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Videos of Fans Being Awesome Flood Social Media as High Stakes European Championship Matches Draw Crowds

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Munich Police, retrieved from X.
credit – Munich Police, retrieved from X.

In the U.S. where soccer takes a backseat to other sports, most stories about football fans in Europe make it across the Atlantic because of their hooliganism.

What’s missed are the heartwarming, sometimes tear-jerking, scenes of European culture and neighborliness playing out during their international country-vs-country tournament, the European Championships.

With a week’s worth of matches already concluded, GNN has created a round-up of videos and stories of fans having fun, obeying the law, and being sweethearts—from Scotland down to Slovenia.

Hosted in Germany this year, the police have already made dozens of arrests for disorderly conduct—but they’ve often swirled at the center of a good-natured party. Check out this officer enjoying a spot of traditional dance with the Albanian fans.

German police dancing with Albanian fans
byu/Minute-Cash8119 insoccer

 

The police also have been the first ones to salute fans for creating “a special atmosphere” like in Munich, where nearly 200,000 of Scotland’s supporters descended on the city in advance of the tournament’s opening match—Germany vs Scotland.

A Scottish newspaper, The National, spoke with one German fan who said they tried to create “a very relaxed and happy atmosphere” in Munich. Another said the Scottish fans were “people of honor”.

More on Scotland later… Also from the British Isles, English fans decided to boogie with an old woman they met on the streets in advance of England’s first game against Slovakia. And, can she boogie!

England fans having a dance with a German lady this afternoon.
byu/Callum0598 insoccer

 

Elderly folks would become a theme of fan interactions this year—like these Austrian fans who were conducted by a German senior from her balcony.

 

Austrians were captured on video straining national relations with the French, ahead of their opening game against France, taunting their opposition by snapping baguettes in front of them while jeering. And, quickly hugging afterward.

Austrian fans snapping baguettes in front of French fans
byu/Callum0598 insoccer

 

Displaying their disrespect for Italian cooking with equal cheek, Albanians decided to taunt the Italian fans in a similar way—by demonstrating exactly how they cook spaghetti.

From funny to emotional, the Washington Post shared a video from a fan zone in Berlin that captured the beautiful sunset singing of Spanish, Croatian, and German fans standing shoulder to shoulder.

Spanish, Croatian and German fans singing together outside of the Olympiastadion in Berlin
byu/el_rompe_toyotas_19 insoccer

 

Featured at the European Championships for the first time in the nation’s history, Georgia lost their opening match 3-1 against Turkey. But when the Georgians tied it up when down 1-0 in the first half, one journalist couldn’t hold back the tears.

Now, back to Scotland: The world’s oldest formalized international team arrived in stunning fashion, with visiting fans saying the Berlin Airport might as well have been Glasgow.

Whatever atmosphere they created ahead of their match against Germany, it paled in comparison to their Scottish invasion of Cologne where they took on the Swiss. They descended in a giant parade of the ‘Tartan Army’ led by dozens of bagpipes, walking shoulder to shoulder with the police towards the cathedral and stadium (where the nations played to a draw, 1-1).

 

The fun and the kindness have been ongoing—from one young local who decided to empty his fridge of beers and drop them to thirsty Scots from his balcony, to an old man with a walker kept dry when Scottish umbrellas came to the rescue.

Scotland fans sheltering this old man from the rain as he walks through the street.
byu/Callum0598 insoccer

 

SHARE This Fantastic Collection Of Football Fandom With Your Friends…

“Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.” – Stewart Udall (Happy Solstice!)

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.” – Stewart Udall (Happy Solstice!)

Photo by: Karl Fredrickson

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Robot Mimics Human Sense of Touch to Better Sort Through Litter

By
Andy Corbley
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Tsinghua University in Beijing (via SWNS, cropped and rearranged)
Tsinghua University in Beijing (via SWNS, cropped and rearranged)

A robotic sorting system that mimics the human sense of touch to sort through litter achieved a 98.85% accuracy rate in recognizing various domestic waste items.

The inventors believe this state-of-the-art automaton could eventually lead to better treatments for people with hand disabilities aside from better outcomes at recycling facilities.

Sorting robots are already present at over 40 of the United States’ 600 recycling centers. Many of these sorting systems are twice as fast, and even more accurate than humans.

Recently, a research team at Tsinghua University in Beijing explained that tactile sensing and logical reasoning can aid a robot’s ability to recognize and classify objects, even when equipped with sophisticated visual sensing.

They say today’s intelligent robots can accurately recognize many objects through vision and touch, but tactile information, obtained through sensors, along with machine learning algorithms, also enables them to identify objects previously handled.

But when presented with objects similar in size and shape, or objects unknown to the robot, the sensing is often confused.

The team at Tsinghua worked to break through the difficulties of robotic recognition of several common, yet complex, items through the endowment of “thermal feeling.”

“Humans possess many different types of touch sensing, one of which is thermal feeling,” said study author Professor Rong Zhu.

