Killing innocent animals for fun is the ultimate act of cruelty demonstrated by humans towards the rest of the living creatures inhabiting the planet. Yet, there are a number of trophy hunters who are guilty of bringing many species on the brink of extinction. What’s most, this “sport” is not even illegal in most countries, on the contrary, governments get enormous amounts of money for letting animals like lions, elephants, cheetahs and giraffes killed.
Scott Van Zyl was a trophy hunter who took rich clients on big game hunts. What happened to him during his final hunting trip to Zimbabwe in 2017 was described by many as “karma at its finest.”
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Van Zyl, along with his dogs, went to hunt crocodiles. However, after some time, his tracker dogs returned without him and his friends assumed something turned wrong during the hunting. And their assumptions turned out to be true.
Namely, Van Zyl’s footprints were spotted near a river bank and an investigation was launched. It was later confirmed that Van Zyl was eaten by the crocodiles after remains were identified as his through DNA tests.
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Many argued how this unfortunate man got what he deserved.
One Green Planet were among those who highlighted the risks hunters are exposed to while taking the life of innocent animals. “Let’s be honest, Zyl shouldn’t have been hunting in the first place,” they wrote. “We have to ask ourselves if the ‘thrill of the hunt’ is really worth risking your own life – while deliberately taking others.”
Nowadays, most people are struggling to meet the tight schedules the modern times impose on them, and this is probably one of the reasons why we are becoming distant over time. However, the acts of kindness we do for one another are what have made humanity going strong for so long. And when this compassion comes from young people, we feel delight because we know the next generations won’t fail us.
Dontarius Caldwell is a 15-year-old boy from Cincinnati, Ohio, whose good deed for a woman in need of help have touched the hearts of people from all around the country.
Namely, as he and his sister Diamond were waiting for the school bus, they noticed an elderly lady struggling to press the button at a crosswalk.
Diamond knew something was wrong and assumed the lady could be blind so she asked from Dontarius to go and help her cross the road.
“I told Dontarius that I think she’s blind, you should get up and go help her, and he got up and went to go help her cross the street two times while I waited for the bus to come,” Diamond said.
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Dontarius approached the woman and asked whether she needed help, to which she answered “yes.”
He then guided her across the street not knowing his kindness had been caught on tape.
Once the video was shared on the social media, everyone praised Dontarious and his sister, saying that many young people should look up to them. The two, however, don’t think they really deserve all that praise as they were only doing the right thing and believe everyone else would do the same.
“I was just trying to help and I really didn’t think I would be on camera,” Dontarius told NBC’s WLWT5 News station.
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“I was just helping the elderly, giving a helping hand. The key word is helping hand. Everybody gotta get a helping hand,” he said.
“If you be kind, what happens (to them) happens to you,” Dontarius added.
The school Dontarius attends is so very proud of him that they have given him a key to the school as a reward for his kindness.
Stories like these always trigger the right emotions and make us all better people.
Please share this so that more people hear of these siblings’ kindness.
Dirty Dancing, 1987, described as “Smart and funny, touching and unabashedly sensual,” by critic Sheila Benson of Los Angeles Times, remains up until this day a movie one can’t easily forget.
The incredibly touching story along with the dancing choreography which hundreds of people tried to imitate over the years make this movie iconic. The star, Patrick Swayze, who was named Sexiest Man Alive in 1991 by People, took the world by storm.
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Young Patrick fell in love with dancing after he started visiting the Houston Jazz Ballet Company where his mom was a director. It was there where he met his future wife Lisa Niemi. Of course, at the time of their first encounter both Lisa and Patrick were still very young and only started dating later. “If I started putting on a pose or doing my Casanova routine, Lisa would turn away and not say anything,” Swayze told People. “We had a lot of dates in silence.” He added, “I knew she was the smartest chick I’d ever met. [Before Lisa] I had been meeting girls with names like “Mimi” and “Angel”. And for a long time, I didn’t feel like I deserved her.”
The couple married in 1975 and their love was perceived by many as the purest and the deepest there was. Even after Patrick became very famous, nothing changed between him and the love of his life with whom he stayed together until the rest of his life.
