Quote of the Day: “Eagles come in all shapes and sizes, but you will recognize them by their attitudes.” – E. F. Schumacher
Photo by: Sylvain Mauroux
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A New Jersey man had the rather unorthodox idea of throwing a party at the Walmart self-checkout counter. Perhaps driven by rage and cynicism, a bit of his motivation can be found in the event description on Facebook, which reads” celebrating another successful year of picking, paying, and bagging your own groceries while actual employees just stand around and check receipts.”
When he saw that 21,000 people had marked the event as ‘interested,’ he decided to turn his cynicism into goodwill. Walmart was unwilling to host the event, but creator Andrew Delgado wasn’t going to give up so easily.
“While this started as a joke, it has me thinking. What if… I was to organize a big toy drive where we have a Santa Claus and then we all purchase toys from the store, pile them outside, and then donate them to whatever children happen to come to the store?” Delgado wrote on the Facebook event page.
“I genuinely believe that something good can come from this. Times are tough for a lot of people. I think this would be perfect.”
Writing to his local Elks Lodge community organization, which agreed to offer their Lacey Township location as a drop-off site, the stage was set to see how many of those 21,000 people, a number which by that point had grown even larger, would show up.
The groundswell of support, and coverage from local news, became so great that Delgado had to reiterate twice on the event discussion section that it was absolutely not going to be held at Walmart, despite the original description.
The turnout was stunning, with over 7,000 people participating and trucks of presents, food, pet food, and other donations flooding the Elks Lodge. (SEE the Video here on Facebook.) At least one local store got involved, and the news of the event made it all the way onto USA Today.
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Delgado posted regular updates, in which he estimated the gifts would make it to over 1,000 families in the Lacey area of New Jersey.
“Well, our journey has finally reached the official end. We rolled over to Popcorn Park Zoo to deliver the last of their donations and then stopped at Lacey Food Bank to drop off the literal SHIPMENT of boxes full of food and toys to them as well,” Delgado wrote on the ‘final update’.
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“We didn’t have a whole lot of time to plan this but we did an amazing job nonetheless.
Also, the manager of the local Walmart store drove a truck to the event and unloaded a ton of toys food etc. He’s actually a really great guy and I really appreciate him coming through for us,” he said, adding as a postscript to the whole bonanza, “I don’t actually hate self-checkout.”
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There’s nothing like a good story of destiny, and in a time when three continents are engulfed in war, CBC News brings a story of reunion by two star-crossed soldiers.
The Iran-Iraq War became the longest conventional war of the 20th century and claimed over 1 million casualties, but this inspiring tale of former foes Najah Aboud from one side, and Zahed Haftlang from the other, is unforgettable.
“I didn’t know much about Iran. I knew it was a neighboring country. And that they were people next door to us,” Najah Aboud, an invading soldier from Iraq told CBC’s show Ideas. “We enjoyed their music. They enjoyed ours. They were just like us.”
A conscript assigned to a tank unit, Aboud was told to occupy a bunker in the city of Khorramshahr which the Iraqis had captured. Shortly after he got there, the bunker was cleared out in a massive take-no-prisoners counterattack by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and their militia support, in which Zahed Haftlang was assigned as a medic.
Haftlang was ordered to go into the bunker and treat his wounded countrymen, and that’s where he came upon Aboud, lying with injuries to the head, back, and chest. While each worried that the other might do them violence, it eventually happened that Haftlang found a picture of an infant son and woman in Aboud’s breast pocket: his family.
It was at that moment when the Persian, who couldn’t speak Aboud’s native language of Iraqi Arabic, decided to save him, even against the will of his comrades.
In some cases he had to physically fight his barracks mates off, with one Iranian soldier hitting the prone Aboud’s face with the stock of his rifle. Against all odds, Haftlang got Aboud to a field hospital and asked the attending doctors to treat him—which they didn’t want to do at first.
Even they relented though, and Aboud was successfully saved before being dumped in a POW camp for 17 years. Haftlang visited him one time, but the two men could only communicate with gestures—the kissing of a hand.
The war took everything the two men had. Aboud was eventually released and returned to his home in Basra to find his fiance and his son long gone. Haftlang spiraled into years of depression and violent jobs before jumping ship in Vancouver after getting into a scrap with the Iranian sailors on board.
