The Hull Daily Mail’s chosen charity of the year for 2001 is benefiting from the generosity of readers, after one of two minibuses was handed over to a county blind group.
Assistant editor Marc Astley handed over the keys and said: “It was a very proud moment for me. The generosity of our readers knows no bounds.
“Some members are partially-sighted and so they could see the bus. The look on their faces said it all.”

The Carmarthen Journal helped save the bacon of a couple of Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pigs – by finding them a new home.
Susu and Ling-Ling moved to a new home where two pot-bellies were already living after an appeal in the paper prompted several readers to step forward.

A stunned and tearful Samantha Hopper accepted boyfriend Darren Swabey’s proposal after he popped the question to her in the Plymouth Evening Herald.
He presented a copy of the Herald to her while she was at work and it contained a page lead with the headline: “Samantha, will you marry me?”, together with a picture of Darren offering her an engagement ring.

Readers of the Mansfield Chad have shown their community spirit by helping raise more than £30,000 for the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
The charity hit its target thanks to £18,000 from Chad readers alone.

A spoken version of the Gloucestershire Echo will be of better quality to the blind and partially sighted people who use the Cotswold Listener, after a £150 grant from the Oxford, Swindon and Gloucestershire Co-operative Society.

An Exeter woman has won a surprise windfall from thousands of miles away thanks to the Express & Echo.
A former work colleague in South Africa used the paper to trace her and pass on hundreds of pounds from a works property syndicate, in which workers collectively bought and rented property. A letter from South Africa found its target when it appeared on the Echo’s letters page.

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