.

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For the past decade, every year, Parisians like [Anne-ValĂ©rie] Desprez have been able to see their proposals come to life on the streets of the French capital. Under the city's Participatory Budget, any resident above the age of seven, regardless of their nationality, can propose a project to be paid for by municipal funds. The model, increasingly popular across the globe, is helping authorities spend resources efficiently and boost democratic participation. In Paris, more than 21,000 ideas have been submitted by citizens since the scheme launched in 2014, resulting in 1,345 funded projects and an expenditure of â‚Ź768 million (almost $900 million), including â‚Ź263 million set aside for low-income districts. Each proposal must pass a feasibility study by city hall before being voted on by residents. "It is a very good device and it's important," says Yves Sintomer, a French researcher and co-author of the book Participatory Budgeting in Europe. It's led to the creation of rooftop farms, children's play areas, community art murals, shade structures and baggage storage for the homeless, as well as a number of projects at the [Cherry Sociocultural Center], which was founded in 1999. In 2017, following the center's first successful budget proposal, benches were installed in the street out front, providing a place for people to congregate for free. Further funding from the participatory budget enabled the center to buy a cargo bike – shared with other local businesses – for short-distance deliveries in 2019.

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"These plants are the winners, the ones that get to pass their genes on [to future generations]," says Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute, an agricultural non-profit based in Salina, Kansas. If DeHaan's breeding programme maintains its current progress, the descendant of these young perennial crop plants could one day usher in a wholesale revolution in agriculture. The plants are intermediate wheatgrass. Since 2010, DeHaan has been transforming this small-seeded, wild species into a high-yielding, domesticated grain crop called Kernza. He believes it will eventually be a viable – and far more sustainable – alternative to annual wheat, the world's most widely grown crop and the source of one in five of all calories consumed by humanity. Remarkably, DeHaan does not paint the current agricultural-industrial complex as the enemy. "Every disruptive technology is always opposed by those being disrupted," he says. "But if the companies [that make up] the current system can adjust to the disruption, they can play in that new world just the same." The Land Institute's strategy is redirection rather than replacement. "Our trajectory is to eventually get the resources that are currently dedicated to annual grain crops directed to developing varieties of perennials," says DeHaan. "That's our [route to] success." There are signs that this is already working, with the food firm General Mills now incorporating Kernza into its breakfast cereals.

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Wade Milyard heard the voice from "out of nowhere" and knew he needed to listen–he thought it was God, or some other higher power. The former canine officer for the Frederick Police Department in Maryland was responding to a domestic dispute at a homeless camp. Soon after he investigated the disturbance, the voice rang out. "Ask them about their laundry." Milyard heeded the voice, asked the question, and unknowingly set the course for a prayer-fulfilling future. The homeless couple he interviewed told him they typically washed their laundry in a nearby creek. The cop never forgot that response, nor his call to service. He pooled multiple donations with some of his own money and went to work creating a full service laundromat on wheels. Fresh Step Laundry was born–with a mission "to help restore dignity to the unhoused community by providing free, accessible, and hygienic laundry." Since retiring from the police force in January, the 45-year-old has been traveling around his Maryland city, which is near D.C., making a difference–one load of wash at a time. He's set a schedule so people can meet him to take advantage of his laundry service, and his email is at the bottom of the web page. In the last several weeks alone, Fresh Step has washed more than 2,000 pounds of laundry and his next goal is to add a second vehicle so he can double the number of people he can serve.

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It began in the small Catalan town of Taradell as a plan to provide local people with allotments where they could grow their own food. Four activists came together with the aim of promoting good environmental practices in local agriculture and business, as well as supplying renewable energy. The town has a strong tradition of community action, and as the initiative gathered momentum, the activists formed a cooperative, Taradell Sostenible, which now has 111 members and supplies power to more than 100 households. These include some of the area's most vulnerable citizens, says Eugeni Vila, the coop's president. "The question was how could people with few resources join the coop when membership costs â‚Ź100," says Vila. "We agreed that people designated as poor by the local authority could join for only â‚Ź25 and thus benefit from the cheap electricity we generate." The [Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy]'s policy aims to bring cheap electricity to households suffering from pobreza energĂ©tica (fuel poverty) who cannot afford the upfront cost of installing solar panels – typically â‚Ź5,000-6,000 for each household. "We've developed a formula to help people who are struggling to get by through incorporating them into a network that helps them to improve their situation," [Vila] says. "We've taken advantage of the EU Sun4All scheme to develop a system to assess who are the vulnerable families, and not just in terms of fuel poverty."

