An English campaign designed to help and encourage people to quit smoking conducted a survey which has found that more than one million people have quit smoking since the outbreak of COVID-19.
The campaign called Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) reported that of the 41% of people in the UK who stopped smoking cigarettes in 2020 said it was a direct result of the pandemic.
It was not confirmed whether this was due partially or primarily to a lack of access to tobacco products because of the lockdowns, or the implementation of social distancing measures which prevented social cigarette use, or if it was from the links between smoking and the virus’s infection and hospitalization rates.
Strong evidence from several epidemiological studies linked smoking cigarettes and lung health with increased likelihood of developing the more serious panoply of symptoms arising from the novel coronavirus.
Separately, the University College London’s survey on smoking rates found fewer smokers among the 2020 UK population than in any year since they started taking the survey in 2007.
UCL’s annual Smoking Toolkit Study found that the average number of smokers who were quitting the habit in 2020 spiked from the 13-year average of 5.9% to 7.6%.
Around 7 million people were smoking in the UK in 2019. Since 2005, the Northeastern part of the country—with cities such as Newcastle and Sunderland—has seen the largest fall in smoking rates.
Treat Your Friends To The Good News By Sharing This To Social Media…
The set of Jeopardy photographed by Joseph Hunkins, CC license, cropped
Since 1984, when he debuted as the host of Jeopardy, Alex Trebek has been like family to the millions of viewers who joined him on television 5 nights a week.
And, like family, they embraced him with love and support—and an outpouring of letters, guidance, and prayers—after Alex announced last year that he had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer,
For decades, he put off writing a book about his life—until all that goodwill changed his mind. And the COVID-19 lockdown provided him with all the time he needed.
Today, on his 80th birthday, Trebek says he is “not afraid of dying,” yet he will head back to the show as soon as coronavirus restrictions are lifted.
While hosting his 36th season, he was undergoing rounds of chemo treatments and wore a wig whenever they taped the show because he was losing his hair.
Even though cancer has taken its toll, he says that as soon as he gets onstage, “it all changes suddenly. I’m myself again. I feel good,” he wrote in his new memoir, The Answer Is… Reflections on My Life.
The set of Jeopardy photographed by Joseph Hunkins, CC license, cropped
The book combines personal anecdotes with Trebek’s thoughts on a range of topics, including marriage, parenthood, education, success, spirituality, and philanthropy (his charitable giving has benefitted World Vision, the USO, United Negro College Fund, National Geographic Society, and Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission).
It uses a fun structure inspired by Jeopardy, with each chapter title presented in the form of a question, “What Is…”
Sean Manning, the executive editor at Simon & Schuster which published the book said, “Today, when there is so much uncertainty and turmoil in the world, Alex Trebek is a beacon of stability and positivity.”
The book, which dropped in bookstores yesterday, features dozens of never-before-seen candid photos of Trebek over the years—and the 7-time Emmy winner from Canada also answers the questions Jeopardy fans ask most, such as what prompted him to shave his signature mustache, and his opinion of Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live impersonation.
And he provides plenty more answers to questions like What is… ‘How it feels to be 80 and living with cancer.’ He peppers those passages with curse words, because that’s who he is in real life.
“I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year,” he wrote.
WATCH an exclusive ABC interview from this week…
ALSO check out this funny video showing a day in the life of Alex behind the cameras…
Broadcast Some Happy Birthday Greetings to Alex on Social Media By SHARING…
Quote of the Day: “In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings—artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers—to create order.” Tom Robbins (turns 88 today)
Photo: by CDC (growing flu cells)
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, there is space enough for trees to grow—and space enough for 2 million residents to plant truckloads of trees while social distancing.
Although the virus has spread fast throughout the country, its threat was not enough to dissuade the government of the most-populous Indian state from conducting a mass tree-planting campaign along the banks of the river Ganges as part of its pledge to shade a third of the nation under tree cover by 2030.
The nation’s target acreage of 235 million acres would represent an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.
The planting was carried out last week by volunteers, nonprofit employees, government workers, and even lawmakers, all of whom maintained distance from each other and wore face masks to stop the possible spread of coronavirus.
