The company that runs the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotel chains announced this week that all of its 843,000 guest rooms will provide shampoo and other bathroom amenities from bulk-sized containers, eliminating millions of plastic bottles from landfills.
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), one of the world’s leading hotel companies, will be implementing the phase-out across all 5,600 of their properties worldwide with the transition to be completed within two years.
Building on its efforts to reduce plastic waste as part of a broader sustainability agenda, this pledge makes IHG the first global hotel company to commit all brands to removing bathroom miniatures in favor of bulk-size amenities.
Almost a third of its hotels have already adopted the change, according to Keith Barr, the CEO of IHG.
“It’s more important than ever that companies challenge themselves to operate responsibly—we know it’s what our guests, owners, colleagues, investors, and suppliers rightly expect,” said Barr. “Switching to larger-size amenities will allow us to significantly reduce our waste footprint and environmental impact as we make the change.”
IHG currently has an average of 200 million bathroom miniatures in use across its entire hotel estate every year. As the new brand standard is adopted between now and 2021, the company expects to see a significant reduction in plastic waste.
Switching to bulk-size amenities is a tested approach at IHG, which believes their hotel guests increasingly want more sustainability without any impact on the quality of their experience.
In October 2018, IHG announced the removal of single-use plastic straws from its hotels globally—an average of 50 million straws removed from IHG’s hotel estate each year, enough to stretch all the way from New York to Tokyo.
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This 50-year-old New Yorker is being hailed as a “highway hero” after she took it upon herself to clear a flooded expressway with nothing but a traffic cone.
Daphne Youree had just picked her cat up from the veterinarian’s office last week when she started driving down the Long Island Expressway.
To her shock, she found that the highway had been flooded due to a recent storm. When she and her fellow motorists realized that there was no way for them to drive through the floodwaters, they all parked their cars and watched in helplessness.
“When I got out I saw a bunch of guys standing around talking about how someone needs to go do something,” Youree told The Gothamist. “Someone suggested we see how deep it was. But no one wanted to do it. So I volunteered.”
So without any further ado, Youree marched into the muddy floodwaters in her Crocs and found that the expressway drains had been clogged with dirt and sticks from the flooding. She then grabbed a traffic cone and began clearing the dirt from the drains.
“It didn’t really smell bad, just rain water with pieces of wood and dirt in it—that was what was clogging the drain,” said Youree. “So when I unclogged it, it cleared pretty quickly. At deepest it went above my knees.”
After Youree managed to successfully clear the highway, she responded to a tweet from the Emergency Management Department announcing that she had cleared the floodwaters.
In addition to City Council Speaker Corey Johnson thanking her for being a “great New Yorker,” Twitter users have begun rallying for Youree to be elected as the new mayor of New York—but the photographer says that she was simply happy to do her civic duty as a city-dweller.
Kazanksky cathedral in St Petersburg, Russia. (Photo by SWNS)
A dedicated team of photographers has created these astonishing Inception-inspired pictures using hundreds and hundreds of pictures layered on top of each other.
Golden Gate in Vladimir, Russia. (Photo by SWNS)
The photos, which were created by video production company Lestnica, capture the iconic grand plazas, towering monuments, and majestic architecture of Russian cities that appear to be bending over themselves at a stomach-churning tilt.
Uspensky Cathedral in Vladimir, Russia. (Photo by SWNS)
Each image is anchored by an architectural feature as the focal point, with sidewalks and streets fanning outward similarly to how they were depicted in scenes from the 2010 sci-fi thriller.
Govenment building in Vladimir, Russia. (Photo by SWNS)
“The first time I saw shots similarly to these was in the movie Inception,” said Artem Prudentov, founder of Lestnica. “I thought it was computer graphics and it was impossible to take the same kind of shot in real life.
Palace Square in St Petersburg, Russia. (Photo by SWNS)
“A little later, my friend Ivan Medvedev sent me pictures that resembled those from the film. He found them on the internet and I thought it was just a photo of a 3D model.
Moscow university in Moscow, Russia. (Photo by SWNS)
“I said it wasn’t possible to take the same real picture of the city,” he mused, “but all this time, I was thinking about how to get a picture like that.
