The Man Behind The Rubik's Cube Celebrates a Lasting Puzzle - And Shares His Tips For Solving It

Inventor Ernő Rubik created the Rubik's Cube in 1974 as a teaching tool to help his students better understand concepts in construction and design. The brain-bending puzzle quickly gained popularity around the world for its elegant simplicity and potential for complex variation. Today, the Rubik's Cube is recognized as a classic toy with over 450 million sold, multiple spin-off products, and even its own medical condition known as "Rubik's thumb" or "Rubik's wrist."Ernő's advice for solving the famous puzzle? "Break it down into smaller steps."

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A Half-Blind Senior Dog Fought a Bear To Protect Her Family, Earns New Nickname

In Cordova, a family dog is getting a new nickname after a violent run-in with a bear left her badly hurt but alive. Honey, a 12-year-old dog who is half-blind, is being celebrated by the Martinez family after what they say was a fight to protect their rural property and the animals on it. Earlier this month, Honey was outside on the family’s land, where the Martinezes keep chickens, horses and other animals, when Denise Martinez noticed she had locked onto something. “She was tracking something at the time. We didn’t know what, but we knew she was tracking something,” Denise Martinez said. The next morning, the family found Honey lying in the driveway with serious injuries. Around the property, they saw what they described as signs of a struggle, including scratches on fences and trees that pointed to a bear coming onto the land. Leanna Martinez said the extent of Honey’s injuries became clear right away. “Her face was swollen on the left… and that’s when I saw, like her whole neck was just ripped from the back all the way down,” she said. Despite those injuries, Honey had made it back to the house. The family rushed her to an emergency veterinarian, where she stayed overnight for treatment. “It was just devastating. You know, I never thought I would ever see our dog in that shape,” Darren Martinez said. As medical costs grew, the family sought help from Española Humane. The clinic treated Honey’s deep neck wound and continued her care with bandage changes and medication at a lower cost. Mattie Allen described how severe Honey’s condition was when she arrived. “Her face was so hugely swollen I mean you couldn’t even tell features in her face,” Allen said. Honey is still recovering, and the family says she has a long way to go. Her wound remains open and is expected to take months to heal fully. Still, the Martinezes say what happened that night showed exactly what kind of dog Honey is. They believe she stepped in to protect not only the family, but the animals that live on the property. “She’s our little savior,” Denise said. “She’s been nicknamed the bear slayer.” The family’s praise for Honey comes with one detail they say makes the story even sweeter. “She’s afraid of the vacuum cleaner.” 📸 credit: KOB 4 News

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A Breastfeeding Volunteers Team is Helping Struggling New Mothers After Birth

For some new mothers, feeding a baby can quickly become the hardest part of the day. At the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Norfolk, England, a team of volunteers is helping women who are struggling to breastfeed after giving birth, according to the BBC. The group shares tips and offers support to mothers facing problems with nursing their newborn babies. Jen Rudd, a volunteer support coordinator, said the extra help can matter at a difficult time. "The moms are emotional, they're tired, they've possibly had a long labor or a complicated recovery, and that's where we can step in to really help support that," she told the BBC. The volunteers are trained with the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, a U.K.-based charity, the BBC reported. One of the volunteers is Elizabeth Judge, who helps mothers on the Queen Elizabeth Hospital's Brancaster Ward. Judge, 33, has three children, aged 11, six and three. She successfully breastfed her second and third children, but said she had problems when trying to do the same with her eldest child. "I was really stressed, because I was just looking at my baby, and I thought, 'Why won't you just feed? What am I doing wrong?' " Judge told the BBC. Now she is providing the kind of support she said she wanted when she was having her own breastfeeding difficulties. "I can give them all the time that they want, and I think that does really help, to just say to them that it's okay, it will be okay," Judge said. According to the U.K.'s National Health Service, breastfeeding issues can happen for several reasons. The NHS says they can be caused by sore or cracked nipples, infection, mastitis or a breast abscess. The NHS also lists a blocked milk duct, breast engorgement, or having too much breast milk as possible causes. At the hospital, volunteers can spend long periods with mothers during feeds. Catherine Hood, manager of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital's Brancaster Ward, said that gives them time to provide close support. The breastfeeding volunteers offer "focused support for a prolonged period," Hood said. "We know a feed can last up to an hour, and, as a volunteer, you can absolutely sit with that mom for that whole hour, which means you can watch a whole feed, and you can amend things along the way," she added. The support comes after birth, when women may be dealing with exhaustion and recovery while trying to feed a newborn. Rudd said that is the point where volunteers can help. At Brancaster Ward, that help includes sharing advice and being present with mothers as they feed their babies, according to the BBC. Judge said the time she can give is part of what helps. She told the BBC that being able to stay with a mother and reassure her can make a difference when feeding is difficult. The volunteers' role is centered on support for women who are trying to breastfeed and running into problems listed by the NHS, including pain, infection, blocked ducts and engorgement. Hood said a single feed can last up to an hour, and volunteers can stay for the whole time to observe and adjust things as the feed continues. Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-white-tank-top-lying-on-bed-6849529/)

