US citizens or lawful permanent residents can now easily sponsor refugees seeking safety in America through a new program called the “Welcome Corps.”
Connected with a consortium of non-profits that specialize in the resettlement of Internationally Displaced Persons, or IDPs, the Welcome Corps will allow private US citizens to quickly capitalize on their humanitarian instincts when tragedies come calling worldwide.
Modeled after the Canadian refugee system, an IDP looking to come to America will be referred to the Welcome Corps by non-profits like Community Sponsorship Hub or International Refugee Assistance Project.
To sponsor their resettlement in America, five citizens or permanent residents must agree to financially and socially support an IDP and their family with up to $10,000 for the first 90 days.
Once the five-member compact is made, they will be referred to the consortium of non-profits for instructional sessions on how to help the IDP apply for residence, enroll their children in school, find work and housing, etc.
The advantage of the State Dept. leaving the work up to a private-private partnership is that a community response creates warmer social conditions for the folks arriving.
“You have five friends as soon as you step off the plane,” Sarah Krause, executive director and co-founder of the Community Sponsorship Hub, one of 200 non-profits the government has tasked with organizing the Welcome Corps, told Fast Company.
“It can take a long time to make five friends in the United States as a newcomer otherwise.”
In the second phase of development for the Welcome Corps, State will allow private sponsors to identify IDPs on their own for referral to the program. State hopes to welcome an additional 5,000 vetted refugees this year with the help of 10,000 private sponsors.
Equipment manager Carson Watters loves basketball, loves working on his junior varsity high school team, but never imagined he would ever get to play in a game.
The Philip Simmons HS freshman has worked hard all year, said his coaches, and deserved to show what he could do on the court.
“Seeing him go in and the look on his face when they called him into the game,” Carson’s mother Mary Watters said, “because he didn’t know it was going to happen, I can’t even describe it.”
15-year-old Watters has Down Syndrome. He’s trained the whole year as player-manager of the Iron Horses, and was able to show it when, with the clock running down, his teammates passed him the ball and he did rest.
“I made my lay-up,” he told reporters from ABC post-match.
His mother Mary knew ahead of time that the coach was going to sub Carson into the match, but they kept it a secret from him. She said that his freshman year has been anything but difficult, despite some apprehensions
“We really were not sure how the kids would respond,” Mary told GNN. “He had been at elementary school with some of them, but we really were not sure what the response would be since high school can be a socially difficult time for all the kids, and sports can be so competitive. We were absolutely blown away with how the team embraced Carson.”
Carson on the bench – by Jack Birchfield / BirchCreativeCo
“We are more encouraged than ever about Carson’s future and potential for involvement in mainstream activities,” Mary continued.
“More than anything, we hope it will encourage parents of kids with different abilities to seek involvement for their children in mainstream activities and encourage the general public, kids and adults, to embrace and recognize the enrichment, value and contribution that everyone can give, regardless of ability or differences.”
WATCH the story below from ABC 2 News…
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Portion of coded letter from Mary Mary Queen of Scots to French Ambassador Chateauneuf – British National Archives
Portion of coded letter from Mary Mary Queen of Scots to French Ambassador Chateauneuf – British National Archives
An international cryptology team accidentally discovered a series of coded letters written by Mary Queen of Scots and deciphered them.
The contents of those letters that have so far been decoded reveal the thoughts, plots, and emotions penned by Mary while she was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth I, and were believed to have been lost entirely.
The cipher which Mary used was so extensive that it was entirely lost upon the bibliographers at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France who had written them and what they contained. They ended up shoved in a collection pertaining to correspondences with the Italians.
When cryptographer and computer scientist George Lasry, piano and music professor Norbert Biermann, and physicist Satoshi Tomokiyo came across the letters, they quickly realized they “had nothing to do” with Italy.
Their detective work revealed verbs and adverbs often in the feminine form, several mentions of captivity, and the name ‘Walsingham’ which arose the suspicion that they might be from Mary.
