Boy, 12, identifies 39 airlines by their plane tails for Guinness record



A 12-year-old boy living in the United Arab Emirates set a Guinness World Record by identifying 39 airlines by the designs on their airplane tails in one minute.

Siddhant Gumber, who is from Haryana, India, and lives in Abu Dhabi, was awarded a Guinness certificate for the most airlines identified by their airplane tails in one minute after he managed to identify 39 carriers by photos of plane tails.

The boy said his mother helped him prepare for the attempt by creating PowerPoint slides of airplane tails.

"He has an exceptional picture memory and usually never forgets an image once he has seen it. He does have a variety of interests and likes to know about things into detail, just like air planes.

"Although he loves country flags, we focused on airplane tails for the Guinness record because they too are unique," the boy's mother, Monisha Gumber, told Gulf News.

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/12/24 ... 608844945/

[Fatima99]

Italian Police Visit Lonely, Elderly Man On Christmas To Share A Toast

Police officers in Italy visited a 94-year-old man to join him in a Christmas toast after the man called the Carabinieri to ask for company.



Signor Fiorenzo of Bologna, Italy, called the law enforcement agency and ask to be able to share a Christmas toast with someone because he was alone at home.

"I don't miss anything, I only need a physical person with whom to exchange the Christmas toast. If there was a soldier available, 10 minutes to come and see me because I'm alone," Fiorenzo said on the phone.

Members of the Carabinieri went to the home of Fiorenzo, chatted with the elderly man, made a toast and then helped him reach relatives with video calls.

[hija]

What went right in 2020: UK smokers quit in their highest numbers in a decade



More than one million people have given up smoking since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, a survey for charity Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) released in July suggested. Just under half of people who had ditched the habit in the previous four months said the pandemic had played a role in their decision to stop. A range of factors were suggested, including health concerns, access to tobacco while isolating or no longer smoking socially.

Separately, University College London found more people quit smoking in the year to June 2020 than in any year since its survey began in 2007.

Cloud that looks like Santa Claus spotted flying over UK



It’s a Christmas miracle!

A man in the UK believes he spotted a cloud that bears a striking resemblance to Santa Claus.

Peter Gorman was at his home in Devon, southwest England, when he captured a photo of the fluffy likeness.

“Is that the Fat Happy bloke’s face in the Cloud? Ho ho ho,” Gorman wrote on social media, according to South West News Service (SWNS).

Many of his friends were sleigh-ed by the resemblance.

“Father Christmas is coming,” wrote one friend, Neil Thompson, using the most common name for Santa in the UK, while another, Michelle Kray, wrote, “Wow! That definitely looks like Father Christmas!”

Others, however, found the apparent likeness a little cloudier.

“Looks more like Homer Simpson,” Jamie Beale wrote, according to SWNS.

https://nypost.com/2020/12/24/cloud-tha ... g-over-uk/

[PennySerenade]

Grandma Who Survived COVID-19 Delivers 800 Handmade Tamales to Health Care Workers in L.A.



A California grandmother who recovered from COVID-19 thanked the health care workers who treated her with homemade tamales.

Margarita Montañez, a grandmother of 12, fell ill with the coronavirus in April and was taken to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she stayed for 20 days, several of which were spent on a ventilator in the intensive care unit.



"People may not remember her but she remembers the medical staff every single day because of what they did to save her life and the lives of literally thousands of people. So they are the heroes and they deserve the best tamales in the world which are my mom’s tamales," Montañez's daughter, Cindy, told KTLA.

Cindy added that her mother makes the tamales every year "with lots of love," adding, "That’s her secret ingredient."

"I appreciate the doctors, the nurse, they helped me. I was in the ICU for four days and I really appreciate it that’s why I did it," Montañez told KTLA.

On Dec. 19, L.A. County surpassed 600,000 COVID-19 cases as hospitalizations continued to soar, according to L.A. Public Health. The county reported 60 new deaths and 13,756 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus.

As of Dec, 20, over 17,701,500 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus since the onset of the pandemic and at least 316,300 have died, according to a New York Times database.hile at the hospital, Montañez promised the doctors and nurses that if she survived she would bring them handmade tamales for Christmas.

On Thursday, she delivered on her promise, bringing 800 tamales that she made over the course of five days.