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Amsterdam Students Use Live Classical Music Sessions to Focus During Exams

For a few euros, students in Amsterdam can swap the library for one of Europe’s best-known concert halls, open a laptop under the red plush seats of the Concertgebouw, and study while live classical music plays above them. The sessions are organised by Entree, the youth association of the Concertgebouw. They are designed to help students concentrate while also bringing younger audiences into the historic venue. In the main auditorium, rows of students sit with laptops and notebooks as violinist Hyunjin Cho and cellist Efstratia Chaloulakou perform. The point is not for students to stop and watch. At these events, they are there to study, and the music is meant to help rather than interrupt. The idea has grown out of an initiative first conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Entree looked for ways to support students studying remotely and introduce them to classical music at the same time. Since then, the sessions have kept drawing students back to the Concertgebouw to prepare for exams or work on dissertations. Simon Reinink, the general director of the Concertgebouw, said the format is also part of a wider effort to bring younger people into the building. “Well, it's one of the many ways to welcome younger audiences to the Concertgebouw, and it's such an inspiring place to study with great music in this wonderful, beautiful environment, and it's one of the ways to more or less seduce younger audiences to discover the Concertgebouw and hopefully they will be enthusiastic that it will come back,” he says. The sessions are cheap by design. Tickets cost €2.50 and include free access to the venue’s Wi-Fi network. For students who do not usually listen to classical music, the setup can still work. “It’s actually very calming and helps in concentrating on the work that we have to do, which is something that surprises me because normally I don’t really listen to classical music, so that’s a new experience for me,” says Kyra Mulder, a 21-year-old student of occupational therapy. Professor Bas Bloem, a neurologist at the Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, says background music does not affect everyone in the same way. For some people, it can be distracting, but for others, it can support concentration. “I think the reason why music in the background can be so soothing almost is that it creates a state of flow," he says. He says that state sits in a balance between skill and challenge. "Flow is this mysterious balance between your level of skills and being challenged, and you want to be in that sweet spot. You don't want to be overchallenged, you don't want to be underchallenged, and I think music in the background can help you to reach a state of flow, and everybody knows when you reach a state of flow, you can go on endlessly and be enormously productive." Students attending the sessions say the quiet setting helps them handle more than one thing at once. Thijmen Broekman, a medical student, says the combination of the hall and the performance makes concentrating easier. "I don't think it's difficult to multitask here because it's really quiet environment and nice quiet music so that helps me to concentrate and I'm not having any difficulties multitasking," he says. The study sessions bring together two aims in one format: giving students a place to work and introducing younger audiences to live classical music in the Concertgebouw. The concerts continue in the background while laptops stay open and notebooks fill up. Tickets for the sessions cost just €2.50, with free access to the venue's Wi-Fi network. 📸 credit: © Jasmijn de Graaff

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Scientists Break Solar Efficiency Limit With 130% Energy Breakthrough