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TV host Barbara Walters described what the couple had as something “extraordinary”. “The way he looked at her, the way he held on to her, the way she smiled. I can’t really imagine one without the other,” Walters said.
Patrick was often teased by his friends for his passion for dancing, but at the end, it was this love that land him the iconic role of Johnny Castle.
Before this, Patrick played Prince Charming in Disney on Parade and Danny Zuko in the original Brodway production of Grease. In 1981, the actor landed a role in M*A*S*H and in 1983, he played in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders.
Dirty Dancing earned him a Golden Globe nomination in the “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical” category and another one for his role of Sam Wheat in the blockbuster movie Ghost, the highest-grossing movie of 1990, where he starred along Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.
Patrick always knew he was a father material and wanted children badly. “I was born to be a dad,” he said according to Closer magazine. However, he never got to experience that role. His wife was pregnant but suffered miscarriage and the two never had any children. This was a very hard time for the actor. “It broke his heart. He wanted to be a dad more than anything. He had skills, knowledge, kindness, and love – everything a child would want,” Swayze’s long-time friend and bodyguard Frank Whiteley said.
As years gone by, Lisa felt she was getting old for children.
“I had been seeing an acupuncturist for a long time, and then all of a sudden I was too old,” Lisa revealed in the Paramount Network documentary, I Am Patrick Swayze, in August 2019 and continued:
“I probably should have been better informed about to go about it, but anyway I may have wasted some time. But you know I said ‘you know, how would you feel about adopting?’ He got very teary-eyed and he said ‘I want to have children with you.’”
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“Patrick very much wanted to be a father because I think he wanted to be as good a father to his child as his dad had been to him,” his manager, Kate Edwards, later said in the documentary.
Patrick’s brother, Don Swayze, spoke of the star’s desperate desire to have children.
“You could tell he would have been a great dad, Just as an uncle you could see it, you could see the amazing dad he would be,” Don revealed. ” … He would have never wanted Lisa feeling bad for having miscarriages, but it crushed him, so they tried.”
After starring in other movies, Patrick decided to get back to Broadway.
In 2007, Patrick was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. His body changed over night and he told Access Online how he “dropped 20 pounds in the blink of an eye.” He was a heavy smoker his whole life and didn’t quit the habit even after the devastating diagnosis but told Barbara Walters, “I’ve seriously cut down. I was one of those dumb ones that started back in the Marlborough Man days whose — you know, it was cool. I’m a cowboy. But I’ll tell you one thing. I will talk so hard core against, against smoking for kids. That’s one reason I’ve never smoked in front of children.”
Sadly, the Ghost star passed away in 2009 at the age of 57 and left the whole world mourning.
He left his wife $40 million and bought his mother a house. However, after his death, Lisa claimed how her late husband was abused by his mother when he was young, allegations the Swayze family rejected as not true. Later, they accused Lisa of selling Patrick’s personal belongings on E-bay, among which his leather jacket from Dirty Dancing. They were very mad at her and Patrick’s niece Danielle said, “These were family heirlooms. It’s a slap in the face that she’s selling these precious memories.”
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In 2014, Lisa re-married. She said her new husband, jeweler Albert DePriscan, knew she was still in love with Patrick when they started dating and tied the knot. “Albert knew I still loved Patrick and would always love him, and told me, ‘and I know you love me, and I love you.’ How could I not marry this man?,” Lisa told People. “As I had time to process the change my life was going to take, my doubts became less and less, and I became more and more sure.”
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On the 11th anniversary of his passing, Lisa wrote an emotional message for the actor. “Celebrating a wonderfully strong, sensitive & special man on the 11th anniversary of his passing. So missed. Can’t help but feel a dark cloud today (and all last week!), but grateful for what we had together. What a journey! Blessed, even with the tears.”
Bullying, in any form, can have lifelong effects on the victim. It affects one’s self-confidence and makes them feel unaccepted and as they don’t belong to the group or the society. This is in issue that is oftentimes overlooked and I honestly believe that we need to work harder in order to put a stop to such violent behavior.
Jeffery Taylor was a 7-year-old boy who had a hard time coping with the way he was treated by his classmates. Being the only black kid in the class, Jeffery was a target of bullies who called him the “N-word,” “Blacky,” “snaggletooth” and ugly, his parents claimed.