“We are committed to increase the forest cover of Uttar Pradesh to over 15% of the total land area in next five years,” said the state’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, pictured above during the campaign’s inauguration ceremony.
“In today’s campaign, over 20 million trees will be planted at the banks of the Ganges river, which will help in keeping this mighty river clean.”
Many nations have targeted 2030 as the deadline for various sustainability-related goals, to coincide with the UN’s 18 Sustainable Development Goals designed to encourage nations to solve the world’s largest problems, such as poverty, hunger, pollution, access to clean water, education access, and more.
Mass tree plantings have been launched as an easy and inexpensive method of drawing carbon from the atmosphere, with hundreds of millions of trees being planted in countries around the world, including China, Pakistan, India, Madagascar, and the nations of the Sahel, especially Ethiopia and Senegal.
The survival of every tree during such mass-planting operations is not guaranteed, of course, but compared to changing energy and transportation infrastructure, tree-planting is easy, inexpensive, and helpful in regenerating previously degraded land back to healthy, functioning ecosystems.
Shaquille O’Neal is no stranger to being featured in national news headlines, but it’s not just because of his legendary sports career—he is also regularly praised for having a heart of gold.
In addition to being hailed for his charity work and random acts of kindness, Shaq was lauded by law enforcement on Facebook after he stopped to help a Florida woman who was in a car accident last week.
According to the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department, Shaq pulled over to the side of I-75 when he saw the woman’s tire blow out. After making sure that she was okay following the collision, he waited with her until law enforcement arrived.
Shaq left the scene shortly afterwards, but not before greeting the surprised officers with a fist bump, as seen on the dash cam footage.
Since the Sheriff’s department posted the video to social media, it has been viewed almost 400,000 times—and while it’s not as if the NBA star was filmed removing a bullet, it is always heartening to see celebrities with kind heart.
(WATCH the video below)
Be Sure And Share This Sweet Story Of Celebrity Kindness With Your Friends On Social Media…
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a tiny camera that can ride aboard an insect. Here a Pinacate beetle explores the UW campus with the camera on its back. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington.
Attaching the camera system to a Pinacate beetle. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington.
In the movie Ant-Man, the title character can shrink in size and travel by soaring on the back of an insect. Now researchers at the University of Washington have developed a tiny wireless steerable camera that can also ride aboard an insect, giving everyone a chance to see an Ant-Man view of the world.
The camera, which streams video to a smartphone at 1 to 5 frames per second, sits on a mechanical arm that can pivot 60 degrees. This allows a viewer to capture a high-resolution, panoramic shot or track a moving object while expending a minimal amount of energy. To demonstrate the versatility of this system, which weighs about 250 milligrams—about one-tenth the weight of a playing card—the team mounted it on top of live beetles and insect-sized robots.
“We have created a low-power, low-weight, wireless camera system that can capture a first-person view of what’s happening from an actual live insect or create vision for small robots,” said senior author Shyam Gollakota, a UW associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “Vision is so important for communication and for navigation, but it’s extremely challenging to do it at such a small scale. As a result, prior to our work, wireless vision has not been possible for small robots or insects.”
Typical small cameras, such as those used in smartphones, use a lot of power to capture wide-angle, high-resolution photos, and that doesn’t work at the insect scale. While the cameras themselves are lightweight, the batteries they need to support them make the overall system too big and heavy for insects—or insect-sized robots—to lug around. So the team took a lesson from biology.
“Similar to cameras, vision in animals requires a lot of power,” said co-author Sawyer Fuller, a UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “It’s less of a big deal in larger creatures like humans, but flies are using 10 to 20% of their resting energy just to power their brains, most of which is devoted to visual processing. To help cut the cost, some flies have a small, high-resolution region of their compound eyes. They turn their heads to steer where they want to see with extra clarity, such as for chasing prey or a mate. This saves power over having high resolution over their entire visual field.”
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a tiny camera that can ride aboard an insect. Here a Pinacate beetle explores the UW campus with the camera on its back. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington.
To mimic an animal’s vision, the researchers used a tiny, ultra-low-power black-and-white camera that can sweep across a field of view with the help of a mechanical arm. The arm moves when the team applies a high voltage, which makes the material bend and move the camera to the desired position. Unless the team applies more power, the arm stays at that angle for about a minute before relaxing back to its original position. This is similar to how people can keep their head turned in one direction for only a short period of time before returning to a more neutral position.
