Quote of the Day: “Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.” – Daniel J. Boorstin
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A freight train driver took a break from his work in the locomotive to play the part of rescuer for a little lost pug which had run away from her owners the night before.
Poppy the pug had become frightened by a speeding car in Rutland, UK, and 60-year-old owners Dawn and Ian Bain had been out searching for her all night long.
At twenty-past eight the next morning, Michael Jones was nearing Langham Crossing in his freight train when he described seeing a “flash of red” from Poppy’s harness disappear into the bushes near the level crossing.
“All of a sudden there was just this tiny little face just looking back at me,” Jones told the BBC. “She was trembling and looking down at the ground.”
He stopped the train and lept out of the cabin to collect the tiny dog who was happy to see a friendly face. Inside the locomotive, he called ahead to the next crossing at a town called Oakham that he had found a lost dog, and then turned his attention to feeding the little pug crumpets and water.
At that same moment, Mrs. Bain arrived at the Oakham crossing to ask the employee there if any dog had been reported on the tracks that morning, to which the worker in the box replied that not only had one been found, but that it was on its way to them at that very moment.
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“My heart—it didn’t know whether to sing or stop,” said Mrs. Bain, still in her nightgown from the previous 12 hours of searching. “In comes this train with this beautiful man on, with Poppy sat on his knee. I cried, massively, and he cried.”
Poppy was totally unharmed from her ordeal, and is recovering from the shock of it all at home with her companion Tinker.
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The belief amongst those involved was that if Jones had not been so observant early on a workday, she would never have been found because neither the Bains nor anyone else had thought to look for her around the tracks.
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A good, honest mechanic is worth as much as the car you bring in for him to service, and in a small country town of just under five-and-a-half thousand people, a local mechanic’s talent saved the day and gave a wheelchair-bound child the vacation of a lifetime.
9-year-old Cooper Greenwood from Sydney has Aicardi-Goutières Syndrome, a rare disease similar to cerebral palsy. His family was already enjoying an outback adventure around Northwest Australia’s Kimberly region in a motorhome when his electric wheelchair broke.
The chair allows Greenwood to move about with liberty—decide where he wants to go and what he wants to do, and without it, his mom says, he becomes very frustrated and depressed.
Cooper tries not to let his disability get in the way of living his life, and the wheelchair is a big part of that. However he was determined to carry on with the trip and began hitching a ride with his dad in a special backpack.
As the family was preparing for the next leg of their journey, they took to social media and asked if anyone in the small town of Kununurra, Western Australia, knew how to fix sophisticated electric wheelchairs. Someone responded that the Greenwoods should call Mick Scott.
“When they did bring it in, I sort of agreed to have a brief look at it and I’ve seen the size of the chair and I thought it must be for a really young fella,” Mr. Scott told ABC News Au.
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Scott diagnosed the problem and even managed to find the part he needed and get it shipped via express post to Kununurra while the family went to the next stop on their trip around East Kimberly’s Mitchell Falls, where Cooper was able to go up in a helicopter for the first time.
When they returned from camping, they discovered that Scott had the wheelchair ready to roll out, after which Cooper’s mom Kyrsten described him as an “absolute legend.”
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“Just super, super happy to be able to get them sorted and I don’t know about legend status, mate—but, yeah, we try our best,” Mr. Scott replied.
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Two museums in the Netherlands have decided to repatriate 472 artifacts to Sri Lanka and Indonesia which the museums claim were taken under duress or by looters.
The objects entered the nation during the Dutch East India Company’s near-monopoly in the trade between Europe and what were once called the Spice Islands, as well as the following colonial period.
In total, the repatriations include the ‘Lombok treasure’, consisting of 335 objects from Lombok in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia, four statues from the Javan Hindu kingdom of Singasari, 132 objects of modern art from Bali, and from Sri Lanka—a cache of ceremonial weapons from the city-states of Kandy and others including a royal canon made of gold, silver, and rubies.
Dutch Secretary of State for Culture and Media Gunay Uslu announced the decision on Thursday after a 2020 report recommended that certain museum possessions be returned.
“This is a historic moment,” Uslu said in a press statement. “It’s the first time we’re following recommendations… to give back objects that should never have been brought to the Netherlands. But more than anything, it’s a moment to look to the future. We’re not only returning objects; we’re also embarking on a period of closer cooperation with Indonesia and Sri Lanka in areas like collection research, presentation, and exchanges between museums.”