Victory Park, Moscow, Russia. (Photo by SWNS)
“I started trying. I took pictures, edited them, found mistakes, and corrected them. This cycle was repeated again and again over the following months.”
Russian Exhibition centre in Moscow, Russia. (Photo by SWNS)
The Lestnica photographers finally succeeded in creating the warped images by bending and merging together a series of photos.
SWNS
The team had to carry out 100 photo shoots and capture over 1,000 photos from different heights in order to create the final products.
Each image took over 12 hours to complete—but it finally resulted in a series of pictures that were appropriately “grand and majestic”.
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A Canadian woman is crediting one of her favorite heavy metal bands for saving her and her dog from a hungry cougar.
Dee Gallant and her dog Murphy were hiking through the wilderness of Vancouver Island in British Columbia last week when she found herself in a spine-chilling predicament.
As they were walking down through the woods, Gallant noticed that she and her pup were being stalked by a cougar standing 50 feet up the trail. Upon noticing that the cat was slowly creeping towards them, Gallant yelled at it to stop—and even though it remained at the end of the trail, it was still crouched in a predatory position with its gaze fixed on Gallant and Murphy.
Since the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, Murphy had not even picked up the scent of the cougar when Gallant spotted it. She knew she had to try and scare the big cat away before it pounced, so she began waving her arms in the air and yelling at the cougar.
She spent about one minute trying to frighten the cougar, all while it remained transfixed on Gallant—but when her scare tactics failed to work, she knew she had to try something different.
Gallant then cranked up the volume on her cell phone, scrolled through her music library, and played the loudest song she had: “Don’t Tread On Me” by Metallica.
“I thought it was the noisiest thing on my phone that would probably scare it, that was also the messaged I wanted to convey to the cougar,” she told Kelowna Now. “As soon as the first notes blared out it ran into the bush.”
We are now one step closer to having the first ever vaccine for genital herpes.
Last week, BlueWillow Biologics announced the issuance of a US patent number for the development of their intranasal herpes simplex virus (HSV) vaccine, which puts them one step closer towards conducting human trials.
The patent protects the use of the pharmaceutical company’s unique NanoVax adjuvant platform in the development of a vaccine that provides protection against HSV-1 and HSV-2, the two viruses that can cause genital herpes.
The intranasal NanoVax platform elicits both mucosal and systemic immunity through its novel oil-in-water nanoemulsion adjuvant, offering a unique advantage to combat sexually transmitted infections including genital herpes. The mucosal immunity elicited by intranasal NE vaccines provides critical protection against infections at the port of entry by which a pathogen enters the body.
The vaccine has demonstrated safety and efficacy in both prophylactic and therapeutic animal models for genital herpes. In a prophylactic guinea pig study, the intranasal vaccine prevented genital herpes infection in 92% of animals vaccinated. The vaccine also reduced recurrent lesions and viral shedding by more than 50% in therapeutic study animals previously infected with genital herpes compared to the animals who received no treatment.
More than one in six people aged 14 to 49 are infected with genital herpes and an estimated 776,000 new infections occur annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Genital herpes increases a person’s risk of contracting HIV and can lead to miscarriage and premature birth in infected pregnant women. Herpes can also be passed from the mother to child during birth, potentially resulting in neonatal herpes, a fatal infection. Most genital herpes vaccine candidates have failed or been abandoned in recent years, leaving no reliable therapeutic or preventive vaccine for the disease.
“Genital herpes is easily and often unknowingly transmitted between partners. The lifelong infection frequently causes psychological distress and negatively impacts quality of life,” said Dr. Ali Fattom, Senior Vice President of Vaccine Research and Development at BlueWillow.
“After years of research in animals, we are moving closer to studies in humans where we expect results to validate the potential of this much-needed vaccine,” he added.
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When a man with Alzheimer’s disease could not remember the lyrics or melody to a song he liked, his caretaker offered up his own voice to help him out.
The caretaker began singing the gorgeous tune after his patient mentioned how he loved Bolero, but could not recall any songs.
After the caretaker began singing a few bars, however, the patient was able to join in—and the resulting duet is magical.