Using computerized and manual techniques, the research team decoded the letters written from 1578 to 1584. They show the challenges Mary faced maintaining links with the outside world, how the letters were carried and by whom, and the brilliance of her spy/correspondence network.
Key themes include complaints about her poor health and conditions in captivity, and her negotiations with Queen Elizabeth I for her release, which she believes were not conducted in good faith. Her mistrust of Elizabeth’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham is also apparent, as well as her animosity for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and a favorite of Elizabeth.
Mary also expresses her distress when her son James—the future King James I of England, is abducted in August 1582, and her feeling they have been abandoned by France.
Cipher on coded letter from Mary Mary Queen of Scots to French Ambassador Chateauneuf – British National Archives
Surrounded by enemies
Born Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland in 1542, she spent much of her life in captivity, first at the hands of Scottish Protestants for her religious faith as a Catholic, and then by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, who considered her a threat to the throne. Beyond Albion, Mary found more allies in France, especially among Catholics.
Most of her letters are addressed to Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissière, the French ambassador to England. She was involved in several conspiracies to incite rebellion amongst Catholics in Britain, and her deeply-coded letters helped conceal her complicity.
“Upon deciphering the letters, I was very, very puzzled and it kind of felt surreal,” explained the lead author of the paper published on the work, Dr. Lasry. “We have broken secret codes from kings and queens previously, and they’re very interesting, but with Mary Queen of Scots, it was remarkable as we had so many unpublished letters deciphered and because she is so famous.”
Lasry and his team deciphered 57 letters and published them in the journal Cryptologia on the 436th anniversary of Mary’s execution (Feb. 8th), aged 44, at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire.
Encrypted letter from Mary Queen Scots – Bibliotheque Nationale de France
“Mary Queen of Scots left an extensive corpus of letters held in various archives,” explain the authors. “There was prior evidence, however, that other letters from Mary Stuart were missing from those collections, such as those referenced in other sources but not found elsewhere.”
“The letters we have deciphered…are most likely part of this lost secret correspondence.”
During her time in captivity, Mary communicated with her associates and allies because of extensive efforts made to recruit messengers and to maintain secrecy.
The existence of a confidential communication channel between Mary and her supporters was known to the English government at the time, but the channels appear to be so strong that for decades, none of the letters fell into the wrong hands.
Eventually, a sterner jailer was appointed who managed to intercept a plot to install her on the English throne, enough to charge her with treason and pass an execution sentence.
“Due to the sheer amount of deciphered material, about 50,000 words in total and enough to fill a book, we have only provided preliminary summaries of the letters, as well as the full reproduction of a few of them, hoping to provide enough incentive to historians with the relevant expertise to engage in in-depth analysis of their contents, to extract insights that would enrich our perspective on Mary’s captivity,” the codebreakers write.
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Quote of the Day: “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” – Winston Churchill
Image: Donald Giannatti
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An artistic form of recycling has an artist in Belgium creating exceptionally unique sculptures from the bits, bones, and barbs of insects.
Joos Habraken creates these insectoid sculptures, measuring from 8 to 15 centimeters tall, out of between 30 and 100 pieces of dead insects.
Each sculpture can contain parts from up to 30 individual insect species including beetles, grasshoppers, mantises, and butterflies.
Joos harvests the bug body parts from insects he finds on walks or purchases them from wholesalers.
“I feel like I’m creating a new species with a new life and story,” Joos says. “I start with an archetype like father, mother, witch, or benevolent king. These are things that people know, without them knowing they recognize them.”
Then Joos takes apart the bugs, modifies the pieces he wants to use, and mounts them on a stick before gluing them together.
Joos Habraken / SWNS
“The hardest part is getting the details right because you’re using 30 different bugs, so you don’t know if the head will fit the body,” said the 28-year-old rock climbing instructor from Ghent, Belgium.