The transfer of ownership to Indonesia took place at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden on July 10th. The one for Sri Lanka will take place later this year.
Repatriation of artifacts taken from around the world during the colonial periods has become a hotter and hotter issue as former colonies become richer and more stable, and objects like the Benin Bronzes or the Kor-i-noor diamond often find their way into news headlines.
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Historic opponents of such repatriation have pointed to instability in countries they might have returned collections to, while others argue that Europe’s museums will lose important pieces that will cause them to close down whole gallery wings, depriving Europeans of the opportunity to learn about other cultures.
But others are more optimistic that it will actually lead to a greater understanding of the artifacts by cooperating with the descendants of the cultures which created them.
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“I expect countries of provenance and museums here in Europe will have a discussion about which objects will go back, and not all of them will be,” Valika Smeulders, head of the Rijksmuseum’s department of history told Art News.
“But what we will gain, all of us, is more knowledge about these objects, how they came into our possession, their background, what stories are we able to tell. So in the end we’ll have an enrichment of what we do instead of empty galleries.”
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A Dehli police officer who managed to crawl his way out of the city slums as a child is now giving back to poor children who live the lifestyle of skipping school and working odd jobs.
With his free school, when class is in session in the parking lot of the famous Red Fort, Than Singh helps kids who’ve missed school catch up to their age bracket so they can be at the same level as their peers.
Born in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur, Singh grew up with two siblings on the streets of New Delhi, where he would sell corn and his father would iron clothes. But despite this day-to-day existence, Singh never forgot the importance of school.
His father wanted to be a police officer, but the weight of supporting the family never allowed him to properly prepare himself. Eventually though, Singh followed in his father’s footsteps, stayed in school, and passed the examination for the Delhi Police.
Going back to police the streets on which he was raised, Singh began to feel something had to be done to help children like him who had to work instead of study. He then started a one-of-a-kind school called Than Singh Ki Pathshala.
“I volunteered to teach these kids so that they are able to come a little par to their peers. For this, I started meeting the parents. Police are the only segment that go to people irrespective of their socio-economic status and get to understand their problems,” Constable Singh told The Better India. “After meeting their parents, I convinced them to not worry about kids and send them to our pathshala.”
He teaches 80 children aged 3 to 15 outside of the Red Fort from neighborhoods like Raj Ghat, Vijay Ghat, and Shantivan. Local battery-rickshaw drivers have volunteered to bring the children home from the school every day.
He gets everything through donations: books, lunches, uniforms, and other supplies.
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“I want to give these children a good atmosphere because their parents go to work and there is a chance that they could wander on streets. This is why we continue to teach them after school. Also, when other children got to know that they can get admission after studying with us, more and more kids started coming,” said Singh.
Last year, 70 of Singh’s students were able to enroll in proper government schools, 10 of whom achieved the highest exam scores in their class.
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“There is no other peace than working for these children. I could be the reason towards bringing a change in their lives with just a little support. What could have been better than this for me?” said Singh.
These image was originally published by The Better India. The Better India is the world’s largest solutions-based content-driven impact platform that uses the power of digital media and positive storytelling to showcase the journey of India’s most inspiring individuals and institutions. Visit www.thebetterindia.com
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Quote of the Day: “Courage is knowing what not to fear.” – Plato
Photo by: NEOM (Hisma Desert in Saudi Arabia)
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China’s leading developer of autonomous driving technologies for heavy-duty trucks, today announced it has powered more than 24.8 million miles (40 million km) of accident-free trucking on China’s highways.
Tesla has been promising shareholders full autonomous driving for its cars for years, but setbacks have been frequent. Founded by a Chinese engineer who studied in Australia, to say that the Inceptio Autonomous Driving System is miles ahead of America’s tech billionaire is a bit of an understatement.
This latest milestone underlines the safety and reliability of Inceptio’s full-stack autonomous driving solution, as well as its accelerating commercial uptake. Inceptio’s L3 autonomous trucks have been in commercial operation since late 2021.