(WATCH the heartwarming video below)
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Quote of the Day: “We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, from which no one can spare us.” – Marcel Proust
Photo: by Simon Matzinger, CC license
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As pressure mounts for companies to transition away from single-use plastics, industry giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have announced that they plan to end their memberships with the Plastics Industry Association, which has advocated against plastic bans nationwide.
Earlier this year, Greenpeace highlighted the role that the plastics industry and front groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have played in pushing preemption bills meant to “ban plastic bans” and undermine statewide progress on plastic pollution.
“Companies understand that they cannot publicly say they want to end plastic pollution, while financially supporting an association that lobbies for our continued reliance on throwaway plastics,” said Greenpeace USA Oceans Campaign Director John Hocevar.
“This is a victory for every person that spoke up and asked Coca-Cola and PepsiCo to put their money where their mouths are and tell the Plastics Industry Association to stop preventing plastic reduction efforts,” he added.
Greenpeace, alongside other investors and organizations, have urged companies like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola to reject the Plastics Industry Association’s secretive lobbying against plastic bans. The association uses a front group, the American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA), and works side by side with ALEC to push state legislators to prohibit plastic bans across the country. Thus far, 15 states with a combined total of 88 million people have passed these pro-pollution preemption laws.
“Local communities should have the right to protect and preserve their environment without corporations interfering,” said Jan Dell, an independent engineer and founder of The Last Beach Cleanup. “It is time for companies that claim to care about reducing plastic pollution to take a stand and reject the Plastic Industry Association’s lobbying to block local plastic bag and container ordinances.”
While the Plastics Industry Association hides most of its membership, SC Johnson was also identified as a member as of 2018. SC Johnson has publicly stated that it supports plastic straw bans despite the APBA’s continued lobbying against local plastic pollution ordinances. Walmart was identified as a member of the association in a recent exposé from The Intercept, despite the company announcing several tepid plastic packaging initiatives earlier this year. Greenpeace urges SC Johnson and Walmart to publicly demand that the Plastics Industry Association stop its repressive lobbying, or leave the association.
“As we’ve seen with companies ditching ALEC over the last few years, when companies start standing up for their values, these front groups lose significant power over local lobbying efforts,” Hocevar said. “The Plastics Industry Association is desperate as governments and companies continue to realize that the tide has turned on throwaway plastics.”
Clean Up Negativity By Sharing The Good News To Social Media – File photo by Tuchodi, CC
After Patrick Hoagland was laid off from his job as a forklift operator, he spent weeks applying for work around town—but he didn’t have any lucky until he finally took a more creative approach to getting work.
With temperatures soaring as high as 110º Fahrenheit, the 30-year-old father headed to a street corner in Phoenix, Arizona with 200 copies of his resumé in hand.
He also carried a sign that told passing drivers he had been laid off and he wanted them to take a resumé.
For three days, Hoagland would spend a few hours at the same intersection handing out resumés with a huge smile on his face—and then he caught the eye of Melissa DiGianfilippo.
DiGianfilippo, who works at a PR and marketing agency, had been driving back to work from lunch when she saw Hoagland on the street. After taking one of his resumés, she realized Hoagland did not have the right skills for her agency; nevertheless, she posted a photo of Hoagland and his resumé to social media with the hopes that it would help land him a job.
To their surprise, the posts spread like wildfire. Within days, Hoagland was flooded with hundreds of job offers.
I was driving down Camelback Rd in Phx near my office and saw this guy on the side of the road with a smile in 110-degree heat, with a sign asking people to take his resume. I love that he was not asking for a handout, just for people to consider him for a job. #pleaseshare#jobpic.twitter.com/5QAUpCkGWk
Quote of the Day: “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville (born 200 years ago today, the author of Moby Dick, died in relative obscurity, his masterpiece considered a failure)
Painting: by Carl Jüng; photo by GWC, copyright 2019
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When Ariel Rigney lost her prosthetic leg in an Oregon river, she was almost sure that she would never see it again—so imagine her surprise when it was rescued by a friendly snorkeler the very next day.
Rigney, who lost her leg in a car accident as a teenager, says that she regularly uses her prosthetic to go running and swimming. In fact, she had gone rafting down the Clackamas River with her friends last weekend in order to celebrate her 32nd birthday.
