Quote of the Day: “If odor were as visible as color, I’d see the summer garden in rainbow clouds.” – Robert Bridges
Photo by: Erda Estremera (cropped)
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
46 years ago today, the Philips electronics company demonstrated the first CD, unveiling the single-sided compact disc that was impervious to scratches, dust, and vibrations, leading to CD players becoming a huge success. The format was later adapted to CD-ROM, for general-purpose data storage and the write-once audio and data storage CD-R. In 2004, worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs, and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs. By 2007, 200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide. READ who came up with the idea… (1979)
Recent UN summits on climate and biodiversity have both ended in what were seen as major disappointments, but a recent report from the United Nations Environment Program details that finance to protect nature is surging from the world’s banking and investment houses.
Raising elevenfold in just four years, various financial mediums such as managed accounts, electronically-traded funds, debt-for-nature swaps, and venture capital funding have raised the total amount of private investment into nature and biodiversity to over $100 billion.
If capital continues to flow at current rates, though that seems unlikely, the private sector would have contributed over $1 trillion by 2030 into investments that protect nature in some way.
Global media reports a lot on the “COP” or conference of the parties [to a treaty], most commonly referring to the parties of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, of which the most recent iteration was COP29. Confusingly, mainstream media will also use COP to refer to the parties to the Convention on Biodiversity, which recently concluded in Rome, and was called COP16.
In both COPs 29 and 16, agreements were struck to fund climate change resilience and biodiversity protection respectively, but neither left anyone feeling positive for the future. COP29 was seen as too great a compromise. At COP15, a $200 billion per year fund by 20230 was seen as a major success, but already the world’s developed nations are not even closely holding to these funding commitments.
In the shadow of what many environmental journalists would describe as the failure of the Developed World to confront two of the biggest challenges of our age, the private sector is quietly picking up the slack.
Never capable of leveraging the resources of modern nation-states, private capital, such as investment firms, hedge funds, banks, and venture capital funds, nevertheless have the benefit of being able to generate sustainable funding for nature by identifying mutually beneficial agreements and investments that are insulated from the swaying wills of politicians and voters.
MORE GREEN STORIES: Grove of 100 Giant Trees Discovered in 2019 Are Tallest in the Amazon–and Now Protected by State Park
In 2020, of the $9.4 billion of private sector capital channeled to protect nature, $2.5 billion came through philanthropy: an unsustainable form of finance. Illustrative of this was philanthropic contributions falling by $700 million by 2025, despite the fact that overall funding for nature had risen, according to the UN’s World Biodiversity Forum, to $102 billion—60% of which was driven by private equity investments.
By 2030, growth could reach $1 trillion—which would be more than what was asked in direct government grants by the COP biodiversity panelists during COP15 in Colombia, and the COP16.
SHARE This Positive Finance News To Shine A Light Through Dreary Headlines…
People who suffered blinding eye injuries have had their sight restored using a new form of stem cell therapy.
American surgeons took stem cells from the patient’s healthy eye and transplanted them into the injured eye, successfully repairing previously “irreversible” damage.
The experimental procedure safely restored corneal surfaces in 14 patients who were followed for 18 months.
Researchers say this clinical trial shows that the experimental treatment for injuries to the cornea is both “feasible and safe.”
Called cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cells (CALEC), the treatment was developed at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a specialty hospital located in Boston, and became the first stem cell therapy for the eye ever trialed in the United States.
The research team explained that the ground-breaking procedure consists of removing stem cells from a healthy eye with a biopsy, expanding them into a cellular tissue graft in a new manufacturing process that takes two to three weeks, and then surgically transplanting the graft into the eye with a damaged cornea.
“Our first trial in four patients showed that CALEC was safe and the treatment was possible,” said Principal investigator Professor Ula Jurkunas.
“Now we have this new data supporting that CALEC is more than 90% effective at restoring the cornea’s surface, which makes a meaningful difference in individuals with cornea damage that was considered untreatable.”
The team showed CALEC “completely restored” the cornea in 50% of participants at their three-month visit and that rate of complete success increased to 79% and 77% at their 12- and 18-month visits, respectively.
With two participants meeting the definition of partial success at 12 and 18 months, the overall success of CALEC was 92% at 18 months. Three participants received a second CALEC transplant, one of whom reached complete success by the study end visit.