“One advantage to being able to move the camera is that you can get a wide-angle view of what’s happening without consuming a huge amount of power,” said co-lead author Vikram Iyer, a UW doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering. “We can track a moving object without having to spend the energy to move a whole robot. These images are also at a higher resolution than if we used a wide-angle lens, which would create an image with the same number of pixels divided up over a much larger area.”
The camera and arm are controlled via Bluetooth from a smartphone from a distance up to 120 meters away, just a little longer than a football field.
The researchers attached their removable system to the backs of two different types of beetles—a death-feigning beetle and a Pinacate beetle. Similar beetles have been known to be able to carry loads heavier than half a gram, the researchers said.
“We made sure the beetles could still move properly when they were carrying our system,” said co-lead author Ali Najafi, a UW doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering. “They were able to navigate freely across gravel, up a slope and even climb trees.”
The beetles also lived for at least a year after the experiment ended.
“We added a small accelerometer to our system to be able to detect when the beetle moves. Then it only captures images during that time,” Iyer said. “If the camera is just continuously streaming without this accelerometer, we could record one to two hours before the battery died. With the accelerometer, we could record for six hours or more, depending on the beetle’s activity level.”
The researchers also used their camera system to design the world’s smallest terrestrial, power-autonomous robot with wireless vision. This insect-sized robot uses vibrations to move and consumes almost the same power as low-power Bluetooth radios need to operate.
The team found, however, that the vibrations shook the camera and produced distorted images. The researchers solved this issue by having the robot stop momentarily, take a picture and then resume its journey. With this strategy, the system was still able to move about 2 to 3 centimeters per second—faster than any other tiny robot that uses vibrations to move—and had a battery life of about 90 minutes.
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a tiny camera that can ride aboard an insect-sized robot they designed. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington.
While the team is excited about the potential for lightweight and low-power mobile cameras, the researchers acknowledge that this technology comes with a new set of privacy risks.
“As researchers, we strongly believe that it’s really important to put things in the public domain so people are aware of the risks and so people can start coming up with solutions to address them,” Gollakota said.
Applications could range from biology to exploring novel environments, the researchers said. The team hopes that future versions of the camera will require even less power and be battery-free—or potentially even solar-powered.
“This is the first time that we’ve had a first-person view from the back of a beetle while it’s walking around. There are so many questions you could explore, such as how does the beetle respond to different stimuli that it sees in the environment?” Iyer said. “But also, insects can traverse rocky environments, which is really challenging for robots to do at this scale. So this system can also help us out by letting us see or collect samples from hard-to-navigate spaces.”
You’ve already seen people paint masterpieces onto canvases, but what about artists who can paint masterpieces onto water? That’s exactly what Garip Ay does in his studio every day.
The Istanbul-based artist specializes in the ancient Turkish art of “ebru”—or “water marbling” in English.
Ay creates each of his designs by distributing colorful dyes onto water that has been treated with wetting agents to make the pigments float. After that, he uses special tools to move the dyes into breathtaking pictures and patterns on the water’s surface.
Although the process is very soothing to watch, Ay says it is not an easy job to do himself—but the end results are magnificent.
(WATCH the video below)
Be Sure And Share This Enchanting Story With Your Friends On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “Pay careful attention to those ideas that keep coming back to your mind. Ideas left lifeless are ghosts that don’t just haunt you, they bite.” – Richie Norton
Photo: by Jeremy Thomas (cropped)
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
When a brave London rail worker saw a bike theft in progress at his station, he knew he couldn’t stand by and let it happen.
Abdul El-Gayar was clocking-off from his shift at Cannon Street station in Central London when he noticed a man using bolt cutters on a bicycle outside the entrance.
“I heard the sound of a lock being snapped and I didn’t think twice. I said ‘You’re not taking that’. I couldn’t let that happen,” El-Gayar, 31, told PA News.
“Voices were raised a little—I said ‘It’s not your bike’. The guy eventually gave up and walked off. I put the bike into safe storage because the lock had been broken.”