“This allows us to sense the wind blowing, perceive hot and cold, and discriminate between matter types, such as wood and metal, because of the different cooling sensations produced.”

Zhu and his team aimed to mimic that ability by designing a robotic tactile sensing method that incorporated thermal sensations for more robust and accurate object detection.

“We propose utilizing spatiotemporal tactile sensing during hand grasping to extend the robotic function and ability to simultaneously perceive multi-attributes of the grasped object, including thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, surface roughness, contact pressure, and temperature.”

MORE ROBOTIC ADVANCEMENTS: Sharp-Shooting Farm Robot Can Treat 500,000 Plants Per Hour With 95% Decrease in Chemical Sprays

The team created a layered sensor with material detection at the surface and pressure sensitivity at the bottom, with a porous middle layer sensitive to thermal changes.

They paired the sensor with an efficient cascade classification algorithm that rules out object types in order from easy to hard, starting with simple categories—such as empty paper cartons—before moving on to orange peel or scraps of cloth.

When installed in an intelligent robot tactile system the arm picked up a range of common trash items, including empty cartons, scraps of bread, plastic bags, plastic bottles, sponges, napkins, orange peels, and out-of-date drugs.

MORE RECYCLING ROBOTS: Robot Named Sorty McSortface Uses Mechanical Claws and AI to Sort Tons of Recyclables in Minutes

It sorted the litter into separate containers for recyclables, food scraps, hazardous waste, and other waste.

Their system achieved a classification accuracy of 98.85% in recognizing various waste items not encountered previously, according to the findings published in the journal Applied Physics Reviews.

“By combining this sensor with brain-computer interface technology, tactile information collected by the sensor could be converted into neural signals acceptable to the human brain, re-empowering tactile perception capabilities for people with hand disabilities,” Professor Zhu added, expounding on where he thought future research would go.

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Archaeologists Uncover 900 Ming Dynasty Artifacts From Shipwrecks in South China Sea

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - National Cultural Heritage Administration
credit – National Cultural Heritage Administration

More than 900 artifacts have been retrieved from two ancient shipwrecks discovered in the South China Sea, the National Cultural Heritage Administration of China (NCHA) said Thursday.

Consisting of piles and piles of porcelain, along with other pottery works, copper pieces, ebony lumber, and animal parts, the wrecks are a testament to the vast maritime trading network overseen by the Ming Dynasty.

The excavation, conducted from 2023 to 2024, was a joint effort by a pair of research institutes and a local museum on Hainan Island, and involved sending manned and unmanned submersibles down to collect the relics and document the wrecks.

The archaeologists believe that the shipwrecks both date to different periods of the Ming Dynasty, (1,368-1,644) either side of the year 1,500 CE.

In the long history of China, the most important dynasties were always interrupted by intervening periods of foreign conquest and strife. The Ming Dynasty was born out of fire and rebellion, and when it centralized control it took Chinese civilization to many of the heights it’s most known for.

credit – National Cultural Heritage Administration
credit – CCTV handout

A new era of monumental architecture was rung in with Beijing’s Forbidden City, while the iconic, blue and white Ming Dynasty porcelain was coveted all over the world, as these shipwrecks bear witness.

Made by using particular forms of clay like kaolinite, alabaster, or feldspar, porcelain is painted with mineral pigments, glazed, and baked in kilns at over 2,000°F. It is one of three forms of pottery and is the most difficult and highly valued for its translucence, strength, and the skill level required to make it.

MORE UNDERWATER TREASURES: 76,000 Gold and Silver Artifacts Recovered from Chinese River Charts Infamous 17th Century Warlord’s Conquests

10,000 items in total were documented, one-tenth of which were pulled to the surface. The excavators also scanned the wrecks with 3D laser scanners to allow for more study on land.

MEANWHILE ON LAND: Stunning Tomb With Skylights in a Carved Chamber Uncovered From the Jin Dynasty – LOOK

The two ships lie 12 miles apart, around 90 miles off the coast of Hainan. The cargo was probably loaded in Jingdezhen and intended for export. By the 14th century, Jingdezhen had become the largest center of production of Chinese porcelain.

The NCHA said the excavation was a landmark effort by the nation’s maritime archaeology programs.

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Austrian Heiress Appoints Fifty Citizens to Give Away Her €25 Million Fortune

By
Andy Corbley
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Marlene Engelhorn – by Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0 license
Marlene Engelhorn – by Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0 license

Move over McKenzie Scott, there’s a new philanthropic heiress in town.

This is Marlene Engelhorn, a Millennial member of one of the richest families in Austria, and the proud owner of several receipts demonstrating how she gave away her inheritance.

The heiress, whose forebearers founded the BSAF pharmaceutical company, and who would come to acquire Boehringer Mannheim, allowed 50 members of the Austrian public to determine how her money would be divided and donated—to various charitable and non-profit organizations.