Working closely with two of China’s top long-haul companies Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle and Sinotruk, Inceptio has shipped hundreds of mass-produced heavy-duty trucks designed from the ground up for full integration with the Inceptio Autonomous Driving System. Major customers, including Budweiser, Nestlé, JD Logistics, and Deppon Express have deployed Inceptio trucks across a nationwide line-haul logistics network in China.
“We are incredibly proud of the stellar performance record that Inceptio trucks have amassed over the past two years,” said Julian Ma, founder and CEO of Inceptio Technology. “Across 40 million kilometers of commercial operations, our Inceptio Autonomous Driving System has achieved a highly satisfactory on-time arrival rate for our customers with a perfect safety record.”
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“The Inceptio R&D team and the autonomous driving system itself are learning a tremendous amount from our fast-growing trove of operational data,” he added.
Innovation invariably leads to disruption in the market, which includes around 4 million long-haul truckers who perform the demanding job of driving massive vehicles on fast moving highways—sometimes a dozen hours per day.
In 2019, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reported 5,005 fatal, 119,000 injurious, and 419,000 non-injurious traffic collisions involving large trucks (and buses) in the US (but the buses accounted for a significantly smaller fraction).
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Automated trucking might not only increase safety, but would significantly reduce the costs of goods related to transport. Automated trucks can drive all night without suffering from white-line hypnosis or fatigue, and Inceptio’s algorithms optimize fuel consumption, reducing use by as much as 7% compared to human drivers, meaning they help reduce the industry impact on climate, as well as costs related to fuel.
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Most of us know the framework of the Big Bang Theory—the universe began expanding outward from a single point after a large explosion, and as matter began to coalesce into larger and hotter structures, the universe began expanding at greater and greater speeds.
This would necessitate that in the earliest periods of the universe, this expansion was slower, and that since Einstein showed that time and space were connected, time too would be slower—exactly what was just discovered by astronomers Down Under.
In a groundbreaking paper published in Nature, Professor Geraint Lewis of Sydney University and Dr. Brendon Brewer at Auckland University used quasars as clocks to track the speed of time in the early universe—perhaps less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
Quasars are the universe’s most powerful known objects, and they showed that time moved 500% slower in the earliest chapter of the universe than it would today.
“Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower,” said Professor Lewis. “If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second—but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.”
Previous universe dating methods used supernovae explosions, but quasars are far more energetic, acting more like repeat fireworks displays than a single firecracker. These active galactic nuclei are powered by supermassive black holes billions of times larger than the sun surrounded by gargantuan accretion disks of hot gas. The energy they emit is beyond all metaphor.
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Lewis explains that he and his team used spectroscopy to separate the light from the 200 or so quasars into green, red, and infrared, which allowed them to chart the lights’ path through space and time rather like the ticking of a clock.
“With these new data and analysis, however, we’ve been able to find the elusive tick of the quasars and they behave just as Einstein’s relativity predicts,” said Lewis.
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It’s the third or fourth time in recent memory that a bold prediction of Einstein has been proven correct, demonstrating the superb intellect of a man who is getting more predictions right from his grave than some scientists do in the lab.
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Oliver Johnson turned 8 years old yesterday in his home in New Zealand. Lonely by nature, his mother had just the idea of what might cheer him up.
Young Oliver is obsessed with trucks. He knows the name of every truck, every truck manufacturer, and every trucking company, and his mom Katherine offered $50 to anyone who would come give him a ride in their big rig for his big day.
Katherine hoped one truck driver would take up the offer, but instead, Barry Hart, owner of Hart Haulage Trucking, decided to take it two steps further and organize a whole convoy.
Then it got almost out of hand, with 40 truck drivers signing up to be part of the Oliver Johnson convoy.
“Every one of these truckies that are doing this, and there are probably 10 trucks at least that are coming from Auckland, those guys, it will cost them $500-600 to get that truck down there, do their thing, and go away, and not one of them is asking for anything,” Hart told the NZ Herald.
Scheduled for Yesterday, (Sunday, July 9th), so many signed up that Hart had to organize the convoy like a parade, and call authorities to help manage traffic. He said he saw a boy who felt like he needed some friends around him, and he couldn’t do any less.
Katherine has heard from other members of her community who donated a birthday cake and their best wishes to her son.