Unfortunately, the bungee cord that had been securing her prosthetic became undone—so when the gang of friends hit a particularly bumpy part of the river, Rigney’s leg went flying into the river.
Since Gantner is an avid scuba diver, he says he is no stranger to finding peculiar things in the river—but he was particularly stunned to find Rigney’s prosthetic leg with the rainbow sandal still attached at the bottom of the river.
Upon returning home, he searched “Clackamas River lost leg” and found Rigney’s post.
Not only did Ganter help to successfully reunite Rigney with her prosthetic, the two of them also managed to strike up a happy new friendship.
(WATCH the news coverage below)
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For the first time in history, wind energy accounted for more electrical usage in Texas than coal.
The Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, which manages about 90% of the electrical flow in the state, released a report earlier this month stating that—during the first half of 2019—wind power generated 22% of the state’s electrical usage while coal only generated 21%.
In addition to Texas being the largest producer and consumer of energy in the US, they have also been the largest consumer of coal. Back in 2003, coal fulfilled 40% of the state’s electrical needs. Wind, on the other hand, only generated 0.8%.
That being said, a new report that was released today by the US Energy Information Administration shows that much has changed over the course of the last 16 years.
Based on data from 2018, Texas now ranks first in US-installed wind capacity and number of turbines. The state generated roughly 24 gigawatts of wind energy, which is three times more than Iowa, the second largest wind power state.
Only 41 US states have installed a minimum of one wind turbine. Of these 41 states, Texas had the largest number of turbines, with more than 13,000. For perspective, California had the second largest amount of turbines with about 7,600.
Power Up With Positivity By Sharing The Good News To Social Media – Photo by Christoph Hrdinka, CC
When an ailing young fan asked his favorite baseball player to hit a home run, the Red Sox champion went above and beyond to make the boy’s wish come true—not once, but three times.
10-year-old Nico Sapienza suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disease that affects the motor neurons in a person’s spine and takes away their ability to do simple physical tasks. He also happens to be a huge Red Sox fan.
That’s why the youngster asked the Make-a-Wish Foundation for a chance to meet the team—particularly his favorite player, Mookie Betts.
Nico’s wish came true after he was brought to Fenway Park prior to the Sox’s game against the New York Yankees earlier this week.
In addition to the boy being given a tour of the stadium, he got to meet with all of the players and chat about their shared love of baseball.
Before he left, Nico asked Betts to hit a home run against the Yankees—and even though it could have been a hard promise to keep, Betts was more than happy to oblige.
"I'm glad he came. He was our good luck charm. He's a great kid. I think him and his family had fun down in BP and I think if I can kind of use the platform that I have to make people smile like that then I know I've done something well." - Mookie after meeting Nico Sapienza https://t.co/miYaaSDSgK
An Irish teenager has just won the prestigious Google Science Fair Grand Prize for his ingenious method of extracting microplastics from water.
Thousands of participants between the ages 14 to 18 entered this year’s contest. Out of the 24 international finalists, 18-year-old Fionn Ferreira was named the winner for his technique of using magnets and ferrofluids—a combination of oil and magnetite powder—to collect the tiny bits of plastic from water samples.
Since most microplastics measure less than 5 millimeters in diameter, it is impossible to prevent the small pollutants from ending up in oceans, lakes, and urban waterways using typical filtration methods.
According to The Journal, there are currently no microplastic filtration systems being utilized in any of Europe’s wastewater treatment plants.
However, Fionn was able to use his ferrofluid method to collect 87% of microplastics from his water samples in 1,000 different tests.
Now that he has been awarded Google’s $50,000 grand prize, the teen from West Cork hopes to start implementing his filtration technique in wastewater treatment plants so the microplastic pollutants won’t ever reach the ocean.
For years, this group of old-timers had been meeting at their local coffee shop in order to chat, joke, and discuss the world’s problems.
Amused by their own banter, the elderly pranksters decided to open a booth at the farmer’s market in Salt Lake City, Utah so they could share their wisdom with the world.
The gang then set up a table with a sign reading “Old Coots Giving Advice: It’s probably bad advice, but it’s free.”
To their surprise, a line of people quickly formed in front of their table, eager for advice and conversation.
