Nelson Daily Stories

                         Lake Pointe School Teacher: "I try to share only                                                                positive things." Brent Caldwell's own personal philosophy is: "I try to share only positive things with people around me because there are already so many negative things in our daily basis. I don't want to add to that." Caldwell, a Student Success Academy Teacher at Lake Pointe Elementary School,  in the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School district, USA, has just had his long hair - all 14 inches of it - cut off. His hair has been growing for more than three years since the last time it was cut. He is donating his hair for Something Good.  In an article  Ben Russell NBC Dallas explained that Caldwell donates his hair to "Hair We Share." That nonprofit organization makes and provides wigs for people who have lost their hair because of a medical condition.  Lake Pointe Elementary School's Act of Kindn

                         INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS EXPRESS OUTRAGE                                                     AT DESTRUCTION OF SACRED TREE Earlier this year a mining company, Rio Tinto, destroyed ancient Aboriginal caves in Western Australia.There was such a public outcry "and criticism of Australia's cultural heritage laws that Rio Tinto's boss announced he would step down." Once again Aboriginal people in Australia are angry and outraged . The Djab Wurring  yellow box known as a "directions tree", a sacred tree for the Aboriginals, was cut down last Monday. Officials said the tree was " not on a protection list." An article on the BBC News Australia site said "protestors have long camped at the site in Victoria to defend culturally significant trees including some where local Djab Wurrung women have traditionally gone to give birth." In 2019, the article said, Aboriginal landowners "negotiated with the Victorian governmen

                             MURDER HORNETS IN THE USA ELIMINATED In December 2019 an Asian giant hornet was seen in the United States of America for the first time. This information came from  Aljazeera,  (a Washington State Department of Agriculture/Handout via Reuters) on 23 October 2020. Throughout 2020 more sightings of the insect were reported. In late October 2020 the first nest of Asian giant hornets, otherwise called murder hornets was found on a property in Blaine, a small town in Washington State. The place is located near to the state's northern border of the USA and Canada.  The insects are large - two inches in size. Dozens of them were seen on a tree on the property.  "Asian giant hornets, an invasive pest, not native to the US, are the world's largest hornet and a predator of honey bees and other insects. A small group of Asian giant hornets can kill an entire honeybee hive in a matter of hours ." the Washington State Department of Agriculture said.

                            The Beauty of Umanga  "The pandemic was a blessing in disguise." Really? That seems a hard thing to say! Prior to the pandemic, Easter Island was "heavily dependent on mainland Chile for food and its 100,000 odd annual tourists for income that it has not needed to function in survival mode." Now things have changed.   Carlos Edmunds Paoa , president of the island's Council of Elders explained to the BBC's Mark Johanson that the pandemic has helped to "turbocharge a programme that helps to make the island self-sustainable and waste-free by 2030 using umanga." Umanga? What is that? Umanga is helping others without expecting anything in return, sharing what you have with others, sharing information with those who are unaware, helping someone who is not as strong as you are. One example of Umanga  is  "it has been revived as an employment scheme called Pro Empleo Rapa Nui." Another example is that  people are now

                                      GOOD HAS COME FROM EVIL The most remote commercial airport in the world is on a tiny piece of land in the Pacific Ocean called Easter Island . The island belongs to Chile and is famous for the 887 monolithic human figures called moai . Sometime in early March this year one of the many visitors to the island brought COVID-19. As a result several people of the indigenous Rapa Nui community became infected with the deadly virus. There were only three ventilators to serve the population of 7,750. This was when Mayor Pedro Paoa had to make a very difficult decision. In the article by Mark Johanson on the BBC Travel website  the mayor decided to end the tourism season in the middle of March. After that there were only five cases of the virus on the island. "By the end of April the virus had been completely eradicated." Easter Island is 3,500km west of the coast of Chile and that distance helped to protect the country from the virus. But the

       HE IS NOT THE 'ELEPHANT MAN ' -   HE IS THE 'ELEPHANT DOCTOR'.   There is a Jamaican dancehall musician and singer whose stage name is "Elephant Man."  A man was born in the United Kingdom in August 1862 and died in April 1890 whose name was John Merrick. He had severe deformities and was  called "Elephant Man." There is another man who says "I am the happiest when I am around elephants."  He is 60 year-old Dr. Kushal Konwar Sarma and affectionally called the "Elephant doctor." Earlier this year Dr Sarma was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award given in India. In a heartwarming story on the BBC Hindi website Dilip Kumar Sharma tells how Dr. Sarma has spent 35 years of his life caring for elephants in the forests of India and Indonesia. He may have treated more than 10,000 elephants. He grew up in a village called Barma in Assam in north-east India where  some 5,000 of the more than 27,000 elephants in