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“I would like to say a massive thank you from the bottom of my – and my husband’s – heart and for giving up your time,” she said. “[I] just can’t get over the community… how wonderful everybody’s been.”
A follow-up by the NZ Herald found Ollie on Cloud 9 for his special celebration, which included best wishes from heavy machinery giant Isuzu.
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Quote of the Day: “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” – Mark Twain
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A man who hunts for pieces of comets that fell to Earth has created a business by making the ancient space debris into jewelry.
Emil Davidsson has made a name for himself showcasing his skill for hunting meteorites.
The 31-year-old from Buenos Aires, Argentina, documents his adventures collecting meteorites in online videos, then crafts the rocks into jewelry creations he sells online.
His pendants cost around $100 made from small fragments of the meteorites he estimates to be between one million and 4.5 billion years old.
He also makes watches with prices starting at around $395, and rings for $130.
Emil has been hunting for meteorites for a decade and says they are “extremely rare and difficult to find.”
He has been on serious expeditions to both the coldest place on Earth—the Arctic Circle—and the driest place on Earth—the Atacama Desert—to find his treasured space debris.
“Every year, I would go on expeditions lasting four to five months above the Arctic Circle.
A special metal detector he uses has pulse indicators that emit high-amperage signals, creating electromagnetic fields around the detector. When there is a metal object “the field collapses” creating a spike in voltage that is represented as sound.
If the meteorite is not on the surface he has to dig down into the soil by hand, which can sometimes be up to ten feet deep (3 meters). The finds are truly out of this world.
“Each type of meteorite requires a different process since all meteorites are unique,” explained the craftsman who resides in Bali, Indonesia. “For example, iron meteorites, are composed of 92-99% iron.
“After we cut them into slices, we need to stabilize them using various methods because if we don’t do that they tend to rust.
Additionally, they use nitric acid to reveal the meteorite’s distinctive structure known as the Widmanstätten pattern—one of the most remarkable features of certain meteorites (pictured above, left).
“It forms through the slow cooling of molten metal over millions of years resulting in the formation of exquisite crystalline 3D patterns.
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“This unique crystallization process cannot be replicated on Earth as it requires extreme outer space conditions over millions of years.”
“These meteorites originated as remnants from the formation of our solar system, making them older than our planet itself. By holding a meteorite in your hand, you are touching the oldest material you could ever come into contact with.
“Some meteorites come from the Asteroid Belt located between Mars and Jupiter (so) they have also traveled millions of miles through space.”
Eventually, due to chance and the gravitational pull of Earth, they fell randomly in remote locations—and thousands of years later, Emil finds some of them with his metal detector.
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A simple blood test for ovarian cancer is on the horizon now that three telltale proteins have been discovered.
Scientists captured them from samples using nanowires with a special chemical coating.
It offers hope for a screening program that could diagnose the disease earlier—because the symptoms of ‘the silent killer’ cancer usually only develop after it has already spread.
The molecules are known as EVs (extracellular vesicles). They are especially small proteins released from the tumor, which can be isolated from body fluids such as blood, urine and saliva.
The Japanese team extracted them from the most common type of ovarian cancer (high-grade serous carcinoma or HGSC), and used a scanning technique called liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.
The findings published in the journal Science Advances showed each of the three identified proteins was useful as a biomarker for HGSCs.
“The results of this research suggest that these diagnostic biomarkers can be used as predictive markers for specific therapies,” said lead author Dr. Akira Yokoi, of Nagoya University.
“Our results allow doctors to optimize their therapeutic strategy for ovarian cancer, therefore, they may be useful for realizing personalized medicine.”
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9-in-ten women who are diagnosed early survive, but if discovered late the survival rate drops to just one in 10.
Currently only a third of cases are caught early, but these three proteins open the door to a new diagnostic tool.
“The validation steps for the identified proteins were tough because we had to try a lot of antibodies before we found a good target,” said Dr. Yokoi.
Then, the researchers created nanowires covered with a thermoplastic polymer called polyketone to separate the proteins from blood samples.
“It was tough. We must have tried three to four different coatings on the nanowires.
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“Although polyketones are a completely new material to use to coat this type of nanowire, in the end, they were such a good fit.”
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In a sweet wedding day moment, the father of the bride grabbed his daughter’s stepdad and pulled him to his feet so they could both walk her down the aisle.