Each piece takes between 30 and 40 hours of work and Joos makes three or four pieces a year. So far, he’s sold every piece he’s made, with the exception of the last three, as he is preparing for an exhibition.
The figures come with their own detailed backstories and portray characters and species from a fictional universe.
Credit Joos Habraken – SWNS
“It’s definitely therapeutic and meditative to create these, but I don’t think about what it brings to me, it’s just the creation of something beautiful,” said Joos.
“100% of the time people are interested when I tell them, they ask what I mean, then I show them and they love them.”
“Sometimes I don’t touch my art for a month. You just don’t always have the time, but it’s always nice to come back and see the work come together, that moment is just a super good feeling.”
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Juliette Lamour family photo / Ontario Lottery and Gaming
Juliette Lamour family photo / Ontario Lottery and Gaming
A delightful story from northern Ontario saw a 5-year-old girl’s good Karma wait 13 years to reward her.
Juliette Lamour won the state’s second-largest lottery jackpot in history, CAD$48 million, on her first-ever try. Local news from her home city of Sault Saint Marie revealed a touching side of the story—that at 5 years old Lamour made a very big act of charity, and the suggestion that her generosity has been rewarded is impossible to resist making.
It was 2010 and the island nation of Haiti had just been ravaged by an earthquake. Aid organizations from across the world rushed to help the people of the obliterated country stabilize and recover.
At the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds hockey team ice rink a branch of the Canadian Red Cross had set up a table to help raise money for Haiti, and Juliette and her sister Sophie were determined to help.
They upturned their big pink sharing piggy bank that day, out of which came $61.38.
Then last week, Juliette stepped forward as a young woman to claim the $48 million prize at the Ontario lottery offices.
She told Soo Today that she was on her way to bring her grandfather some ice cream.
“I called him on the phone asking what kind of ice cream he wanted,” she recalled. “And he said to me: ‘You just turned 18, go buy a lotto ticket, test your luck.’ So I did.”
“I got to the corner store and I’m in my car—and I didn’t know how to buy it,” she said laughing. “So I had to call my dad. I said: ‘Dad, Grandpa wants me to buy a ticket. How do I do it?’ He’s like: ‘Oh, just go inside and get a QuickPick.’”
Fortunately for Lamour, her father is a financial advisor, so it’s unlikely to burn a hole in her pocket.
Preparatory work began this week to restore the sharp spire atop the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris as the destroyed monument continues on track for a late-2024 reopening.
Scaffolding has been set up, and custom-cut stones for the spire’s base were recently delivered by barge along the River Seine as they would have been during the last spire’s construction in the 19th century.
It’s been almost 4 years since the iconic building was devastated by a fire, and the reconstruction has been going according to schedule. Early hopes were that it would be ready to welcome visitors for the Summer Olympics in Paris next year, but a December completion seems more likely.
At the moment, December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, is the target.
The original spire was designed by architect Eugene Viollet-Le-Duc, and the replacement has been made as an exact replica out of 500 tons of oak, with another 250 tons of lead for the covering and ornaments.
The collapse of the spire was described as one of the most dramatic moments of the fire.
Notre Dame fire CBS News-YouTube-only use once
Once completed, the spire will be 100 meters tall. France24 recently released the second mini-doc looking at how the restoration work is going—available here in English.
The French government has repeatedly assured the people of Europe that extreme precautions are being taken to prevent lead poisoning in the environment or the workers.
An update on the reconstruction GNN published last year, detailed how the original cathedral had a huge amount of lead used on the roof, which the fire melted down into the depths of the building. After it cooled, chipping the toxic metal off the surviving stone and wood became the majority of the cleanup work.
In the meantime, restoration work uncovered multiple stone tombs and a lead sarcophagus among the lowest foundations of the cathedral in a remarkable discovery. The sarcophagus contained the remains of a religious leader from the 13th century.