The Old Coots have now been setting up shop at the farmer’s market every summer Saturday for the last several years—and it seems that they won’t be running out of advice any time soon.
(WATCH the news coverage below or our international viewers can check out the footage on the CBS website) – Photo by CBS News
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Quote of the Day: “Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others.” – Marianne Williamson
Photo: by solarisgirl, CC license on Flickr
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I have been wanting to do a video about my book for MONTHS, and finally sat myself down in front of a camera this week. One of the reasons I procrastinated is because I never liked much how I look on camera. (I know, so much vanity, right?)
But, I was spurred to action by the need to talk about our Summer Book Sale, which offers 20% savings now for a limited time, if you’re shipping to the USA.
You can save $2.00 compared to Amazon prices—plus get FREE shipping! Claim your Summer Savings here: GNN.to/book
I really hate to exclude people outside the US, but GNN can only ship domestically. HOWEVER, I promise to run an Amazon sale all my friends outside the US later this year. Amazon sells our book, ‘…And Now, The Good News: 20 Years of Inspiring News Stories’ in Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany, Spain, and Italy—and all the links are HERE.
Love to all, Geri
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This story was submitted as a nomination to the Reader’s Digest “Top 50 Nicest Places in America” contest: a crowd-sourced effort to uncover nooks where people are still kind and respectful in an era of cultural and political divides. Be sure and vote for which story you think should be nominated as the top Nicest Place by visiting the Reader’s Digest website.
Photo by Tom Tait
It isn’t every city where someone can be elected mayor by running on the slogan “Make Kindness Contagious”—but that is exactly how this California town made a reputation for itself as “The City of Kindness”.
After Edward Jaievsky’s daughter passed away in a car accident, he was later surprised to discover that she made a series of drawings and writings about her wish for a world filled with kindness.
At a loss as to what to do amid this tragedy, he decided to honor her memory by hanging up signs reading “Make Kindness Contagious” all over Anaheim.
That tiny act, sparked by the wishes of an innocent girl, ended up having an enormous impact on the town.
Tom Tait, a former city councilman who nominated Anaheim as one of the Nicest Places in America, tells Reader’s Digest that he saw the signs and wanted to figure out where they came from. He eventually tracked down Jaievsky and learned about his daughter’s wish.
Jaievsky’s story then inspired Tait to run for mayor with “Make Kindness Contagious” as his campaign slogan.
It might sound overly simple, but Tait hoped that if the city adopted “kindness” as one of its essential pillars, life in Anaheim would get better for everyone.
And here’s the crazy thing: it worked.
Tait served as mayor from 2010 to 2018, and nearly ten years later, the “City of Kindness” has become famous for its ethos of smiles and caring—so famous that the Dalai Lama chose to spend his 80th birthday in the town.
Just one of the city’s reoccurring examples of kindness is how all Anaheim schools now host a Serve-a-Thon every Martin Luther King Day. Instead of taking the school holiday off, teachers, administrators, and hundreds of students come together in order to do compassionate activities such as planting trees and singing songs at a senior citizens center.
“It’s really fun,” says fifth-grader Kenley Herrera, who participated in a neighborhood cleanup. “It’s just the thought of making people happier.”
She and her friends made posters with uplifting messages like “May You Have Love in Your Heart” to carry as they picked up trash for nearly two miles, all the way from her elementary school to Anaheim High.
“Kindness has just become integrated into who we are,” says Ephrain Paniagua, principal of Lincoln Elementary.
Reprinted with permission from Reader’s Digest. To learn more about GNN’s part in searching for the Top 10 Nicest Places, click here.
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Researchers have discovered an interesting new method for exhausted students to relax and relieve themselves of stress-related headaches.
Teenagers report higher levels of stress than adults, and cite school as the highest contributing factor, according to the American Psychological Association‘s annual report. A summary from 2013 concluded that while stress among Americans was not new, “what’s troubling is the stress outlook for teens in the United States.”
In response, some schools have recently turned to mindfulness-based programs as a way to alleviate stress among their students. These programs could benefit from more research into what activities students find most useful.
In a pilot study led by the University of Washington, researchers explored art-based mindfulness activities that schools could use to reduce headaches, a common side effect of stress in adolescent girls.