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Emily Kasriel, the author of "Deep Listening" (HarperCollins, 2025), believes that really listening to each other can help us repair the social fabric that has frayed. Kasriel emphasized that Deep Listening is not just about changing personal habits but also about confronting a broader societal turning point. She shared, "I believe we're at an inflection point where we must choose between further fragmentation or renewed connection. The practice of Deep Listening isn't just a nice communication skill – it's a necessary foundation for addressing complex challenges, in a business or society, from climate change to adapting to AI." Kasriel hopes that by creating a comprehensive guide "to equip readers with practical tools to bridge divides in their personal lives, professional settings, and communities," she will ultimately contribute to a less polarized, more connected world. Kasriel [said], "In my mediating, I witnessed how transformative it can be when people who see each other as enemies have the experience of being genuinely heard by the ‘other side.' In these settings, I refined techniques for creating safety and holding space during difficult conversations-skills that directly informed several of the eight steps in my methodology." Given her extensive experience, Kasriel realized that listening is not a passive act but a deliberate practice. Through listening differently, you transform what your speaker shares or even thinks.

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In Montana, a focus on restorative justice is reducing juvenile recidivism through a nonprofit program that engages them, rather than punishes them. The nonprofit believes that it's actually far more challenging for juvenile offenders to look their victims in the eye and explain why they behaved antisocially than it is to simply serve a suspension from school, where they're distanced from friends and mentors, and often fall behind in their education. The Center for Restorative Youth Justice (CRYJ), is not a new organization, but their influence in Montana is growing. CRYJ receives referrals from Youth Court probation officers, school administrators, or school resource officers made on behalf of a juvenile offender who's broken the law. CRYJ then has a conference with the youth and their parent or guardian, and creates a tailormade program of restorative justice. This can involve peer group discussion, victim-offender meetings, and other situations where the youth is given the forum to reestablish a relationship with the community, rather than something like a school suspension. CRYJ believes that by limiting the overuse of exclusionary discipline and emphasizing a community-driven approach, it can help at-risk youth avoid falling behind in school. We spend a lot of time separating people after there's been harm, but often the deepest healing and learning and moving forward can happen ... when we can actually come together and talk about what happened and how to make things right.

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John Seigel-Boettner ... has been coordinating the local chapter of Cycling Without Age (CWA) since 2019. Effortlessly charming and still ferociously fit at 70-years-old, he gives rides at least twice a week. Though the people who ride upfront don't pedal, he doesn't call them "passengers" but "riding partners" to emphasize the program's spirit of companionship. "Cycling Without Age is about connection," Seigel-Boettner says. "It's about the conversations between pilot and partner, and the connection with everyone we meet along the way." While anybody can ride for free, CWA prioritizes riders with limited mobility. Seigel-Boettner's youngest rider was a five-year-old boy on a feeding tube who wanted to ride to school with his friends. "We provided that," he says, "and it made him very happy." Sometimes, his riders have lost their ability to speak at all. When Seigel-Boettner rides with someone experiencing memory loss, the words might fade away, but not the emotional resonance. The vibrations, the breeze, watching the passing world together become their shared language. "They see a flower, or the ocean, or a bird, and suddenly a memory surfaces," Seigel-Boettner says. CWA is much more than a lovely idea. A 2020 study found that participants experienced measurable improvements in mood and well-being after rides. The trishaw excursion is a chance to be seen again, not as a diagnosis but a person, not a burden but a being alive in the world.

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When marine geologist Mick O'Leary showed a group of Australian First Nations Elders a digital model of two ancient watering holes he had recently located–now under 14 meters of ocean–one man perked up, struggled to his feet and began speaking excitedly. Timmy Douglas, had recognized the watering holes as part of a songline he'd known all his life. Songlines involve using dramatic story songs that First Nations people began creating long before the written word as a mnemonic and spiritual system to navigate Australia's harsh terrain: they would do so by singing the songs as they walked across the land. These songs, which also define groups and laws and impart cultural values, have been passed down from one generation to the next over thousands of years. The connection of the songline to a recent and remarkable archeological find by O'Leary and his colleagues illustrates how First Nations groups and modern scientists are learning to work together–in this case to find evidence of the ancient humans who lived on land that is now underwater, what the Murujuga Elders call "Sea Country." Such evidence now includes stone tools that the scientists found last year on the ocean floor near the submerged watering holes. O'Leary says that although the research team did not physically follow the songline to make its discovery, he thinks that kind of collaboration might happen in the near future.