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Always keen to anthropomorphize their robots, NASA put out a social media post of one of their Mars rovers coming upon an exciting discovery.
Putting words into the Curiosity rover’s mouth as it lazily dug around in the dirt, the rover said, ‘Rock. Rock. Rock. Rock. Rock. Rock. METEORITE!’
“This one’s about a foot wide and made of iron-nickel,” ‘said’ the Curiosity Rover on Twitter. “We’re calling it ‘Cacao.'”
Sent to explore a region of Mars called Gale Crater, as well as to climb Mount Sharp, Curiosity has been roving 3,725 Martian days, or just over 10 years of Earth days.
It’s not uncommon for the robot geologist to discover a meteorite, and in fact, the NASA tweet included pictures of other meteorites it’s found on the Red Plant over the years.
Here's another meteorite I found in 2016. It's called "Egg Rock" aka the golf ball
A commenter asked why they appear to be sitting on the surface of Mars like regular stones, to which the rover replied that the craters they would have made upon impact were likely filled in and then eroded away, leaving only the hardest materials behind.
Curiosity’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, took a panorama of Cacao with its 100-millimeter focal length lens. The panorama is made up of 19 individual images that were stitched together after being sent to Earth.
The color has been adjusted to match lighting conditions as the human eye would perceive them on Earth.
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Quote of the Day: “There’s no knowledge that is not power.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image: Giammarco Boscaro
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Boyan Slat, Founder of The Ocean Cleanup, and Joe Geddia, Co-Founder of Airbnb - Released
Boyan Slat, Founder of The Ocean Cleanup, and Joe Gebbia, Co-Founder of Airbnb – Released
The co-founder of Airbnb.org has just donated $25 million to support the Dutch nonprofit The Ocean Cleanup as they prepare to assemble and deploy the largest plastic capture system ever developed for use in the ocean.
The Ocean Cleanup’s pilot-scale ocean cleaning system, System 002, has been deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) located between Hawai’i and California since late 2021. It has so far removed close to 200,000 kilograms, or roughly 440,000 pounds, of plastic that otherwise would have remained trapped for decades or more.
This pilot system is now in the process of being scaled up to the largest, most cost-effective ocean cleaning system ever developed, and will feature a capture area 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) across, and a three-vessel team that will allow it to operate 24-7.
“I’m proud to partner with The Ocean Cleanup in their crucial work to remove harmful plastics from our oceans,” said Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb and Samara. “The Ocean Cleanup has created systems and technology that actually work at scale. In order for them to deploy across our oceans and rivers, they now need to scale their funding. It is my hope that this donation can inspire others to act.”
As the only group currently cleaning the trillions of plastic pieces in the GPGP, The Ocean Cleanup has streamlined their cleaning systems to be as cost-effective as possible, allowing their entirely not-for-profit income generation and any potential donations to go far.
Dutch wiz kid and Ocean Cleanup founder Boyan Slat has been developing the capture system for a decade, and has gradually enlarged and improved it based on fieldwork harvesting plastic from the GPGP. System 03, cleans ten times faster than the previous system and could clean all the plastic patches of the world’s oceans with about 10-50 systems.
“Joe’s continued support of The Ocean Cleanup’s mission has a direct impact on our operations all over the world,” said Slat. “Thanks, in part, to his generous assistance, we are able to scale up our work in oceans and rivers, helping us reach our goal of ridding the world’s oceans of plastic. On behalf of the world’s largest ecosystem, we are immensely grateful for the support.”
Slat’s work in the GPGP will go down as one of the greatest accomplishments in the 21st century. In front of him was a true leviathan of a problem—a patch of plastic trash twice the size of Texas swirling in International Waters where even the loudest climate-hollering nation-state had no desire to even crack an idea about how to clean it.
Relying only on his team, and his vision of basic scientific deduction and elegant engineering solutions, Slat proved that the most absurd problem was nevertheless solvable.