[goldie0608]

Ex-wife of Amazon CEO has Given Away $4 Billion in Last 4 Months to Help Those Affected by the Pandemic



MacKenzie Scott, who was married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for 25 years, has donated more than $4 billion in the past four months to hundreds of organizations and charities—in particular to food banks and emergency relief funds across the USA.

A month after her divorce from the world’s richest man, Scott signed the Giving Pledge—an initiative sparked by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett a decade ago—and promised to give away her billions “until the safe is empty.”

This July, she began making good on her promise, with GNN reporting that she had already donated $1.7 billion of her $60 billion fortune to 116 charities.

Last week, the 50-year-old announced that she’d given even more money away. Since summer, the world’s third-wealthiest woman has donated more than $4.15 billion to 384 organizations in Puerto Rico and the States—taking her 2020 donations so far to $6 billion.

According to the New York Times, these donations “might be among the most ever handed out directly to charities in a single year by a living donor.”

In a blog post that begins with an Emily Dickinson poem, Scott–a lauded novelist as well as a philanthropist—writes, “This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling. Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color, and for people living in poverty. Meanwhile, it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires.”

Scott goes on to say she has been working with a team of advisors to help her accelerate her giving to organizations that need immediate support in the face of the COVID crisis.

Using a “data-driven approach” to identifying organizations with strong leadership teams, and paying “special attention to those operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital,” recipients of Scott’s funding include the YMCA, Meals on Wheels, the Global Fund for Women, civil rights organization the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs, many dozens of food banks, Goodwill, and various centers of education such as Blackfoot Community College.

According to Scott, these organizations help by delivering vital services, “and also through the profound encouragement felt each time a person is seen, valued, and trusted by another human being.”

Scott is not the only billionaire who’s been giving in 2020. While Jeff Bezos has not signed the Giving Pledge, he has distributed $791 million in grant money to large environmental organizations through the Bezos Earth Fund.

[BigGlen]

Finder Of Treasure Chest Hidden In Rocky Mountains Reveals His Identity

The man who found a buried chest that had enraptured scores of treasure hunters for a decade has revealed his identity. His name is Jack Stuef, and in June, he found the treasure famously buried by author and retired art dealer Forrest Fenn somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, with a poem from Fenn's memoir, The Thrill of the Chase, offering clues to its location.

Fenn announced in June that the treasure had been found — but he wouldn't say where exactly it was found or who found it. And in July, to provide some "closure" to those who had searched in other states, Fenn revealed that the chest had been hidden in Wyoming. Over the course of the hunt, at least four people died searching throughout the Rockies for the trove, which Fenn said contained about $2 million worth of gold and precious gems.

Stuef, in a post on Medium, says he had asked for his identity to be kept secret so that he wouldn't invite the same fate that Fenn and his family dealt with amid fervent treasure hunters. "For the past six months, I have remained anonymous, not because I have anything to hide, but because Forrest and his family endured stalkers, death threats, home invasions, frivolous lawsuits, and a potential kidnapping — all at the hands of people with delusions related to his treasure. I don't want those things to happen to me and my family," Stuef wrote.

Fenn died in September at age 90. His family confirmed on Monday that it was Stuef who found Fenn's treasure. Some treasure-seekers had believed the finding was a hoax. "We congratulate Jack on finding and retrieving the treasure chest, and we hope that this confirmation will help to dispel the conjecture, conspiratorial nonsense, and refusals to accept the truth," wrote Fenn's grandson, Shiloh Forrest Old.

Stuef, who Outside magazine reports is a 32-year-old medical student from Michigan, says a lawsuit forced him to give up his anonymity. A Chicago attorney named Barbara Anderson filed a lawsuit against Fenn and the then-unnamed finder in U.S. District Court in Santa Fe, N.M., in June after the treasure was reported found. She argues "that after she had spent several years painstakingly deciphering Mr. Fenn's poem and scouting out the general location of the treasure, someone hacked her cellphone and stole proprietary information that led them to the trove," The New York Times reports.

Stuef says the case is "meritless."

"The U.S. District Court for New Mexico has ruled that Forrest's estate must provide some of my personal information to a woman I do not know and with whom I have never communicated who has brought a meritless lawsuit against me. This would make my name a matter of public record, so I chose to come forward today," he wrote on Medium.

While Stuef's identity is now known, a few other mysteries remain: where in Wyoming the chest was found and how exactly Stuef solved the riddle. Stuef says he pored over not only Fenn's poem but also interviews with him, teasing out clues from his words to understand what kind of person he was and where he might be inclined to hide his riches.

