Misao Okawa is the oldest person in the world. Since last Wednesday she is 116 years old. Born in Osaka, Japan, on March 5, 1898, and her family was engaged in the manufacture of kimonos. She married in 1919 and had three children, four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Okawa is one of five people alive today who were born in the nineteenth century.
International Women’s Day (IWD), originally called International Working Women’s Day, is marked on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women’s economic, political, and social achievements.
Neanderthals became extinct 45,000 years ago, but not completely. Something from them still remains in us, according to a study published a few months ago year by the scientific journal Nature. This study shows how genes from Neanderthals, representing between 1.5 and 2.1 % of the DNA of modern man, served the modern non-African man to survive cold climates.
The tree you see in the picture is called “Ike’s tree”. Or rather, it was called, because he died a few days ago due to heavy snowfall this winter in the United States. Ike was, in fact, one of the icons of the Augusta National Golf Course.
In the Mexican state of Sonora has just come into effect a new rule prohibiting the enrolment in the Registry for children with derogatory and demeaning names, or using names of singers, marks, names of fictional characters or meaningless names. The aim of the reform is to protect children from abuse.
One of the Natura Award winners in 2012 was Sol Solidari, awarded € 10,260 for its solar electrification project in schools in Burkina Faso. We recently received their report about the implementation of this project, and we want to share it with you here, also thanking Sol Solidari for their great work.
According to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, human memory rewrites the past by adding information from the present. It seems that the new versions that memory “records” of everything that happens cause emotions that, at the same time, modify again our memories. So, in regard to what we remember, there is no an “original version”.
The apteryx, better known as kiwi, is an animal that lives only in New Zealand. The kiwi is a flightless bird, about the size of a chicken. It is a bird that, paradoxically, is highly adapted to terrestrial life.
New York (Ep) -. A homeless has received compensation of $ 1.9 million after a jury ruled in favour of the man to receive compensation from the Transit Authority of the City of New York, as he had broke his foot during an accident in the subway.
The Animal Welfare Association (Spain) found three weeks ago an abandoned dog in the street. The dog, which they called Engi, had a leg deformity that prevented him from walking and required an urgent, complicated and expensive surgery.
The Three Wise Men of the city of Sort (Lleida, Spain) were not limited on last 5 January to hand out gifts to children. Or at least that is what is stated in the complaint filed in court by a police officer in charge of security in the Three Kings Procession, accusing Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar of insulting and attacking him.
Pollution is an issue of concern in China. In Beijing, the air becomes unbreathable sometimes, and environmental pollution is such that most days you can’t see the sun. And if anyone wants to see it, they must do that through the giant screens installed for the purpose.
The Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda, who lived hidden in the jungle of the Philippines for three decades without knowing that World War II had ended, died last Thursday in Tokyo at age 91, according to the public broadcaster NHK. Onoda shocked Japan with his unexpected appearance in 1974, when he finally decided to give up his mission in the jungle and return home.
Jep Gambardella is a writer who, after a big success with his first novel, stops writing. The film begins many years after that: Gambardella just turned 65, he works as a cultural journalist in Rome and lives a life plenty of luxury, parties in large buildings and palaces, and superficial relationships with intellectuals, artists, politicians or decadent nobles.
The Yanomami tribe lived on their land very quietly until the 1980s, when the gold fever broke out in full Amazon. More than 40,000 miners, the vast majority illegal, have come since that moment to this territory to maintain a business that increases as much of the area is devastated.
Niagara Falls are frozen. This news would be enough by itself to get an overview about the magnitude of the cold snap that has hit the United States in recent days.
Melchior is a middle-aged man, with hazel brown hair, moustache and beard. He is unemployed for more than a year: it was nothing personal, as usual, but in the big company in where he worked there were no place for everyone. Melchior is sad these days because he can’t get even a job interview.
Kids have no need to hide. If a child is happy, he laughs; if he is sad, he cries; if he is angry, he sulks. If he likes you, you will know it; if he doesn’t, you will know it too. Kids are what they are all the time. They don’t feel indebted to anyone. They act the way they think.
Holidays, shops, shopping, gifts, bags, queues. Kitchen, food, bells, grapes, nougat, bicarbonate. Guitars, tambourines, drums, carols. Tree, crib, decoration. Party, cinema, restaurant, theatre, games, home.
Recently it has been published in Spain a book that it is worth noting: La utilidad de lo inútil (The usefulness of the useless), by Nuccio Ordine . This Italian author is a teacher, philosopher, and one of the most experts in the Renaissance. He currently works as a teacher of literature at the University of Calabria. His previous books have been translated into many languages, and have received many awards in different European countries.
Today is December 20, 2011, and that man is sitting in front of his desk; he grabs a paper and a pen and starts writing his list of resolutions for 2012. Give up smoking. Go to the gym twice a week. Start a diet. Leave work earlier. Tell some nice words to his wife every day. Take his children hiking once a month. Take the stairs. Read. Keep his desk tidy.
During the last few days, members of the NGOs that won the XIX Natura Award for development projects have come to our head office. We lived there very emotional and unforgettable moments, in which it was shown, once again, the harmony between all people involved in this award.
After the death of her adoptive parents, Hortense, a young black optometrist who lives in London, feels the need to meet her biological mother, who gave her up for adoption at birth. After several inquiries, Hortense gets to meet her. And when she does, her mother, Cynthia, is not at all the person she had imagined.
One of the first things we learned when we began to go to school, with 5 or 6, was how to read. Our teachers taught us patiently and slowly, letter by letter from the first to the last; then we discovered that letters could be joined to form words, and words could compose sentences, which ended up being pages, and in the end, they were a story worth knowing.
According to a study published in the journal The Lancet, prolonged exposure to the fumes and particles from cars and industries can be fatal, even if concentrations are given below those required by the European Union. This study confirms that air pollution is a health hazard even at much lower levels than thought.
Much is written these days following the death of Nelson Mandela, on 5 December, at age 95. It is virtually impossible to say anything that has not already been said in any of the millions of media, blogs and social networks that have dedicated a space to him.
A decision has recently been reached regarding the nineteenth Natura Award, which since 1994 has recognized and thanked the work of many people and organizations, and which has been supporting humanitarian aid and nature protection projects. This time, the winners have been three entities, with different projects in Ethiopia and India.
Look at them, there they are. They are old people. They occupy park benches. They look for sunny corners. There they come, one by one, wearing their hats and using their canes. They sit and talk. They observe pigeons and children playing. They remember. Now they have more past than future.
On the occasion of a former students reunion, Willie Conway, a boy aged 29, goes back home in the small town of Knight ‘s Ridge. There he will think about his future; he does not know whether to give up his desire to be a pianist and become a sales representative or not, and also he will think about his relationship with his girlfriend Tracy.
A report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature assessed 71,576 species of animals. This report concludes that 21,286 of them are threatened or endangered. Perhaps the most striking of these endangered species is the okapi, also called “the forest giraffe”.