His vision attracted millions in private contributions from philanthropists like Gebbia, even while government scientists sneered at his use of fossil-fuel vessels to pull the nets to capture the plastic.
WATCH the explanation of the new cleanup system below…
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The threat of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections has been growing across human civilization for years, but a new look at a plant pathogen discovered years ago reveals a potential new method of combating it—an antibacterial agent that works like nothing else deployed in medicine.
Called albicidin, it belongs to a pathogen that causes a disease in sugarcane called leaf scald, but also seems to attack bacteria in a completely different way than common antibiotics like fluoroquinolones.
A new study looking at the mechanism used by albicidin to attack lifeforms found that it works as a DNA topoisomerase inhibitor.
Topoisomerases are nuclear enzymes that play essential roles in DNA replication, transcription, chromosome segregation, and recombination. In the study, albicidin was found to efficiently lock DNA gyrase in antibiotic-resistant E. coli, caused double-strand DNA breaks, and eventual cell death.
“We could not elicit any resistance towards albicidin in the laboratory,” said Dmitry Ghilarov, one of the researchers in a British-German-Polish group that studied the potential antibiotic at the John Innes Center in Norwich, UK.
“That is why we are really excited—because we think it will be very hard for bacteria to evolve resistance against albicidin-derived antibiotics.”
Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are one of the biggest challenges in conventional medicine today. Far more dangerous in terms of case fatality and total fatality than COVID-19 has ever been, developing new methods of fighting these infections has nevertheless been a task largely ignored by major pharma companies.
“Now we have a structural understanding, we can create modifications of albicidin to improve its efficacy and pharmacological properties,” said Ghilarov.
“We believe this is one of the most exciting new antibiotic candidates in many years. It has extremely high effectiveness in small concentrations and is highly potent against pathogenic bacteria—even those resistant to the widely used antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones.”
Animal infection models have already established both safety and efficacy in two derivatives of ablicidin.
Furthermore, the researchers write in their study that inhibitors of DNA gyrase represent an untapped reservoir of potential antibiotic compounds, and building a broad understanding of one will help expand the field outward, potentially turning over new leaves in the development of a whole new class of pharmaceuticals.
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An elderly Belgian man was able to meet the descendants of a neighbor who saved him from the Holocaust after his perseverant son and a helpful geneticist managed to track down his grandchildren.
The meeting was organized in the same house where a 5-year-old David Rossler was hidden along with his mother. Now 85, Rossler had a chance to thank the grandchildren for what their grandfather, Georges Bourlet, had done.
Mr. Bourlet lived in Auderghem, Brussels with his four adolescent children, Paul, Jacques, Anne-Marie, and Christiane. Together they gave shelter to Rossler and his mother towards the end of the war in 1944 after Rossler’s uncle and grandfather had already been seized and sent to Auschwitz.
In the present day, David Rossler’s son Lionel has tried for years to find the family that hid his father and grandmother. Thanks to social media and genealogist Marie Cappart at MyHeritage, he was able to track down Anne-Marie’s son Xavier.
“After browsing records and cross-referencing data, Marie found an Anne-Marie Bourlet, born in Auderghem in 1929,” said Lionel. “She discovered that Anne-Marie married someone with the surname Dedoncker and had five children—all of them possibly still alive.”
“After a bit more research, Cappart found Xavier, one of Georges Bourlet’s grandsons, and managed to contact him.”
L-R back: Bernard Moens, Anne Moens, Pascale Moens. L-R front: Christine Moens, David Rossler, Xavier Dedoncker – SWNS
Through Xavier, Cappart got in contact with all five grandchildren of Georges Bourlet and explained that Lionel hoped to be able to introduce them to David whom their grandfather had saved when he was just a boy. It became clear that one of the grandchildren lived in the very house that David was hidden in, after which a meeting was set up there.