And the secret hiding spot? Stuef says he wants that to remain secret, lest it become a site of pilgrimage and become overrun — perhaps by people looking to see if maybe an emerald was dropped along the way.

"If I were to reveal where the treasure was, the natural wonder of [the] place that Forrest held so dear will be destroyed by people seeking treasure they hope I dropped on my way out or Forrest on his way in," Stuef wrote. "Getting to the wilderness location where the chest was is not dangerous in the conventional sense of the word, but it very quickly can be when people do not take basic precautions or go out in the wrong conditions. It is not an appropriate place to become a tourist attraction."

The treasure is now in a secure location in New Mexico, but Stuef plans to sell it. He says he has medical school loans to pay off.

[johngriffen]

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
SUNDAY DECEMBER 27
What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to find weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

How do you play?
Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
BUT NOTHING DEPRESSING

EXAMPLE POST

​Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag

A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

Rules:
Each Edition of IN OTHER NEWS will be open for 7 days...
You may post as many stories as you like
However, you will only get paid for One Story in any 24 hour period
So in other words, you can only get paid once a day
Each news day will start when I post announcing it
OR at:
9:00 AM CHICAGO TIME (UTC -6)
3:00 PM GMT (UTC -0)
on those days I space out and forget to post or can't due to Real Life
Stories may be accompanied with images - but No big images, please! 800x800 pixels wide maximum
Videos are allowed, but please keep them to under a minute, and post a short summary for those that don't like to click on videos
No Duplicate stories - Where a post has been edited resulting in duplicates, then the last one in time gets disallowed.
And please limit this to reasonably family friendly stories

Reward:
Each news story posted that I feel is acceptable (must be a real story, too few words or simply a headline are not considered acceptable) will earn you 50 WRZ$
If you post multiple stories on any given day, you will only earn 50 WRZ$ for the first story of the Day
Special Bonus - Each week I will award "The Pulitzer Prize" for the best story of the week
The weekly winner of the "The Pulitzer Prize" will receive a 100 WRZ$ bonus
It's just my personal opinion, so my judgement is final

So help bring GOOD news to the members of mobi, and join our reporting team...

IN OTHER NEWS

[hija]

How entrepreneurs in Africa are tackling the growing stream of e-waste



With global e-waste set to reach 74 million tonnes by 2030, it is the world’s fastest growing non-industrial waste stream. From Ghana to Tanzania, entrepreneurs across Africa are turning electronic trash into treasure

What happens to the millions of tonnes of electronics that are thrown away every year? Despite governments’ efforts to regulate how this waste steam is managed, the majority does not find its way into formal recycling schemes.

In Europe, the region with the highest rate of e-waste recycling, just 42.5 per cent was formally collected and recycled in 2019, according to the annual Global E-Waste Monitor report. In the global south, it is even lower; just 1 per cent of Africa’s e-waste went through official recycling programmes last year.

But these stark figures don’t reveal the whole picture. Beyond the government recycling schemes, informal workers and creative entrepreneurs across the continent are developing a thriving ecosystem that is giving new life to the materials in discarded electronics.

“Africa is doing very well [when it comes to] reuse and repair compared to other regions,” says Garam Bel, e-waste officer at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and a co-author of Global E-Waste Monitor. “The informal sector is extremely efficient and cost-effective at getting the best out of this waste stream.”

Close to the centre of Ghana’s capital Accra, the scrapyard in Agbogbloshie is a vivid example. Once labelled “the most polluted place on Earth”, the scrapyard here is often presented as a symbol of African poverty in the face of western extravagance.

But, while many in the west are blithely extravagant and pollution levels at the site are certainly a cause for concern, such a description overlooks the agency and creativity of the thousands of informal workers who make their living here: repairing, dismantling, buying up scrap materials and making something new.

Recognising the potential of this economy, architects DK Osseo-Asare and Yasmine Abbas founded the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) in 2012. It is a network of makers that runs workshops and supports scrapyard workers to learn and collaborate. Osseo-Asare has described Agbogbloshie as a “gigantic open air factory, where anyone can pick up waste or scrap material and give it a new life”.

Products made at AMP’s space include household tiles, made from shredded PET waste and baked in a kiln constructed from a recovered refrigerator condenser grill; and ‘jerry computers,’ whereby recovered computer parts are assembled in a jerry can and then hooked up to a screen or used as standalone data storage.