Even though El-Gayar’s workday had ended, he then chose to wait until the bicycle’s owner came back—and it took four hours.
“I have a bike and cycle to work; I know what value they have to people.”
When Steve Farmer arrived outside the station that evening, he’d already had a stressful day. Normally he’d lock his bike up at the office, but that morning he’d forgotten his security pass. Typically he’d always have his trusty U-lock with him, but he only had his son’s bike lock this time. So he’d left his bicycle outside the station and hoped for the best.
When he arrived at 6 pm and saw the cut lock on the ground where his bike had been, he thought the worst.
“I was gutted,” the 39-year-old told the Evening Standard. “I was annoyed that I had used a bad lock to lock it up with. I was resigned to the fact I would never see it again, but trudged back up to the station, thinking there was no point really in asking for the security cameras but wanted to try anyway.”
At the train platform he saw El-Gayar, who had “a smile I will never forget,” recalled Farmer, who entered the code into the cut bike lock to show he was the owner.
London rail worker Abdul El-Gayar by Steve Farmer – FB
Later on, Farmer shared a Facebook post detailing the day’s events and the generosity of El-Gayar — who he described as “a legend of a man” and “a credit to his employer.”
That post, which went up on June 29, has since been shared 134,000 times.
One commenter captured public sentiment towards El-Gayar’s kind actions perfectly: “People like Abdul make the world a better place.”
PEDDLE This Story Over to Friends on Social Media, And Restore Their Faith in Humanity…
Catholic Social Services collected truckloads of supplies with the help of Hotel Captain Cook. (Courtesy Catholic Social Services Alaska)
Anchorage, Alaska was nominated as one of 50 finalists in the Reader’s Digest “50 Nicest Places in America” contest for 2020. A crowd-sourced effort to uncover places in all 50 states where kindness and generosity are reigning supreme amidst a climate of coronavirus and cultural upheaval, you can now vote for your favorite ‘Nicest Place’ by visiting the Reader’s Digest website.
A city known for its cold climate is warming hearts by ensuring its residents are safe during the coronavirus crisis—and that includes everyone in the remote city of nearly 300,000, especially the homeless.
“Since COVID-19 our community has come together—and it’s an amazing transformation that I never thought I would see,” said Sandy Cannon, the resident who submitted her city’s story to Reader’s Digest. “People are supporting local businesses, the homeless population is finally being cared for, and city leaders are stepping up and making us all proud.”
When Alaska issued its “hunker down” order due to the novel coronavirus, the staff at Catholic Social Services knew they needed to act quickly to get the homeless population of Anchorage off the streets and out of crowded shelters to stem the disease’s spread.
That meant finding private places for as many homeless as possible.
“We knew that getting these individuals into their own residences was going to be the safest option,” says Molly Cornish, community engagement director at the local Catholic Social Services.
So CSS staff worked around the clock to find hundreds of homes. But their success created a new problem: those being rehoused often lacked the necessities that so many take for granted. Soap, toothpaste and—of course—toilet paper.
A call for help on social media was picked up by Coronavirus Days of Caring, a new Facebook group of Anchorage residents. They collaborated with a local business that has an ongoing partnership with CSS, the Hotel Captain Cook, to start a drive. Residents could drop off necessities with the hotel bellmen to be distributed to a newly housed person.
Not only that; for every selfie taken during the drop-off, the hotel would give a $10 tip to staffers who had temporarily lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
Catholic Social Services collected truckloads of supplies with the help of Hotel Captain Cook. (Courtesy Catholic Social Services Alaska)
When the drive concluded, two massive box trucks full of household items had been gathered. Catholic Social Services now had everything they needed for anyone who walked through their front door.
“People were so generous,” says Cornish. “It was so wonderful to see.”
A peaceful march on June 5 to protest the death of George Floyd also inspired similar steps to help community members.
After the 1,000 residents gathered, a local art gallery launched a social-distancing charity event featuring photos of the protests. “The turnout was fantastic,” says Jovell Rennie, co-owner of Akela Space. “People just kept coming to support and donate.” And they raised $23,000 for groups serving Black and Native residents.