Her €25 million share of the family’s $4.2 billion fortune was portioned out to 77 such groups by 50 randomly chosen citizens of Salzburg, who formed a working group that met over the course of 6 weeks to make the determination.

Designated the Good Council for Redistribution, the members, selected at random from a pool of 10,000 people, were offered “a series of lectures including from philosophers and economics professors to inspire their choices,” Euro News reports.

Once the committee was formed, Englehorn withdrew entirely from the process.

MORE PHILANTHROPIC GIVING: Patagonia Gives Away Its Entire $3 Billion Worth To Fight Climate Change

Among the recipients, the two largest were the Austrian Nature Conservation Association and Nuenerhaus, (a homeless assistance org) which were each awarded more than $1.5 million

Two political think tanks, the Momentum Institute and Attac Austria, were also awarded €1 million.

MORE NEWS LIKE THIS: Instead of Taking Millions for Their Land, Texas Family Makes a Park Instead

€300,000 was donated to the Autonomous Austrian Women’s Shelters, and €100,400 went to the nature restoration charity the Común Foundation, for further examples.

Austria is one of the only countries in Europe that doesn’t have an inheritance tax law on the books, so Englehorn is a passionate advocate for the ultra-wealthy of the country to give away as much as they can.

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Students Invent Leaf Blower Silencer Attachment–Corporation Expects to Be Selling Them Soon

By
Andy Corbley
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Michael Chacon, Madison Morrison, Andrew Palacio, and Leen Alfaoury - credit WILL KIRK JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Michael Chacon, Madison Morrison, Andrew Palacio, and Leen Alfaoury – credit WILL KIRK JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Engineering students at Johns Hopkins have created a silencer module for the campus leaf blowers, reducing the overall noise pollution of the devices by 37%, while they succeeded in almost completely removing the high-pitched whining that annoyed them the most.

The design is patent-pending and Stanley Black & Decker, who sponsored the students, expects to be selling them in two years.

It’s not uncommon for leaf blowers to be banned by homeowners associations or following apartment tenant protests—their endless, up-and-down caterwauling of various frequencies is the delight of no one, and worse, landscapers often use them in the early morning to avoid the heat of the day.

“The sound that comes out of this leaf blower is very complicated and it contains a lot of different frequencies,” said team member Andrew Palacio. “A lot of different notes on a piano would be a good analogy.”

At the moment, the Johns Hopkins campus uses battery-powered leaf blowers which are already quieter than gasoline-powered ones. Since last September, Palacio and his team members Michael Chacon, Leen Alfaoury, and Madison Morrison have been examining the devices in depth—how many sounds are there, and what is causing them.

Overall they workshopped more than 40 versions of a leaf blower silencer. Many of them worked but diminished the power of the air coming out. They eventually came up with an easy-to-secure suppressor that functions much like the ones fitted to firearms.

MARKET-READY INVENTIONS: Alaskan Inventor is 3D Printing Tidal Power Generators for Houseboats: Just Drop Anchor and Power On

“Our product takes in a full blow of air and separates it,” Alfaoury told Johns Hopkins. “Some of that air comes out as it is, and part of it comes out shifted. The combination of these two sections of the air makes the blower less noisy.”

“It ultimately dampens the sound as it leaves, but it keeps all that force, which is the beauty of it,” adds Chacon.

MORE GREAT INVENTIONS: Indian Engineers Tackle Water Shortages with Star Wars Tech in Kerala

It’s one thing to come up trumps in a class project, but this invention isn’t designed to win them any science fairs, but rather for going on the shelves of Home Depot or Lowe’s.

“It’s not just some cool theoretical thing that will sit on a shelf and never be heard from again—this is ready to be mass manufactured,” said Nate Greene, senior product manager at Stanley Black & Decker, who graduated from Johns Hopkins in 2017 with an engineering degree. “This is a really rare and dramatic level of success.”

WATCH the story below from JH University Press…

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“If you don’t love me, it does not matter… I can love for both of us.” – Stendhal

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “If you don’t love me, it does not matter… I can love for both of us.” – Stendhal

Photo by: Paola Chaaya

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Lung Cancer Drug Elicits Unprecedented Results in New Trial

By
Andy Corbley
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File photo by James Heilman, MD, CC license
File photo by James Heilman, MD, CC license

With lung cancer being the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, news of the unprecedented success of a new drug is sure to be celebrated.

The five-year results of a phase III trial present the longest progression-free survival data ever reported when treating non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with a single targeted intervention.

Called lorlatinib, the drug is from a class of pioneering medications known as anaplastic lymphoma kinase inhibitors or ALK-inhibitors. ALK is a protein that can be utilized by tumor cells to help lung cancers, including NSCLC to spread, and is present in about 3 to 5% of cases—typically in young people with little or no smoking history. ALK-positive NSCLC is also more aggressive.