Meanwhile, in the agricultural north of Ghana, startup Appcyclers recently made a prototype egg incubator from disused fridges, offering poultry farmers an inexpensive tool to hatch chicks. The company, which has also launched a platform for trading old electronics, aims to “promote recycling for a greener and safer environment”.

“There are a number of Africa-based companies pushing the zero-waste agenda, particularly through 3D printing,” explains Ngosa Mupela, Kenya business manager for Close the Gap, which runs repair and making hubs across the continent and supports local social entrepreneurs. “We have our own makerspace currently in development and hope to contribute to that ecosystem in the coastal region of Kenya,” he says.

In neighbouring Tanzania, in the capital Dar es Salaam, makerspace Buni Hub builds 3D printers from e-waste. “It took us eight weeks to build our first 3D printer,” explains Paul Mandele, hub co-manager. The team used steel rods from broken printers, stepper motors from old electronics and power cables from discarded computers.

The business plan was to use the newly created 3D printers to make visual teaching aids. However, as Mandele explains, a lot of Buni Hub’s work is now printing parts for more 3D printers. “We have tested other use cases,” Mandele adds. “Recently, we piloted the printers to make prosthetics and other tools that can be used in the medical field.

”E-waste will be a persistent challenge, with the global total predicted to grow by 40 per cent by 2030. Africa produced 2.9m tonnes of it in 2019, tiny compared to the Americas’ 13.1m tonnes and Europe’s 12m; however, some of the discarded products from Europe still find their way to sites such as Agbogbloshie – legally or not.

But most comes from within Africa, notes ITU’s Bel, and the amount will continue to increase thanks to a growing middle class in many African nations. “Manufacturers must take responsibility,” he adds. Until more formal schemes are developed, it’s down to the smarts of entrepreneurs across the continent to put e-waste to good use.

[HogwartsExpress]

Fire station gets its bell back after theft 50 years ago


A bell stolen by a pair of drunken teenage brothers 50 years ago has been returned to a north-west Queensland fire station, along with a touching letter of contrition.



The handwritten note, which was sent to Mount Isa Fire Station earlier this year, was filed away in a desk and all but forgotten until the arrival of a rather heavy package a few weeks later.

At that point, the letter - addressed to the "chief fire officer" and signed only with a first name - was dug out to make sense of the parcel's contents.

"In the early '70s my brother and myself were 15 years old and 17 years old, doing apprenticeships and cadetships at Mount Isa Mines, and stayed in the old Base Supply Depot barracks," the letter read.

"Drinking was about the only activity available, apart from sport.

"One night near the barracks there was a big party at one of the houses.

"A long story short," the letter continued.

"My brother was killed in a mine - we shifted his widow to Mackay.

"Recently my other brother died and his widow rang me and said what was I going to do with this bell?

"I don't know how she came to have this bell, 50 or so years later.

"Anyway, I think this bell was a fire bell stored while renovations were being done at your station."

'A good thing'
Firefighter Bastien Vincent said emergency service workers often received letters of thanks from the public, but correspondence of this nature - not to mention the hardware that succeeded it - was certainly a first.

He said the bell and the miner's letter would have pride of place somewhere in the office.

"I think he felt a bit of guilt and just wanted to do a good thing," Vincent said.

Staff have declined to reveal the first name provided by the author, but are concerned the number given at the end of letter asking for a text to confirm that the bell arrived is incorrect.

Readers are encouraged to contact the station if this story rings a bell.

source
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/433677 ... -years-ago

[HogwartsExpress]

Recently Discovered Dinosaur ‘Mummy’ Is So Well-Preserved It Even Has The Skin And Guts Intact


“We don’t just have a skeleton,” one researcher involved said. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.”



Scientists are hailing it as the best-preserved dinosaur specimen ever discovered. That’s why you cannot see its bones – they remain covered by intact skin and armor.

Found accidentally by miners in Canada, this fossilized nodosaur is more than 110 million years old, yet patterns are still visible on the skin. According to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada, which recently unveiled the find, the dinosaur is so well-preserved that instead of a ‘fossil’, we could safely call it a ‘dinosaur mummy.’



The researchers examining the find were astounded at its nearly unprecedented level of preservation. The creature’s skin, armor, and even some of its guts were intact – something they’d never seen before.

“You don’t need to use much imagination to reconstruct it; if you just squint your eyes a bit, you could almost believe it was sleeping,” one researcher said.