Cannon says such generosity is the kind of thing locals do automatically for neighbors in need. She credits the kindness of her 70-something neighbor, Charlotte, with making sure she and her husband both survived the quarantine, given their high-risk immune systems. Cannon is a 65-year-old with asthma and high blood pressure, while her husband has Crohn’s disease, pre-diabetes, and lung issues. Charlotte repeatedly picked up their medications whenever they were ready at the pharmacy, and frequently made other stops.
“I would say something offhand, like ‘Oh, I need flour,’ and magically the next day flour would arrive on my doorstep,” Cannon says. “It was like the flour fairy had come! Flour, sugar, toilet paper—the surprises kept coming.”
“She’s just always there, when there’s no payoff in it for her. She does it out of the kindness of her heart.”
Need more positive stories and updates coming out of the COVID-19 challenge? For more uplifting coverage, click here.
SHARE The ‘Nicest Place’ in Alaska And Warm the Hearts of Friends on Social Media…
It’ll be another decade until the world’s nations and firms are evaluated for the United Nations 18 Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDG).
Much to the delight of global conservationists, however, Pakistan has already met the criteria for SDG 13, which calls on nations to take urgent action against climate change and its effects.
Pakistan isn’t the richest country, but it does have a major incentive to tackle the climate crisis, as they are ranked among the most vulnerable nations to the direct climatic and meteorological effects of global climate change.
Malik Amin Islam, advisor to the Premier on climate change, announced that in the UN’s 2020 Sustainable Development Report, Pakistan had met the SDG 13 through its implementation of a variety of programs.
“With the achieving of the Climate Action SDG 13, Pakistan has proved that it is committed to global efforts against the challenge of climate change to protect life on the planet earth,” he told reporters.
From planting trees to clean water
Major initiatives that have contributed to the country’s the fulfillment of SDG 13 includes the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Project—a nationwide project launched in 2015 by Prime Minister Imran Khan to reforest degraded land around the Hindu Kush Mountains in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
Since the project was relaunched in April during the COVID-19 shutdowns, it has also helped to put thousands of recently-unemployed Pakistani laborers back to work.
Another trailblazing program which has contributed to the nation’s eco-success has been the Clean Green Pakistan Index, which ranks cities and towns based on the quality of solid and liquid waste treatment and removal, sanitation and drinking water services, and parks and green spaces.
File photo by Mehak Wajid Ali, CC
The communities that attain the highest scores receive a reward in recognition of their work.
In this article from the IUCN written by Amin Islam himself, the advisor outlines another of the pillars in Pakistan’s progress towards SDG 13—the Protected Areas Initiative— with a quote from American author Henry David Thoreau: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
Explaining the value inherent in preserving Pakistan’s protected areas, Amin Islam writes: “These protected refuges of nature also create a payback mechanism by creating spaces for human recreation, promoting ecotourism, generating green jobs, enhancing resilience to natural disasters, contributing to food and water security through ecosystem restoration and addressing issues such as climate change by sequestering carbon.”
The Protected Areas Initiative aims to cloak the 15% of the country that exists as wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the finest possible ecological management plans and community conservation funds.
Climate: Everything to gain, everything to lose
According to Germanwatch, a sustainable development advocacy group advising for the Climate Risk 2020 report, Pakistan is the fifth most-vulnerable nation in the long term to extreme weather events owing to its geographical position, and has been in the top ten for the last 30 years.
“This means that the our economy is at peril from climate catastrophes and this is not alone an environmental challenge but also an issue affecting our economy, human health, agriculture and ecosystem,” said Amin Islam.
“Turning to renewable energy and a range of other measures that will reduce emissions and increase adaptation efforts is a key way forward as a part of viable climate action,” he added, according to The News Pakistan.
Prime Minister Khan announced that energy companies were withdrawing from plans to construct a series of 2,740-megawatt imported coal projects auctioned off by the previous government, pivoting instead to zero carbon and indigenous hydroelectric projects of a much higher, 3,700-megawatt capacity.
Pakistan has a gross domestic product, that while on the rise, still amounts to only $316 billion U.S. a year.
Keeping in mind that GDP isn’t the finest measure of economic conditions, this is less than half of the recently-passed $740 billion dollar U.S. National Defense Authorization Act of 2021.