Solar panels do a lot of heavy lifting in the push away from fossil fuels, but they still leave a lot of sunlight on the table. Scientists from Kyushu University in Japan, working with collaborators at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany, say they have found a way past a long-standing physical limit in solar energy conversion. In research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on March 25, the team used a molybdenum-based metal complex known as a "spin-flip" emitter to capture extra energy produced through singlet fission, or SF. With that approach, they reported energy conversion efficiencies of about 130 percent, above the traditional 100 percent limit. Solar cells generate electricity when photons from sunlight hit a semiconductor and transfer energy to electrons, setting them in motion and creating an electric current. The process can be compared to a relay, with energy passed from one particle to another. But some of that sunlight goes to waste. Low-energy infrared photons do not have enough energy to activate electrons. High-energy photons, such as blue light, lose their extra energy as heat. Because of that, solar cells can use only about one-third of the incoming sunlight. That limit is known as the Shockley-Queisser limit. "We have two main strategies to break through this limit," says Yoichi Sasaki, Associate Professor at Kyushu University's Faculty of Engineering. "One is to convert lower-energy infrared photons into higher-energy visible photons. The other, what we explore here, is to use SF to generate two excitons from a single exciton photon." Under normal conditions, each photon produces one spin-singlet exciton after excitation. In singlet fission, that single exciton can split into two lower-energy spin-triplet excitons. The process could effectively double the available energy. Some materials, including tetracene, can support singlet fission. But collecting those excitons efficiently has been difficult. "The energy can be easily 'stolen' by a mechanism called Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) before multiplication occurs," Sasaki explains. "We therefore needed an energy acceptor that selectively captures the multiplied triplet excitons after fission." To deal with that, the researchers turned to metal complexes, which they said can be precisely engineered. They identified a molybdenum-based "spin-flip" emitter as a working answer. In that system, an electron changes its spin during absorption or emission of near-infrared light. That lets it capture the triplet energy generated by singlet fission. The researchers said they carefully adjusted the energy levels to cut losses from FRET and allow efficient extraction of the multiplied excitons. "We could not have reached this point without the Heinze group from JGU Mainz," Sasaki says. The collaboration began after Adrian Sauer, a graduate student from the group who was visiting Kyushu University on exchange and is the paper's second author, drew attention to a material long studied there. When the molybdenum-based system was combined with tetracene-based materials in solution, the team said it successfully harvested energy with quantum yields of about 130 percent. The researchers said that meant roughly 1.3 molybdenum-based metal complexes were activated for every photon absorbed. In turn, that exceeded the usual limit and showed that more energy carriers were produced than incoming photons. The work is still at the proof-of-concept stage. The team said it now wants to integrate the materials into solid-state systems to improve energy transfer and move closer to practical solar cell applications. The findings could also prompt more research that combines singlet fission and metal complexes. According to the researchers, this could have uses in solar energy, LEDs and emerging quantum technologies. For now, the result is a laboratory demonstration that singlet fission energy can be harvested with a molybdenum-based "spin-flip" emitter, with quantum yields of about 130 percent. Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/photo/an-aerial-shot-of-a-roof-with-solar-panels-12606669/)

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ENIAC, the First Computer, is On Display at the University of Pennsylvania

A piece of computing history is sitting inside a university classroom in Pennsylvania. At the University of Pennsylvania's Moore Building in Philadelphia, part of ENIAC remains on display. ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, and it is known as the first programmable, electronic computer. Its construction was finished in 1945. Historian Paul Shaffer told ABC11, "The University of Pennsylvania is very proud to have started all this and we like to think this was the start of the information age!" Four of ENIAC's panels and one instrument table are housed in the Moore Building at the University of Pennsylvania. The computer was unveiled in 1946 and originally took up an entire laboratory. It had 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed more than 30 tons. ENIAC was designed and built to handle computations for the military's artillery firing table. Before ENIAC, that work would take hours. Newspapers at the time called it "Giant Brain." It remained in operation until 1955 and was eventually moved to Aberdeen, Maryland. The university also chose six women to be programmers of ENIAC. They played an important role in the development and usage of the computer through the years. Today, students walk by and study next to this piece of computing history every day. While Silicon Valley in California is known for the tech industry's giants, ENIAC's history is tied to Pennsylvania. More information on ENIAC is available at https://www.seas.upenn.edu. 📸credit: Paul W. Shaffer, University of Pennsylvania