After a brief stint in homelessness, Haftlang ended up in a halfway house where he would try to commit suicide. But in an incident indicative of fortune, some coworkers came in, rescued the poor Iranian, and recommended he visit a hospital for mental health crises. Haftlang relented.
It was there in the waiting room that Haftlang saw an obviously Middle Eastern fellow about his age come into the same mental hospital. The two opened a conversation, and the Iranian found that the newcomer spoke his language.
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“I was a prisoner of war,” the newcomer replied, explaining how he had come to know Farsi.
“I remember taking an Iraqi to a field hospital. His teeth were broken,” Haftlang recounted to Ideas, before mentioning that he hadn’t finished speaking before he saw that the man’s teeth were in fact broken.
“He’d mentioned that he’d been captured in Khorramshahr. In a bunker. And I asked him, ‘Which bunker, where?’ And then I said to him, ‘Did you keep a photograph of your family in your pocket?’ and he said, ‘Yes, how did you know that?’ And I said, ‘I’m the guy! I’m the soldier who was with you, caring for you!'”
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In the most unbelievable coincidence, the two men had immigrated to the same country, and visited the same hospital on the same day at the same time. Their joy—their hugs and kisses, caused the staff of the mental hospital—who are probably easily triggered by raised voices, to come rushing in, only to burst into tears alongside the former soldiers turned friends after hearing their story.
Without family and without their homes, the two men admitted that their friendship is the most precious thing in the world to them.
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2023 featured a proposed update to the COPPA, or the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act which included limitations on the nudging of kids to stay online and reductions in the data collection of children while using their parent’s devices.
The last update was in 2013 and dealt with social media and mobile devices (how quaint). This one will feature additional protections to ensure that children are not targeted by their online behavior.
For starters, businesses would have to set behavioral advertising as disabled by default, unless they were to get parents’ separate verifiable consent to disclose information to third parties, including third-party advertisers.
System operators and businesses will not be able to send push notifications to encourage kids to use their services or games more often. Operators using kids’ information to send these push notifications would also be required to flag that use in their COPPA-required direct and online notices.
Most importantly, whether parents understand it or not, the 2023 proposed update would “strengthen COPPA’s existing standards by making it clear that operators can hold on to kids’ personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected—and they for sure can’t hold on to it indefinitely or use it for any secondary purpose.”
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Cybercrime has become the largest loss of money due to private criminal activity on Earth, causing an estimated $10 trillion in damage from identity theft, data breaches, and so forth in this year alone.
To this end as well, the new COPPA rules would require separate, written data security policies for the handling and storage of kids’ information.
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Since it’s enforced by a federal regulatory agency and not a Congressional action, there was an open comment period, during which the FTC received almost 200,000 comments, demonstrating at least to some degree the urgent desire for more stringent controls on childhood data handling by the American public.
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Among all the things that the James Webb Space Telescope has taught us, one of the most surprising for the layman has probably been that all the outer planets have rings.
The rings of Saturn are well known, but Webb has already shown that the ice planet of Neptune sports rings as well, and now, Uranus has been shown shining like a bright blue eyeball.
When NASA’s spacecraft Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, the planet appeared to be a nearly featureless, solid blue ball. Webb used its infrared view to show that it’s much more dynamic and intriguing. Rings, moons, storms, and a bright, north polar cap grace these new images.
Because Uranus is tipped on its side, the polar cap appears to become more prominent as the planet’s pole points towards the Sun and receives more sunlight—a time called solstice. Uranus reaches its next solstice in 2028, and astronomers will watch for changes in the planet’s atmosphere.
Uranus also spins on its side at a tilt of about 98 degrees, giving it the most extreme seasons in the solar system. For nearly a quarter of each Uranian year, the Sun shines over one pole, plunging the other half of the planet into a dark, 21-year-long winter.
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With Webb’s unparalleled infrared resolution and sensitivity, astronomers now see Uranus and its unique features with groundbreaking new clarity. These details, especially of the close-in Zeta ring, will be invaluable to planning any future missions to Uranus.
One day on Uranus is about 17 hours, so the planet’s rotation is relatively quick. This makes it supremely difficult for observatories with a sharp eye like Webb to capture one simple image of the entire planet—storms and other atmospheric features, and the planet’s moons, move visibly within minutes. This image combines several longer and shorter exposures of this dynamic system to correct for those slight changes throughout the observing time.
