Author: CNN Newsource

By Max Goldwasser

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    SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A San Diego sailor is preparing for what could be the first-ever solo, non-stop voyage across the Pacific Ocean by a blind person, planning to sail from San Diego to Japan in spring 2027.

Hiro Iwamoto, who lost his sight completely at age 16, has already completed the journey once before in 2019 with the help of a sighted navigator during a 55-day voyage covering thousands of miles. Now, he wants to attempt the crossing entirely alone.

“If you are in despair, please try to find the meaning and act on it! Your life will be much better,” Iwamoto said.

For Iwamoto, finding that meaning took time. He began losing his eyesight at 13 and went completely blind three years later.

“My life got very, very into darkness,” Iwamoto said. “So I tried to commit suicide, jump off from the bridge to the beautiful ocean it used to be, but at the time it sounded very dark and scary.”

The ocean, where Iwamoto once contemplated ending his life, has now become the place where he feels most alive.

“Sailboat — can you imagine? Just go, just with wind,” Iwamoto said.

His first attempt to cross the Pacific in 2013 ended after just six days when a whale struck his boat.

“I heard 3 big crashing sounds — Boom! Boom! Boom!” Iwamoto said.

That setback sent him back into despair, questioning his ambitious challenge.

“Why as a totally blind you had such a dumb dream? As a totally blind, the safest place is staying home. Never go out,” Iwamoto said.

During his darkest moments, Iwamoto remembered a message from his late uncle: “There is meaning in your blindness! Through your challenges, you will give courage and hope to others.”

For his upcoming solo attempt, Iwamoto will rely on new technology that can observe critical, real-time sailing data and speak it aloud, even in the middle of the ocean.

“Like wind angle, wind direction, boat speed, boat direction and where the obstacles are coming,” Iwamoto said.

This week, the Challenged Athletes Foundation and sailing legend Malin Burnham surprised Iwamoto with a $5,000 grant to support his journey.

“This is an opportunity to change the world. This is an opportunity to change what people perceive someone’s limits are who is visually impaired. And he has no limits,” said Bob Babbitt, co-founder of the Challenged Athletes Foundation.

Iwamoto hopes his journey will inspire others to push beyond perceived limitations.

“Don’t limit yourself. Let’s make impossible, possible together,” Iwamoto said.

“This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. KGTV verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Wakisha Bailey

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    MILLVILLE, New Jersey (KYW) — On days when temperatures are bitter cold, there’s a place in South Jersey where kindness is always in season.

At the Child Family Center in Millville, the moment you walk through the doors, the chill disappears — replaced by warmth, laughter, and a lesson that goes far beyond ABCs and 123s.

Inside the teachers’ lounge, a hot chocolate bar is set up, part of a monthly tradition designed to pour kindness into the people who pour so much into their students.

“It’s been so cold — this is definitely a happy surprise,” one teacher shared.

For longtime educators Robin Dick and Cindy Ciocco, each with more than 20 years in education, the goal is simple: lead with kindness and let it trickle down.

“Every year, teaching gets harder and harder,” Dick said. “But if teachers are showing kindness, it trickles all the way down to the children.”

That philosophy led them to spearhead the school’s Kindness Committee, a major reason the preschool was recently recognized as a National School of Character.

A walk through the building tells the story. Hallways are named Caring Street and Fairness Boulevard, while children chant reminders like, “We use kind words.”

And kindness doesn’t stop at the classroom door.

Students spend time with elderly neighbors next door, organize coat drives during the holidays, and make a point to recognize custodians, nurses, and staff members who help keep the school running.

“You have to form committees and do things within the community,” Ciocco said.

The school’s mascot is a cub — and here, cubs roar with kindness.

Five-year-old Myla proudly showed off her kindness calendar, complete with checkmarks for daily good deeds.

“Clean up after yourself,” she read aloud. “I do that all the time,” she added, “at my house.”

Another standout student, Riley, was recently named Cub of the Month for showing citizenship.

“You follow the rules and you help your friends follow the rules,” Riley explained.

At the Child Family Center, kindness comes first, with reminders around every corner that being respectful, open, and kind matters just as much as learning the alphabet.

As the children sing it best themselves: “Respectful, open and kind.”

The Child Family Center proving you’re never too young to be kind.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Joshua Sidorowicz

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    SWARTHMORE, Pennsylvania (KYW) — An Eagles fan says a ticket transfer mix-up left him without the $1,700 worth of seats he bought for an away game until the company reversed course and issued a refund.

Jason McDevitt, who lives in Swarthmore, Delaware County, purchased six tickets on StubHub for the team’s December game against the Los Angeles Chargers. But when he tried to move the tickets to his Ticketmaster account, he said the system told him they’d already been claimed.