“It was an incredibly emotional day for us,” Lionel explained. “I was able to see, with my own eyes, the place where my father was kept safe from the Germans all those years ago.”
“If I had Mr. Bourlet in front of me, I would want to kiss him,” said David. “To say thank you with all my body, with all my life, I am alive, I have a family of which I am very, very, very proud of. To tell him that my life is thanks to him.”
“Nine people were saved thanks to what he did,” Lionel added. “My brother, myself, and our children would not be here today if not for his courage and kindness.
“In Jewish tradition, there is a saying that ‘he who saves one life saves all of humanity’ – Georges Bourlet saved humanity nine times over We are submitting our testimony to Yad Vashem in hopes that he will be recognized for his heroism and granted the title of ‘Righteous Among the Nations,'” said Lionel, referencing the Israeli civilian honor for those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
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The pomegranate bush represents Katherine of Aragon while the Tudor rose represents Henry VIII. Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum
The pomegranate bush represents Katherine of Aragon while the Tudor rose represents Henry VIII. Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum
“People say it’s like winning the lottery; it’s not. People actually win the lottery. When was the last time a crown jewel was unearthed?”
Those were the words of Birmingham cafe owner Charlie Clark who after just 6-months of metal detecting as a hobby, found the treasure of a lifetime.
Elbows-deep in a field in Warwickshire after a day of turning up junk, Clark found a 300-gram necklace of 24-carat gold that is believed to have either belonged to or commissioned as a present for, King Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon.
Despite seeming too good to be true, the curator of Renaissance Europe at the British Museum, Rachel King, confirms that the find is genuine, but what it was doing buried in a field in Warwickshire, and what its connection was to the King and his wife, are questions that as of now have no answer.
“In the British Museum, we’ve got the largest collection of objects from the early Tudor periods in precious metal; none of them are anything like this,” said King, explaining that the archives and collections were scoured for any scrap of evidence that might place the pendant and chain in the King’s possession.
The pendant bears the initials H and K on one side. Further evidence of its royal designation comes from the design on the front—a Tudor rose formed by precious stones, and a pomegranite bush, the latter the symbol of Katherine’s house. Lastly, a “Franglais pun” on the underside reads TOV IOURS, a blend between the translations of Toujours and All Yours, IOURS being the Old English spelling.
One hypothesis of its origin was that it was made by a wealthy courtier to be a present for them, but that it was perhaps never delivered or stolen. Another theory was that it could have been made for one of the tournaments which Henry VIII was so fond of putting on.
The pendant was deemed treasure under the UK’s Treasure Act which allows the government to buy archaeological and historical finds for fair market value based on metal and antiquity trades. 96% of all treasure finds between 2,020 and 2,022 were found by metel detectives.
The sum has not been released, but Mr. Clark said it will be split with the landowner of the field in which he found the pendant, and spent to give his son a first-class education.
Quote of the Day: “You can be a con or a man. You can’t be both.” – FBI Agent Peter Burke (from the TV Series, White Collar, about a conman)
Image: Joshua Earle
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A large trial investigating the effectiveness of a celery-seed-derived neuroprotectant drug for use in ischemic stroke cases has shown significant promise.
Patients given the medicine called butylphthalide had a 70% better chance of improved neurological and general living outcomes 90 days post-stroke, a finding generated from a little over 1,000 cases.
Butylphthalide is already approved for use in treating strokes in China. Currently though, the FDA has not approved it for any use.
How butylphthalide works isn’t clear, with animal studies suggesting various possible mechanisms. It may help protect brain tissue from damage when the supply of oxygenated blood is cut off and it works alongside existing clot-busting drugs or procedures to remove blood clots in ischemic stroke conditions.
The trial consisted of 1,216 patients who were admitted for stroke in China where the drug is approved for use, and given it alongside a tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) and/or a mechanical clot removal procedure—two primary means of dealing with ischemic, or clot strokes.
Every year, more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke, with 87% of these being ischemic ones. The burden of these events is large, and they are a leading cause of disability in the elderly.