Bride Amy Walkinshaw was raised by both her dad, Andy Collins, and her stepdad, Jeff Bennett, who has been in her life for the past two decades.
The 31-year-old knew as soon as she got engaged that she wanted both men to be involved in giving her away.
So she came up with a sweet surprise for her wedding day, scheduled for June 24 at Prested Hall in Colchester, England—a way to honor both father figures.
She asked her father to go over and surprise Jeff by grabbing him from his seat in the audience to join the wedding march.
“Jeff is basically a second dad to me,” said Amy. “I always imagined if I got married I’d ask him to walk me down the aisle, as well as my dad.
“Jeff didn’t know it was coming either—you can tell in the video the shock on Jeff’s face, I knew how much it meant to him.
“The main thing to come out of it is to show there doesn’t have to be animosity. You can ask a step-parent without upsetting your biological dad too.”
Amy said Jeff and Andy didn’t know each other, but Andy “agreed straight away” to Jeff being involved.
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On the day, Amy’s younger half-sister, Macenzie Collins, watched with emotion.
“Me and my sister have lived 150 miles from each other since I was born so we don’t see each other a lot. So, it was really nice to share that moment with each other.
WATCH the moment below…
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A new study explored the causal role that music engagement has on student achievement in mathematics—and they found a significant benefit.
Researchers believe that music can make math more enjoyable, keep students engaged, and help ease their fear or anxiety about topics like fractions. The addition of music may even motivate kids to appreciate math and want to learn more.
A typical technique for integrating music into math lessons for young children involves clapping to songs with different rhythms learning numbers, and equating fractions to musical notes.
The new meta-analysis published in the journal Educational Studies analyzed 55 studies from around the world, involving almost 78,000 students, from kindergarten to university age.
Three types of musical interventions were included: typical music lessons in which children sing, listen to, and learn about composing music; learning how to play instruments alone or as part of a band; and music-math integrated interventions, where music was integrated into math lessons.
Students took math tests before and after taking part in the intervention, and the change in their scores was compared with those who didn’t take part in any intervention.
The use of music—whether in separate lessons or as part of math classes—caused a greater improvement in math over time.
Combining both in the same lessons had the most significant effect, with around 73 percent of students who had integrated lessons doing significantly better than children who didn’t have any type of musical intervention.
Also, 69 percent of students who learned how to play instruments and 58 percent of students who had normal music lessons improved more than pupils with no musical intervention.
The results also revealed that music helps more with learning arithmetic than other types of math and has a bigger impact on younger pupils and those learning basic mathematical concepts.
Math and music have much in common, such as the use of symbols and symmetry. Both subjects also require abstract thought and quantitative reasoning.
Arithmetic may lend itself particularly well to being taught through music because core concepts, such as fractions and ratios, are also fundamental to music.
Musical notes of different lengths can be represented as fractions and added together to create several bars of music.
Integrated lessons may be especially effective because they allow pupils to build connections between the math and music and provide extra opportunities to explore, interpret and understand math.
“Encouraging mathematics and music teachers to plan lessons together could help ease students’ anxiety about mathematics, while also boosting achievement,” said Dr. Ayça Akın, from the department of software engineering at Antalya Belek University, Turkey.
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However, she said there were limitations to the study. The relatively small number of studies done meant it wasn’t possible to look at the effect of variables such as gender, socio-economic status, and duration of musical instruction upon the results.
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Quote of the Day: “What can you seek now, to make your heart still sing?” – Langston Hughes
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(By Mark Waghorn, SWNS)
Bird feathers from 99 million years ago not only shows that modern birds are descended from dinosaurs but might also point to why some of their ancestors died out.
The feathers, found preserved in amber in Myanmar, show how molting was the key to some early extinctions.
It represents the first definitive fossil example of juvenile molting in birds, the only type of dinosaurs to survive the asteroid strike.
The bird, named Enantiornithine, had to keep itself warm while undergoing rapid shedding, a factor in the species’ ultimate doom, say scientists.
All non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out in the asteroid strike that hit the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago.
“Enantiornithines were the most diverse group of birds in the Cretaceous, but they went extinct along with all the other non-avian dinosaurs,” explained Professor Jingmai O’Connor of The Field Museum Chicago, who published the research in the journals Cretaceous Research and Communications Biology.
