Teenager Helps a Blind and Deaf Passenger

The teenage girl was headed to California, and the man to Oregon. They weren’t supposed to be on the same flight, but their chance encounter came to be widely known and celebrated.

The girl, Clara Daly, 15, and her mother were traveling home to Calabasas, Calif., and had planned to fly nonstop from Boston to Los Angeles. Their flight was canceled, so Alaska Airlines booked them on another flight with a layover in Portland, Ore.

That’s how Clara ended up meeting Tim Cook, 64, who is deaf and blind and wasn’t able to communicate easily with the flight attendants.

“The flight attendants sincerely wanted to assist him, but had no way to communicate,” another passenger, Lynette Scribner, wrote on Facebook.

“ They took his hand and tried so hard to communicate with him, to no avail.”

The attendants asked if anyone onboard knew American Sign Language. Clara pressed the call button. She has been studying ASL for a year. She chose to learn ASL as a foreign language since she is dyslexic and it is easier for her to learn,
The attendants asked her to sign letters into Mr. Cook’s hand, so she knelt in front of him and began spelling out words.

“How are you?” she asked. “Are you O.K.?”

They chatted a few times during the flight, once for about 30 minutes. She told him where she went to school and about her grandmother in Boston. He told her about his childhood and about his sister, who also lives in Boston.

“It seems like such a lonely life to be deaf and blind — to not be able to see and hear,” Clara said on Sunday.

 Ms. Scribner, 56, who was sitting in the same row as Mr. Cook, took a picture of the two.

She is in the habit of posting one positive thing on Facebook every day, so she wrote about the pair and attached the picture.

A friend asked her to make the post public so it could be shared, and shared it was. As of Sunday afternoon, Ms. Scribner’s post had been liked more than 1 million times and shared nearly 600,000 times.

“I was just so struck by Clara’s kindness,” Ms. Scribner said. “I think people were starving for something beautiful.”

Clara agreed. “Everyone’s all bummed out by what’s happening in our society,” she said, citing school shootings, migrant families separated at the border and global warming. “It’s just bad thing after bad thing.”

Mr. Cook lives in a home for the deaf in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. He lost his sight and hearing as an adult. He is completely shocked that so many people were interested in the story and “very moved” that Clara took the time to come speak with him.

The New York Times (edited)

Russia’s Investment in the World Cup

The FIFA World Cup soccer championship in Russia is the most costly ever held. Officials say the total cost will be $15 billion.

Close to $3 billion dollars have been spent on 12 new or improved stadiums and at least $8 billion on infrastructure, including new roads, railroads and airports.

Now, experts question whether there will be a good return for the Russian taxpayer. Professor Leonid Grigoryev, an economist at the Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation, offers an unusual answer. He compares the World Cup to a wedding dress.

“On one hand, it’s necessary. It makes everybody happy. The exact economic efficiency definitely cannot be defined in American quarterly financial reports. It’s a long-term story. We still hope to become not only a hockey country, but a football country."

Brazil held the last World Cup in 2014 at an estimated cost of $11 billion. Four years later, the difference is clear to Brazilian football fans in Moscow

“Comparing Brazil with Russia, the infrastructure here is much better than ours,” Marcio Pessoa told VOA, as he walked through Red Square.

Russia’s $15 billion investment is aimed at improving the country’s image, even as it faces sanctions. International restrictions were put in place over Russia’s activities in Ukraine and the annexationof Crimea in 2014.

Dmitry Oreshkin is a political expert. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to govern as though the sanctions are not important. “'Despite sanctions, we conduct such a gorgeous World Cup. Despite sanctions we go ahead with the war in Syria’…until the very moment that they start feeling that for all this pleasure, they are paying [for something],” said Oreshkin.

The first to feel the financial difficulty are likely to be the middle-aged people looking forward to retirement.

On opening day of the World Cup last week, the government announced an increase in the pension age, from 60 to 65 for men, and a much bigger jump for women, from 55 to 63.

Eva lives in Moscow. The 62-year-old told VOA that most Russians were not surprised.She said she believed that officials thought that the championship would ease the effect of the news. Eva described a joke that people were telling about the increase in the retirement ago.

“‘Yesterday, I had four years until pension age. Today, I have nine years. And they still keep telling us that you can’t get your youth back!’” she said.

Russia said the World Cup is partly a gift for its young people. There is talk of unforgettable memories and new buildings. The World Cup ends on July 15, but its value will be measured in the coming years.

 From VOA 

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Frequent Business Travelers

Sales executive Neal Landsburgh frequently packs his bags to meet with clients around the world. He has lost track of how many countries he has visited in the last 20 years. And even when he compares his airline miles with other frequent fliers, he usually wins.