“This is the first trial to show the benefit of using a medication that protects the brain from damage caused by a lack of oxygen to brain tissue. The medication was given to patients with acute ischemic stroke who were also receiving treatment to restore blood flow to the brain,” said Baixue Jia, M.D., co-author of the study.
The patients were then analyzed for stroke symptoms 90 days after the event, and those who had received the celery-seed-derived butylphthalide fared better 70% of the time compared to placebo.
“The next step should be investigating the exact mechanisms of butylphthalide in humans,” Jia said. Other authors noted that the relation between the medication and eating celery seed or celery should not be considered as existent, since it is merely derived from the vegetable.
There are other options for clearing blood clots, so the study is limited to the fact that the patients only received two of the available methods.
The results will soon be presented to the International Stroke Conference this week in Dallas, Texas.
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Mr Butler's child on the trike - retrieved from KCRA, YouTube.
Mr. Butler’s child on the trike – retrieved from KCRA, YouTube.
No gas is no problem for one Stockton CA inventor who created a solar-powered tricycle that’s really catching on.
Milton Butler’s invention uses two batteries and a small electric motor gathered up in a normal plastic storage bin to power three bicycle wheels and is allowing his family to save money on $5.00 per-gallon gasoline.
He says he built the contraption based on something he saw in his dreams, and out of things he had lying around in his garage.
“I’m an inventor and that’s all I know how to do. I invented something that people can use everywhere,” said Milton Butler of his idea. “It came to me in my sleep and I saw how the sun is always out, so I went and got my boys and we built something that we can use from the sun.”
Butler told KCRA that a friend of his asked about the trike on behalf of a man from the other side of the world in The Philippines, who complained about $11.00 gas and 14 hours of sunlight per day.
In December Butler was hoping to drive the “Duckie” as it’s called, downtown to city hall and hopefully show off his newly-patented device.
The name comes from his late wife who did “everything perfect,” in Milton’s eyes. Currently, Mr. Butler is in the funding and development phase looking for investors who are committed to creating a better world.
WATCH Milton’s kids drive about in their tricycle…
WATCH This Inspiring Invention From A Brilliant Mind…
Brady's 2007 Jersey NFL Hall of Fame - CC 2.0. Erik Drost
Brady’s 2007 Jersey NFL Hall of Fame – CC 2.0. Erik Drost
23 years ago, Thomas Patrick Edward Brady Jr. was signed as a 6th-round draft pick. As of his current official retirement announcement on the 1st of February, 2023, he holds nearly every NFL quarterback record.
However, it might, even now, not be the end of the road for the 45-year-old. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has said he would offer the greatest quarterback of all time a 1-day contract so that he could retire as a Patriot.
“Not only do I want it, our fans are clamoring for it and to us, he always has been and always will be a Patriot,” Kraft continued at a press conference.
“We’ll do everything we can in our power to bring him back, sign off as a Patriot and find ways to honor him for many years to come. He did so much to bring life and good cheer to our community and he’s a beloved figure and he’s earned the respect and love that people feel for him like no other athlete in our town and we’ve had some great ones.”
After two decades of unprecedented dominance as the star of the Patriots, Brady did one of the hardest things to do in sport—transfer to another team and continue winning exactly as before. When Brady won Super Bowl LV with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it was only the 7th time in history that the Wildcard team won it, and also the first time Tampa Bay had.
He became the second player in history to win the Super Bowl with two different teams, but the first to win Super Bowl MVP with two different teams.
Brady retires with more NFL championship wins than any other player and holds countless records for passing, wins, touchdowns, and individual accolades.
Perhaps a good method of summarizing his performance was recently written in a CBS report, which was that if one divides Brady’s career into three decades, each one would mark a Hall of Fame-worthy career.
“Words cannot adequately express the gratitude my family, the New England Patriots and our fans have for everything he has done,” Kraft continued in a statement.