Lorlatinib is a third-generation ALK-inhibitor that was recently tested in a trial at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne, Australia, of 296 patients with previously untreated, advanced ALK-positive NSCLC.

New Atlas called the findings remarkable, while the study lead author Ben Solomon told the Guardian they were unprecedented.

Five years after treatment, 60% of patients given lorlatinib were still alive without signs of disease progression, compared to 8% of patients in the control group who were given crizotinib, a first-generation ALK-inhibitor.

“This updated analysis shows that lorlatinib helped patients live longer without disease progression, with the majority of patients experiencing sustained benefit for over five years, including nearly all patients having protection from progression of disease in the brain,” Solomon told the press at the Peter Mac Center.

MORE SUPER CANCER NEWS: Glowing Dye Clings to Cancer Cells Giving Doctors ‘Second Pair of Eyes’

“These improvements in outcomes for patients with ALK-positive NSCLC represent a remarkable advancement in lung cancer.”

The most recent paper extends the follow-up window to 5 years, and consistent with the findings of the 2-year follow-up, lorlatinib is associated with a higher rate of non-cancer adverse health events than crizotinib, which is hypothesized to be a result of the drug increasing triglycerides and cholesterol.

STORIES OF SIMILAR IMPORTANCE: CAR-T Cell Therapy Achieves Near-Complete Tumor Regression in Brain Cancer After Five Days

However, adverse cardiovascular events are the same between the two, and it was found that the increase seen in lorlatinib could be eliminated by reducing the dose—all without reducing the effect it had on the NSCLC.

SHARE These Unprecedented Results In Fighting Off Non-Smoking Lung Cancer With Your Friends… 

College Lab Makes 3D Printed Arms to Help 12-Year-old Amputee Reach Her Drumming Goals

By
Andy Corbley
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Tennessee Tech students create prosthetics for 12-year-old drummer Aubrey Sauvie
Tennessee Tech students create prosthetics for 12-year-old drummer Aubrey Sauvie

12-year-old Aubrey Sauvie never let her lack of hands interfere with the pursuit of her interests, whether that was Tae Kwon Do, art, or doing her own makeup.

Born a triple congenital amputee and missing both arms from below the elbows and several toes on one of her feet, it was from a very early age that she demonstrated to her family that there’d be very little necessity to accommodate her.

“It’s just one part of me,” Aubrey Sauvie told WKRN. “It doesn’t make me, me. It definitely was a challenge to learn, but as time went on, it became easier and easier until it wasn’t difficult at all.”

Indeed the family photo album is packed with pictures of her in dance competitions, breaking boards with a flying side-kick, or lined up in front of her snare drum with her school band, the drumsticks stuck in the creases of her elbows.

But that’s where even her dexterity and determination couldn’t succeed in producing the results she wanted—the sound of the snare just wasn’t right.

Aubrey’s middle school band teacher recommended her as a candidate for the Tennessee Tech University program, Engineering for Kids, where 10 students decided to make it a class project to create a pair of custom prosthetics so the firebrand could play the drums.

3D-PRINTING STORIES: This Cheap, Amphibious, 3D-Printed Prosthetic Means That Amputees Can Now Enjoy the Water Without Stress

“So she plays the drums; does she also play the mallets?” Tennessee Tech mechanical engineering student Zakary Henson told the ABC affiliate as he recalled his thought process. “Does she play a xylophone? Something like that. So like is it going to have to have different handles? How is it going to be secured to the hand? All of these are questions we are thinking through.”

The solution as they saw it was a 3D-printed pair of durable yet flexible customized prosthetics with interchangeable grips, something which Tennessee Tech Professor of Mechanical Engineering Stephen Canfield said was a one in a million shot.

MORE INSPIRING AMPUTEES: Amputee Who Can Only Walk for 20 Minutes at a Time Climbs England’s Three Highest Peaks

The students proceeded to work the entire semester taking measurements and testing prototypes before their one in a million shot turned out to be a home run—startling them as much as it delighted Aubrey.

Now the young drummer gets to hear the nice hard snap of a proper snare hit, which now has her envisioning a full drum kit.

WATCH the story below from WKRN News 2…

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Coldplay’s New Album Is Made of Plastic Collected from Rivers by The Ocean Cleanup

By
Andy Corbley
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Boyan Slat with Coldplay album made of river plastic - THE OCEAN CLEANUP
Boyan Slat with Coldplay album made of river plastic – THE OCEAN CLEANUP

Coldplay has a new album announced: Moon Music, and in keeping with both the rise in conscious consumerism and the vinyl revival, there’s a limited edition record made using plastic removed from Rio Las Vacas in Guatemala.

The eco-conscious band has collaborated with Dutch non-profit The Ocean Cleanup, who have a mission to rid oceans and waterways of plastic. Much of their most publicized work takes place around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean.

However the organization is also deeply active in the world’s river systems, deploying floating barricades and special boats to trap and collect dumped plastics and prevent them from entering oceans in the first place.