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Uranus can also serve as a proxy for studying the nearly 2,000 similarly sized exoplanets that have been discovered in the last few decades. This “exoplanet in our backyard” can help astronomers understand how planets of this size work, what their meteorology is like, and how they formed. This can in turn help us understand our own solar system as a whole by placing it in a larger context.
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Quote of the Day: “We live in the world when we love it.” – Rabindranath Tagore
Photo by: Natasha Reddy
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Using a type of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, MIT researchers have discovered a class of compounds that can kill a drug-resistant bacterium that causes more than 10,000 deaths in the United States every year.
In a study appearing this week in Nature, the researchers showed that these compounds could kill methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) grown in a lab dish and in two mouse models of MRSA infection. The compounds also show very low toxicity against human cells, making them particularly good drug candidates.
A key innovation of the new study, could help researchers design additional drugs that might work even better than the ones identified by the model.
“Our work provides a framework that is time-efficient, resource-efficient, and mechanistically insightful, from a chemical-structure standpoint, in ways that we haven’t had to date,” says James Collins, from MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering.
Severe cases of MRSA can lead to sepsis, a potentially fatal bloodstream infection.
Over the past several years, Collins and his colleagues at MIT have begun using deep learning to try to find new antibiotics. Their work has yielded potential drugs against Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacterium that is often found in hospitals, and many other drug-resistant bacteria.
These models sifted through millions of compounds, generating predictions of which ones may have strong antimicrobial activity.
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These types of searches have proven fruitful, but one limitation to this approach is that the models are “black boxes,” meaning that there is no way of knowing what features the model based its predictions on. If scientists knew how the models were making their predictions, it could be easier for them to identify or design additional antibiotics.
“What we set out to do in this study was to open the black box,” Wong says. “These models consist of very large numbers of calculations that mimic neural connections, and no one really knows what’s going on underneath the hood.”
The deep learning model generated this training data by testing about 39,000 compounds for antibiotic activity against MRSA, and then fed this data, plus information on the chemical structures of the compounds, into the model.
“You can represent basically any molecule as a chemical structure, and also you tell the model if that chemical structure is antibacterial or not,” Wong says. “The model is trained on many examples like this. If you then give it any new molecule, a new arrangement of atoms and bonds, it can tell you a probability that that compound is predicted to be antibacterial.”
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To figure out how the model was making its predictions, the researchers adapted an algorithm known as Monte Carlo tree search, which has been used to help make other deep learning models, such as AlphaGo, more explainable. This search algorithm allows the model to generate not only an estimate of each molecule’s antimicrobial activity, but also a prediction for which substructures of the molecule likely account for that activity.
To further narrow down the pool of candidate drugs, the researchers trained three additional deep learning models to predict whether the compounds were toxic to three different types of human cells. By combining this information with the predictions of antimicrobial activity, the researchers discovered compounds that could kill microbes while having minimal adverse effects on the human body.
Using this collection of models, the researchers screened about 12 million compounds, all of which are commercially available. From this collection, the models identified compounds from five different classes, based on chemical substructures within the molecules, that were predicted to be active against MRSA.
The researchers purchased about 280 compounds and tested them against MRSA grown in a lab dish, allowing them to identify two, from the same class, that appeared to be very promising antibiotic candidates. In tests in two mouse models, one of MRSA skin infection and one of MRSA systemic infection, each of those compounds reduced the MRSA population by a factor of 10.
Experiments revealed that the compounds appear to kill bacteria by disrupting their ability to maintain an electrochemical gradient across their cell membranes. This gradient is needed for many critical cell functions, including the ability to produce ATP—molecules that cells use to store energy. An antibiotic candidate that Collins’ lab discovered in 2020, halicin, appears to work by a similar mechanism but is specific to Gram-negative bacteria (bacteria with thin cell walls). MRSA is a Gram-positive bacterium, with thicker cell walls.
“We have pretty strong evidence that this new structural class is active against Gram-positive pathogens by selectively dissipating the proton motive force in bacteria,” Wong says. “The molecules are attacking bacterial cell membranes selectively, in a way that does not incur substantial damage in human cell membranes–and is not toxic against human cells.”