Prof Jurkunas said CALEC displayed a high safety profile, with no serious events occurring in either the donor or recipient eyes. The only major adverse event, a bacterial infection, occurred in one participant, eight months after the transplant due to “chronic” contact lens use.
Other adverse events were minor and resolved quickly following the procedures.
CURING BLINDNESS: Bioengineered Corneas Stand to Cure Blindness For Millions of People Around the World
The researchers say the study shows the “promise” of cell therapy for treating incurable conditions.
One limitation of the approach is that it is necessary for the patient to have only one involved eye so a biopsy can be performed to get starting material from the unaffected normal eye. Study team members said that an allogenic manufacturing method would, in the future, allow for CALEC to be possible in patients with two damaged eyes rather than just one.
CALEC remains an experimental procedure and is currently not offered at Mass Eye and Ear or any other hospital, and research team says additional studies will be needed before the treatment is submitted for federal approval.
MORE DEVELOPMENTS IN EYESIGHT REPAIR: Red Light Therapy Could Improve Your Eyesight After it Declines Due to Age
“We feel this research warrants additional trials that can help lead towards FDA approval,” said Jurkunas.
“While we are proud to have been able to bring a new treatment from the lab bench to clinical trials, our guiding objective was and always will be for patients around the country to have access to this effective treatment.”
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In a recorded video, A-list actor Steve Carell dropped in on several high schools around Los Angeles to give the seniors a very special announcement.
The students probably thought it was a curious prank, or an AI-generated video, but they’d have been wrong. The announcement was that all the seniors’ prom tickets had been paid for by a nonprofit that Carell has personally worked alongside before.
They asked him to lend an air of stardust to their announcement video, and Carell was all too happy to ablige.
“Attention. Attention all seniors,” Carell said in the video, which beamed into the assembly halls of six schools in Altadena, California. “This is Steve Carell, with a very special announcement.”
Even though the Eaton Fire, which burned 14,000 acres of towns and hillsides to cinders, had left all six of the schools standing, many of the students lost their homes in the blaze.
3,000 miles away in Virginia, Alice’s Kids works anonymously to provide low-income or disadvantaged children something they need. In this case, it was determined that, along with taking away the burden on families of affording a $50-$185 prom ticket, what they needed more than anything was a good time.
“I work with a wonderful charity based out of Virginia called Alice’s Kids,” Carell said in the video. “And Alice’s Kids wanted me to let you know that they will be paying for all of your prom tickets.”
“The prom is a party, and more than anything, these kids need a party,” Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of Alice’s Kids, told the Washington Post. “They need something that is uplifting.”
OTHER STORIES LIKE THIS: Charles Barkley Keeps $1M Promise After 2 New Orleans Students Solve Pythagorean Theorem
Steve Carell’s famous protagonist in The Office, Michael Scott, once promised children he’d pay for their college tuition through a program he started called Scott’s Tots, but as is often the case throughout the show, Michael backs out of his commitment to the kids after he realizes he doesn’t have the money.
Alice’s Kids is donating $175,000 to send 800 seniors to proms across Aveson Schools, Blair High School, John Muir High School, Marshall Fundamental Secondary School, Pasadena High School, and Rose City High School.
CELEBRITIES STEPPING UP: Baseball Star Bryce Harper Helps a Random Guy Ask a Girl on a Prom Date
“This means everything to our students…” said Lori Touloumian, the principal of Marshall Fundamental Secondary School. “It brought so much joy this morning, and that’s something that our students have really been missing.”
SHARE Steve Carell’s Helping Hand To A Tremendous Nonprofit And Their Great Work…
Unique geologic formations found in Western Australia have led a team of researchers to conclude that an asteroid struck the area around 3.57 billion years ago which would make it the oldest such impact site known.
And it wouldn’t be even close. The second-oldest impact crater dates to around 2 billion years before our time.
Located in an area known as the Pilbara in the state of Western Australia, certain formations like “shatter cones” and “pillow basalts,” along with a rising dome shape in the middle of a vast expanse, have convinced Geologist and co-author Tim Johnson that their hypothesis is correct.
The Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago and was mostly water, but meteorite and asteroid impacts were uncommon before 2.5 billion years ago. This long stretch of largely empty history is known as the Archean Eon, and as one might imagine, little is known about the dynamics of Earth formation, terrestrial build-up, or impacts from this time.
ABC News Down Under reports that Johnson and his colleagues contentiously proposed three years ago that a 250,000 square kilometer region called the Pilbarra Craton was created by this impact, and a new paper on this theory includes physical examinations in an area which they believe was the epicenter of this event—one so large it would rival the extinction of the dinosaurs for aftermath.
Johnson reports the crater can be seen today only in a 35-mile wide dome that marks exactly where the asteroid impacted.
“So, when you form a really big crater, the middle bit forces its way back to the surface so you get a dome structure,” he said.
“We think those [sort of] domes are possibly the likely places where life would have taken a foothold in the Pilbara and elsewhere.”
As Johnson suggests, part of the work he and his team are doing at the site is laying out a hypothesis for how a massive impact event like this may have been the genesis of life. But before that, he and his team had to present multiple lines of evidence that point to the Pilbara dome structure being the site of a meteorite impact.
MORE ANCIENT EARTH HISTORY: Antarctica Yields Intact Skull — An Ancestor of Today’s Waterfowl That Survived Dinosaur Extinction
Part of that evidence is the presence of shatter cones, a formation that appears like an upside down badminton shuttlecock.
“So, upward facing cones with delicate feathery-like features,” Johnson said. “The only way you can form those in natural rocks is from a large meteorite impact.”
OTHER AUSTRALIA NEWS: Second-Ever Elusive Night Parrot Egg Discovered in Australia Where it Had Been ‘Extinct’ for 100 Years
Another formation found that may hint that the site’s archaic history are pillow basalts, which could have formed from lava flowing under water after an impact event, overlying the shatter cones in the Pilbara, and offering part of the precise date of 3.57 billion years ago.
Other scientists aren’t convinced—at least that the discovery changes anything about our understanding of Earth’s evolution and the influence of impacts on Earth’s structure. Johnson and his team will use a variety of tools to examine the components of the shatter cones to hone their argument.
WATCH a video on why Australia can help understand Mars…
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Quote of the Day: “How successful you are on the outside is directly related to how you feel inside.” – Neville Goddard
Photo by: Benjamin Davies
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
176 years ago today, the renowned American botanist and horticultural pioneer, Luther Burbank, who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants, was born. He created the Shasta daisy, the Delicious apple, and the Russet potato, which he invented to be resistant to the blight that wiped out crops throughout Europe and caused the devastating Irish potato famine. READ more… (1849)
While some might consider Burger King royalty only among big corporate fast food chains, the staff members at a local Minnesota branch just put some very human, very sensitive toppings on the reputation of their restaurant.
When a 91-year-old regular at the restaurant’s North Branch location died, the staff requested his name be engraved into the chair on which he always sat—a request that was granted swiftly by the higher-ups.
For years, Jerry Parkin met his friends often for their morning coffee at Burger King, so often in fact that they began to see him as family.
So when that family member died, it was only natural they attended the funeral.
“Someone came into the kitchen at church and said, ‘The whole crew of Burger King is here, and they brought a chair,’” Jenny Olson, Parkin’s daughter, told KARE. “I said, ‘What?’”
Arriving in their uniforms, the staff had brought the chair that Parkin always sat in. Into the back of it, one of Parkin’s coffee compatriots had asked his wife to use a wood burner to engrave his name, the date of his birth and that of his death.
Before doing so, Tom DeHaven, the general manager at the Burger King location in North Branch, secured permission from corporate; a request he would eventually make again once another of the coffee compatriots passed away.
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Son Surprises Dad with Dream Car He Gave up for Diaper Money 41 Years Ago
“He would walk in, and we would have his order ready for him,” said Monica Kuball, one of the Burger King employees who attended the funeral, while another, Ashley Fundingsland, noted that he sat in the same chair every morning: “That was his seat. He always sat there every morning, so we had to bring his chair.”
They said they all loved him, and he loved them; and Burger King. He celebrated his 90th Birthday there, while his last meal would end up being chicken nuggets, a milkshake, and a cookie, his son Leo told KARE.