Their Interceptor 006 floating barricade system was deployed in the Rio Las Vacas in 2023 to stop plastic emissions into the Gulf of Honduras.

“Interceptor 006 made significant impact and captured large quantities of plastic—which has now been sorted, blended, tested, and used to manufacture Coldplay’s limited edition physical release,” stated The Ocean Cleanup.

The final product, dubbed the Notebook Edition LP, consists of 70% river plastic intercepted by The Ocean Cleanup and 30% recycled waste plastic bottles from other sources.

The Interceptor 006 floating boom barricade system operating near the Gulf of Honduras – SWNS
The Ocean Cleanup’s River-going Interceptor – SWNS

Coldplay provides financial support for the non-profit’s cleaning operations, sponsors Interceptor 005 in the Klang River, Malaysia, and shared The Ocean Cleanup’s mission with millions of their fans during their record-breaking Music of the Spheres tour.

“Coldplay is an incredible partner for us and I’m thrilled that our plastic catch has helped bring Moon Music to life,” said Boyan Slat, Founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup.

MORE GREAT CLEAN-UPS: Nonprofit Diverts an Ocean Plastic Tide, Removing 2 Million Pounds of Trash From Waterways

“Ensuring the plastic we catch never re-enters the marine environment is essential to our mission, and I’m excited to see how we’ll continue innovating with Coldplay and our other partners to rid the oceans of plastic—together.”

Coldplay’s Moon Music album is set for release on October 4th.

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In Just First Year of State’s Ban on Plastic Bags, 1.5 Billion Fewer Have Been Used

By
Andy Corbley
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Plastic Bags-CC velkr0
credit – CC 0.0 velkr0

At the beginning of 2023, Colorado began enforcing a 10-penny charge on all single-use plastic and paper bags at major retailers in the hope it would encourage the use of reusable ones. This hope sprung into a massive success.

A report from 9News claims that Colorado used 1.5 billion fewer plastic or paper shopping bags since the implementation of the Plastic Pollution Reduction Act of 2021 that entered into force at the beginning of last year.

The 10-cent charge amounted to $5 million in revenue for the state, which was spent on a variety of programs including the free distribution of durable reusable shopping bags and educational resources for community groups.

Only stores with three or more locations were required to charge the bag fee.

“It took many years to get it passed, but we have become now a leader in the nation,” said Randy Moorman director of policy and community campaigns at Eco-Cycle, the non-profit advocacy group that came up with the 1.5 billion figure.

“…We’ve seen dramatic change in how we as customers go into our stores and use products like this. It’s become a pretty easy and regular change that we have accepted.”

Eco-Cycle finds that the usespan of your average plastic grocery store bag is about 12 minutes, while the petroleum-based plastic material takes hundreds of years to biodegrade, all while releasing harmful chemicals into whichever environment it is left in.

OTHER COLORADO NEWS: Group Wants Colorado Kids to Save the Bees This Summer–Giving Out 100,000 Free Packets of Wildflower Seeds

Even whilst celebrating the success of last year, Moorman and Eco-Cycle hope to see similar results with another part of the Plastic Pollution Reduction Act that went into effect this year—a ban on polystyrene (Styrofoam) products used as containers for ready-to-eat food and drinks will be banned.

GNN reported that such a ban was also implemented this year in Washington, where polystyrene is a hazard to the state’s rich coastal wildlife.

MORE ENVIRONMENTAL REGS COMING GOOD: White House Issues Unprecedented Pardons After FDA Finds Cannabis to Be More Like Tylenol Than Heroin

“I think it’s just phenomenal that we have been able in a relatively short amount of time make some dramatic changes that are not only going to have an impact on the day-to-day in our environment and health but on future generations, so that’s really exciting,” Moorman said.

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“Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.” – Robert Green Ingersoll

By
Good News Network
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Art Rachen

Quote of the Day: “Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.” – Robert Green Ingersoll

Photo by: Art Rachen

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Art Rachen

 

Strangers Crowdfund $54,000 for 22-Year-old Mom with Terminal Cancer Who Needs More Time with Baby

By
Andy Corbley
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Rachel Burns, 22, and her daughter Kaeyla, 1 - retrieved from GoFundMe
Rachel Burns, 22, and her daughter Raeya, 1 – retrieved from GoFundMe

A Northern Irishwoman was able to watch her beautiful healthy girl celebrate her first birthday just before receiving expected news: she had just 4 months, give or take, left on this Earth.

After experiencing persistent dizziness and eye irritation, Rachel Burns was told she had an advanced-stage brain tumor with a rare and aggressive mutation, and probably not more than 4 months to live.

Just 22 years old, one can scarcely imagine what the young mother must have been feeling, being that her daughter, Raeya, had just turned 1, she busied herself writing birthday cards for all the birthdays she presumed she would be missing.

“I left that appointment with no real hope and I didn’t know how to tell my mum and the rest of the family, I didn’t want them to get upset. It felt like everything had just been taken away from me at that point,” Burns told Belfast Live.