The researchers have shared their findings with Phare Bio, a nonprofit started by Collins and others as part of the Antibiotics-AI Project. The nonprofit now plans to do more detailed analysis of the chemical properties and potential clinical use of these compounds. Meanwhile, Collins’ lab is working on designing additional drug candidates based on the findings of the new study, as well as using the models to seek compounds that can kill other types of bacteria.
“We are already leveraging similar approaches based on chemical substructures to design compounds de novo, and of course, we can readily adopt this approach out of the box to discover new classes of antibiotics against different pathogens,” Wong says.
In a new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers have described a new species of fanged frog: the smallest one ever discovered.
In general, frogs’ teeth aren’t anything to write home about—they look like pointy little pinpricks lining the upper jaw. But one group of stream-dwelling frogs in Southeast Asia has a strange adaptation: two bony “fangs” jutting out of their lower jawbone.
There are over 70 species of these Dracula frogs, and they use these fangs to battle with each other over territory and mates, and sometimes, incredibly, even to hunt tough-shelled prey like giant centipedes and crabs.
In collaboration with the Bogor Zoology Museum, a team from the McGuire Lab at Berkeley found the frogs on Sulawesi, a rugged, mountainous island that makes up part of Indonesia.
“It’s a giant island with a vast network of mountains, volcanoes, lowland rainforest, and cloud forests up in the mountains. The presence of all these different habitats mean that the magnitude of biodiversity across many plants and animals we find there is unreal—rivaling places like the Amazon,” said Jeff Frederick, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago and the study’s lead author.
“This new species is tiny compared to other fanged frogs on the island where it was found, about the size of a quarter,” says Frederick.
“Many frogs in this genus are giant, weighing up to two pounds. At the large end, this new species weighs about the same as a dime.”
While trekking through the jungle, members of the joint US-Indonesia amphibian and reptile research team noticed something unexpected on the leaves of tree saplings and moss-covered boulders: nests of frog eggs.
Frogs are amphibians, and they lay eggs that are encapsulated by jelly, rather than a hard, protective shell. To keep their eggs from drying out, most amphibians lay their eggs in water. To the research team’s surprise, they kept spotting the terrestrial egg masses on leaves and mossy boulders several feet above the ground. Shortly after, they began to see the small, brown frogs themselves.
“Normally when we’re looking for frogs, we’re scanning the margins of stream banks or wading through streams to spot them directly in the water,” Frederick says. “After repeatedly monitoring the nests though, the team started to find attending frogs sitting on leaves hugging their little nests.”
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This close contact with their eggs allows the frog parents to coat the eggs with compounds that keep them moist and free from bacterial and fungal contamination.
Closer examination of the amphibian parents revealed not only that they were tiny members of the fanged frog family, complete with barely visible fangs, but that the frogs caring for the clutches of eggs were all male.
“Male egg-guarding behavior isn’t totally unknown across all frogs, but it’s rather uncommon,” says Frederick.
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Frederick and his colleagues hypothesize that the frogs’ unusual reproductive behaviors might also relate to their smaller-than-usual fangs. Some of the frogs’ relatives have bigger fangs, which help them ward off competition for spots along the river to lay their eggs in the water. Since these frogs evolved a way to lay their eggs away from the water, they may have lost the need for such big imposing fangs. (The scientific name for the new species is Limnonectes phyllofolia; phyllofolia means “leaf-nester.”)
“It’s fascinating that on every subsequent expedition to Sulawesi, we’re still discovering new and diverse reproductive modes,” says Frederick. “Our findings also underscore the importance of conserving these very special tropical habitats. Most of the animals that live in places like Sulawesi are quite unique, and habitat destruction is an ever-looming conservation issue for preserving the hyper-diversity of species we find there. Learning about animals like these frogs that are found nowhere else on Earth helps make the case for protecting these valuable ecosystems.”
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A man will once again taste one of his mother’s home-baked mince pies this Christmas—21 years after she died.
Richard Newson discovered a batch of 47 pastry treats in the bottom of his mum’s freezer following her sudden passing in December 2002.
Now, every Christmas, he defrosts one of the small pies and scoffs it down in memory of his mum Marlene.
