Jul. 27 Ikea sells toys for charity: I found this article in the Metro on Nov. 13, 2014. Here's the article:
Soft Toys for Education is a good cause partnership between the IKEA Foundation, UNICEF and Save the Children, first launched twelve years ago. The idea is simple: for every Soft Toy or children’s book sold from November 2014 – January 2014, the IKEA Foundation donates
1 euro to children’s education projects.
The Soft Toys for Education campaign aims to provide quality education to children living in poverty in developing countries. Since the campaign started, donations from the annual IKEA Soft Toy Campaign have totalled €67 million, helping more than 11 million children in 46 countries enjoy their right to a quality education.
Jul. 28 Man killed by escort, possibly linked to missing women: Here's an intense article.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A man killed by an escort he met online is being investigated for possible links to the unsolved disappearances or slayings of women nationwide, authorities said.
Neal Falls, of Springfield, Oregon, was carrying axes, a shovel and bleach when he was killed July 18, and authorities said Monday he had been stopped, interviewed or investigated by police in at least 20 states.
Police say Falls was fatally shot as he attacked and choked the escort in Charleston, West Virginia, and she grabbed his handgun off the ground and fired it.
My opinion: The escort goes by the name "Heather" so it looks like she got a serial killer off the streets.
Straight-A student kills parents: I was reading the Edmonton Journal and I found this story. I looked up Jennifer Pan and found this National Post story. Here are some excerpts:
For a while, Jennifer Pan’s parents regarded her as their “golden” child.
The young Canadian woman, who lived in the city of Markham just north of Toronto, was a straight A student at a Catholic school who won scholarships and early acceptance to college. True to her father’s wishes, she graduated from the University of Toronto’s prestigious pharmacology program and went on to work at a blood-testing lab at SickKids hospital.
Pan’s accomplishments used to make her mother and father, Bich Ha and Huei Hann Pan, brim with pride. After all, they had arrived in Toronto as refugees from Vietnam, working as labourers for an auto parts manufacturer so their two kids could have the bright future that they couldn’t attain for themselves.
But in Pan’s case, that perfect fate was all an elaborate lie. She failed to graduate from high school, let alone the University of Toronto, as she had told her parents. Her trial, for plotting with hit men to kill her parents, ended in January, and she’s serving a long sentence. But the full story of this troubled young woman is just now being told as a complete and powerful narrative by someone who knew her.
“Jennifer’s parents assumed their daughter was an A student,” wrote Ho in the article. “In truth, she earned mostly Bs — respectable for most kids but unacceptable in her strict household. So Jennifer continued to doctor her report cards throughout high school. She received early acceptance” to Ryerson University in Toronto, “but then failed calculus in her final year and wasn’t able to graduate. The university withdrew its offer. Desperate to keep her parents from digging into her high school records, she lied and said she’d be starting at Ryerson in the fall.
It’s a mistake to take one case and generalize or stereotype, noted Jennifer Lee, a sociology professor at the University of California Irvine who specializes in Asian-American life in America. And she said, it would be a mistake to attribute Pan’s troubles to “tiger parenting.”
Pan’s story is an extreme case. “It’s so easy to blame immigrant parents,” said Lee, who co-authored the recently released book “The Asian American Achievement Paradox.” “The danger of highlighting cases like Jennifer’s is that they contribute to a misconception that all Asian-American kids experience this extreme pressure and are mentally unstable.”
My opinion: I want to add to the Jennifer Lee's comment. Not all Asian parents are hard and put pressure on their kids like mine. There are probably a lot of other parents from different races who put a lot of pressure on their kids.
In the Edmonton Journal, it said Pan failed her calculus class and then she didn't graduate out of high school, and Ryerson then didn't accept her. So it's not like she was a bad student. She should have gone to summer school to either pass calculus or take something else to get the requirement to graduate.
She killed them because they found out the truth of her schooling, and put her on like "house arrest." So overall, it was a sad story.
Darren Huenemann: This reminds me of this 1990 case where an 18 yr old Huenemann gets his 2 classmates to kill his mom and grandma killed to inherit their fortunes:
I know this because I saw the TV movie in 2000 called Scorn. My favorite Edmonton actor Eric Johnson played Huenemann in it.
Organ donations: I was reading this article called "How one of the world’s longest-living heart transplant recipients would fix our organ donation system" by Andrea Woo. Here is an excerpt that stood out to me. It was at the end of the article:
In the summer of 2011, Keith stood quietly at a cemetery in Wales, trying to find the right words for the many thoughts in his head, but finding them all inadequate. Persuaded by a friend, Keith had reached out to the family of the boy whose death had sustained his life.
With two of his own children, he now stood before the teenager’s grave with the boy’s 71-year-old father, Roger, feeling overwhelmed with gratitude and solemnity – and taken aback by the jarring similarities between the donor and his own son.
The donor’s name was John Edward; his son’s is Sean Edward. They both had red hair, freckles and blue eyes. They both played soccer; in fact, John Edward had died suddenly on the soccer pitch when an aneurysm ruptured in his head. The field where he died was bordered by a road called Vancouver Drive.
“We all went around and shook hands,” Sean says. “Roger shook my hand and just held on to it, and looked at me.”
“When I stood with Roger at the gravesite,” Keith says, “it became very real for me. It’s indescribable. There are no words to describe how you feel, standing there with the guy’s dad, whose son’s heart you have in your chest. It was very powerful.”
How one of the world’s longest-living heart transplant recipients would fix our organ donation system
5 yr old saves mom: Here's a happy story:
A five-year-old B.C. girl is credited with saving her mother and baby brother's lives after the mother fell asleep at the wheel and drove off an embankment just outside of Jasper, Alta.
"She woke up and got out of her five-point harness, which she had only done once before, and she just climbed up the embankment to the highway and flagged somebody down," Shymanski told CBC News.
My opinion: Please get good rest before driving so you won't be tired.
Aug. 3 Mystery hero saves 3 yr old: This is a very uplifting story:
The mystery hero who saved a three-year-old from drowning at a Toronto beach nearly 40 years ago has been located, thanks to commenters on Yahoo Canada News’ Facebook page.
Terrence Perry, who in 1977 dove in to rescue a drowning Edith Beliwicz, née Langille, says that day is “welded into” his memory.”
“It’s as clear as if it happened yesterday,” Perry tells Yahoo Canada News.
Beliwicz had taken to social media in an attempt to find the man who saved her life at Cherry Beach, after she’d come across an old newspaper clipping, which featured a photo of Perry and his dog Whiskey.
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