“It gave me an email,” he explained. “And it said, ‘Your tickets have been claimed already by another email,’ which kind of started a hellacious process.”

McDevitt contacted StubHub through the company’s virtual customer chat. He shared screenshots showing he was initially told he qualified for the company’s “Fan Protect Guarantee,” which promises a refund or replacement if a seller fails to deliver.

But he says StubHub later reversed course, telling him the tickets had been successfully transferred to the email he provided when he completed the purchase.

“Just hours of going back and forth,” McDevitt said. “It was just a nightmare, just a headache.”

With time running out and a trip on the line, McDevitt contacted In Your Corner for help. When CBS News Philadelphia contacted both companies, Ticketmaster said in an emailed statement that it determined StubHub, “made an error and sent the tickets to the wrong account.”

StubHub disagreed, saying in a statement that it “stands by the fact that the tickets were successfully transferred,” and that the seller provided valid proof. Still, the company agreed to issue McDevitt a full refund, adding that it understood the buyer had been unable to access the tickets in his Ticketmaster account.

“I’m so glad I called you and you got the ball rolling,” McDevitt said.

Despite the ordeal, McDevitt and his father still made it to the game. He bought replacement tickets — also through StubHub — and had no issues.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Jenna DeAngelis

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    NEW YORK (WCBS) — An investigation is underway into how a man and a dog died inside a mobile veterinary van in Flushing, Queens, on Sunday.

Police said a second man and dog survived.

The NYPD responded to the van parked on 65th Avenue near Parsons Boulevard at around 9:30 a.m. to find a 57-year-old man and a dog dead inside. Police said they found a 73-year-old man unconscious. He is now hospitalized.

Police were waiting for autopsy results, but said a component of the investigation is if a generator seen outside of the van played a part.

A customer said the man who survived is a veterinarian known for providing low-cost services, helping save many pets. Neighbors said he has a business nearby but lives on the street, where he keeps the van parked.

Shortly after arriving to the Low Cost Vet Mobile on Sunday for her cat’s surgery, Linnette Mejias was leaving shocked and in tears.

“Usually they contact, or he does. He reaches out. So it makes sense because he didn’t,” Mejias said. “I didn’t expect this, honestly. I really hope he’s OK because he’s such a sweetheart.”

Mejias said the veterinary team is always affordable and has saved a lot of pets, including hers.

She said her hope is “that he definitely makes a speedy recovery, that he comes home and goes back to doing what he loves to do and what we love him for.”

A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said she called 911 after her son saw the owner of the van, who police have not identified, stumble out of the vehicle.

“He said he was locked in there for four hours,” the neighbor said. “He was disoriented, but he was going in and out and he was the one that was able to tell me that the surgeon, the vet surgeon, was in the truck dead.

The neighbor said the man who survived “is a nice guy,” adding, “I just don’t like the business being done out of a truck in a residential area.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By La’Tasha Givens

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    SOUTH FULTON, Georgia (WUPA) — The latest Georgia Milestones, the state’s standard assessments, found that only 35% of third graders demonstrated proficiency in the English Language Arts assessment.

Organizations are working to solve the problem, including in the City of South Fulton. There, educators and students get together after school for a program that helps them academically and teaches them lifelong learning skills.

These lessons are lyrical. Dozens of students in the city’s Finish Strong Learning Pod afterschool program are dropping punchlines and rhymes while learning at the same time.

The program partnered with the nonprofit Soul Food Cypher to bring to the classroom what its founder, Alex Acosta, calls “edu-tainment.”

“And what we are doing is building community through this craft of freestyle rap,” Acosta explained. “Take those same lyrical exercises to go into schools to work with kids to help them increase their vocabulary, their self-confidence, and their public speaking skills.”

Finish Strong Learning Pod founder Sylvia Carter says while rap isn’t her preferred genre, these three linguists paired well with her language arts students.

“What better way to connect reading with my scholars than to have ciphers come in?” Carter said. “Alliteration and similes and all of those things. And my scholars absolutely loved it. So I would say, as an educator, sometimes we gotta switch things up, bring in other things that will grab our students.”

Carter says that within a few short weeks, her students’ vocabulary expanded. Their excitement for reading and writing, and their overall confidence in public speaking, grew, too.

These results match research from the University of Cambridge, where Dr. Akeem Sule outlines how freestyle rap stimulates parts of the brain that process language, emotion, and motor function, leading to a host of benefits, including academic and personal development.

What I love about it is that I can use my thinking and stuff I learn in school,” student Lavender Gatewood said. “I can put all this togethern and I can just rap it out.”

Gatewood said that she loves being able to rap about anything with the Soul Food Cypher.

For lyricist and Soul Food Cypher’s instructors Takari “TK” Mitchell, freestyle has been like therapy, and she knows the children participating in the program can relate.