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Reducing stress and softening the sharper edges of anxiety in this way are beginners' steps when it comes to the practice of meditation. Put in the hours, though, and you may well reach the deep end: a place where radical, long-lasting upgrades to how you feel and what you experience are possible. Now, these mental transformations are being examined and understood by neuroscientists at world-leading institutions. Matthew Sacchet [is the] director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School. His team works hand in hand with advanced meditators, such as Buddhist monks, exploring how the material brain changes because of subjective experiences that are often considered spiritual in nature. Using state-of-the-art brain scanners, his team pinpoints the neural changes that occur across a variety of deep meditative practices. Beyond mindfulness-related stress reduction, advanced practitioners report experiences of ecstatic bliss, deep insights into their own minds, radical compassionate states and prosocial ways of being, and even shifts in their fundamental sense of self. Advanced meditators sometimes report states of consciousness that are described as deeply peaceful, mentally clear or subjectively non-dual – meaning there is no perceived distinction between self and other. These aren't just subjective reports: we observe changes in the brain that support their existence.

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Dr. Ian Stevenson [was the] director of the Division of Perceptual Studies, or DOPS, a parapsychology research unit he founded in 1967 within the University of Virginia's school of medicine. The survival of consciousness after death continues to be at the forefront of the division's research. The team has logged hundreds of cases of children who claim to remember past lives. DOPS is a curious institution. There are only a few other labs in the world undertaking similar lines of research. The only other major parapsychology unit in the United States was Princeton's Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, or PEAR, which focused on telekinesis and extrasensory perception. That unit was shuttered in 2007. Common features in children who claim to have led a previous life include a verbal precocity and mannerisms at odds with that of the rest of the family. Unexplained phobias or aversions have also been thought to have been transferred over from a past existence. In some cases, extreme clarity besets the remembrances: the names, professions and quirks of a different set of relatives, or the particularities of the streets they used to live on and sometimes even recalling obscure historical events – details the child couldn't possibly have known. The strongest cases, according to the DOPS researchers, have been found in children under the age of 10, and the majority of remembrances tend to occur between the ages of 2 and 6, after which they appear to fade.

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The chapel of San Quentin prison was abuzz as more than 100 incarcerated men and their friends and families took their seats. A banner with large orange lettering hanging at the front read "Arms Down: Teaching there are options between the first and second amendment", and the mood was festive, with the men hugging their spouses, parents and siblings. Arms Down is a "mutual help group for firearm offenders", meant to help incarcerated people understand the reasons that they carried and used guns. Understanding will lead to healing, the program's creators hope, and insights the men gain in the program will travel beyond the prison's walls and help reduce violence in the free world. "This is an opportunity you have to give back to your community. We're the untapped resource," said Jemain Hunter, the program's founder. "People are scared because they don't understand what we're doing as gun offenders – as far as rehabilitation goes – to come out and not commit these sorts of crimes again." "I'm just trying to make sure people don't end up like me," he continued. The sessions, many of the participants said, allowed them to talk about the shame and regret they feel over their offenses, and connect the dots between the violence they witnessed in their youth and the harm they have caused others. Word about Arms Down has spread to other California prisons, which Hunter hopes can introduce other incarcerated people to a new way of thinking about their crimes.

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Young people have become powerless against the multibillion-dollar tech companies whose apps exploit adolescents' need for social acceptance. This is the backdrop against which my book, "The Anxious Generation," was published in 2024. The book helped fuel the movement to reclaim childhood from tech companies – a movement that has since spread, driven in part by the protective passions of parents. Already, a majority of states have enacted laws to limit phone use in school. Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., have gone all the way and enacted "bell-to-bell" phone restriction policies, which liberate students from the distraction of their phones for the entire school day. Outside of the United States, Brazil has made every school phone-free, and new school phone policies have passed in the Netherlands, Finland and South Korea, among other countries. We are just beginning to see some of the impacts: Children are more attentive in class and are reading more books; teachers have told me they hear more laughter in the halls and at lunch. Heavy social media use doubles the risk of depression for adolescents. Just as we have age limits in the real world for porn, gambling, alcohol, tobacco and many other products, countries have begun enacting policies to add age restrictions to social media. These things may seem small, but in terms of children's development ... they're enormous.

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In 2019, Ostbelgien, a town in Belgium with about 80,000 residents, took a gamble on a new approach to governing: The city's parliament voted to establish a permanent Citizens' Council and Assembly, giving randomly-selected citizens the power to make decisions. They called it, aptly, the Ostbelgien Model. "Its main objectives are providing citizens not only a permanent voice in the process of decision making but also a systematic monitoring system to ensure they are heard," the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy writes. "Ultimately, the project seeks to increase accountability and reinvigorate the agenda-setting power of common citizens." Now, about six years into the experiment, which was created with the express purpose of increasing trust in government, participants say it's working. Once a year, about 1,500 letters are sent to randomly chosen residents in Ostbelgien. Recipients indicate their interest. Of those who express interest, about 30 are chosen to become members of the citizens' assembly. The newly formed assembly meets once a week for about two months, with each participant receiving a stipend of 155 euros (or $133) per day. They are assigned a topic of concern and have in-depth discussions about how the government should proceed, with an appointed moderator present to help move things along. Their recommendations to the parliament are not binding, but lawmakers are required to consider them.