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Scientists Identify World’s First Known Dog, Pushing Back Genetic Record 5,000 Years

Dogs were hanging around people a lot earlier than the genetic record had shown. Two studies published in Nature on March 25 found that dogs were living alongside humans in western Eurasia about 14,000 to 16,000 years ago, before humans developed agriculture. The findings push back the earliest genetic evidence of a domesticated canine by about 5,000 years and add new detail to how dogs spread. Modern dogs descended from ancient wolves, but researchers still do not know exactly when domestication began. A 2015 analysis using computer simulations of the canine family tree suggested the split happened around 27,000 to 40,000 years ago. Before the new papers, the oldest genetic evidence of a domesticated dog came from remains in northwestern Russia dated to nearly 11,000 years ago. One of the new studies examined DNA from bones of more than 200 canines recovered from archaeological sites in Europe and southwestern Asia, including Turkey, Switzerland and Scotland. The analyses showed that some of the animals were dogs. The oldest was a Swiss animal dated to 14,200 years ago that lived with a hunter-gatherer group. That Swiss dog shared ancestry with later dogs from other places, suggesting the animals descended from one population and that different human societies were acquiring dogs from each other. “It is kind of the equivalent of a new blade or a new point or a new kind of material culture or art form or something, where everybody’s getting really excited about having this fun new thing around,” Greger Larson, a paleogeneticist at the University of Oxford in England and co-author of both studies, told Emily Anthes at the New York Times. “And it’s useful, and it’s interesting, and it’s probably cute.” The second study found even older genetic evidence of a dog. Remains from a site in Turkey produced a 15,800-year-old domesticated animal. DNA analysis also identified ancient dogs at other sites in western Eurasia, including a 14,300-year-old individual in England. The Turkish and English dogs lived nearly 2,000 miles apart, but they were still closely genetically related. The researchers said that suggests dogs were already widespread across the region by then. The studies also found signs that humans in different places treated dogs in similar ways. William Marsh, a paleogeneticist at the Natural History Museum in London and co-author of the study, told Ewen Callaway at Nature that the animals “were treated in very similar ways.” Chemical analyses suggested that people at both sites fed their dogs the same food they ate. The English dog’s skull had decorative perforations like those found on human skulls. In Turkey, dogs were buried on top of deceased people. The research also tracked what happened later, when the first farmers moved into Europe from southwestern Asia about 9,000 years ago. The studies found that these farmers brought dogs with them, which led to more animal trading. Those farmers nearly fully replaced earlier human populations in Europe, but the research suggests they did not do the same with dogs. According to the studies, only about 50 percent of European dog DNA was replaced in later animals. “They seem to incorporate these dogs rather than trying to replace them with their own,” Anders Bergström, a geneticist at the University of East Anglia in England who co-authored both papers, told David Grimm at Science. The work supports the idea that all dogs came from one place, possibly somewhere in Asia, with additional interbreeding between early dogs and wolves. Adam Boyko, a geneticist at Cornell University who was not involved in the research, told Science News’ Tom Metcalfe, “Of course, we can’t rule out that some early fossils classified as wolves were actually tame and effectively dogs.” He added, “But from the standpoint of modern dogs, it seems they all share a single domestication origin.” Researchers still do not know what roles dogs had in hunter-gatherer groups 14,000 years ago. Laurent Frantz, a paleogeneticist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany who worked on both studies, told the Times that it is possible the animals did different jobs in different human societies. Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the work, told Science News the studies were a “significant advance” in understanding the origins of dogs. Photo by Ambareesh Sridhar Photography on Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/photo/street-dog-in-thiruvananthapuram-kerala-34059239/)

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Abandoned At Birth, She's Now Leading Care On A Hospital Ship