Marlene used to bake hundreds of festive treats and dish them out to shops, businesses, and friends in Fleetwood, near Blackpool, England, for no other reason other than to spread Christmas cheer.
“She used to bake hundreds of them and had started to bake them, storing in the freezer before she died,” explained Richard. “I decided to take them home and eat one every single year in her memory.”
He lamented that this year’s tin did taste like a 21-year-old mince pie, but he dug in anyway.
“The pastry is still great—short and crumbly—but the mincemeat did have a funny taste this year. But it wasn’t too bad!”
Richard allows the pies to defrost naturally and then warms them slightly before the main event. It has become a family tradition and heralds the start of their family Christmas.
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“Mum absolutely loved Christmas and we do too. She has passed on, but I think she would be telling me off for still eating them now.”
Back in 2002 there were 43 mince pies. In the early days the family joined in, but now it is only Richard who dares to eat one.
MORE HOLIDAY FUN: Brits Reveal Their Best-Loved Holiday Traditions, Like Christmas Jumpers on Boxing Day
There are lots left and he plans to keep up the family tradition until they are gone.
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Quote of the Day: “We are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.” – Laura Ingalls Wilder
Photo by: GWC
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
A dog was just 12-weeks-old when he was brought into an animal hospital with signs of abuse, but now he gets to celebrate his ‘first proper’ Christmas with the veterinarian nurse who helped save him.
Terry the Whippet arrived at the Hull PDSA Animal Hospital in East Yorkshire, England, where he was treated by nurse Rachel Coombes.
The 42-year-old fell in love with the puppy and told her colleagues that she would adopt him, and later brought him into her home.
“I just felt a connection as soon as he was brought in, as he was in such a state.”
“He hasn’t looked back since—and is having the best of life right now. He enjoys running around the garden and going to the beach.
“He has formed a close bond with my son Stanley and will always be there by his side.”
After Terry was brought into the vets in November 2021, the vet discovered the white of his left eye and his lips were both bruised. Three of his upper incisors were missing and another tooth was broken.
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Due to his suspicious injuries, RSPCA Inspector Laura Barber was asked to investigate. She said, even though he was in a sad state, he was very trusting’.
“He was really quiet and withdrawn when he was with people,” said Inspector Barber. “I remember him coming over to me and putting his head on me and being so trusting.”
Terry’s owner appeared in court, where he admitted causing unnecessary suffering to a dog and was handed a five-year ban on keeping animals.
Emily Lomas, an animal care assistant at the RSPCA’s Hull branch, says she was ‘thrilled’ when she found out Rachel had adopted him.
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“He was overwhelmed when he came to us so we had to really show him there was nothing to be scared of and that he was now safe,” she recalled. “We took him to the socialization room and I remember him falling asleep on my legs.”
“He was so lovable so it’s great to see he has the home he deserves with such a lovely family.”
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“A great news photograph can be many things, but its core quality is that it tells you a story and lives on in your memory,” says picture editor Jon Mills, who prepared a list of the best photos from this year.
Many of our favorite 2023 pictures are stunning images of the natural world. Some show moments of intense emotion.
But these dozen photos chosen by GNN are guaranteed to uplift your spirits—or your curiosity—as we look back on the past year.
All these images were licensed to GNN by SWNS—Southwest News Service–a partnership for which we give endless thanks.
Happy Holidays to the folks at SWNS and to all our loyal readers of good news…
Tom Wren / SWNS Pictures of the Year 2023
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Read the story here, and see more photos: 90-Year-old Woodcutter Built his Own Hobbit House Where He Lives in Charming Comfort
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Read the story here: Farmer Creates Massive Sunflower Trail Growing 250,000 in a Pattern Out in His Fields
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A seven-year-old is preparing to open the most recent of 14 years’ worth of Christmas gifts pre-bought by her elderly neighbor before he died of cancer.
Cadi Williams is looking forward to opening her sixth mystery present from Ken Watson, who was 87 when he passed away five years ago.
After the funeral, Ken’s family was surprised to find a sack full of 14 wrapped presents for the wee girl who was then only two. Cadi’s parents were “knocked off their feet” by his thoughtfulness, which he had kept secret from everyone.
“It was magical and heart-warming,” said her father Owen Williams. “It was the feeling that gets you in the throat—when your brain is processing quicker than your heart can take it.”