But lately, he has little positive to say about seeing so many new places, so often. In fact, he blames two divorces, an almost "non-existent" relationship with his daughter and his troubles with alcohol, at least in part, on the fact that the majority of his life has been spent travelling.

"It looks glamorous," Landsburgh said. "But it's not."

Even as technology offers us countless ways to connect with one another remotely, many employers still want their workers to travel to sit down with others face-to-face. In 2017, companies in the U.S. sent their employees on more than 500 million domestic flights.

Travelling, it turns out, can take a toll on an individual's mental health, according to a new study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

"The individuals who are travelling the most have the poorest self-rated health, the worst depression symptoms, the worst anxiety symptoms," said Andrew Rundle, one of the study's co-authors and a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University.

Reuben Gonzalez, an engineer who travels for work around a quarter of the year, said it can be difficult and lonely.

 "I can never adjust to the time change," Gonzalez said. "Going to restaurants and eating alone isn't fun. There's no dinner conversation."

He regrets missing important events in his son's life, such as his basketball tournaments.

"I missed a lot of the time of my kids growing up," he said. "It's kind of sad."

These psychological findings show that hours on planes and nights alone in hotels can put a person at greater risk for heart attacks and strokes.

"Most business travel health plans are about immunizations, all of the literature is about infection or food poisoning," Rundle said. "But there's very little literature on these chronic health conditions that result from a lot of travel."

"Companies need to provide their road warriors with the tools they need to travel healthily," Rundle added. "There are stress management techniques, like mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapy."

Photo Credit: Tim Clayton | Corbis | Getty Images

From CNBC

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Punished for starting lunch 3 minutes early

A 64-year-old Japanese employee of the waterworks bureau in the western city of Kobe was fined and reprimanded for leaving his desk just three minutes before the start of his designated lunch break on 26 occasions over a seven-month period.

Senior officials at the bureau then called a televised news conference, where they described the man’s conduct as “deeply regrettable” and bowed in apology.

“The lunch break is from noon to 1pm. He left his desk before the break and violated a public service law requiring officials to “concentrate on their jobs”, according to the bureau.

Social media users leaped to the Kobe official’s defense, with one Twitter user pointing out that, on average, he had left his desk early just once a week.

Others wondered if the rule is applied to people who leave their desks to smoke or go to the toilet.

Another said: “What about all the politicians who sleep in parliament? They ought to be fired, then.”

The official’s illicit lunch expeditions were uncovered after a senior colleague looked out of his office window and spotted him walking to a nearby restaurant that sells takeaway food at lunchtime.

Senior management calculated how much time he had spent away from his desk and docked him half a day’s pay.

The employee, who has not been named, reportedly said that he had left the office early to buy lunch because he needed a “change of pace”.

Last month, the Japanese lower house passed a law intended to address Japan’s punishingly long working hours. The bill caps overtime at 100 hours a month in response to a rise in the number of employees dying from karoshi, or death from overwork.

The government was forced to act following a public outcry over the death of  a 24-year-old employee of the advertising giant Dentsu, who killed herself in 2015 after being forced to work more than 100 hours overtime a month, including at weekends.

In 2016 the government said one in five employees were at risk of death from overwork.

From The Guardian

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The fog-catchers of Chile

IN THE school playground in Los Tomes a lone child, José Ossandón, plays with his emboque, a ball-and-cup game. The eight-year-old is the school’s only pupil. His teacher, Nilda Jimena Gallardo, herself a former pupil, says that enrolment has dropped from 65 when she started teaching 43 years ago. Drought has driven families away, she says. “Only the old remain.”

Los Tomes is an agricultural co-operative, one of 178 in Chile’s Coquimbo region. Nineteen comuneros try to grow wheat and raise sheep and goats on 2,800 hectares of semi-arid land. A decade-long drought has made that harder. Farmers’ children moved away to take jobs in cities or at copper mines.

Hope for Los Tomes comes in the form of three 60-square-metre  nets - atrapanieblas - that capture droplets from the fog that comes from the sea 4km away.The banner-like nets can harvest 650 litres of water a day. 

“We’re content: it has produced the results we wanted,” says José Ossandón, the child’s father and the president of the co-operative.

Chile has been investigating fog capture since the 1950s. Earlier attempts to turn the mist into usable water failed. 

 The project at Los Tomes is part of an attempt to revive fog capture. A government development fund will put up cash. 

At Majada Blanca, a goat-herding community north of Los Tomes, three 150-square-metre fog catchers feed a plantation of young olive trees. When the trees mature they will produce 750 litres of organic olive oil a year, which the comuneros will be able to sell for about $12,000. 