“When the asteroid hit, global temperatures would have plummeted and resources would have become scarce, so not only would these birds have even higher energy demands to stay warm, but they didn’t have the resources to meet them.”
The present consensus is that birds are a group of theropod dinosaurs that originated during the Mesozoic Era from 252 to 66 million years ago.
Feathers are made of a protein called keratin, the same material as our fingernails and hair and molting happens as they can’t be repaired.
“Molting is fundamentally such an important process to birds, because feathers are involved in so many different functions,” said Prof. O’Connor.
“We want to know, how did this process evolve? How did it differ across groups of birds? And how has that shaped bird evolution, shaped the survivability of all these different clades?”
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Today there are two types, known as altricial or precocial birds. The former hatch naked so parents can transmit body heat directly to their skin. The latter are born with feathers and are fairly self-sufficient.
Molting takes a lot of energy, and losing a lot of feathers at once can make it hard for a bird to keep itself warm. As a result, precocial chicks tend to molt slowly. They keep a steady supply of feathers, while altricial chicks that can rely on their parents for food and warmth undergo a ‘simultaneous molt’ at roughly the same time.
Prof O’Connor explained, “This specimen shows a totally bizarre combination of precocial and altricial characteristics.
“All the body feathers are basically at the exact same stage in development, so this means that all the feathers started growing simultaneously, or near simultaneously.”
In modern adult birds, molting usually happens once a year in a sequential process, in which they replace just a few of their feathers at a time over the course of a few weeks. That way, they are still able to fly throughout the molting process. Simultaneous molts in adult birds are more common in aquatic birds like ducks.
They tested more than 600 skins of modern birds stored in the ornithology collection of the Field Museum to look for evidence of active molting.
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“Among the sequentially molting birds, we found dozens of specimens in an active molt, but among the simultaneous molters, we found hardly any,” said first author Dr Yosef Kiat.
While these are modern birds, not fossils, they provide a useful proxy.
“In paleontology, we have to get creative, since we don’t have complete data sets,” said O’Connor.
“Here, we used statistical analysis of a random sample to infer what the absence of something is actually telling us.”
It is believed ancient birds simply weren’t molting as often as most modern birds—either doing it simultaneously or not on a yearly basis like today. Prehistoric birds and feathered dinosaurs, especially ones from groups that didn’t survive the mass extinction, molted differently, state the US team.
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“All the differences that you can find between crown birds and stem birds, essentially, become hypotheses about why one group survived and the rest didn’t. I don’t think there is any one particular reason why the crown birds, the group that includes modern birds, survived. I think it is a combination of characteristics.
“But I think it is becoming clear that molt may have been a significant factor in which dinosaurs were able to survive.”
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Zookeepers threw a coming-out party for the baby calf of an okapi couple—a rare birth of ‘one of the least known and understood species on the planet’.
Known as the forest giraffe, the endangered mammal was born at Chester Zoo on May 12 to a 10-year-old mother and a 20-year-old male named Stomp.
The adorable calf, named Arabi, has been snuggled up in a nest behind-the-scenes but has now taken her first tentative steps outside at six-weeks-old.
Heartwarming photos and the video below shows the leggy youngster exploring her enclosure for the first time with some gentle encouragement from mum.
Conservationists hope the birth will shed new light on this shy and elusive species, which is classified as endangered, but was only scientifically discovered in 1901.
Arabi’s namesake is a village located in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, inside the only country where okapi are found—the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Africa.
It’s estimated that fewer than 10,000 remain in the wild, living in the dense rainforests in the DRC where their zebra stripes act as camouflage.
The English zoo and its partners say the new arrival will be considered a ‘vital’ part of the global population.
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“Every birth is incredibly special indeed,” said Hannah Owens, an okapi keeper at Chester Zoo. “Mum has been doing a fantastic job of feeding and nurturing her calf every day.”
Mike Jordan, animal and plant director at the zoo, added: “The arrival of this okapi calf is not only a cause for celebration but also a significant milestone in our ongoing commitment to the conservation and protection of this charismatic species.
“Through our continued efforts, we hope to inspire others to join us in safeguarding these remarkable creatures.”
