When Jan Minihane swapped a high-flying life in London for bringing up two wonderful little boys in Shropshire, she didn’t realise she would become so actively involved with her local branch of the National Childbirth Trust.

This week we’re following the enchanting story of a Shropshire woman’s life between two continents. Maureen Davies from Telford moved to Nanyuki in Kenya last year to care for her husband as he recovered from a life-saving operation.

Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman has been forced to change the password on her Twitter account after it was hacked, she told MPs today.

Light pollution is a topic that’s gathering worldwide momentum, and in a quiet corner of Shropshire, one man is joining in to campaign against it and recover our dark skies.

A prominent firm of Shropshire architects have just arrived on Twitter, and have been using the site to tweet about worldwide architectural breakthroughs as well as exciting local projects they’re working on.

Until a few years ago, our lively capital city was the only place you could catch a really unusual, international or unreleased film from an exciting independent director. That is, until now…

An Oswestry man is putting Shropshire back on the literary map by staging a week-long festival celebrating his town’s most famous former resident, the First World War poet Wilfred Owen.

From his office in Shrewsbury, Martin Brian Jones, one of the managing directors of the Woodland Stewardship Company, manages a forest in New York State covering 18.5 million acres – larger than all the forest land within the UK.

While most of us might spend our Wednesday evenings snuggled up on the sofa, professional downhill mountain biker Rob Smith heads out under the cover of darkness each week with 40 like-minded souls to tackle some of Shropshire’s most challenging terrains.

With so many of the county’s businesses and individuals now using Twitter, we wanted to give our followers the chance to tell us about the things that make our county so special. And the result? The 2009 Shropshire Star Twitter Awards!

Shrewsbury’s popular @TheatreSevern has joined the Twitter community and staff have been using the site to post events, ticket availability, reviews and information from the stages, the restaurant and the bar.

As well as the colourful mix of businesses and individuals making expert use of Twitter, charities are increasingly turning to social media too. We talk to Lucy Proctor from Severn Hospice to discover about how she’s using Twitter to spread the word.

This week we’re talking to a Telford twitterer who’s been using the social networking site to organise a fundraising event for a local charity.

At the tender age of 22, most of us didn’t know what day it was, let alone what career path to follow. But at 22, Shropshire twitterer Jonathan Gidney has already turned pro golfer and played in tournaments all over the world.

We’re stepping just across the border for this week’s column to talk to an enterprising young lady who was recently named one of the Future 100 Young Social Entrepreneurs for 2009.

The latest addition to Ludlow’s thriving arts scene is a real Aladdin’s Cave of unusual objects. And as you might expect, the enterprising duo behind this unique concept have a background as fascinating as the shop itself.

For several years, the South of Shropshire has enjoyed a glowing reputation for its fine local produce, while the north of the county has gone relatively unnoticed. But one Market Drayton woman is changing that.

Our past few columns have been rather male-dominated lately, so thank goodness we spotted the enterprising Telford duo @MoanAboutMen, aka Sue Hedges and Angie Savchenko, on Twitter.

It’s always encouraging to hear about local firms defying the gloomy tales of the recession, and this week, we’ve found a Shropshire firm who is not only beating the odds but have become one of motoring’s best-loved scooter brands.

We may think we live in a Mickey Mouse world but for one Shropshire town it could become a reality if it is twinned with Walt Disney World.

Madeley-based IT consultant Stevan Eggleton, who tweets from @stevanegg, is one of a surprisingly large number of mature swimmers who are competing at national, European and even world champion level.

It’s easy to see that Oswestry twitterer Tim Robbins has a taste for adventure. He spent most of his adult years exploring Mexico, Paraguay, Uraguay, Thailand, Indonesia, Malasia and Tasmania before travelling to Brazil and Slovakia to teach English as a foreign language.

We’re always excited to discover new artisans in our food-rich county, and this week we were delighted to stumble upon Twitter’s latest arrival, Brock Hall Farm in Chelmarsh, near Bridgnorth.

“Laughter is the best medicine” seems like a particularly appropriate proverb in these uncertain times, and it’s a belief shared by five pioneering Shrewsbury men who’ve made it their mission to give us a good old giggle.

In today’s frighteningly competitive jobs market, university graduates are increasingly turning to gap years and voluntary projects to enhance their employability. And one Shropshire lad, a recent graduate in Computer Science at Kings College in London, decided to do just that.

Our twentieth Twitter Talk column is a rather special occasion, and to mark it we’ve found a suitably extraordinary twitterer – Lilleshall-based Rob Chapman.

If you’ve ever woken up on a bright, clear day to the mesmerising sight and sound of a hot air balloon rising over the Shropshire skyline, the chances are it was made by Lindstrand Balloons.

Two Shropshire Chamber of Commerce members who started ‘tweeting’ after meeting at the Chamber’s first Twitter for Business workshop are now celebrating their first joint contract win.

Stories of stressed-out city couples relocating to the countryside are now a familiar tale, but one county pair have taken their new life in the country a step further and gained national recognition in an industry that was, until seven years ago, entirely new territory.

As well as lecturing in illustration and promoting the work of creative arts and media students at the University of Wolverhampton, Bridgnorth man Michael Dixon has become one of the country’s leading consultants in a rather unique subject: puppets!