                       "WE, IN PART, BROUGHT COVID-19 ON OURSELVES." Sixty years ago a young Englishwoman,  Jane Goodall, made an important scientific observation in the rainforest of Gambia in Tanzania. "She witnessed a creature, other than a human in the act of not just using a tool, but of making one." The story, "Chimps with everything: Jane Goodalls 50 years in the jungle"   by Robert McKie was carried in The Guardian on June 27, 2010. In an interview broadcast on Tuesday, October 20, 2020, Jane Goodall,  now a world famous primatologist and anthropologist said "We, humans, in part brought COVID-19 on ourselves by our disrespect of nature and disrespect of animals."  She was speaking to the media during a Press Conference as part of the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) . "We push animals into closer contact with humans. We hunt them, eat them, traffic them, sell them as exotic pets around the world, we put them in

             Michigan Teacher Saves Student's Grandmother              "I don't think one can truly be a good teacher and not care about the students and their families. In the environment we're in especially, it's too hard to do this without actually truly caring," Julia Koch said in a recent interview with CNN . On September 22, this year Julia was remotely teaching her first grade students at Edgewood Elementary School in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, USA. But one student was having difficulties - her school tablet was not charging. In order to solve the problem Julia called Cynthia Phillips, the student's grandmother. Julia, who also spoke with NBC affiliate WOO D said that when "she (the grandmother) started speaking I could tell that there was something wrong." Grandmother was "slurring" her words. She was not sure what the problem was with the student's grandmother but she called the administrators at the school. They immedia

                                          PREPARE FOR THE RETURN! "We need to prepare the people before the insects return," Msgr. Isaac Ibrahim Racho told Catholic News Service recently. The Msgr. is the vicar general of the Diocese of Marsabit in Kenya . But what insects was he speaking about? And why would they return? He was referring to the desert locusts . The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that "a new wave (of the insects) is imminent." This will happen because "there has been an increase in breeding of the insects in the Middle East and the movement of the winds across the Red Sea into East Africa."  In the article titled "Predicted return of deadly locusts triggers fear in East Africa" Fredrick Nzwili wrote:   "Experts say the rise of locusts in Africa and the Middle East is linked to rapidly warming waters of the Indian Ocean due to the Indian Ocean Dipole or Indian Nino. The phenomenon - amplified b

                                             HANDLING IT WITH WISDOM "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom." The words from Proverbs 4 verse 7 came to my mind as I read a comment made by Claire Anderson .  Claire, who lives in Marietta, Georgia, USA, has a Masters degree in Education, and is the mother of a 12-year old boy, Caleb . She told Andrew Court of the "Daily Mail" that her son is rather unusual. Why? He completed high school by the time he was 11 years old and has been studying aerospace engineering at Chattahoochee Technical College for the past year.  He will make history as the youngest student to study aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech. Caleb will major in Aerospace Engineering.   He hopes to obtain an internship with Elon Musk, founder of Tesla.  In other words Caleb is very, very smart. He is a genius . There is more! His mother said that Caleb began making sounds that mimicked her speech when he was just four weeks old. When he wa

                             Pelican Point peninsula Pelican Point peninsula, in Namibia, Southern Africa, is a very popular tourist destination. Each year over 1 million visitors flock to Namibia and go to see the "colony of seals and school of dolphins." But a story by Reuters staff , published on Wednesday October 14, 2020 said "Thousands of dead seal pups have washed ashore on the coast of Namibia." The animals were found at Pelican Point peninsula. Photographs taken by Ocean Conservation Namibia (OCN) show "the coast dotted with more than 5,000 dead seal pups." The seal pups were born prematurely and they died immediately OCN explained. But why? An article by Albertina Nakale in  New Era Live  publication, said Namibia is a tourist destination of choice for many foreign visitors. In 2018, for example, over 1.5 million visited the country, more than the 1.49 million who came in 2017.   The country is known for its ecotourism with its extensive wildlif

                                 CONGO ACTIVIST DIYABANZA FINED He knew what could happen, but he did it anyway. On June 12, this year, 2020, Congolese activist  Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza and two others dislodged and attempted to remove a piece of African art, a 19th century Chadian funerary object, from the Quai Branley Museum in Paris, France. On Wednesday October 14, 2020, a French court convicted the activist (and his accomplices) of attempted theft and ordered them to pay a $2,320 fine. The penalty was much less than the prison sentence of ten years and a $176,000 fine they could have faced, a news report on artnetNews said.    Diyabanza and the two others acted  "as part of a demand that France repatriate African heritage taken during the colonial era."  A report on the BBC website headlined "France fines Congo activist for seizing museum artefact" said: "An activist has been fined 901 pounds for removing an African artefact from a Paris museum in protes