Thus began the tradition of Cadi opening her ‘Ken gift’ every Christmas Eve, when the family brings it down from the attic—and so far, she’s unwrapped toys, books and games.
“We tell Cadi about how, on a dark night in December, her neighbor passed away. She doesn’t really remember him, but you can always keep someone’s memory alive by telling stories.
“There’s something quite powerful about a kindly neighbor who put away these gifts.
“What’s sweet is seeing my daughter’s development as well. She’s gone from being a toddler when this started and now she’s seven. It’s like a record of her growing up.”
The family actually couldn’t wait until Christmas to open the first present from Ken in 2018, so they immediately unwrapped it—a book called ‘Christmas Eve at the Mellops’, by Tomi Ungerer.
Cadi unwrapped a cuddly goat on Christmas the same year, and in 2019 she received a little wooden train that carried the letters of her name.
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In 2020 she opened a giant Crayola coloring book and the following year she got a book, ‘Ghostly Beasts’ by Joan Aiken.
Last Christmas she received the three-book series of ‘What Katy Did’ by Susan Coolidge.
Owen, who works in social media, uses #BeMoreKen in his annual Twitter post revealing Cadi’s gift, encouraging others to be kind and to get to know their neighbors. At the time of this posting, they had just brought the present down.
“Ken was just one of those people that others adored,” says Owen.
“He was like a Father Christmas figure.”
He didn’t have grandchildren and missed his wife who had passed away ten years prior to the Williams family moving next door.
For her first birthday, Ken gifted Cadi a huge cuddly Lion called Elvis—and he went on to buy the same plush giant for every child on the street—costing $20 a pop in Wales.
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That fact became known when Owen went into a local toy shop and mentioned to the owner that his neighbor had bought Cadi one of the lions for her birthday.
She replied, “Was it Ken?”
He had come into the shop after seeing the lion in the window and decided to buy them for all the children in the street.
An accomplished man, Ken often surprised Owen with tales of his past adventures—just another reason the 45-year-old Welsh dad advises others to “take the time to get to know your neighbors”.
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Quote of the Day: “We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence.” – Benjamin Disraeli
Photo by: borkazoid (CC license)
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In a win for public health, pollinators, and the environment, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this month in favor of farmworkers and public-interest groups that called for reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) approval of a human antibiotic for use as a pesticide on citrus crops.
In the ruling, the court determined the EPA’s 2021 decision to allow spraying of streptomycin on citrus crops to be unlawful under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, and the Endangered Species Act. The court also held that the issue’s seriousness required that the EPA vacate its approval of the ‘pesticide’.
The decision directs the EPA to bolster its analysis of the potential risks to pollinators and assess whether streptomycin is actually effective for this purpose.
Streptomycin is used to treat serious human illnesses ranging from tuberculosis to urinary tract infections. The overuse of medically-important antibiotics has contributed to increased antibiotic resistance in bacteria, a pressing public health crisis causing more than 35,000 deaths each year in the United States, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We don’t need to blast medically important antibiotics into the environment,” said Allison Johnson, Senior Attorney at the NRDC. “We do not have to choose between a stable food supply AND pollinators–we need both.”
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“Organic producers show that we do not have to sacrifice one for the other by building healthy farm ecosystems without wanton antibiotic usage.”
Also involved in the lawsuit was the Farmworker Association of Florida, which sought to protect agriculture workers who toil in the fields and deserve to be free from such avoidable threats to their health—especially when the spraying of antibiotics “has not been proven effective in treating citrus diseases,” according to the advocates for both the environment and workers’ heath.
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You’ve heard about Christmas gifts coming down a chimney, but did you know they also float down from airplanes attached to parachutes?
Since 1952, the U.S. Army has been dropping huge packages every year for the holidays while flying over islands in the Pacific.
The tradition of giving, called Operation Christmas Drop, has become the longest-running U.S. Department of Defense mission in full operation—bringing joy and supplies to Micronesia.
It doubles as a training mission, teaching new troops how to deliver humanitarian supplies from cargo airplanes, to be prepared in case of disaster.
Each parachuted crate contains 400 pounds (180 kg) of toys, school supplies, and items such as clothing, shoes, powdered milk, canned goods, and fishing nets and gear.