Pakistan’s success in contrast to limited resources demonstrates that it doesn’t always have to be “superpowers” that take the lead on the world stage, but rather countries that have the will and the talent to make positive changes.
Reprinted with permission from World at Large, an online journal focused on travel, foreign affairs, health and fitness, and the environment.
Plant Some Positivity By Sharing The Exciting Eco News With Your Friends On Social Media…
Pickles the penguin enjoys playing with bubbles at the Newquay Zoo in Cornwall. SWNS.
Without human visitors to keep them entertained, these penguins have been gifted an adorable new form of entertainment during their time in quarantine.
Pickles the penguin enjoys playing with bubbles at the Newquay Zoo in Cornwall. SWNS.
Staffers at the Newquay Zoo in Cornwall, England had been trying to find new ways to keep their feathered residents entertained when a zoo patron suddenly donated a bubble machine.
Penguin caretaker Dan Trevelyan said the bubbles help to keep the penguins’s predatory reflexes sharp.
“In the wild, these guys are marine predators who are very sensitive to objects and movement,” said Trevelyan. “The bubble machine is fantastic, as all the movement and new shapes and colors really stimulate these guys. They have a great time chasing them around. And all these donations are really appreciated.”
The bubbles, which cause no harm to the animals, have in the past also proved popular with the Zoo’s squirrel monkeys and Sulawesi crested macaques.
Animal enrichment programs are used to provide zoo animals with specialized stimulation designed to encourage their natural behaviors and prevent them from getting bored.
Enrichment usually consists of branches and foliage, but can also come in the form of food hidden in hard-to-reach places for the animals to find.
Research has shown that animal enrichment program are as important for the wellbeing of zoo animals as a nutritious diet and good veterinary care. These birds in particular are usually kept occupied by feeding shows and guests visiting the zoo, but due to the novel coronavirus, their daily routine was forced to change. Thankfully, Newquay Zoo fully re-opened to the general public on July 1st.
(WATCH the adorable video below)
Be Sure And Share This Sweet Story With Your Friends On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed.” – Walter Russell
Photo: by Aziz Acharki
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Some of the most remote parts of Kenya will be showered with internet connectivity thanks to a fleet of giant balloons deployed by Google.
Photo by the Loon Project
The tech company’s Loon Project will be using large airborne balloons that are in constant motion to broadcast mobile internet at download speeds of up to 18.9 mbps to benefit parts of the developing world in the same way that a cell tower broadcasts cell signals.
With roughly 72% of the East African nation’s 1.2 billion people living without internet, the project aims to close that gap with 4G LTE connectivity.
This is the first deployment of Google’s Loon balloons in Africa, after having already been deployed to provide mobile data to the entire island nation of Sri Lanka, as well as Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
“In light of the spread of COVID-19, Telkom and Loon are working as fast as we can to realize service deployment,” stated Loon Inc’s Chief Executive Officer, Alistair Westgarth. “This will also enable us support the Kenyan Government’s efforts to manage the current crisis in the short-term, and to establish sustainable operations to serve communities in Kenya in the long-term.”
The initiative, which is being facilitated in partnership with Telkom Kenya, will launch into the stratosphere about 35 separate balloons to service the areas of Iten, Eldoret, Baringo, Nakuru, Kakamega, Kisumu, Kisii, Bomet, Kericho, and Narok—a total of 19,300 square miles (50,000 square kilometers).
“This is an exciting milestone for internet service provision in Africa and the world, more so that the service will pioneer in Kenya,” said Telkom Kenya’s Chief Executive Officer, Mugo Kibati in a statement.
The balloons will launch on their journey from locations in the United States and navigate to Kenya using wind currents. As Loon gains more experience flying in Kenya, and dispatches more balloons to the service region, it is expected that service consistency will increase, which Google and Telkom caution could be spotty during weather events such as storms.
The Loon balloons are solar-powered so as to reduce carbon emissions and increase potential hours of operation, during which Kenyans can expect coverage from about 6:00AM to 9:00PM.
(WATCH Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta laud the initiative in the video below)
Power Up With Positivity By Sharing This Inspiring Story With Your Friends On Social Media…
Does your ice cream choice say anything about your personality?