“With a lot of the issues that, you know, our students might face outside of the classroom, I feel like this is their therapy,” Mitchell said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By John Ramos

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    SANTA CLARA, California (KPIX) — Businesses in San Francisco and Santa Clara are gearing up for what they hope is an influx of customers during Super Bowl week. But one long-time vendor in the South Bay has been shut down, a casualty of what the NFL calls its “clean zone.”

Howard Gibbons knows a good hot dog when he sees it. Known as “The Hot Dog Dude” of Santa Clara, he takes pride in his product.

“Freshly chopped onions. None of that fake bagged stuff,” he said, as he set up his condiments table.

But for Gibbons, the success of his business has always depended on three things: location, location, location. For the last 12 years, his hot dog cart has called the underpass to the Great America VTA station home. But unfortunately, it’s right next to Levi’s Stadium, the home of Super Bowl LX.

“They shut down all vendors,” Howard said. “All street vendors are not allowed within what they call their ‘clean zone.’ Why it’s called the ‘clean zone,’ I don’t know. I didn’t know I was dirty. I thought I was a pretty clean guy.”

On Saturday, he was hired for a private event, providing lunch at a local Adult Education Center.

But as of last Thursday, he’s been kicked out of his normal location, where he serves commuters walking to and from the VTA train station. And for the last three weeks, he’s lost about half his business as the VTA commuter parking lot was closed for the exclusive use of the NFL.

Gibbons finds that ironic since for the last eight years, he said the city has been trying to attract vendors to the area.

“And now they’re being closed down for this event,” he said. “It’s kind of like, you got ’em out of the closet, you got ’em to come out and be clean, and then you tell ’em, well, you don’t get to play in the big game. You’re sitting the big game out.”

As he hung up his “Hot Dog Dude” banner above the serving area, Gibbons said that when the Super Bowl comes to town, the NFL basically owns the area around the stadium, including banning any advertising within the clean zone.

“Me putting this up during the Super Bowl would be, ‘Call the FBI. We got an advertisement violator here,'” he said, laughing.

But Howard is luckier than most. The Bay Area Host Committee has offered to subsidize some of his losses for the weeks before and after the game. His daughter, Wendy Rogers, said it helps that he’s so well-connected in the community.

“He’s pretty well known. I mean, he knows the mayor, he knows everybody,” she said. “You know, I try to call him sometimes and he’s like, ‘I can’t talk, I’m in a meeting.’ He’s at a City Hall meeting, letting ’em know, and fighting for what’s right.”

What doesn’t feel right to Gibbons is what’s happening to all the other vendors, especially with all the big talk about the economic boost of hosting the Super Bowl.

“I guess they’ll play,” he said. “The billionaires will make their money. And they’ll leave a mess, and ‘Y’all have a nice day.'”

Gibbons said he used to operate a full-sized food truck 12 years ago but switched to a hot dog cart when they began building Levi’s Stadium, so he could stay in the area. He said he was allowed to operate when the Super Bowl was last played there in 2016, but this time he’s been completely shut down.

Super Bowl organizers say there are closures to streets and public infrastructure surrounding Levi’s Stadium for safety and security reasons for the event. There are similar closures around the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

All closures for the Super Bowl are available on Santa Clara’s website.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Kennedy Cook

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    BOULDER, Colorado (KCNC) — For the past eight years, Louis “Lou” Cicio has celebrated Jan. 30 as his “birthday.” Not because it’s the day he was born, but because it’s the day he nearly died — and survived.

On Friday, the Boulder man was reunited with the doctor and medical staff who saved his life.

“I was brought to Good Samaritan because I had a cardiac arrest,” he said. “I was resuscitated in my office and brought here, and that started this journey where they saved my life.”

Doctors told him he had only about a 40% chance of surviving that day.

“When you’ve had cardiac arrest, that means you’ve already died once,” said Dr. Shaheer Zulfiqar, an interventional cardiologist with Intermountain Health. “So the mortality with cardiac arrest is pretty high.”

But Cicio’s story beat the odds.

Not only did he survive — he returned to his everyday routine, riding his bike, exercising, and living a healthy life. And every year on the anniversary of his cardiac arrest, he comes back to the hospital where his life was saved.

“I come back every year on the anniversary day,” Cicio said. “Thank you to the staff.”

His way of saying thanks? Delivering fresh fruit to every department that helped save his life.

“Generally, when physicians come across a story like this, it makes you feel good about your profession,” Zulfiqar said. “Somebody who probably otherwise would not be around is biking, surviving, and living a healthy life — that’s the good outcome you hope for in medicine.”

Hospital staff say patient visits like Cicio’s are rare and deeply meaningful.

“They don’t get too many patients visiting them,” one staff member said.

For Cicio, the gratitude runs deep.

“It is amazing what we have as a health system to take care of someone like me,” he said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.