 “We’ll be pioneers in the production of quality olive oil made with fog water,” says one of them, Ricardo Álvarez. A privately owned brewery in Peña Blanca was quick to spot fog water’s marketing appeal. It is the main ingredient of its artisanal beer, called Atrapaniebla.

It makes a profit, but most fog-harvesting projects require subsidies in their early stages. The development fund paid 5.6m pesos apiece to put up the structures at Majada Blanca. When the nets wear out, the villagers will have to replace them at a cost of 100,000 pesos each. Coquimbo has more than 40,000 hectares of land with the right conditions for putting up fog-catchers. If fully exploited, the region could harvest 1,400 litres a second, enough to supply all its drinking water.

That might lure back educated young people from the cities. 

From The Economist (edited)

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Want some Mate?

They say it gives the energy boost of coffee, has the health benefits of tea and the endorphin buzz of chocolate. It is the national drink of Argentina, beloved by the pope and, thanks to coach Mauricio Pochettino, half of the Tottenham Hotspur dressing room. And now the England dressing room, too.

Spurs and England defender Eric Dier, said this week that he is a little bit addicted to it.  If his advocacy is anything to go by, mate tea could soon become as popular in Britain as it is in South America.

It is made by steeping the dried leaves of a Paraguayan holly plant in hot water, and is drunk from a cup-like gourd through a metal straw known as a bombilla, which also functions as an in-cup tea strainer. And while it may be an acquired taste – its flavour is best described as somewhere between a grassy green tea and a bergamot-less Earl Grey – its main attraction is that it is not only good for you, but makes you feel great.

That its energy boost is akin to coffee is not surprising: mate (also known as yerba mate) contains just over half the caffeine of the average americano. But mate drinkers don’t experience the jitters, sleeplessness or the energy crashes that plague the coffee fan. Enthusiasts also claim it helps improve mental acuity and aids digestion. In the words of the Pasteur Institute, which publiched a study of it back in 1964: “It is difficult to find a plant equal to mate’s nutritional value.”

All of which makes one wonder why it has taken so long for it to catch on in the UK. Perhaps because it is marketed as a health food instead of South America’s best-kept secret? Still, if Dier keeps singing mate’s praises, it surely can’t be long before the rest of us stick a brew on.

How to make mate

• Heat water to no more than 85C.

• Half fill your gourd with the tea then, with a hand over the top, shake it upside down to bring the finer, powdery bits of leaf to the top.

• Turn the gourd up and remove your hand. You want the mate to be piled up along one side. At this point, some people wet the mate with cold water, others don’t. Now you’re ready to brew.

• Add the hot water until the mate is almost completely, but not quite, covered.

• Drinking mate is a social thing, where the gourd and bombilla are shared: the first brew is drunk by the brewer to make sure it is up to par.

• Re-brew the same leaves again and again until they lose their flavour, and everyone has had enough.

From The Guardian

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Longest Swim Across the Pacific

Heading off from Choshi, Japan

Last Tuesday a French swimmer began an attempt to swim across the Pacific Ocean, a journey that will take him through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a bid to raise awareness of plastic pollution.

Benoit "Ben" Lecomte, 51, set off from his starting point of Chōshi, Japan, aiming to reach San Francisco, 9,000 km away.

To accomplish his goal of becoming the first person to swim the Pacific, Lecomte will need to swim for eight hours a day for six months, with an average of 48 km a day.

Lecomte, the associate director of sustainability services at a consulting firm, is hoping the endeavor will double as a scientific study on climate change, health, and pollution.

Researchers from 12 scientific institutions, including NASA and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, will be conducting studies and gathering samples throughout his swim. The researchers will focus on eight areas of interest, which include radiation from the Fukushima disaster and the swim's effects on Lecomte's heart and psychological state.

They will also conduct research on plastic pollution as Lecomte passes through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an área three times the size of France where plastic and debris have accumulated.

Researchers and support crew members will accompany Lecomte in a yacht called Discoverer, while doctors will monitor Lecomte's condition remotely on land.

After each day's eight-hour swim, Lecomte will rest and recover on the yacht, before being dropped off at the same spot the next day.

Lecomte has been physically training for this journey for four years, and has spent even more time putting together the scientific and practical preparations.

Swimming aside, he also has to prepare himself psychologically.

"The mental part is much more important than the physical. You have to make sure you always think about something positive," Lecomte said.

From Chōshi, he will swim north up the coast of Japan, helped by the Kuroshio current before he joins the North Pacific current going east.