But if a slim hope of dodging death remains, it’s because Burns and her partner acted fast—setting up a GoFundMe to pay for a trip to Germany for an experimental treatment called ONC201.

Discovered in the last decade when scientists screened for compounds that would induce expression of the gene encoding tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) in tumors and thus cause an autocrine or paracrine-induced death in tumor cells, ONC201 may give Burns years more to live.

The results were immediate and dramatic—in just 24 hours the fundraiser had accumulated £30,000, and six days on donations have continued to arrive.

As it stands, the couple have raised £48,000 of their £60,000 goal.

MORE STORIES OF STRENGTH: A Mom’s Love Helps Woman Wake From Coma After Five Years

“I spoke with the doctor yesterday and now we are able to start making plans to go over,” said Burns.

“Belfast is such a small place but you never think that people from all over would show as much kindness as they have done for me and my family. It is a scary time to be going through all of this but this has given me more hope that I can spend some more time with my family.”

MORE STORIES OF HOPE: Experimental Cancer Treatment Gives New Jersey Mom a Chance for A Second Baby: ‘I decided to go for it’

“I just want to say thank you to every single person who has donated so far, you don’t know the difference it has made to me and my family.”

Readers can donate to the family in this desperate hour on their GoFundMe page here.

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Black Birder Wrongfully Accused in Central Park Used his Fame to Make Bird Watching Show-Now it Wins Emmy

By
Andy Corbley
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A devoted birdwatcher who landed a show on National Geographic after making headlines during a racial profiling incident has turned his fame into an Emmy Award after overcoming adversity.

It’s a beautiful culmination of four years of creative work spawned in the wake of the “Central Park Karen” incident, that has seen Mr. Christian Cooper produce a book, television show, and graphic novel series.

To readers for whom the 24-hour news cycle has swept this story under the rug, in 2020 Christian Cooper was in a wooded area of NYC’s Central Park called The Ramble, enjoying his lifelong passion for birdwatching when a woman threatened to call 911 on him after he asked her to put her dog back on its leash, as per the park rules.

Becoming irate, the woman called the police and said there was an African-American man threatening her life, all while the Harvard-educated Cooper recorded the dreadful stunt on his smartphone.

By posting it on social media, it became national news, and Cooper was asked to host a birding show on Nat Geo, while the woman was fired from her job as an investment manager.

STORIES OF JUST REWARDS: Man Ignores Naysayers to Revive Tiny Sparrow with CPR – Watch the Moment his Patience is Rewarded

On June 8th, he became a Daytime Emmy Award winner in the Outstanding Daytime Personality category for his show, Extraordinary Birder, which took viewers all over the Western Hemisphere exploring the nature and character of birds and Cooper’s lifelong hobby.

STORIES OF JUST REWARDS: Boy Offered a Dollar to Man He Thought Was Homeless, Gets Richly Rewarded for His Kindness

With birding rapidly advancing on his old career as a writer, for which he contributed to the Marvel universe, he combined the two in order to produce the critically acclaimed Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World, published by Penguin-Random House.

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It’s Twins! Astronomers Discover Parallel Disks and Jets Erupting from a Pair of Young Stars

By
Andy Corbley
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An artist's impression of star system WL20 - credit, U.S. NSF/ NSF NRAO/B. Saxton.; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
An artist’s impression of star system WL20 – credit, U.S. NSF/ NSF NRAO/B. Saxton.; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA

Astronomers were thrilled when they received the news that they were expecting twins—stars that is, after their telescopes recorded dramatic jets erupting from a faraway star system.

To preface the thrilling discovery, most of the Universe is invisible to the human eye because the building blocks of stars are only revealed in wavelengths outside of the visible spectrum of light our eyes can perceive.

Astronomers recently used two very different, and very powerful telescopes to discover two separate disks pierced by jets erupting from two separate young stars in a binary star system. This discovery was unexpected, and unprecedented, given the age, size, and chemical makeup of the stars, disks, and jets. Their location in a known, well-studied part of the Universe adds to the thrill.

Observations from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) were combined for this research.

ALMA and JWST’s MIRI observe very different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Using them together allowed astronomers to discover these twins, hidden in radio and infrared wavelengths in star system WL20, located in the nearby rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud complex, over 400 light years away from the Earth.

“What we discovered was absolutely wild,” shares astronomer Mary Barsony. “We’ve known about star system WL20 for a long time. But what caught our attention is that one of the stars in the system appeared much younger than the rest. Using MIRI and ALMA together, we actually saw that this one star was two stars right next to each other.”

“Each of these stars was surrounded by a disk, and each disc was emitting jets parallel to the other,” she adds.