A fun poll of 2,000 adults aimed to discover if there were any differences between Americans who preferred vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry.
Basing the survey around the nation’s top three top flavors, it found that on average, if you like doing laundry, watching a sci-fi movie, and listening to the soothing sounds of jazz, then you are likely a strawberry ice cream fan.
However, when playing truth or dare, it’s the vanilla fans who won’t hesitate to say dare while chocolate ice cream lovers prefer choosing to tell a truth.
The study conducted by OnePoll, in conjunction with Breyers, also found vanilla ice cream lovers are on average more introverted, prefer dogs over cats, prefer washing dishes over doing laundry and are night owls.
Chocolate ice cream lovers, on the other hand, are more extroverted, enjoy a romantic comedy, and love listening to pop music.
Chocolate ice cream lovers also tend to have more variety in their interests. In addition to pop music, chocolate ice cream lovers also like rock and R&B music.
Strawberry ice cream respondents were more likely to find love earlier than their chocolate or vanilla-loving counterparts.
A full two years before chocolate lovers, strawberry people on average found love at 24 years old—one year before vanilla lovers.
When it comes to the ideal way to enjoy ice cream, Americans prefer their scoops in cups—topped with three different toppings.
Whether it’s stressing about world affairs or COVID-19 social restrictions, some people might be experiencing an inordinate amount of frustration this week—which is why an Icelandic tourism company is offering up a strange, but fulfilling new source of stress relief.
People from all over the world are recording their yells of frustration so they can be broadcast into the wide open Icelandic wilderness.
The Looks Like You Need to Let It Out initiative, which was created by Promote Island, was launched as a means of helping people release some of their pent-up anxieties while also encouraging them to think about how they can enjoy traveling in solitude once travel restrictions have lifted.
“You’ve been through a lot this year and it looks like you need the perfect place to let your frustrations out. Somewhere big, vast and untouched. It looks like you need Iceland,” reads the project website. “Record your scream and we’ll release it in Iceland’s beautiful, wide-open spaces. And when you’re ready, come let it out for real. You’ll feel better, we promise.”
Although the concept might seem a little far-fetched, therapist and mental health consultant Dr. Zoë Aston supported the psychological benefits of the project, saying: “Screaming as a therapeutic tool was developed in the 1970s as a way to release pent-up emotion.
“The psychological response to wanting to scream lights up a part of our brains called the amygdala,” she continued. “The amygdala activates when we are under threat—something we have all experienced in the past few months.
“Part of the beneficial effect of screaming comes from being able to make a loud noise into a wide, open, undisturbed space. This literally allows your amygdala to release the stress stored there and move forward.”
That being said, not all of the recordings are screams of distress—some people’s yells lean on the sillier side; others will use their ten seconds of sound to say hello to the beautiful landscape.
The website warns that anyone experiencing more pronounced mental health issues ought to seek professional help immediately—but for anyone else who may simply be feeling a bit overwhelmed during these turbulent times, a scream into the scenic Icelandic void might be just the pick-me-up you need.
(WATCH the amusing promo video below)
Help Your Friends ‘Let It Out’ By Sharing The Microphone On Social Media…
Since Hasidic and Jewish Orthodox communities were some of the first to suffer the worst COVID-19 outbreaks, they are now turning their experiences into a nationwide movement that has already saved thousands of lives.
Out of all the COVID-19 treatments that are currently being researched in the US, convalescent plasma therapy has been shown to be particularly promising—especially for severe cases of the virus. The treatment involves drawing blood plasma out of an individual who has recovered from and built up an immunity to COVID-19, testing the blood for the related antibody, and then injecting it into a sick patient so that the antibody can attack the virus for its new host.
When Dr. Michael Joyner first began spearheading the treatment’s research at the Mayo Clinic back in mid-April, one of the biggest hurdles for its progress was obtaining blood plasma from people who had already recovered from the novel coronavirus.
Joyner knew that many Jewish communities in New York City had been hard-hit by the virus prior to the city’s lockdown because of how its large religious families tend to be more closely-knit—so he hosted a conference call with several of the city’s most prominent rabbis and asked asked them for help.