After three weeks of twice-weekly mindfulness and art therapy sessions, the girls reported experiencing significantly fewer headaches. At the beginning of the study, the girls reported 7.38 headaches, on average, within the previous two-week period. At the end of the study, that number had dropped to 4.63 — almost a 40% decrease. This drop remained even seven weeks after the study had ended. The researchers published their findings in the journal Art Therapy.
“This study highlights one of my main research missions: We should be making interventions in cooperation with teenagers if we want these strategies to work,” said corresponding author Elin Björling, a senior research scientist in the UW’s human centered design and engineering department.
“There’s something powerful about saying ‘I’m inviting you to start thinking about how you could get better. Come have a conversation with me about how we could do this.’ I think that’s why we saw such a strong response even in this tiny study.”
The team recruited eight girls between the ages of 14 to 17 from a high school in Seattle. All of the participants reported experiencing three or more headaches not related to an injury within a two-week period, and five of the eight mentioned tension or stress as the main reason for headaches.
During the program, the students met twice a week for a 50-minute session with the research team. Each session began with an activity in which students would map where they were feeling stressed on a drawing of a body. Then the teens would participate in mindfulness and art activities before closing the session with another body map.
The researchers asked the students to mark where they feel stress and tension on a drawing of a body before (left, A) and after (right, B) participating in mindfulness and art therapy activities. (Photo by the University of Washington)
“After the study, we looked at all the before and after body maps side by side. It was so clear that something significant was going on,” Björling said. “In the beginning everything was in pieces, and in the end everything was flowing through the whole body.”
The teens tried different mindfulness techniques in each session so they could find which ones worked the best for them.
What teens liked: square breathing, a technique that encourages people to take slow breaths by concentrating and counting.
“I thought: ‘No teen ever wants to do counted breathing, and they’re never going to do it,’” Björling said. “But a few of them said ‘That’s my favorite. I do it all the time now.’”
What teens didn’t like: mindful eating, a technique that asks people to focus on what and how they’re eating.
“They hated it,” Björling said. “This was a technique straight out of a lot of mindfulness programs for teens, but it didn’t connect with them. It just annoyed them. It goes to show I need them to be experts in their own lives.”
The researchers also asked the students to participate in different mindful art activities. During each session, the students tried a new art medium — they particularly liked using oil pastels — and different types of art therapy projects, including one where they worked together to create mandalas before and after a meditation exercise.
During one of the sessions, the researchers asked the students to work together to create mandalas before (left, A and C) and after (right, B and D) participating in a meditation activity. (Photo by the University of Washington)
While the teens experienced fewer headaches after the study ended, their overall stress levels didn’t change much—but the students reported feeling better in the moment, saying that they felt like they could handle whatever happened for the rest of the day.
The team was surprised to see any differences, given the small size of the group.
“It’s not just about this study,” Björling said. “This problem of teen mental health and headaches is so big that I’m worried about what happens if we don’t take it on. Some teens will want nothing to do with art mindfulness. So we need to come at this in lots of different ways. We’re going to need an army of people and a cornucopia of options.”
A 13-year-old boy from East China was found guilty of hijacking two seaplanes for a joyride last week—but instead of being punished for his little heist, he may have paved his way towards a career as a pilot.
The teenager reportedly learned how to start the planes after he biked to the Taihu Lake hanger in the Zhejiang province last weekend and watched the pilots doing maintenance repairs on the planes.
He then biked back to the airport in the dead of night and dragged one of the seaplanes onto the tarmac so he could take it for a drive. After he accidentally ran the plane into a guardrail, he hopped into a second aircraft for a few laps around the tarmac before he abandoned his new hot rod and escaped on his bike.
Once police officials consulted the hanger’s security footage and identified the boy, they negotiated the price of a small fine from his family in order to fix the damaged seaplane.
Hanger employees say that it would have been impossible for the youngster to take the plane into the air without the proper training, but they were still impressed with the boy’s skill.
He also told the news outlet that he and the other hanger employees are now trying to take the boy under their wing so they can give him flying lessons and help him become a certified pilot.
(WATCH the video below) – Photo by Asiawire
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