                     Seven (unexpected) Months in Peru.  When Jesse Takayama , a Japanese tourist, arrived in Peru, South America, in March this year, he intended to spend just a few days there. His plan was to see the "most visited tourist destination in Peru" the UNESCO World Heritage Site,  Machu Picchu.  Located on a mountain ridge 2,430 meters (7,970ft.) above sea level, it is the most famous symbol of the Incan empire . No one knows exactly why the Inca people built Machu Picchu. "It may have been a royal estate for Inca emperors and nobles" some say. It was founded in the Cuzco region of Peru about 1450 and abandoned in 1672.  In 2007 the site was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World .  Jesse Takayama was looking forward to visiting the place. He arrived in Peru, on March 14, and was due to enter Machu Picchu on March 16. But something unexpected happened. He was stranded in the town of Aguas Calientas (which is near to Machu Picchu). Why was he st

                                        V ISITORS WELCOME!                                           There are no more slaves here. Goree is "a tiny tranquil island" just 3,000 feet (900 meters) in length and 1,150 feet  (350) meters) in width. It is  surrounded  by deep waters, sheltered by the Cap Vert peninsula and located 2 miles (3 kilometers) off the coast of Senegal, opposite Dakar in West Africa. The name Goree , which means good harbour, was given to the island by the French. Just 1,300 people live on the island which, since 1978, is a World Heritage site. Yet it made news on the  BBC World Service yesterday (October 12, 2020). Why? Because it has been closed to visitors for six months due to the pandemic. Now it is opened again! Goree is part of the city of Dakar. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, however, it played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade. It was "the largest slave trading center on the coast of Africa."   The House of Sla

                                             "I will stay with you." Sophie Petronin survived four years in captivity in Africa at the hands of jihadist militants. A photograph on the Reuters website (October 9, 2020) shows a small woman walking beside French President Emmanuel Macron.They are at a military airport near Paris, France. The woman  is 75 year old Sophie Petronin . The story that accompanies the photograph is amazing. It tells how Sophie, a French aid worker, (along with three other hostages) was "released in Mali after negotiations led by the West African nation's security services and international partners." They were flown to the capital Bamako late on Thursday. Mali, the eighth largest country in Africa, is landlocked. Sophie Petronin ran a charity for malnourished and orphaned children in that country. On Christmas Eve 2016 she was abducted in Gao, a city on the river Niger, east-southeast of Timbuktu. The story, written by Paul Lorgerie ,

                                                        A FIRST FOR WOMEN They have made history! Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna  have become the first women to ever recieve the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It began at a conference in Puerto Rico. The two scientists who   were introduced to each other at the meeting decided to work together. In 2011, Professor Charpentier, who received her Ph.D while at the Institut Pasteur in Paris suggested to Professor Doudna that they collaborate on work she was doing. Professor Doudna had received her Ph.D from Harvard Medical School in the USA. In the article by BBC News Science Editor Paul Rincon , he says the scientists have become the first women to recieve the prestigious Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "developing the tools to edit DNA." "Their discovery, known as Crispr-Cas9 "genetic scissors", is a way of making specific and precise changes to the DNA

                       What do they want :   HERITAGE SITES OR MINING SITE S? On May 30, 2020, Australian journalist  Calla Wahlquest , wrote in the Guardian Australia : "A 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site destroyed by Rio Tinto this month is one of more than 463 mining sites that mining companies operating in  Western Australia have applied for permission to destroy or disturb since 2010." "None of these applications have been refused." the article continued. On Monday, October 5, 2020, I listened to an interview on Al Jazeera . That was when I learned of the disaster at Juukan Gorge . The place is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the mining town of Tom Price. Juukan Gorge was a 46,000 year-old Aboriginal heritage site in Western Australia.There is a 4,000 year-old genetic link to the people who now own the site. The mining company Rio Tinto came to Western Australia and the site "became one of more than 463 sites that mining companies operating

                                             It belongs to me! Give it back! There is a Jamaican proverb that says:  "Tief tief fram tief, God laff."  Explanation: A thief steals from a thief, God laughs. The meaning - when poetic justice is meted out . Mwazulu Diyabanza is a Congolese activist who   has lived in France for 20 years.  An article on Reuters  (October 2, 2020) reported by Yiming Woo and written by Richard Lough  tells how Mwazulu " and an associate prised the carved wooden ornament from its stand in the Quai Branley museum as a third man live streamed the act on social media." The carved wooden ornament was a 19th century funerary  post from central Africa. Mwazulu was stopped as he was about to leave the Museum. What was the dramatic incident all about? "We're in a fight to recover our (cultural) wealth. When the Europeans arrived they pillaged these artifacts, they pillaged our patrimony," he explained to Reuters .  Mwazulu   is par

                                             THE UGLY FACE OF RACISM According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of the noun " racism " is a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Also behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster this belief: racial discrimination or prejudice. An article written by Jessica Schladebeck in the New York Daily News Thursday October 1 2020 tells how " a murder conviction has been thrown out because of racism on the part of the prosecutors." "This may be the first case in the US where a murder conviction has been thrown out because of racism on the part of prosecutors," John Barter said. Who is John Barter? He is the attorney for Frances Choy , an Asian American woman  who (as a teenager) was accused of her parents murder nearly 17 years ago. Her mother and father died in "a terrible h