“It’s been a blessing for me to watch him grow, first as a young professional on the field, but most importantly, as a person off it. He is one of the most loving, caring and passionate players I have ever known and I will always consider him a part of our family.”
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A kayaker got more than he bargained for when he set off hoping to encounter some beluga whales.
His innovative approach of conducting marine biology by singing at the top of his lungs actually managed to draw in a pod of these smaller whales who began to interact with his kayak.
After a period of elation and disbelief, he threw on a scuba mask and began to dive and swim near the animals, singing as he went.
In the most incredible inter-species duet one is likely to hear, the belugas actually began to sing back to him with their chirps and trills.
We’ll leave it to the scientists to make determinations of what exactly these intelligent marine mammals were doing, but beluga whales do communicate via high-frequency sounds that could resemble singing in the auditory environment of the ocean.
YouTube commenters noted nice it was for the belugas to join in, but that rightly detailed that unfortunately, the little whales shouldn’t take the strange singing man home—humans belong in the wild.
Quote of the Day: “Wisdom is sweeter than honey, brings more joy than wine, illumines more than the sun, is more precious than jewels.” – the Queen of Sheba, from Kebra Nagast, a (translated) 14th-century epic text from Ethiopia
Image: Josh Hild
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Hanging out in a local park, lake, or garden really could be an antidote to ill health for people who live in cities, according to a recent study from Finland.
Researchers found lower use of drugs for depression, anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, and asthma among urban residents who often visit green spaces—regardless of their income or level of education.
The Finnish team said that the frequency of visits to urban green spaces, rather than simply viewing them from your house, was key.
Previous studies have suggested that exposure to natural environments is good for health and well-being, but the evidence is inconsistent.
The Finnish team looked at the number of green and blue spaces (bodies of water) within a community, then compared those to both the frequency of visits, and the views of such spaces from home, to see if they were separately associated with the use of certain prescription medications.
They chose prescription meds as a proxy for ill health and those for anxiety and insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, and asthma, in particular, because they are used to treat common and potentially serious health issues.
They drew on the responses of 16,000 randomly selected residents of Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa—the three cities making up the largest urban area in Finland.
The survey gathered information on how city dwellers over the age of 25 experience residential green and blue spaces within a one-kilometer radius of home.
Participants were also asked to report their use of prescribed meds—drugs collectively known as mental health drugs used for insomnia and depression, as well as high blood pressure and asthma drugs—for periods ranging from within the past week, within the past year, or never.
They were also asked how often they spent time, or exercised outdoors, in green spaces, during May and September, with options ranging from never to five or more times a week.
Participants reported whether they could see green or blue spaces from any of their windows at home, and if so, how often they took in those views, with options ranging from seldom to often.
Potentially influential factors—including outdoor air pollution and noise, and household income and educational attainment—were also considered.
The findings, published last month in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, showed that neither the number of green/blue spaces nearby, nor views of them through your window, were associated with the use of the studied meds.
But the frequency of visiting the green spaces was.
Compared with less than one weekly visit, visiting three or four times weekly was associated with 33 percent lower odds of using mental health meds, 36 percent lower odds of using blood pressure meds, and 26 percent lower odds of using asthma meds.
Central Park in New York by Ajay Suresh, CC license
“The effects of visiting green spaces were stronger among those reporting the lowest annual household income,” said senior researcher Dr. Anu Turunen. “But overall, the associations found did not depend on household income and educational attainment.”
“These observed associations were weakened when weight was factored in, particularly for asthma meds, as obesity is a known risk factor for asthma,” added Turunen, of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.
Finnish cities are relatively green, making it easy for those willing to use green spaces to access them with minimal effort.
“Mounting scientific evidence supporting the health benefits of nature exposure is likely to increase the supply of quality green spaces in urban environments and promote their active use.
“This might be one way to improve health and welfare in cities.”
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