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After the service, the chairs were returned to the Burger King, where Olson was able to eventually visit and take in the sights where her father spent so much time.
WATCH the story below from KARE…
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A senior citizen who suffers from claustrophobia offered a man in the aisle seat on a recent Delta Airlines flight $100 to switch with her.
Though he repeatedly declined, and offered his seat happily, the woman would not let it lie, eventually telling him to give some of the money to his kids as a lesson that being kind brings rewards.
The man, who was not named, shared his story in a recent Reddit room for airline encounters.
“As I approached my seat an elderly lady was having a hard time getting her bag in the overhead so I offered to help. She ended up being in 1D and I was 1C,” the passenger wrote on the sub-Reddit thread r/delta.
“She immediately said she’d pay me $100 to swap seats because she feels claustrophobic in the window seats in this particular seat configuration. Even though I prefer an aisle I told her that I’d gladly switch for free…”
As boarding continued, the man, an engineer by trade, conversed freely with the woman, eventually leading him to believe that the question of payment had been settled: he was not going to willfully take money for a courtesy he hoped anyone would do for free.
Eventually, they landed in Atlanta, and the woman slipped $100 out of her purse and again offered it to the man.
ALSO CHECK OUT: Lost Stuffed Bunny Goes on Airport Adventure Ending in Heartwarming Reunion (WATCH)
“I tried to refuse again, but she told me to take it and give it to my kids but to explain to them how being nice to others can lead to something nice in return,” he recounted on the social media site.
He concluded his post by questioning the wisdom of offering his kids money, as he foresaw a world in which they’d perform many good deeds but always with a request for a reward.
MORE AVIATION INSPIRATION: United Pilot Orders 30 Pizzas to Feed Passengers After Emergency Landing for Medical Care
One of the commentors said they had recently been in the woman’s position, and wished there was some easy way to reward the seat-swapper in their story. As it turned out, the commenter alerted the flight attendant, who was able to add points to the passenger’s frequent flyer account.
What flies there around flies back around.
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After an Oregon man won the state’s third-highest Powerball lottery prize ever, he has decided to travel, to give to various nonprofits “close to his heart,” and make some investments.
The $328 million prize manifested itself on a ticket bought from a Fred Meyer convenience store in Beaverton, Oregon, a stroke of fortune that saw it receive a $100,000 bonus, which it also says will be used to contribute to nonprofits.
79-year-old winner Abbas Shafii opted to take a lump sum of $146 million rather than the full amount over a 29-year annuity.
“I am overjoyed to have won the Powerball and plan to use my prize to travel, invest and share my good fortune with non-profit organizations that are close to my heart,” Shafii said.
Approximately a third of Powerball game sales in Oregon are returned to the state and supports beneficiaries such as economic development, public education, veteran services, state parks and more, the game’s parent organization, the Multi-State Lottery Association wrote in a statement.
The chance of winning the large total was the same as flipping a coin and having it land head 28 times in a row, mathematicians speaking with the AP estimated.
OTHER GENEROUS LOTTERY WINNERS: Irish Woman Who Won $145M Lottery Has Given Over Half: ‘I’m Addicted to Helping People’
While Shafii didn’t mention which nonprofits he would be patronizing, Fred Meyer is donating half the $100,000 bonus to the Oregon Food Bank’s Zero Hunger | Zero Waste initiative, showing that generosity is infectious.
Shafii’s winning numbers were 14, 31, 35, 64, 69, and a Powerball of 23.
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LeBron James has become the first player in NBA history to score a combined 50,000 points across all games, season and postseason.
He made the record with a three-pointer in the first quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers’ 136-115 win over the New Orleans Pelicans, in which he scored 34.
Talk about longevity.
“I mean, that’s a lot of points,” James said afterward, rubbing his beard in wonder, (we’re right there with you LeBron.)
“Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is where I’m from. Picking up the game when I was a little kid and having a love for the sport, and hoping that someday I’d be able to play at the highest level. I’ve been able to do that and really enjoy my career. So it’s definitely an honor. It’s pretty cool to see that.”
Across his joint-most-ever seasons in the NBA of 22, LeBron is gradually leaving other greats of the game behind. Kareem Abdul-Jabar is fading into the review mirror with his 44,149 points across 20 seasons.