The okapi is the national symbol of the DRC and is protected under Congolese law. However, habitat loss, poaching, and prolonged periods of conflict have made conservation more challenging.
“Despite that, we’ve been supporting okapi conservation in the region for nearly 20 years and are now part of a global 10-year long project, in collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to develop an action plan and investigate ways that we can help the last remaining populations thrive.”
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Conservation experts from Chester Zoo are now caring for a total of six okapi living in the UK. Check out the latest baby pictures below…
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A 95-year-old veteran became the first person to dance at a newly-reopened nightclub, 74 years after meeting his wife there.
Sprightly Kevin Topham took to the dance floor with his caregiver when Club X reopened after more than a decade in Nottinghamshire, last weekend.
The grandad-of-one was adamant that he wanted to go back to the venue where he remembers meeting his bride, Molly, in the 1940s, when it was known as the Corn Exchange—a hotspot for servicemen.
It was during a Royal Air Force dance that the retired airman and oil rig worker wooed Molly, before their happily married life with two children.
Kevin noticed the venue was being reopened in his local newspaper and asked his part-time caregiver Donna Harvey whether she would take him dancing.
Despite being warned there would be “booming music” and strobe lighting in a room full of 18-year-olds, the senior was undeterred.
But Donna had a better plan, and asked the club owner if they could come in early. He not only offered the dance floor but gave the veteran his choice of music.
Kevin was the first person to shuffle across the floor on Saturday night, July 1, to the song Chattanooga Choo Choo by the Glenn Miller Orchestra.
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“It was just amazing, his face absolutely beamed,” Donna said. “It melted my heart, because it made him happy.”
“All of his memories came flooding back to him.
“He put on his medals and he talked about how all the Americans stationed nearby would come in and there would be fights over who could dance with the women.
“It was just so heart warming. He hasn’t stopped talking about it.”
Donna said Kevin had asked her what she was doing that coming Saturday and then explained he wanted to take her out dancing.
“I said ‘Kevin, it will be nothing like it was in 1949’. But he just kept asking me about it – he was determined.
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“I thought if I didn’t take him he’s probably going to get in his car and go, which I didn’t want him to do. So when I was down there and saw the door of the club open, I went to go and see the manager.
“There was no umm-ing and ah-ing, the manager just said to bring him down at 8pm and that’s what we did.”
Kevin’s daughter, Karen Mason, said her dad had always loved dancing and found the whole event “quite emotional”. Kevin even spun Donna around.
“The new owners clearly care for their community, not just the young people but older members too.
They even put on a second slower song to close out the set.
The English club has since said it was inspired by Kevin and is looking at introducing an over-60s event each month where they will play music from the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
Watch their dances…
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Our partner Rob Brezsny provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)
Here is your weekly horoscope…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week of July 8, 2023
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
I wrote my horoscope column for over ten years before it began to get widely syndicated. What changed? I became a better writer and oracle, for one thing. My tenacity was inexhaustible. I was always striving to improve my craft, even when the rewards were meager. Another important factor in my eventual success was my persistence in marketing. I did a lot of hard work to ensure the right publications knew about me. I suspect, fellow Cancerian, that 2024 is likely to bring you a comparable breakthrough in a labor of love you have been cultivating for a long time. And the coming months of 2023 will be key in setting the stage for that breakthrough.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Maybe you wished you cared more deeply about a certain situation. Your lack of empathy and passion may feel like a hole in your soul. If so, I have good news. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to find the missing power; to tap into the warm, wet feelings that could motivate your quest for greater connection. Here’s a good way to begin the process: Forget everything you think you know about the situation with which you want more engagement. Arrive at an empty, still point that enables you to observe the situation as if you were seeing it for the first time.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
You are in an astrological phase when you’ll be wise to wrangle with puzzles and enigmas. Whether or not you come up with crisp solutions isn’t as crucial as your earnest efforts to limber up your mind. For best results, don’t worry and sweat about it; have fun! Now I’ll provide a sample riddle to get you in the mood. It’s adapted from a text by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace. You are standing before two identical closed doors, one leading to grime and confusion, the other to revelation and joy. Before the doors stand two figures: an angel who always tells the truth and a demon who always lies. But they look alike, and you may ask only one question to help you choose what door to take. What do you do? (Possible answer: Ask either character what the other would say if you asked which door to take, then open the opposite door.)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
I found a study that concluded just 6.1 percent of online horoscopes provide legitimate predictions about the future. Furthermore, the research indicated, 62.3 percent of them consist of bland, generic pabulum of no value to the recipient. I disagree with these assessments. Chani Nicholas, Michael Lutin, Susan Miller, and Jessica Shepherd are a few of many regular horoscope writers whose work I find interesting. My own astrological oracles are useful, too. And by the way, how can anyone have the hubris to decide which horoscopes are helpful and which are not? This thing we do is a highly subjective art, not an objective science. In the spirit of my comments here, Libra, and in accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to declare your independence from so-called experts and authorities who tell you they know what’s valid and worthwhile for you. Here’s your motto: “I’m the authoritative boss of my own truth.”