For Becky Chaplin, the road from a bag on a roadside in Kenya to a hospital ship in Sierra Leone has come full circle. Chaplin, 30, was found abandoned in a bag on the side of the road as a newborn in Kenya in 1995. She was so young that her umbilical cord was still attached. A missionary was out jogging when they spotted the bag and looked inside to find the baby girl. She was taken to an orphanage, and seven weeks later she was adopted by two British missionary workers stationed in Kenya. Becky said: "Mom said when she picked me up that she felt that God was saying 'this is your daughter'." She was raised in Kenya by her British parents until the age of 10, when the family moved back to East Grinstead, London. Chaplin said her early years in Kenya shaped what came next. She said: "Living in Kenya, I was exposed to extreme poverty and the opportunities you can have with education. "I was fortunate to be adopted into a family that gave me that opportunity." She said she had wanted to work with disabled children and adults since she was young. Becky said: "I've known since I was little that I wanted to help children and adults with disabilities." She went on to pursue a career in healthcare and became an occupational therapist. After completing her degree, she also pursued a master's degree focusing on hand therapy, burns and working in low-income countries. Chaplin then worked in the UK for four-and-a-half years. She specialised in hand therapy and gained experience on the burns unit in East Grinstead. Later, she heard about Mercy Ships, a hospital charity, and decided to leave her job in the UK to volunteer. Becky said: "I left my work in the UK to volunteer with Mercy Ships because I've always had a heart to come back to an African country. "I wanted to do it once I had the skill or experience to be able to help." She joined the Global Mercy in Sierra Leone as a rehabilitation team leader. In that role, she worked with burns patients recovering from free surgery on the hospital ship. Her work then shifted when the Global Mercy moved to the port of Freetown in Sierra Leone. In 2018, Sierra Leone established its first university-level physiotherapist course at the Tonkolili District College of Health Sciences. Chaplin said that before the degree programme began, people who wanted to train as physiotherapists had to leave the country. She said: "Before the degree programme was started, anyone wishing to become a physiotherapist would have to fly to Ghana, Cuba, Kenya, or further afield for training." With an estimated population of around nine million people, Sierra Leone had six fully trained physiotherapists, according to the source text. That began to change in 2023, when 15 new graduates emerged from the bachelor's programme and another 15 from the diploma programme. Chaplin said she had the privilege of working alongside them. Over time, she said, the mentorship programme grew. She now works in a local hospital close to where the Global Mercy is docked in Freetown, assisting with mentoring and upskilling physiotherapists around burn patients. Her focus is on helping local staff build their methods of treating patients, especially young children. Becky said: "The high proportion of burn patients are under five years old. "You see many accidents from boiling water or soup spilling onto small children. "I work alongside the physios to build their methods of treating patients. "As Sierra Leone develops their resources, we hope we'll begin to see less contractures come to the ship when we next visit Sierra Leone." Mercy Ships is an international health charity that deploys hospital ships to some of the poorest countries, delivering free healthcare. Chaplin now serves as a mentor to trainee physiotherapists in Sierra Leone, after first volunteering there as rehabilitation team leader on board the Global Mercy.

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Melbourne Zoo Snow Leopard Cubs Get Vaccinations Before Habitat Debut

Four snow leopard cubs at Melbourne Zoo have had their vaccinations before stepping out confidently into their habitat. The cubs, the only snow leopard cubs in Australia, were born in January to 9-year-old mother Miska and 10-year-old father Kang Ju. The two girls and two boys are named Maya, Kira, Lumi and Sabu. Laura Weiner, manager of carnivores and ungulates, said: "The names were inspired by the range countries where snow leopards are found, a wide variety of locations around the Himalayas. "We didn’t know what their personalities would be like and it was obvious very quickly, three of them were really quite calm and curious and the other one was very feisty and quite a handful!” The cubs weigh 3 kilograms and have been playful with their mother. Laura Weiner said: "As the cubs grow they start to practice some of those hunting behaviors and they’ve started to practice them on Miska, they’re pouncing on her, they’re chewing on her tail, they’re grabbing her. "As you can imagine, four cubs are a lot to handle! So, she does take some time on her own away from them." Snow leopards are classed as vulnerable, and Zoos Victoria is contributing to a global breeding program for their conservation. 📸 Talker News