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A recent survey from the British Standards Institution found that 68% of teen respondents said they feel worse when they spend too much time on social media, and 47% would remove them from existence if they could. So it's not surprising that hundreds of thousands of people are now attending ‘IRL' events (in real life) where phones are either banned or limited. Several new services are now curating "offline experiences" for social gatherings and dating, and the number of these events that are landing on the calendars of Americans and Europeans is a testament to the deep desire for human-to-human contact. The Offline Club of Europe has over half-a-million Instagram followers (an ironic yardstick of success), and chapters across the continent gather at venues where one's smartphone is locked in a box at the start of the event. Once inside, reading, chatting, sharing a drink, playing a board game–in short, everything we used to do to socialize–are preferred over looking down at your phone. In addition to the Offline Club, companies like Kanso, Sofar Sounds, and the app 222, are making a business out of disconnecting humans from their social media feeds that overflow with targeted ads and AI-generated drivel. Each one has found itself a niche, but all are returning us to the social activities that our parents used to do before phones. There are likely more options for engaging with the world and humanity offline; these are just a few that are exploding in popularity.

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Every time somebody flushes a toilet in Mannheim, they contribute to ecological shipping. Since March 2025, the German city's wastewater treatment plant has been feeding an experiment of global relevance: Transforming sewage gases into green methanol, a cleaner, nearly-carbon-neutral alternative to heavy fuel oil. The pilot, known as Mannheim 001, is the first full case study of how human waste can be captured, processed and converted into fuel powerful enough to propel cargo ships across oceans. "It's the first time the entire value chain – from sewage to finished methanol – has been demonstrated," says David Strittmatter, co-founder of Icodos, the start-up behind the project. Wastewater plants produce sludge – the thickened residue left after sewage is treated and cleaned. Mannheim's plant ferments this sludge in oxygen-free tanks, yielding biogas rich in methane and carbon dioxide, which is usually burned for heat or flared off. Icodos' innovation is to clean and upgrade that gas. "The sewage gas is dried, desulfurized, and then the carbon dioxide is separated from the rest," Strittmatter explains. Using renewable electricity, the captured carbon dioxide is then combined with hydrogen through a catalytic process to form methanol – a liquid fuel that can run ship engines. According to Icodos, scaling sewage-to-methanol worldwide could cover the entire fuel demand of the global shipping sector.

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Scientists have just built working computer components out of shiitake mushrooms. As described in a paper published in PLOS One, using mycelium–the threadlike roots of fungi–researchers created memristors, the circuitry elements that remember past electrical states. You'd imagine such a feat would yield a memristor that performs terribly, but the researchers say its performance wasn't too far off from that inside your laptop. These organic circuits can store information, process signals, and maybe even help future computers behave more like organic brains, all while being low-cost, biodegradable, and probably compostable when you're done with them. The team grew nine batches of shiitake mycelium in petri dishes. They let them sprawl and stretch into mildly disturbing, gross, tangled networks of roots. Then, they dried them out in the sunlight until they were ready to handle electricity. Once wired up to a circuit, the fungal fibers responded to voltage like living synapses. They were firing off signals at about 5,850 hertz with 90 percent accuracy. The researchers found they could boost power by wiring more mushrooms together, creating an even larger fungal network that improved circuit stability and speed. It's still very early on, but the implications here are wild and potentially game-changing. Imagine being able to grow the components for, say, a new iPhone or the aforementioned high-end gaming rig, from just some dirt and a lot of humidity.

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For more than 30 years, Frank Frost worked as a long-distance truck driver. He gained weight and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his 50s. His doctors put him on insulin injections and told him to lose weight and move more. "When l, like most people, failed, they made me feel weak and worthless," says Frost. Then, Frost met a doctor with a completely different approach – one that changed his life. The doctor ... asked Frost about things he enjoyed doing as a kid and discovered he used to love riding a bike. He gave him a prescription for a 10-week cycling course called Pedal Ready for adults getting back into cycling. "I hadn't been on a bike for almost 50 years until I started cycling again," says Frost. What Frost's doctor had done was give him a social prescription, says journalist Julia Hotz. It's the idea of health professionals "literally prescribing you a community activity or resource the same way they'd prescribe you pills or therapies," she explains. The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exposure to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous benefits to physical and mental health. And it all starts with "flipping the script from what's the matter with you to focusing on what matters to you," Hotz says. "What are your activities that you love? What gets you out of bed?" Frost's prescription helped him make friends after years in a solitary profession. And it helped him lose 100 pounds, get his diabetes under control and go off insulin.

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Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.