Four days before Christmas, Jeffery came home from school and his mother could see the disappointment in his eyes. He was sad and said he didn’t want to get back to school again. His mom then told him he should be happy and looking forward to the winter break, to which the first grader replied: “I should, but I’m not happy. I want to get away from that school. They don’t listen to me. They don’t like me.”
Later that night, Jeffery went to sleep and his parents kissed all of their seven children goodnight. Never in their life would they imagine it would be the last time to see their youngest child alive.
Although the parents were convinced that their kids were unaware of the firearm in the house, it turned out Jeffery knew his mother kept a gun in a bible case under her bed. That night, the boy took the gun and took his own life.
Investigators called the shooting an accident, but once claims of Jeffrey’s alleged bullying came to light, they investigated further.
“It’s been a struggle. I put on this beautiful face, but inside I hurt because I miss my baby,” mom LaKeisha told WTOL. “No matter what I said to him that Friday, the day before, it wasn’t enough because he was already broken.”
At Jeffrey Taylor‘s school white children called him the “N-word,” “Blacky,” “snaggletooth” and ugly. They destroy his belongings and his teacher kept his desk segregated as the only Black child.
He was 7 and bullied to death by racist 1st graders.
The parents spoke of the way Jeffery was treated by his classmates and said they made his time at school a living hell. One time, they even destroyed his shoes and a pair of boots.
“It just seems like he just was being targeted and picked on,” Jermaine said. “He was just that one person that stood out.”
The mother recalled that during a parent/teacher conference, she noticed that her son’s desk was segregated from the rest of the class. The teacher reportedly said that Jeffery might have been having issues with the rest of the kids.
As the parents accepted the responsibility for their son finding the weapon, they claimed the reason for his devastating decision was the excessive bullying.
The school on the other hand expressed condolences but claimed no bullying took place.
“East Central ISD profoundly mourns the loss of Jeffery Taylor. He was a bright and well-liked student and we still, to this day, are in shock and disbelief over this tragedy.
“We are saddened to hear about the allegations as any form of bullying, harassment, or violence is taken seriously and follows required state law, board policy, and District procedures.
“The District completed a thorough investigation with many teachers, staff, and classmates to determine if any bullying occurred. The investigation did not produce information to corroborate the allegations. The findings of the investigation were in a letter sent to the family on January 8, 2020.
“We investigated the allegations further at three levels: Salado Elementary, student services, and the superintendent. All investigations did not support the allegations.
“East Central ISD stands proudly united in our commitment to inclusion and diversity.”
Source: YouTube/ KENS 5: Your San Antonio News Source
The death of Jeffery is surrounded by many unanswered questions. We hope no child ever would be the victim of bullying. One thing is certain, bullying is present everywhere, especially schools, so school districts need to do more about this issue and provide a safe place for students.
It is very common for people who reach certain age to feel the need for a change regarding their appearance. Whether it is wrinkles removal, fillers, or going under the knife, all these procedures are meant to boost one’s self-confidence. But what happens if things go wrong, just as in the case of neurologist Gina Anderson?
When this beautiful and successful woman turned 40, she decided to treat herself with fillers that would lift her cheeks. However, she didn’t explore many options but decided to turn to a colleague of hers who offered to do the procedure for her.
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At first, things looked great and she felt good about herself. Sadly, some four years later, she started experiencing pain under her right eye and it was the start of an exhausting life journey.
“A colleague offered to do fillers for me, and it was like ‘well, I’m in my 40s, I’m going to look a little bit better,’” Gina said on the reality television series Botched. Little did she know her life would turn into hell.
What she believed were quality fillers turned out to be plain silicone which caused severe inflammation and deformed her face completely. She received injections in both her cheeks, but only the right side of her face received the silicone.
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The inflammation caused Gina severe pain. She had a hard time sleeping and was even forced to shut her practice down. The granuloma, or the inflammation Gina had, was in fact the body’s defensive mechanism for preventing a bacteria from spreading. A few weeks after it started growing, it suddenly burst open and left a big hole under Gina’s eye.
She turned to a number of doctors, but it looked like nothing could be done to remove the silicone from her face.