Previously, only nodosaur skeletons have been discovered, which look like this:



This dinosaur was built like a tank. A member of a newly discovered species called nodosaur, it was an enormous four-legged herbivore protected by a spiky, plated armor. It weighed approximately 3,000 pounds.

To give you an idea of how intact the mummified nodosaur is: it still weighs 2,500 pounds!



Although how the dinosaur mummy could remain so intact for so long remains somewhat of a mystery, researchers suggest that the nodosaur may have been swept away by a flooded river and carried out to sea, where it eventually sank to the ocean floor.

As millions of years passed, minerals could have settled on the dinosaur’s armor and skin. This might help explain why the creature was preserved in such a lifelike form.

Researchers have named the 5.5 metre (18-foot-long) nodosaur Borealopelta markmitchelli, in honour of Royal Tyrrell Museum technician Mark Mitchell, who spent over 7,000 hours carefully unearthing the fossil from its rocky grave.



But how ‘lifelike’ is the specimen really? Well, apparently the preservation was so good that researchers were able to tell the dinosaur’s skin color by using mass spectrometry techniques to detect the actual pigments.

This way they found out that the nodosaur’s coloring was a dark reddish brown on the top of the body – and lighter on the underside. Since this dinosaur was an herbivore, its skin color must have played a role in protecting it from the enormous carnivores present at the time.

And the fact that we’re talking about a massive, heavily-armored dinosaur illustrates just how dangerous those predators must have been…



The nodosaur was found by an unsuspecting excavator operator that uncovered the historic discovery while digging in an oil sands mine, according to the museum’s news release about the exhibit. 7,000 painstaking reconstruction hours later, the nodosaur was ready to meet the public.

As if the preservation of skin, armor, and guts weren’t impressive enough, the dinosaur mummy is also unique in that it was preserved in three dimensions, with the original shape of the animal retained.

According to one researcher, “it will go down in science history as one of the most beautiful and best preserved dinosaur specimens – the Mona Lisa of dinosaurs.”



source
https://earthlymission.com/dinosaur-mum ... ct-canada/

[HogwartsExpress]

Loud Booms and Bangs: Mysterious Fireball Crashes in China



Unidentified fireballs are not very rare these days. Thousands of meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere every day, bursting into pieces and drawing people’s attention all over the world. Sometimes, however, the size of such fireballs is enormous, and even scientists have a hard time explaining the origin of the phenomena.

An unidentified flying object crashed in China’s Nanqiang County in the province of Qinghai on Wednesday, Chinese media reported. According to the reports, there were no casualties or damages caused by the incident, but it was accompanied by loud bangs that were heard by many residents.

​The fireball was caught on camera by locals and the video has gone viral on social media.

The footage shows the sky being lit up by an extremely bright light as the fireball flies above Qinghai province for about 20 seconds.

Chinese media suggested that the ball could have been a bolide, a bright meteor that usually explodes when it enters the atmosphere.

According to the China Earthquake Networks Centre, the impact of the fireball was recorded near the border of Nanqiang and Yushu counties, where the object reportedly crashed.

NASA’s Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has estimated that the approximate total optical radiated energy was equivalent to the energy released by the explosion of 9.5 kilotons of trinitrotoluene, making it the largest fireball event in China since 1988.

The largest recorded fireball incident in the world was Russia's Chelyabinsk meteorite, which illuminated the sky above the Russian city on 15 February 2013, with the total optical radiated energy equivalent to the energy released by the explosion of 440 kilotons of trinitrotoluene.

sorce
https://sputniknews.com/viral/202012261 ... na--video/

Google Year In Search 2020: This Year, More Than Ever, The World Searched For...

It is said that in times of uncertainty, people look for meaning. This year, as the world battled the coronavirus pandemic, it's perhaps little surprise that more than ever, people searched for "why". Google has released this year's edition of its annual "Year In Search", which looks back at the most popular search terms and questions that people asked the search engine in the preceding 12 months.



Google's Year In Search 2020 provides a glimpse into the questions, fears and anxieties that people had in a year marked by the coronavirus pandemic.

"The most human trait, is to want to know why," begins the voice-over in Google's retrospective video, which has been viewed a whopping 10 crore times on YouTube. "And in a year that tested everyone around the world, 'why' was searched more than ever."

In a year defined by the pandemic, it is not surprising that Covid-related searches took the centre stage. One of the most-searched questions on Google: Why is it called Covid-19?