They arrive in the water just off shallow beaches in order to avoid hitting the locals.
Money is raised for the operation by sponsored activities like golf tournaments and sponsored runs, and though donations from local businesses. Volunteers assemble the boxes in Guam at Andersen Air Force Base, with crew and aircraft coming also from the 36th Airlift Squadron at Yokota Air Base in Japan.
In 1951, the aircrew of a WB-29 aircraft from the Guam base, was flying a mission over the Micronesian atoll of Kapingamarangi when they saw the islanders waving to them. The crew quickly gathered some items they had on the plane, placed them in a container with a parachute attached and dropped the cargo as they circled again.
“We saw these things come out of the back of the airplane and I was yelling, ‘There are toys coming down,’” said a witness to the first drop on the island of Agrigan.
At the time the island had no electricity or running water, and the islands were periodically hit by typhoons. Some of the first containers failed to arrive where intended, and islanders swam out to retrieve some, while others were discovered months later some miles away.
MORE HOLIDAY JOY: FedEx Delivers 300,000 Free Christmas Trees to Military Families With Annual Trees for Troops Program
By 2006, 59 islands were the recipients of 140 boxes, using repurposed parachutes. The 2011 operation included dropping 25 boxes of IV fluids to Fais Island in order to combat a local outbreak of dengue fever.
In 2015, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force and the Royal Australian Air Force participated in the operation for the first time. The two countries each provided one C-130 plane to join the three provided by the United States—and continued their participation in future missions.
This year in during six days in early December, the Royal Canadian Air Force supplied Secret Santas for the first time, working with crews that included The Republic of Korea and The Philippines. They delivered 210 bundles of supplies inside crates decorated with holiday scenes to benefit more than 42,000 residents of 58 islands throughout Micronesia and Palau.
POPULAR: Boy Who Started Food Bank in his Shed Now Opens Holiday ‘Gift Bank’ for Hundreds of Poor Kids
The story of Operation Christmas Drop became a 2020 Netflix rom-com film, too. Watch a video dropped this month by the USAF about this year’s operation…
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A black rhino looks like it has found a mate in time for the holidays—and, in time to help save a species.
The 4-year-old, which was born on Christmas Eve in 2019, has just reached maturity after being moved from a zoo in Lansing, Michigan to a newly designed home in Palm Desert, California.
Newly captured videos shows the triumphant day when Jaali was first introduced to Nia—a female black rhino from the Cleveland Zoo that was also moved following a match-making appeal from the Association of Zoo and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan.
Their first interactions are precious, but also critical. African Black Rhinos are classified as critically endangered and the pair’s new caretakers at The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens are devoutly committed to the conservation of this species.
“This first introduction between Jaali and Nia is the culmination of 4 years of habitat design research and construction to build the perfect home for this pair of endangered black rhinos,” said Allen Monroe, the zoo’s president.
The California team hopes that, with a little luck—and after a 15-month gestation period—they will have at least one more to add to the species’ diminished numbers.
GOOD RHINO NEWS: Rare Rhino Sub-Species Sees Dramatic Growth – From Just 100 to 3,700 Today – as Poaching Falls
“It’s amazing to see the first steps of rhino courtship now that Jaali and Nia have reached maturity.”
The animal matchmaking experts behind the Species Survival Plan knew that this particular female and male were underrepresented genetically in the population, and needed to get together—and the new ‘Rhino Savannah’ in the Palm Dessert zoo would be a prime environment for procreation.
“Black rhinos are solitary by nature. The general thought is that absence makes the heart grow fonder. So we had Jaali on one side of the habitat and Nia on the other. They can see each other,” Monroe told People.
Female rhinos have a short reproductive period—three days out of the month—so caretakers will time their interactions for that peak breeding time.
“Our fingers are crossed that sometime in the coming year these introductions will result in a pregnancy and bouncing baby rhino.”
MORE POSITIVE TRENDS: For the First Time Since 1977, Zero Rhinos Were Poached In India’s Parks
With his fourth birthday coming on Christmas Eve, Jaali (pronounced jolly) couldn’t have received a better gift.
Watch the heartwarming video posted on Instagram…
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Quote of the Day: “Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” – Hal Borland
Photo by: Mick Haupt
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The James Webb Space Telescope recently took a picture of the C region of the Sagittarius constellation, deep in the galactic center of the Milky Way in order to find what’s going on inside.
