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

Indigenous Woman Helped Slap Judgment on Chevron

ECUADOR

In a landmark case of David-and-Goliath, indigenous villager Maria Aguinda (61), despite lack of legal training or even of ability to speak Spanish, helped bring a judgment of $9.5-billion fine against the American oil giant Chevron for polluting the rain forest she calls home. She lives in Rumipamba, a town in remove Orellana province where pollution caused by 30 years of oil drilling and petroleum accidents had become a sad fact of life. Her home sits near marshes clogged for decades in sticky oil wastes of then Texaco, which operated in teh area from 1964 to 1990. When Chevron bought Texaco in 2001, it inherited Texaco's legal nightmare.

Mary Aguida et all filed a suit in 1993 on behalf of 30,000 residents of Orellana and Sucumbios provinces, in which they charged Texaco for dumping billions of gallons of toxic crude duirng its operations, fouling rivers, lakes and soil and causing cancer deaths in indigenous communities.

Aguida believes her husband and two of his 10 children died from effects of the pollution, which has affected the size of Rhode Island.

The court last week announced a penalty against Chevron of $8.6 billion plus an additional 10 percent for environment management costs. [Full Report]

Used Paper Firm Saves 149,000 Trees

PHILIPPINES

Cebu-based used-paper buyer, Paper Savers and Trading Co. collects more than a million kilos of paper a year. Since its inception in 2003, it helped recycle 8,024,000 tons of paper. At an estimate of one ton of paper equivalent to 17 trees, it has help save 149,600 trees to-date.

The papers the firm collected came from printing companies, banks, hotels, resorts, malls, junk shops and scavengers. Colored papers, bond papers, and carbon papers are segregated at the warehouse.

White papers are then shipped to paper mills in Pampanga, where these are made into rolls of paper and toilet paper. While the colored ones are sold to makers of paper egg trays. Carbon paper are still being studied where to ship to. [Full report]

Egyptians Win a Chance for Democracy

EGYPT

On 11 February 2011 (Friday), the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces sealed the will of the Egyptian people when it announced, in a statement broadcast on state television, that it supported the legitimate demands of the people. And after 18 days of protests, vice president Omar Suleiman announced that reigning president Hosni Mubarak is stepping down from office effective immediately.

On hearing the news, ABC News reported: "Cairo erupted with joyful dancing, singing and cries of 'God is greatest.' Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the nationwide revolt, thundered with cheers as protesters waved flags and cars honked their horns. Outside the presidential palace protesters shouted, 'I am Egyptian ... proud to be Egyptian,' as they hugged one another, danced and ululated. Some fell to the ground, overcome with emotion. Elsewhere in Cairo, cars honked their horns and fireworks went off as Egyptians celebrated the end of Mubarak's reign."

Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, 75, will sack the cabinet, suspend parliament and co-opt judges from the Supreme Court to rewrite the constitution in what some are calling a coup by consensus, ABC News reported.



Cease-Fire Monitoring Team Extends Mandate

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Philippine Public Works Save P577M Through Public Bidding

PHILIPPINES

Secretary Rogelio Singson of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), under the new Aquino administration in the Philippines, saves 577 million pesos for the country, betweenn July through December 2010, when it removed all negotiated contracts outstanding from the previous Arroyo government, and put the projects into public bidding instead. [Read more.]

Napping Trends

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A good 30-minute nap gives a daytime boost to employee energy as effectively as a good night sleep. It is good for the health and alertness of employees in their jobs. And employers are starting to wake up from the benefits of napping at work.

Companies such as Google and Nike now have areas where employees can take a nap during the day. In New York City, "napping spas" appear offering people a 20-minute rest for $15 dollars.

A phone survey of 1,000 white-collar workers found that 85 percent of them claimed more productivity if they slept more. A recent study that Braun Research conducted for Philips Consumer Lifestyle noted a nearly quarter of office workers admitted to napping on the job.

If your company has not recognized this benefit and still has to support napping at work, why not start a campaign to get a policy supportive of this healthy incentive?