Just 36 hours later, more than 1,000 vials of plasma from Jewish people who had recovered from the virus were delivered to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The delivery was not just an astonishing feat of organized community speed, it was also a medical success: more than 60% of the donations tested positive for antibodies proven to be effective in fighting COVID-19.
Since that initial donation, Jewish communities across the country have hosted plasma drives to help save at-risk COVID patients.
“There’s no way we’d be able to treat so many people without them,” Dr. Joyner told NBC News. “They were the straw that serves the drink in a lot of ways.”
#ConvalescentPlasma after filling all the available slots of the local blood banks, members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Rockland Co. NY, traveled Delaware to donate plasma to save lives. Proud that our community is at the forefront of this initiative @MountSinaiNYCpic.twitter.com/zGVHRYYOmr
Additionally, their donations have been sent to research facilities around the world to help further the treatment’s development for more widespread use.
To date, more than 36,000 American people have been treated with antibody-rich plasma transfusions—and more than half of those blood donations have come from Jewish people.
“Because we were ravaged by COVID so early on, we recognized that we had the opportunity to give back to the scientific community and to our fellow brothers who are suffering,” Dr. Israel Zyskind, a Brooklyn pediatrician and Jewish practitioner, told NBC. “We don’t just care about ourselves, we care about everyone, and we will do what we can.”
(WATCH the NBC news coverage below)
Treat Your Friends To The Good News By Sharing This Article To Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.” – Helen Keller
Photo: by Kristy Lou Photography
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Only found in a few forest patches in Nigeria and Cameroon, this western gorilla subspecies is the world’s rarest great ape. They are rarely seen, let alone photographed, even by remote cameras.
But new photos captured for the first time in years shows a group of With only 300 Cross River gorillas left in the wild, conservationists are celebrating new camera trap photos showing several new infants were born
The international non-governmental organization relies on the photos because the gorillas, which have lighter-colored hair, smaller heads and longer arms than other great apes, are very wary of humans and are rarely seen.
The WCS says it works closely with a community organization, the Conservation Association of the Mbe Mountains, as well as authorities in Nigeria’s Cross River state to protect the primates.
WCS says that camera traps at WCS sites in Cameroon and Nigeria have captured only a few images including one from 2012 in Cameroon’s Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary. But none of the rare apes have been seen, recorded—or reported killed since then.
This is the first time that multiple infants have been recorded in the same group.
Donations surged nearly 50% in the first half of 2020—the most generous giving recorded in the history of one of America’s largest philanthropic funds.
In response to the immense needs created by the COVID-19 pandemic, a resulting economic downturn and a period of deep social unrest, Schwab Charitable donors have been granting at a record pace to support impacted communities.
From January through June 2020, donors earmarked over $1.7 billion in aid, marking a 46% increase in dollars granted compared to the same period last year. They doled out 330,000 separate grants, which represents the fastest pace of growth in Schwab Charitable history.
“The last six months have been incredibly challenging, and I am truly inspired to see donors utilize their donor-advised funds to help communities and nonprofits impacted by health, economic, and social crises,” says Kim Laughton, President of Schwab Charitable.
Dave D., who manages his charitable giving through the company, said, “The need within our country and around the world is greater than ever. Basic needs have dramatically increased, so to help provide some relief, we are giving more to our local food bank, church food pantry, and homeless shelters.”
In addition to supporting crisis relief efforts in fiscal year 2020, donors continued to express broad-based generosity in support of their favorite nonprofits.
In the last twelve months, Schwab noted that each generation—Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, and the Greatest Generation—saw an uptick in giving from the previous year, granting on average between 7 and 13 times throughout the year.
Donors fulfill a variety of philanthropic goals with their giving, and in fiscal year 2020, donors supported more than 100,000 charities, a 14% increase over the prior fiscal year.
The most widely supported charities in fiscal year 2020 included Feeding America, Doctors Without Borders, the Salvation Army, and Planned Parenthood.
“It is very encouraging to witness heightened levels of generosity from donors of all ages in supporting nonprofits across the philanthropic landscape this year,” added Laughton, in a media release.
GIVING Your Friends Some Good News on Social Media Could Contribute to Their Well-Being…
In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, there is space enough for trees to grow—and space enough for 2 million residents to plant truckloads of trees while social distancing.