“You can’t sleep, and you’re in constant pain. It’s hard to think on your feet all the time. This isn’t just me looking slightly pretty. I’m in agony, I don’t sleep, my hair started thinning kind of like a hair loss. And I just started feeling kind of weak and fatigued. It’s been a nightmare.”
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Eventually, she turned to Dr. Terry Dubrow and Dr. Paul Nassif, of the reality television series Botched.
“When you get a granuloma, which is a foreign body inflammatory reaction, that typically happens between six months to a year,” Dr. Dubrow explained.
“The fact that Gina didn’t start developing those granulomas until way later indicates it’s a very slow, smoldering inflammatory chronic response that could be potentially very, very difficult if not impossible to treat.”
Gina underwent a number of surgeries. During the first procedure at the Botched clinic, Dr. Paul Nassif said he found something which looked like “a piece of gauze” on her face, probably from the surgeries at the other clinics.
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Luckily, Gina’s pain was no longer present and she could finally sleep after so much time. “I’m just really grateful now that I have a chance to reclaim my life because things were starting to look dismal. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time, so I’m just really crossing my fingers that this is really the end of my personal hell.”
Sadly, shortly after, she felt pain again, and it turned out there were some complications from the procedure, including swelling. She needed to go under the knife again, and this time, everything turned out for the best.
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Today, Gina looks beautiful and is happy with her face.
“My energy level is increasing, and actually, my mood has gotten better,” she said. “My hair loss has stopped, and actually, my hair is starting to grow back. My thought process is actually getting faster. I mean, it’s just a miracle. It’s just life-changing.”
This story should serve as a warning that whenever someone feels the urge to undergo a beautifying procedure, they should always consult an expert.
Loretta Lynn, the legendary country singer who impacted the world of music so profoundly over the years, turned 90 on April 14.
Throughout her life, she experienced a lot of beautiful things, as well as loses and griefs, but she came even stronger each time.
Lynn was a daughter of a coal miner, and that is something that was a big part of her life. Her signature song “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and an Oscar-winning biopic of the same name were inspired by her life story.
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At the age of 15, Lynn met the man who would become her husband. She stayed with him for 48 year, until his passing in 1996. Her marriage to Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn resembled a fairytale, but things weren’t smooth between them, mainly because of his heavy drinking and the many affairs he had with other women over the years.
”I married Doo when I wasn’t but a child, and he was my life from that day on,” Lynn later wrote in her 2002 memoir Still Woman Enough. “But as important as my youth and upbringing was, there’s something else that made me stick to Doo. He thought I was something special, more special than anyone else in the world, and never let me forget it. That belief would be hard to shove out the door. Doo was my security, my safety net.
“Doo was a good man and a hard worker. But he was an alcoholic, and it affected our marriage all the way through.”
He, however, supported her career a great deal and bought her her first guitar. It was in 1960 that Lynn recorded her first record, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.” The song led to a contract with Decca Records after which she appeared on the Grand Ole Opry.
From that moment on, she rose to stardom and is until this very day a much loved vocal adored by millions.
She has always been a woman before her time who was never afraid to tackle topics which were considered taboo during the 1960’s. Her song “Dear Uncle Sam,” which was critical of the Vietnam war, and “The Pill,” which tackled the controversial topic of birth control led to her songs to be banned from the radio.
“Loretta Lynn has more banned songs than any other country artist,” the artist’s granddaughter Tayla Lynn recently told NewsNation. “They tried to cancel her before cancel culture was a thing.”
55 years ago today I put this song out and it became a #1 hit. Some advice never gets old and, boys, I recommend you keep this one in mind still today! pic.twitter.com/Jw15F1IUqg
For her music, Lynn has won three Grammy Awards and was inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988. She is also a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, given to her by former President Barack Obama in 2013.
In 2018, Lynn suffered a stroke and broke her hip, which led to magazines writing about her declining health. “Well, through the years they’ve said I’m broke, homeless, cheating, drinking, gone crazy, terminally ill, and even dead!” she wrote on Facebook. “Poor things can’t ever get it right.”
Before turning 89, Lynn released her milestone 50th studio album and she is still recording music.
“She’s still up over there on that hill, writing music,” granddaughter Tayla said, adding that she’s always been modest about her success.