Located about 300 light years from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, and 25,000 light years from Earth, Sag. C is a star-forming region that is filled with yet unexplained phenomena.
“The galactic center is the most extreme environment in our Milky Way galaxy, where current theories of star formation can be put to their most rigorous test,” said Professor Jonathan Tan, an astronomer at the University of Virginia.
The image was generated with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument, which color-coded some of the interesting features as a result of seeing the light in such long wavelengths.
The great mess of cyan-colored material in the center is ionized hydrogen, which happens when some energetic particle collides with a hydrogen atom and causes it to become positively charged via a loss of its electron. The collision in the image could be coming from the blacker region that seems to be driving a wedge into the cyan color.
That black wedge is deceiving, for though it may appear to be emptiness, it’s actually the result of the material inside it being so dense that light from stars behind it can’t shine through. The material in question will coalesce into stars in the coming millennia.
MORE GORGEOUS IMAGES FROM WEBB: New Webb Image Captures Clearest View of Neptune’s Rings, Revealing the Ice Giant in Whole New Light
At the center of this regional collision lies a bright magenta protostar, just one of 500,000 estimated to be present in this image of Sag. C. This specimen is 30 times the mass of the Sun, and much of the darker areas will eventually be filled up by these bright characters.
One unexplainable phenomenon are the bright streaks of cyan that seem to be oriented in random directions. At present, neither Tan nor his colleagues have any idea what they are.
MORE LESSONS LEARNED FROM WEBB: X-rays and Webb Telescope Provide Dazzling Views of Space Invisible to the Unaided Eye
“The galactic center is a crowded, tumultuous place. There are turbulent, magnetized gas clouds that are forming stars, which then impact the surrounding gas with their outflowing winds, jets, and radiation,” said Rubén Fedriani, a co-investigator of the project at the Instituto Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain.
“Webb has provided us with a ton of data on this extreme environment, and we are just starting to dig into it.”
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In 2017, the Caribbean nation of Dominica needed to think of some way to recover from Hurricane Maria which devastated the whole of the country, and do so in a manner that could protect them from future storm damage of the like.
Now, thousands of storm-proof homes have been built for locals who had lost everything. They sit in elegant and not-too-crowded developments in the hills, paid for by enthusiastic foreigners who were willing to pay for near-instant citizenship to the island.
The need was great. Tropical Storm Erika eliminated 90% of the country’s productive capacity, while the damage from the following Hurricane Maria resulted in total damages of 226% of the country’s GDP.
Instead of rushing to the IMF for a bailout that would plunge the relatively prosperous Caribbean nation into debt, the government created the Integrated Housing Development plan which was funded by the Citizenship by Investment program.
Established in 1993, the Dominica Economic Citizenship Program legally offers individuals and families worldwide irrevocable second citizenship and passports in only four to six months with no visit to the country required. It requires that prospective residents make a large investment into a government fund, or purchase real estate on the island.
“Dominica is one of the most beautiful islands in the Caribbean with perfectly unspoiled nature,” reads the Citizenship by Investment program. “Americans are retiring to the country in record numbers, drawn to the island’s natural beauty and peaceful way of life.”
It’s not a boast, and soon the money from the program was completing housing units all over the country.
MORE NEWS FROM DOMINICA: Rats Finally Eradicated from Caribbean Island as Huge Nature Reserve Rises in Their Place
Resettlement for displaced families started in December 2018, reports Caribbean News Now, at the Bellevue Chopin Housing Development; consisting of 350 residential units, a 28-unit commercial complex, a community center, medical facilities, and sports areas.
These sorts of developments have been popping up all over the island, and over 2,000 housing units have been built in 23 different districts. All utilities are underground, and the buildings have reinforced concrete walls, storm drains, protected sewage, and stormproof window panes.
OTHER CARIBBEAN HIGHLIGHTS: Artist Decorates Underwater Sculpture Park With 25 Figures of Local Island People in the Caribbean
“The units are granted, not sold nor rented, and are awarded to beneficiaries through a selection system based on dire and social needs, with particular consideration for single mothers,” reports Caribbean News Now.
WATCH drone footage of the housing developments below…
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