MORE STAR FORMING REGIONS: New James Webb Image Shows ‘Crowded, Tumultuous’ Heart of Our Galaxy in Never-Before-Seen Detail

ALMA spotted the discs, while MIRI found the jets. Co-author Valentin J.M. Le Gouellec of NASA retrieved and reduced ALMA archival data to reveal the discs’ composition, while Lukasz Tychoniec of Leiden Observatory provided high-resolution images, revealing the discs’ massive size, approximately 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

“So if it weren’t for MIRI, we wouldn’t even know that these jets existed, which is amazing,” Barsony adds.

Another remarkable thing about this discovery is that it may never have had the opportunity to happen. JPL scientist Michael Ressler explains that when he had command of the JWST for a brief moment, he decided to reconnect with an old flame.

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“A lot of the research about binary protostars focuses on a few nearby star-forming regions. I had been awarded some observing time of my own with JWST, and I chose to split it into a few small projects,” Ressler said.

“For one project, I decided to study binaries in the Perseus star-forming region. However, I had been studying WL20, which is in the rho Ophiuchus region in nearly the opposite part of the sky, for nearly 30 years, and I thought, ‘why not sneak it in? I’m never going to get another chance, even if it doesn’t quite fit with the others.’ We had a very fortunate accident with what we found, and the results are stunning.”

By combining multi-wavelength data from ALMA and JWST, these new findings shed light on the complex processes involved in the formation of multiple star systems.

Lost Donkey Seen Living With Elk Herd 5 Years Later: ‘Living His Best Life’

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Max Fennell, retrieved from Instagram
credit – Max Fennell, retrieved from Instagram

A hunter in Northern California stumbled upon a queer sight while out in the Cache Creek Wilderness—a donkey that had seemingly been adopted by a herd of elk.

The video he posted on his Instagram channel marks the first update on the status of Diesel, a local donkey separated from its owners back in 2019.

When out hiking with Dave Drewry, a local of Clear Lake, something spooked Diesel sending him running off into the woods. Drewry and his wife Terrie looked all over the nearby territory on foot, in their car, and even with drones, but could not locate their beloved donkey.

Over the years, the family was always saddened at the mention of their lost family member, believing that he didn’t have the minerals to survive in the wild.

Now five years later, triathlon and hunter Max Fennell posted a video on Instagram of a healthy adult donkey right in the middle of a herd of cow elk.

“I bumped into a herd of elk that have adopted a donkey. I can’t get over seeing it and I’m amazed that the donkey looks happy and healthy!” he wrote alongside the video.

The discovery made its way through the airwaves to Terrie and Dave, who said it was “amazing” to see him.

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“He’s living his best life,” Mrs. Drewry told CBS News Sacramento. “He’s happy. He’s healthy, and it was just a relief.”

Despite her and her husband’s nerves about his chances, Diesel was originally a feral donkey adopted by the Drewrys through a program run by the Bureau of Land Management that allows the public to take custody of wild horses, donkeys, and mules they find on America’s landscapes.

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The Drewrys have since adopted new donkeys, and they said there is no intention on their part to try and capture Diesel. By Terrie’s reckoning, Diesel would be 8 years old, with about three-quarters of his life ahead of him if he could stay abreast of the wolf’s jaws and winter’s cold.

“To catch him would be next to impossible,” Terrie said. “He is truly a wild burro now.”

WATCH the video below… 

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“Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Photo by: Federico Beccari

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

 

One of the World’s Oldest Penguins Hatches a Chick with New Boy Toy 26 Years Younger

By
Andy Corbley
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Windy's 24th penguin chick - SWNS
Windy’s 24th penguin chick – SWNS

A great-great-great grandmother Humboldt pengiun in England’s blustery eastern coast has brought a member of yet another generation into the world after she shacked up with a bird 20-plus years her junior.

Windy surprised everyone at the zoo when during the last breeding season she paired with 4-year-old Nacho. A pairing doesn’t guarantee that mating will occur.

But despite the fact that Windy’s first egg was laid before Y2K had been disproven, and Nacho had only recently reached adulthood, the two produced a healthy young chick.

Windy has produced 23 offspring, but for Nacho it’s the first time.

Due to the success of her descendants through the European breeding program in 2023, she claimed the title of great-great-great grandmother to a chick hatched in Schwerin Zoo, Germany.

Even more remarkable about this pairing is that Windy might be the oldest penguin parent in the world.

Penguins—including Humboldt penguins—usually only live to around 30 years old in captivity. But Windy is proving to be as capable a mother as ever to her latest chick.

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“Windy was paired up with male penguin, Jet, for a long time, and produced more than 20 chicks together,” said Dan Trevelyan, Senior Bird Keeper at Newquay Zoo in Cornwall.

”When Windy lost her partner, we didn’t necessarily expect her to pair up with another penguin, but Nacho started courting Windy last year, and the two have been devoted to each other ever since.”

“They had a clutch of eggs last spring, but neither of them were successful, so we are really happy that the pair have had a healthy chick this breeding season.”

