Clothing the Drenched Child

PHILIPPINES

PERHAPS her mother let her go to play in the rain. But the little girl along EDSA Avenue in Manila looked cold and drenched beside steel containers in the port side.

Then into the rain walked in a woman unknown to the little child, took her jacket, and draped it on the child's shoulder. In a few minutes, just the way she approached her, the woman left waving the little child a goodbye. [Read Report]

Slippers of Love

TEXAS

SOMEWHERE in Houston, Neil Duller had the rare chance to take a picture of this outmoded brand of love--genuine love of our downtrodden neighbor.

The modern world has gone so fast so that those who are left behind got consumed into oblivion, forgotten, as people move around blind to the plight of those who survive in the fringes of our society. These forgotten brothers and sisters barely eat once a day to stay alive... much more get a decent pair of slippers.

A Mother's Undying Love

JAPAN

After the great earthquake in Japan had subsided, the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman's house. They found her dead body. And through the cracks they noticed her posed that looked somehow strange: she was on her knees, knelling like a person in worship; her body leaned forward; and her two hands seemed to be supporting an empty space underneath her. The collapsed house had crashed her back and head to death.

With great difficulties, the leader of the rescue team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach into the woman, hoping that she could still be alive. However, the cold and stiff feel on her to his touch told him she had passed away. So he and the rest of the team moved on to the next building. 

But for some unknown reasons, the pose of the dead woman troubled the team leader. He felt a very compelling force pushing him to go back to the ruined house as have a second look at the woman. So he did. Again he knelt down and inserted his hand through the narrow cracks. This time he wanted to check the little space under her dead body.

Suddenly, the team leader screamed: "A child! There is a child!"

So the whole team rushed back, and worked together to carefully remove the piles of debris around her dead body. 

Then they saw a three-month-old baby boy, wrapped in a flowery blanket under his mother's dead body. When the house started falling on them, the mother obviously used her body to protect her son from the death-bringing debris. The little body was still sleeping peacefully when the team leader picked him up.

The medical doctor came quickly, and checked the little boy. After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone inside the blanket, and a text message on the screen. It said: "If you happen to survive, you must remember that I love you."

The doctor passed the cell phone around to the members of the rescue team. And each one who read the message wept. 

Handcuffed Pickpocket Saved Cop

PHILIPPINES

Even in handcuffs, Felix Cañete who was in police custody for pickpocketing, grabbed the collar of PO1 Roy Ceniza and pulled him inside the police patrol car, after seeing a robber aim his gun at the officer.

"I dragged him so he won't get hit. I pitied him," said in Cebuano the 52-year-old Cañete, who has three children with his estranged wife. "He was on the brink of death, and I saved him because like me, he has a family.

Ceniza was hit in the right foot, while his companion PO1 Elrich Jourdin Catacutan was hit in the chest near the right armpit. Both officers and PO1 Ernesto Silva fought four men who robbed China Bank personnel and security outside the supermarket of the Robinsons Mall on Osmeña Blvd. in Cebu City Monday morning. The two policemen belong to the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Mobile Patrol Group (MPG). [Full Story]

Facebook and Microsoft Join Hands to Locate Missing Children

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

On 20 May 2011 (Friday), Facebook and Microsoft formally unveiled an alliance to remove child pornography, and those who share these, from the world's leading online social network. Facebook will use PhotoDNA technology that Microsoft and Dartmouth College computer science professor Hany Farid developed to search for marches to pictures in a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) database.

This effort will have dual main effects. First, it will ferret out pornographs from Facebook as well as those accounts who share these around. It can also help law enforcers trace the sources of these photos in order to have the perpetrators face justice.

Second, the project will also help locate missing children from a large probabability that these youngsters keep themselves connected with friends through Facebook. Read more. [Associated Free Press: "Facebook and Microsoft battle child porn," Manila Bulletin 21 May 2011]

Filipino Wins First International Tobacco Control Award

PHILIPPINES
On 18 May 2011 (Wednesday), Filipino physician Ulysses Dorotheo won the The Judy Wilkenfeld Award for International Tobacco Control Excellence that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kinds presented in the United States for pushing tobacco control in the Philippines. He is the first Asian to win the prestigious prize.

Dorotheo, a neuro-ophthalmologis, is current project direct for the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance under its Southeast Asia Initiative on Tobacco Tax (SEASTCA-SITT). SITT is a five-year program aimed primarily at raising tobacco taxes and prices in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippiens, and Vietnam.

The Philippines "has among the lowest cigarette prices in the world; consequently ranks among those with the highest smoking prevalence," noted HealthJustice, an NGO involved in tobacco control in the country. Filipinos dying from tobacco-related diseases in the country has increased to 87,000 annually, according to the Department of Health. [Source: Virgil Lopez: "Filipino wins international award for tobacco control," SunStar Network Exchange (20 May 2011)]

God's Hand and the Will to Live

JAPAN

Her parents thought they saw the last of her as the four-month old baby girl  in a pink woolen bear suit got swept away from their hands by tsunami's tidal wave. But three days later, on 14 March 2011, rescuing Japanese Defense Force heard her cries under the rubbles that the angry sea left behind. Amidst the fragments of wood and slate, shattered glass and sharp rocks around her, she survived and came back to her parents.

On March 15, rescuers found a 70-year-old woman alive inside her home, four days after the black tidal wave wiped out much of the region. She remained conscious, and suffered nothing but hypothermia brought to the very cold weather.

Elsewhere, Hiromitsu Shinkawa (age 60) survived two days at sea, clinging for dear life on his floating rooftop 10 miles off the Japanese coastline. Rescuers discovered him on March 13.

Source

William Lee Adams: "Miracles in Japan: Four-Month Old Bay, 70-Years Old Woman Found Alive," Daily Mail 15 March 2011