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Is it a fact that our bodies are made of stardust? Absolutely true, says planetary scientist Dr. Ashley King. Nearly all the elements comprising our flesh, nerves, bones, and blood were originally forged in at least one star, maybe more. Some of the stuff we are made of lived a very long time in a star that eventually exploded: a supernova. Here’s another amazing revelation about you: You are composed of atoms that have existed for almost 14 billion years. I bring these startling realities to your attention, Scorpio, in honor of the most expansive phase of your astrological cycle. You have a mandate to deepen and broaden and enlarge your understanding of who you are and where you came from.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
I foresee that August will be a time of experiments and explorations. Life will be in a generous mood toward you, tempting and teasing you with opportunities from beyond your circle of expectations. But let’s not get carried away until it makes cosmic sense to get carried away. I don’t want to urge you to embrace wild hope prematurely. Between now and the end of July, I advise you to enjoy sensible gambles and measured adventures. It’s OK to go deep and be rigorous, but save the full intensity for later.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Is there a crucial half-conscious question lurking in the underside of your mind? A smoldering doubt or muffled perplexity that’s important for you to address? I suspect there is. Now it’s time to coax it up to the surface of your awareness so you may deal with it forthrightly. You must not let it smolder there in its hiding place. Here’s the good news, Capricorn: If you bring the dilemma or confusion or worry into the full light of your consciousness, it will ultimately lead you to unexpected treasure. Be brave!
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
In Larry McMurtry’s novel Duane’s Depressed, the life of the main character has come to a standstill. He no longer enjoys his job. The fates of his kids are too complicated for him to know how to respond. He has a lot of feelings but has little skill in expressing them. At a loss about how to change his circumstances, he takes a small and basic step: He stops driving his pickup truck and instead walks everywhere he needs to go. Your current stasis is nowhere near as dire as Duane’s, Aquarius. But I do recommend you consider his approach to initiating transformation: Start small and basic.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Author K. V. Patel writes, “As children, we laugh fully with the whole body. We laugh with everything we have.” In the coming weeks, Pisces, I would love for you to regularly indulge in just that: total delight and release. Furthermore, I predict you will be more able than usual to summon uproarious life-affirming amusement from the depths of your enchanted soul. Further furthermore, I believe you will have more reasons than ever before to throw your head back and unleash your entire self in rippling bursts of healing hysterical hilarity. To get started, practice chuckling, giggling, and chortling for one minute right now.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Genius physicist Albert Einstein said, “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old questions from new angles, requires creative imagination and makes real advances.” What he said here applies to our personal dilemmas, too. When we figure out the right questions to ask, we are more than halfway toward a clear resolution. This is always true, of course, but it will be an especially crucial principle for you in the coming weeks.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
“Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.” So said Taurus biologist and anthropologist Thomas Huxley (1825-1895). I don’t think you will have to be quite so forceful as that in the coming weeks. But I hope you’re willing to further your education by rebelling against what you already know. And I hope you will be boisterously skeptical about conventional wisdom and trendy ideas. Have fun cultivating a feisty approach to learning! The more time you spend exploring beyond the borders of your familiar world, the better.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Hooray and hallelujah! You’ve been experimenting with the perks of being pragmatic and well-grounded. You have been extra intent on translating your ideals into effective actions. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you so dedicated to enjoying the simple pleasures. I love that you’re investigating the wonders of being as down-to-earth as you dare. Congratulations! Keep doing this honorable work.
WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com
(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)
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