50,000 points wasn’t a record set by another player—LeBron already was the NBA’s all-time highest scorer across regular season and playoffs—it’s just a nice round number unlikely to be touched for a long time.
During the game, the Lakers’ stadium announcer took the first time-out as an occasion to inform the crowd they had been witness to history, with James acknowledging the standing ovation with several waves from the bench.
The other longevity record left to break would be all-time games played, one he would likely make his own if he returned for another season and stayed fit and available, as he is less than one regular season’s worth of games behind Jabar, and Robert Parish who holds the record with 1,611.
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If he were to return for a 23rd season at the age of 41, it wouldn’t be a testimonial either. As his points total against the Pelicans on Tuesday suggests, James keeps up his high-standards. He was named the NBA’s Western Conference player of the month for February, averaging 35 minutes per game, 29.3 points, 10.5 rebounds, 6.9 assists and 1.2 steals. He also holds the NBA’s record for most player of the month awards (41).
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AP reports that James has also played in 287 postseason games, the most in NBA history. He became the league’s career playoff scoring leader almost a decade ago, when he surpassed Michael Jordan’s total of 5,987 during his time with Cleveland in 2017.
His performances throughout his career have verged on inevitable, and by far the best piece of LeBron trivia is his scoring streak. Since January of 2007, James has scored at least 10 points in each of the 1,278 consecutive games he has played in since then.
Talk about fine wine.
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Quote of the Day: “No one has ever loved anyone too much. We just haven’t learned yet how to love enough.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Photo by: Adrianna Geo
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Happy Birthday to musician and singer-songwriter David Gilmour, who turns 79 years old. In a career spanning more than 50 years, he is best known for his work as the guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It was estimated that by 2012 the group had sold over 250 million records worldwide. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 14 in their list of the greatest guitarists of all time. WATCH him perform a gorgeous version of the ultimate ballad of angst, Wish You Were Here… (1946)
If the headline to this story sounds oddly like the plot of the movie Nacho Libre starring Jack Black, well, that’s becaues they are one and the same.
Fray Tormenta was a masked wrestler that delighted crowds in Mexico’s lucho libre circuit for years, but few would have known that underneath the mask there was a man of god—a drug addict turned priest, who wrestled purely to raise money for an orphanage.
The story, though decades old, resurfaced and was retold recently on a Spanish news outlet. Sergio Gutierrez Benitez was born in 1945 the second-youngest of 18 children.
By the tender age of 11, Benitez was addicted to drugs and proceeded down a path of crime, robbery, and odd jobs to fund his various dependencies.
“I started when I was 11 or 12. In this country [Mexico], drugs have always been very present,” recounted Benitez to El Confidencial. “I did everything—marijuana and cocaine every day, even mushrooms from time to time. A little after that, I started heroin.”
At age twenty, Benitez was staring down murder charges after a friend of his in a gang he was in turned up dead. Fortunately, an alibi of drunkenly passing out in a bar elsewhere helped him evade the slammer.
After that, he sought confession, for reasons only he can say, but even though he was turned away for his wickedness, he joined the seminary and became a priest in the Piarist Order, studying in Spain and Italy to cement his faith.
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After joining the Diocese of Texcoco, he wanted to build a shelter for the city’s many homeless children and orphans, but the costs were prohibitive. An early life of gang and streetfighting in which he was stabbed, beat up, and shot, left him with a high tolerance for pain, and so he pulled on a lucho libre mask and started wrestling for $15 per hour under the name Fray Tormenta.
He ended up wrestling for 23 years, from 1977 to 2000, traveling from town to town elbow dropping, tombstoning, and double-legging his way to semi-stardom. Relying on his mask to hide his identity, he eventually revealed his double-personality to officiate the wedding of a close wrestling colleague shortly before opening his orphange—the object of his long fight—at the turn of the millennium.
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Sidelined for Gambling Problem, Soccer Star Spends Probation Helping Fans Kick Theirs
La Casa Hogar de los Cachorros de Fray Tormenta, or Fray Tormenta’s Cubs Children’s Home, has seen over 2,000 children pass through its walls. Many of whom have gone on to become doctors, civil servants, engineers, lawyers, and yes, even wrestlers. One wonders where they got the idea.