“She is so humble,” she said. “But she’s also one of the wisest women I’ve ever met. So I think she probably has an inkling that she’s made a move or two in the music business.”
A day which started like any other turned life-changing for one little girl and one police officer. Namely, Kingman Police Department lieutenant Brian Zach was asked to check on a child and what he stumbled upon broke his heart. The little girl he saw there, 4-year-old Kaila, was a subject of child abuse. Her caretaker caused her multiple injuries and it was obvious the girl had been neglected.
While he was waiting for the detectives to come and take the girl, Brian stayed by her side. She felt very comfortable with him and it looked like she had known him forever. Well, he was the person who saved her, and although she was very young, she somehow knew she could trust him.
Speaking to Good Morning America, Brian recalled the five hours he and Kaila spent together that day. They were coloring and watching Wreck-It Ralph, and she was holding his hand.
Once Kaila was taken to the hospital, Brian went home and told his wife and two children about Kaila. Somehow, they all felt that the girl belonged with them.
Later, they learned that social services were unable to find a new home for Kaila at a short notice and they took it as a sign to welcome her in.
Brian recalled that when she arrived in their home, Kaila was wearing clothes that didn’t fir her any more. “Within the second day she was calling my wife ‘mom’ or ‘mommy.’ I was ‘guy’ for a week or two and then when she began preschool, she learned who dad was,” he told Good Morning America.
From someone who didn’t even know how to talk, Kaila turned into a vibrant and chatty little girl within a short period of time. “She’s happy and she’s flourished and when we got her she knew three words basically she grunted like a caveman, she didn’t know how to talk. And now she loves to talk,” Brian shared.
On August 18, 2020, the Zachs adopted Kaila at Mohave County Superior Court in Lake Havasu City. She officially became a part of the family.
Speaking to KTVK, Zach said, “I had a lot of child abuse cases and there’s always kids that I would bond with and I’d love to take them out of bad situations and just bring them home.”
Arizona police officer adopts girl he consoled while working on her case https://t.co/i8EzKEWaYt
Brian and his wife Cierra are now planning on renewing their fostering license because they know there are a lot of other children like Kaila out there who need someone to love them and care for them. “I would definitely encourage people to do it because there’s so many kids who need guys even if it’s just for a small amount of time you can make such an impact,” Brian said, as reported by the Daily Mail.
For more on this lovely story check out the video below.
The Brooklyn shooting which took place earlier this week left 23 people injured. The shooter, later identified as 62-year-old Frank James, a man who was obsessed with a number of conspiracy theories, put on a gas mask, detonated a smoke grenade, and opened fire on a crowded subway train in Brooklyn during the morning rush.
After an extensive manhunt, James was arrested following a tip officials received on their Crime Stoppers hotline. Police found an abandoned van they believe belongs to the suspect. A key to the van was found among other belongings on train, including a Glock 9-millimeter handgun, three ammunition magazines, a hatchet, fireworks and a liquid believed to be gasoline. According to WABC, James will be charged under a federal statute, and he will also face charges from the federal government. His motives for the shooting remain unknown.
BREAKING: The man suspected of shooting 10 people on a Brooklyn subway train Tuesday has been arrested, law enforcement officials tell @AP.
Among those who were injured in the shooting is a man named Hourari Benkada, 27. When James threw the smoke grenades, commuters were desperately trying to leave the smoke-filled car.
Speaking to CNN, Benkada said that he was sitting next to the suspect, who was dressed in an MTA vest and carried a duffle bag with wheels.
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When the car filled with smoke and James started shooting, Benkada, as everyone else, tried saving his life. But as he turned around, he noticed a pregnant woman.
“This pregnant woman was in front of me. I was trying to help her. I didn’t know if there were shots at first. I just thought it was a black smoke bomb,” he told CNN.
“She said ‘I’m pregnant with a baby.’ I hugged her and then the bum-rush continued,” he added. “I got pushed and that’s when I got shot in the back of my knee.”
Despite being in much pain, Benkada focused all his energy in protecting the pregnant lady. Luckily, she was left unharmed and he was later rushed to the hospital.
Once the train stopped, people left the car, and those who were injured were tended to by fellow New Yorkers.
Thank you, Benkada, for being the hero in this pregnant woman’s story.