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Sun-Powered Portable Factory Manufactures Zero-Emission Plastic Goods Anywhere There’s Trouble

By
Andy Corbley
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The molding system exposed to concentrated sunlight - credit Light Manufacturing
The molding system exposed to concentrated sunlight – credit Light Manufacturing

A startup has found a way to create high-quality plastic products like water tanks, boat frames, and more, all using the power of the sun, and has created a portable factory that can be transported anywhere in the world via shipping containers.

The speed and flexibility of the factory system make it an incredible asset for firms or governments operating in numerous environments and situations from disaster relief to rural development.

Called Light Manufacturing, the technology is known as Solar Rotational Molding (SRM), and in layman’s terms involves putting raw plastic into a mold and blasting it with a beam of sunlight concentrated via a bank of 30 special mirrors called heliostats that automatically adjust to keep shining on the mold as the sun moves across the sky.

Karl von Kries, founder of Light Manufacturing and inventor of SRM, used to work for a Massachusettes-based company that used rotational molding for flight cases, and started on his entrepreneurial journey after seeing the company’s energy bills, and watching An Inconvenient Truth.

“Back then I found it strange that we were paying for a lot of natural gas, but in the summer months, the roof of the factory was well over 130 degrees Fahrenheit,” he told GNN. “I wondered if there was some way to capture that solar heat.”

“I assumed that this idea had been tried before, and was found impractical. But I couldn’t find anything in the literature about solar rotational molding, so I set up a new company to ‘prove the idea would NOT work’ so I could get on with my career.”

Then a strange thing happened, solar molding “failed to fail.”

“We made some pretty low-quality parts at first, but we kept iterating, and by 2014 we were molding high-quality plastic parts and had landed several critical patents,” said Von Kries, who sees one of the best ways to utilize SRM technology as furnishing rural areas in poor countries with critical plumbing equipment like pipes and rainwater catch tanks.

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“Currently our biggest system, the SRM4, can mold tanks up to 2,000 gallons / 7,500 liters. Each system can mold thousands of tanks a year… and of course, smaller tanks can be molded as well.”

The mold system is fitted on a rotational axis inside a shipping container, along with all control panels and electrical parts. No foundation or base is needed apart from one single acre of flat, cleared ground.

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“All costs accounted for, our systems are one-tenth the cost of deploying a traditional molding system in a factory building,” Von Kires says.

With just a two-person crew, operating costs are very low, while finished product cost is 20-30% less than products made with traditional means because the system doesn’t require natural gas for heating.

Currently, Von Kries and Light Manufacturing have a system deployed already in Hawaii.

WATCH the system in action… 

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Widow on Her First Holiday Without Husband Makes A Lifelong Group of Friends

By
Andy Corbley
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Trudy Veenstar, 81, (center) with people she befriended - SWNS
Trudy Veenstar, 81, (center) with people she befriended – SWNS

Trudy Veenstar never doubted the possibility of having a life beyond the end of a long marriage after her dearest partner passed away, she just never imagined it would come so soon.

81-year-old Veenstar spent the most memorable moments of her life traveling around the world with her husband, Auke Veenstar, who died at age 89 in April of last year. She preparing to carry the torch of their marital legacy onto the African continent, where the two either rarely or had never visited, when, in a turn quite unexpected, she fell in with a group of ladies who would become dear friends.

She decided to book a two-and-a-half-week safari around Kenya in February 2024. She had hardly concluded the first day when she hitched her lone wagon to a group of tourists and forged a special bond with them, most of all with Melisa Boddie, a TV executive from Denver who was also on the safari.

“As much as I missed including my husband in the planning, I am a traveler and I have always had it in me; I was so ready to get back out traveling,” Veenstar said. “The 32-hour flight was daunting but as I say ‘no pain, no gain’.”

Veenstar and her husband traveled extensively around the world, hitting Nepal, Bangkok, Myanmar, and Cambodia in Southeast Asia, and also South America and Europe.

As curious as she was to see what solo travel was like, she didn’t get to experience it for long. After just a few short hours, she met Boddie.

“I was eating breakfast and a woman asked if I minded her sitting with us for breakfast. That is when we learned that her husband died a year prior and this was her first trip without him,” Boddie told the British news outlet SWNS.

“We ended up meeting other people in the group, much older than me in their 70s and 80s. Trudy is a lovely woman, she is so funny and so lovely.”

During the trip, the group of friends who have nicknamed themselves the ‘Kenyan cousins’ visited all the national parks and saw much of the wildlife there.

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Trudy said she did not expect to leave with a group of friends but she is happy she has.

“I never expected to leave with such a close group of friends, never expected to form such a bond with them.”

They are also trying to arrange another group holiday together but as Trudy is so well-traveled they are finding it difficult to find a place she hasn’t yet been to.

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“We are all wanting to plan another trip together, we are going to the Galapagos Islands but Trudy has been before so she isn’t coming.”

After the trip ended, the group vowed the stay in touch and now have monthly FaceTime calls to stay connected.

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