This isn't his first cross-ocean journey, though it's his most ambitious. In 1998, Lecomte was first person to swim across Atlantic Ocean (6,500 kms) without a kickboard.

"It didn't take that long for me to change my mind. Three, four months afterwards I was already thinking about my next adventure and doing something kind of the same," he said last week.

After having a shark follow him for five days during his Atlantic crossing, Lecomte is prepared this time, with a shark repellant bracelet.

If you want to follow Lecomte's progress and his location's weather conditions click HERE.

The support sailboat, Discoverer, will accompany Lecomte on his journey

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Article from CNN and BBC (edited)

Malaysians crowdfund to help cut national debt

Malaysia's new government, led by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, achieved a shock victory last month after a notorious corruption scandal which contributed to his predecesor's defeat.

Malaysia  current debt and liabilities stand at more than $251 bn - about 80% of the country`s GDP.

Feeling optimistic after the first change in government since Independence in 1957, Malaysians, using their credit cards,  gave nearly $2m in the 24 hours after authorities set up a special page on internet to raise cash.

“Truly, Malaysians have taken their patriotism to a greater height, willing to help rebuild this nation we all love.They voluntarily want to share their earnings with the government to help ease the burden," said Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, as he announced the fund to provide a "systematic and transparent" platform for contribution. He also provided a bank account number to receive donations in the local currency, and said it will publicize the fund's tally daily.

The move is reminiscent of the late 1990s when South Koreans queued to donate wedding rings and other valuables to help their struggling economy amid Asia's financial crisis.

US-based Twitter users were quick to draw parallels. The US national debt passed $20tn last year."With the US deficit ballooning, I wonder how long before we try this." commented one person.

But analysts said the move was unlikely to have much of an impact. "Given the scale of debt we are looking at in Malaysia, there is a very long way to go " said Krystal Tan, Asian economist at Capital Economics.

From Business Insider and BBC (edited)

           

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A beach. A sign. A mystery. An answer.

Hurricane Sandy made landfall  on the Jersey Shore town of Brielle in October 2012.Homes filled with water. Boats washed up on people’s lawns and on the Brielle Avenue bridge.

Also, a real estate sign went missing.

It had been planted in back of a house for sale on Cedarcrest Drive. The sign was 48 by 63 cm and about 3 cm thick and made of plastic composite. It disappeared along with the post it was mounted to and was never seen again.

Until around May 14, 2018.

On a beach in France, 3,595 miles away.

A man walking along the Plage du Pin Sec, near Bordeaux, spotted it. The faded sign was missing a chunk, but he could still read the legend “Diane Turton Realtors 732-292-1400.”

 “It was curious,” said the man, Hannes Frank, 64, a semiretired software consultant who lives in Brussels.

He sent an email to Diane Turton Realtors: “Hi, Just wanted to let you know that I found part of one of your signposts washed up on the beach near Bordeaux France pictures available if wanted. Not in best shape after that crossing.”

Perry Beneduce, the company’s marketing director, received the email. “I initially thought this has to be a prank,” he said. But Mr. Beneduce happened to have been the manager of the Diane Turton branch in Wall, N.J., when the hurricane hit.  “It was the only sign from that office that went missing,” he said.

An oceanographer who studies the drift of floating objects, Curtis Ebbesmeyer,  said that judging by how long it took, the sign was probably on its third crossing of the Atlantic when it beached.

 There is a great circulating ocean current that runs from New Jersey to northern Europe down to Spain and back to New Jersey and takes 3.3 years on average, and it takes about a year and a half to drift across the North Atlantic one way from New Jersey to France,” said Mr. Ebbesmeyer.

 “So five and a half years is just about right.”

Over the centuries, Mr. Ebbesmeyer said, thousands of pieces of man-made stuff, including Columbus’s ships, have followed the same watery circuit that links the East Coast and Europe: eastward on the Gulf Stream, south on the Portugal Current, west on the North Atlantic Equatorial Current, back up the East Coast on the Gulf Stream. He knew of a 2003 political campaign sign, about the same size as the Diane Turton sign, that departed Newfoundland, Canada, and landed in Cornwall, England, in 2007.

“What you have is a low-windage object,” he said. “It floats flat in the water. Typically those travel about seven miles a day.”

“I’m always trying to find data that give me better estimates of the orbital period,” Mr. Ebbesmeyer said. “This is really good scientific data.”

The real estate office now hopes to get the sign back to frame it as a memento.
Up to 233 people died when Hurricane Sandy tore a path through the Caribbean and America's east coast in 2012.

Before hitting New Jersey and New York the storm affected the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas and Bermuda.

From The New York Times (edited)