CNN Heroes

WORLD

CNN Heroes 2011 is accepting nominations for the Top 10 CNN Heroes this year. 

Last year's winners include Guadalupe Arizpe De La Vega, Susan Burton, Linda Fondren, Anuradha Koirala, Narayanan Krishnan, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, Harmon Parker, Aki Ra, Evan Wadongo, and Dan Wallrath. The 2010 Hero of the Year went to Anuradha Koirala.

Guadalupe Arizpe De La Vega provides quality health care in the dangerous city of Juarez, Mexico, the murder capital of the world. At age 74 she drives several times a week into the city to help keep a sanctuary for its citizens alive. [Her Story]

Susan Burton provides sober housing and other support to formerly incarcerated women, ex-offenders just released from California's prison system. She provides program that can help these women reenter the community after many years of imprisonment--the "A New Way of Life Reentry Project. She helped more than 400 women get back to their feet. [Her Story]

Linda Fondren made it a mission to lighten up the residents in her town, specifically their body weights. With her weight-loss challenge program, nearly 15,000 pounds of extra weight got lost among her fellow residents. And her community has been known as the fattest state in the United States of America in 2009. Her all-female workout facility, Shape Up Sisters, slowly changed the story. [Her Story]

Anuradha Koirala founded a group, Maiti (Mother's Home) Nepal, which helped more than 12,000 victims of sex trafficking business in Nepal since 1993. [Her Story]

Narayanan Krishnan was an award-winning chef with a five-star hotel group enlisting him for an elite job in Switzerland. But visiting India in 2002 before heading to Europe changed everything. He founded his nonprofit Akshaya Trust in 2003, and since then it has served more than 1.2 million meals--breakfast, lunch and dinner--to his country's homeless and destitute, mostly elderly people abandoned by their families and often abused. [His Story]

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow started the Mary's Meals program, named after the Virgin Mary. And since then it provided free daily meals to more than 400,000 children around the world. [His Story]

Harmon Parker builds footbridges in Kenya, protecting people from floods and animals which connecting communities. A master mason, he worked with local residents to build bridges through Kenya's mountainous terrain since 1997. [His Story]

Aki Ra leads his caravan of 20 men and women members of the Cambodian Self Help Demining team. They have cleared about 50,000 mines and weapons throughout Cambodia. And he and his team still have a big mission to do. The Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority estimated 4 million to 6 milion land mines laid in Cambodia during the communist Khmer Rouge regime. [His Story]

Evans Wadongo invented a solar-powered LED (light-emitting diode) lantern to replace the smoky kerosene lamps and fire lights long used in rural Kenya. And he is giving his invention to his community for free. [His Story] 

Dan Wallrath, a Texas home builder, has given injured veterans homes of their own--mortgage-free. Since 2005 he and his army of carpenters, plumbers and suppliers who took on the remodeling job for free has built four houses, five more under construction. And he is expanding his reach into a national campaign called Operation Finally Home. [His Story]  

In this world where greed is gaining control, it is good to know that heroes still exist among us.

Purplegold Harvests Sunlight Energy

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Professor Richard Watt of Brigham Young University and his chemistry students found a new way to harvest energy from sunlight. And it takes only 20 minutes to do so.

The idea stemmed from suspicion that a common protein might react with sunlight to harvest its energy, in the same manner that chlorophyll does in synthesizing such energy for the plants.

So the students started with citric acid obtained from oranges and mixed it with protein. They dissolved gold powder into the solution. Then they put vials of the yellow-colored mixture in direct sunlight, and hoped that the idea works. And it did.

The mixture turned to purple, indicating that the gold atoms absorbed electrons from the other chemicals in the mixture, using the sunlight energy to bunch them together into small, purple-colored nanoparticles. The protein successfully used the sunlight to excite the citric acid and trigger the transfer of energy.

Compared to a high-powered tungsten mercury lamp, the new method works much slower. But the potential for an environmentally friendly energy source has just been unearthed. The next step will be to connect the protein to an electrode to channel it into a battery or fuel cell for storage. [Read full report]