Questions like, "Why Black lives matter" and "Why is Australia burning?" also highlighted important events and movements we saw in 2020.

In India, the number of searches for Indian Premier League surpassed those for coronavirus. One of the top trends in India was "How to make paneer" - presumably thanks to the lockdown.

Globally, a heartwarming search term cropped up. The world searched "how to help" more than ever. Alongside, searches for the mask emoji reached an all time high, as did "pranks on parents".

Google's Year In Search video ends on a hopeful note as the Internet giant reminds people to dream big and stay curious.

https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/google-yea ... or-2343075

[BigGlen]

TORONTO: Long line-ups at airport instead of stores on Boxing Day 2020


Despite a province-wide lockdown kicking in at midnight, there were long line-ups of travellers
heading out of town on Boxing Day 2020. PHOTO BY JOE WARMINGTON /Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Who says there were no line-ups on this Boxing Day in the year 2020!

In fact, these lines were longer than you would normally see on Dec. 26 outside of any store. But for thousands of people this mad dash was not for bargains, it was for a seat to get out of dodge.

The coronavirus, and the new mutated strain from the United Kingdom, which Ontario now has two cases of, must not be a worry at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Needless to say the authorities sure didn’t apply the same tough rules that prevented families from attending Christmas dinners and enjoying many other suspended freedoms.

So much for Premier Doug Ford’s newest provincial lockdown that went into affect at 12:01 a.m. on the day after Christmas. So much for social distancing.

No one was taking either seriously here on Boxing Day. No one was paying any attention to orders or guilt trips. In fact, they were thumbing their noses at it.

The departure gates were mayhem and while people were wearing masks, it was anything goes. People going in every direction and huddled together in masses, which is not permitted in pubs, stores, gyms, hockey arenas and places of worship. The lockdown even has Ontario’s ski hills shut down to adhere to these tough measures.

But there were lots of skis in travel bags at Pearson — heading out on flights to places like Calgary and Vancouver where skiing has not been outlawed.

What is also permitted is the risk of virus spread that Ontario purports to make a priority.

Not one bylaw enforcement officer was spotted dealing with this social distancing crisis at Pearson. And while security was seen sternly kicking people out who were trying to pick up relatives coming in from international flights, there was no one trying to figure out how to create a boarding experience that adheres to all the problems the medical officers’ of health so loudly explain.

It makes no sense that our land borders are closed to non-essential travel while our airport is bustling with travellers arriving and departing on both domestic and international flights.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Ford, Mayor John Tory and Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie need to address this. Outside skating rinks have tougher protocols.

The coronavirus response and scolding is so uneven and selective. If this was a Christmas party, tickets would have been threatened. If they were lined up at Adamson’s Barbecue, there could be 100 police deployed. The Point of Light Store in Newmarket received $2,000 in fines for opening on Christmas Eve while daring to try to raise enough money to pay their December rent.

These rigid rules only apply to some.

[Fatima99]

Teenager with Down’s syndrome receives hundreds of birthday cards from strangers



With weddings and birthdays cancelled, people are going the extra mile to make sure these celebrations take place in some form. One person on the receiving end of these efforts is Bradley Pickess, a teenager with Down’s syndrome who received over 600 cards from strangers for his 18th birthday.

Bradley, from Etwall, a village in East Midlands, was due to have a party with a bouncy castle and burger van to celebrate his milestone birthday. However, because of Covid-19 restrictions, his mum Nicky, 40, put a plea on Facebook for people to send him a card as he loves to open mail.

Nicky, who is his full-time carer, never expected to receive so many. Sorry, the video was not found The mum-of-three said: ‘I was desperate to make Bradley happy on his birthday as he is such a loving boy.

‘He loves opening post so in a desperate bid to put a big smile on Bradley’s face, I asked Facebook friends for some help. I thought we might get 20 or 30 which would be exciting for him to open.

‘But he has received 617 cards from all over the world! ‘He was blown away when he saw all of the cards stacked up in our lounge. He took a step back before diving in to open them. It took four hours to open half of them as we have read every single one.

‘One had a pound in which meant the world to Bradley. ‘I can’t thank people enough!’

Nicky posted the message on Facebook on November 19 and it was shared over 600 times. People in Australia, America, France and the UK have wished Bradley happy birthday and many also sent him gifts. Nicky said: ‘The response has been totally overwhelming. We’ve had cards delivered every day for the last two weeks.