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Sunday, Jul 10, 2011 3:09 PM UTC

The Week in Uppers

A corgi jail break, a daring rescue and a $1.5 billion donation are just a few of this week's winners

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Topics: Uppers, Viral Video,

The Week in Uppers

Amid a torrent of downers, from dysfunctional debt-ceiling talks to the News of the World phone hacking scandal, it would easy to overlook some of the better news this week. That’s why we’re here to remind you.

  • In a daring operation, revealed on YouTube this week, surreptitious Ferris assisted prisoner Dot Matrix in escaping from captivity. Both of the conspirators, by the way, were dogs. [YouTube]

  • Here’s an amputee who isn’t letting a his disability get bring him down. Instead, he’s doing backflips. [Huffington Post]
  • Warrent Buffett disclosed a $1.5-billion stock gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of his plan to eventually donate the majority of his wealth to charity. [WSJ]
  • Swedish doctors successfully implanted a lab-made, synthetic windpipe in a 36-year-old man who suffered from tracheal cancer on Thursday. The procedure was the first success of its kind. [AP]
  • We’re fairly certain that jump-rope has never been this cool. [CBS News]

  • Charitable donations in India have increased a full 50 percent over the past four years, a breakthrough in a country where 40 percent of the population falls below the poverty line. [WSJ]
  • The Humane Society and United Egg Producers, responsible for 80 percent of all egg farms in America, reached a landmark deal this week to institute new industrial regulations — the first of their kind in 30 years. [Huffington Post]
  • Perhaps the most amazing story of the week, a woman in China risked life and limb to rescue an infant who had fallen from the 10th story of a high rise. The child survived the fall. [AP]

More Peter Finocchiaro.

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  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

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