WATCH a long explainer video below…
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Drone footage has revealed that the narwhal actively wields its long tusk for hunting and play behavior, opening up whole new fields of study over one of the oceans’ most charismatic denizens.
The scientific name of the narwhal (Monodon monoceros) literally translates to “one tooth, one horn,” an incredibly ironic name since the first thing that anyone learns about the narwhal is that what appears to be a horn is actually a tooth, or tusk. At least someone was paying attention, even if someone else wasn’t.
The tusk, which is predominantly found in males and can grow up to 10 feet long, is one of the most fascinating adaptations in nature and the inspiration for myths such as the unicorn. It is believed to play a role in competition for mates, including mating displays.
The tusk may have other uses and its function has long been debated, primarily because few people have observed how these elusive animals use their tusks in the wild.
Limited field observations have long left the creature’s true nature to gut instinct, speculation, and wild fantasy, but researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, in partnership with Inuit communities in Nunavut in Canada’s High Arctic, provide the first evidence of narwhals using their tusks in the wild to investigate, manipulate, and influence the behavior of Arctic char.
These large common and delicious game fish of the northern seas were found to be on the receiving end of the narwhal’s tusk, with the whales delivering sufficient force to stun and possibly kill the fish.
Using drone observations, researchers captured 17 distinct behaviors, which shed light on the dynamics between the narwhal and its prey.
The results of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, also reveal the first evidence of likely play, specifically exploratory-object play, in narwhals as well as other fascinating insights into narwhal behavior in a changing Arctic.
Aspects of the narwhals’ actions, for example, may also have included social learning, and possibly social instruction and personality differences among individual narwhals. These novel findings further enrich our understanding of narwhals’ complex behavior.
“Narwhals are known for their ‘tusking’ behavior, where two or more of them simultaneously raise their tusks almost vertically out of the water, crossing them in what may be a ritualistic behavior to assess a potential opponent’s qualities or to display those qualities to potential mates,” said Greg O’Corry-Crowe, Ph.D., senior author, a research professor at FAU Harbor Branch and a National Geographic Explorer. “But now we know that narwhal tusks have other uses, some quite unexpected, including foraging, exploration and play.”
The narwhals exhibited remarkable dexterity, precision, and speed of movement with their tusks, and regularly made adjustments to track the moving target—in this case the fish. The tusk, especially the tip of the tusk, was used to interrogate and manipulate target fish.
NEWS FROM THE ARCTIC: More Than 50,000 Pounds of Trash Removed from the Arctic in 2023
“I have been studying narwhal for over a decade and have always marveled at their tusks,” said Cortney Watt, Ph.D., co-author and research scientist and team lead at Fisheries and Oceans, Canada.
“To observe them using their tusks for foraging and play is remarkable. This unique study where we set up a remote field camp and spent time filming narwhal with drones is yielding many interesting insights and is providing a bird’s eye view of their behavior that we have never seen before.”
MORE NARWHAL NEWS: A Pod of Whales Adopted a Young Stray Narwhal – and They May Have Little ‘Narwhales’
“Our observations provide clear evidence of narwhals chasing fish and using their tusks to interact directly with the fish and to influence the fish’s behavior,” said O’Corry-Crowe. “Some of the interactions we saw appeared competitive in nature with one whale blocking or trying to block another whale’s access to the same target fish, while others may have been more subtle, possibly communicative and even affiliative. None appeared overtly aggressive.”
WATCH some of the drone footage below…
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Two of the Central Asian ‘Stans’ have agreed to shift their borders after decades of violent frontier flare-ups, celebrating peace between neighbors.
Not every country can enjoy a border as easily delineated as Colorado and Kansas. Few areas of the world can boast a worse cartographical headache than the Fergana Valley.
Located where the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan touch, this fertile region appears like a Jackson Pollock painting, as bits of each nation jut into each other, and drops of sovereign territory are scattered here and there surrounded by foreign land.
To make matters worse, the Fergana Valley, like so much of Central Asia, is home to nomadic pastoralists who for generations never had to think about international borders.
Out of this chaos—courtesy of the Soviet Union—disputes over grazing and water rights and who knows what else have boiled over into outbreaks of extreme violence and unrest along the borders of the Kyrgyzstan region of Batken and northern Sughd region of Tajikistan.
Now however, after successful diplomacy, the two nations have agreed to shift their borders in order to end existing conflict motives.
GOOD DIPLOMACY: After 5 Year Ban on Direct Flights Between China and India, Border Relations Thaw as Planes Resume
“Negotiations have reached the final point and can be discussed openly from today,” said the head of Kyrgyzstan’s secret service Kamchybek Tashiev. “After parliamentary consideration, the presidents will sign, then ratification, and finally, the final version will be signed by the heads of two states.”
Both sides announced a new demarcation deal last December, but little to no details have emerged until now. Tashiev said that the agreement has progressed to the point where it can be discussed openly.
MORE CENTRAL ASIAN STORIES: Kazakhstan Sees Incredible Progress Scaling Back World’s Worst Environmental Disaster
Several controversial roads through the rough terrain will be declared ‘neutral’ and available for either nation to use. The authorities will also relocate the inhabitants of the villages exchanged under the agreement, according to the Defense Post, while a vital irrigation canal has had access rights eased for both parties.
After 2022 saw the deadliest fighting in the area since the 1990s, the presidents of the two nations discussed a border agreement openly during a meeting at the UN, a rare moment of warmth and civility that suggested a deal might be possible.
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From India comes the incredible story of a young man who reconstructed an ‘extinct’ musical instrument using clues in ancient literature.
Called the Yazh, this gorgeous harp, carved in the form of a peacock and aided by a resonator, was played for Tamil kings 2,000 years ago, but hasn’t been manufactured for years, perhaps even centuries.
His passion for Indian instruments led him to start an instrument company called Uru, which is now selling these harps all over the world.
Profiled in a feature for the Better India, Tharun Sekar picked up instrument making at university while studying for an architecture degree. Born in Chennai, the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Sekar was comfortable making guitars and ukuleles, but felt a calling to do something different.
“After finishing college, I was considering instrument-making full-time,” says Sekar. “While Western instruments are popular, I was driven by the question of why our instruments weren’t reaching a global audience.”
He never intended to start making Yazh (Sekar never uses the definite article) but came upon it when a friend asked him if he knew how to make one. Looking into it, Sekar realized there was virtually no information on how Yazh is crafted, played, or even what it sounded like.
The mystery left him entranced, and soon, with the help of some friends, he was consulting the canon of ancient Tamil literature.
“We started to read works of literature like Silapathikaram… where there was a mention about Yazh,” he told the Better India. “We won’t have direct information about the instrument but rather it would be hidden behind uvamai (metaphors in Tamil)—[p]hrases like ‘the sound of Yazh was like honey’, ‘the bend of Yazh was like the belly of an eight-month pregnant woman.’”
From this he managed to formulate an idea over what the instrument looked like. For sounds, he took references from the canon and compared them with related instruments from other regions like the Greek lyre or an antique harp from Burma.
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The literature mentions several components common in stringed instruments such as tuning keys, a resonator, and a bridge (where the strings connect to the body).
It took Sekar a year, with the help of local experts in brasswork, to make his first Yazh, but now he can crank out several in a year. All are handcarved wood and metal, made to order, in different sizes. There are some the size of the harps played by minstrels in the Middle Ages, but other Yazh are very tall and come with a stand to support the weight of the bass-drum-sized resonator.
Its sound lies somewhere between a sitar, western lyre, and a banjo.
Uru Instruments has sold around 80 Yazh to customers from Canada, the US, UK, Germany, India, and other countries.
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Along with starting a band that produces music on traditional Tamil instruments, Uru Instruments, led by Shekar, is now pursuing a goal of reviving an antique or lost instrument from each Indian state: a noble goal if ever there were one.
“Right now, we want to work on each state in India and find out an important instrument from that state,” Shekar told the Better India. We are in the search for that.”
LISTEN to the sound of the Yazh from below…
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55 years ago today, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went into effect after ratification by 43 nations agreeing to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The goal was also to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to advance disarmament in general. It took three years for the treaty to be negotiated by a United Nations-sponsored committee made up of 18 countries: Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy, the U.S., Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, Brazil, Burma, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Sweden, the United Arab Republic. READ the current status of the NPT… (1970)