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Virunga National Park Sees Elephant Return and Rare Gorilla Twins Born

After years of empty flights over part of Virunga, the view has changed. Elephants are crossing back into the park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and mountain gorillas have recorded a run of healthy births, including rare twins. Things are looking up in the Virunga Mountains, where scores of elephants have been returning across the border following a reduction in militia violence. This spring, 9 healthy births have also been recorded among the mountain gorillas, including twins that a ranger officer called “a very encouraging sign.” There were once thousands of African bush elephants roaming freely between Virunga National Park in Congo and Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. But mountains, jungles and borderlands are among the areas most commonly used by violent rebel groups around the world, and Virunga includes all three. The park has suffered from decades of violent insurgency in DR Congo, with elephants poached by rebels to sustain themselves. In recent years, however, 480 elephants from the Ugandan side have been documented travelling back into Virunga. “For years I haven’t seen any animals when I flew over this area, just rebels,” said Anthony Caere, a Belgian anti-poaching helicopter pilot at Virunga National Park. “Now not only are we seeing the elephants, which is an unbelievable sight from above, but we’re noticing the impact of such a big herd on the park. They’re restoring everything back to what it was 50 years ago and doing so much faster than we could have imagined. If the elephants continue to stay here in these numbers, this place will look totally different in just a few years.” The returning elephants are also changing the park itself. Their size and appetites are cutting trails through the forest, scything back invasive shrubs and expanding clearings. The area is beginning to look like a “forested savannah” again. There have also been sightings of buffalo, Ugandan kob, warthogs, topi and even a pair of lions. Virunga is the oldest national park on the continent and is home to extraordinary biodiversity. It has received millions in aid money from Re:Wild, Global Wildlife Conservation, the European Union and other organisations, including from a fund established by Leonardo DiCaprio. That backing has helped the park scale back poaching and put development programs in place to try to steer impoverished locals away from illegal agriculture, poaching or militia life. The recent stability has also benefited the park’s mountain gorillas. A female in the Bageni family, the park’s largest gorilla family group with 59 members, was recently observed to have given birth to twins. The babies are now 2 months old. Jacques Katutu, head of gorilla monitoring, said the twins are developing well and that their mother is managing the demands of two babies, which is uncommon among gorillas. “The five births recorded since the start of 2026, including twins in the Bageni family, are a very encouraging sign,” Mr. Katutu said in a statement. “Behind every confirmed birth is the patient and dedicated work of our community trackers. Present in the field every day, often under challenging conditions, they are the first to witness these extraordinary moments.” The births add to the signs of recovery in a park that has long been shaped by conflict. Alongside the gorilla births, the return of 480 elephants from Uganda has brought back the ecosystem engineering associated with the largest land animal on Earth. According to the account from Virunga, the elephants are helping restore the park to what it was decades ago. Caere said the change is already visible from the air. “They’re restoring everything back to what it was 50 years ago and doing so much faster than we could have imagined,” he said. 📸 credit: Virunga National Park

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A Young Fan Lost a Souvenir — So, An Officer Made It Right

What started as a letdown at a hockey game in Hartford ended with a police officer turning the night around for one young fan. Earlier this month, a family was at a Hartford Wolf Pack game when the team mascot pointed to a girl and her brother and tossed a T-shirt toward them. For a moment, it looked like the children had their big souvenir. Instead, the shirt bounced off the wall and ended up with another child, and the excitement quickly gave way to disappointment. Officer Christopher Vanwey, who was working the game, saw what happened and decided to step in. He surprised the little girl with a hockey toy and a soccer ball, changing the course of her night with what the family later described as a simple act of kindness. The moment stayed with the family, who said it gave them a chance to teach their children about compassion and the positive role police officers play in the community. In a letter later shared with the Hartford Police Department, the girl’s mother thanked Vanwey for what he did. She wrote that the gesture “made my daughter’s day.” She also wrote: “I hope this card can get to the police officer. Thanks for all you do each and every day to protect us all. Thanks for teaching my children about kindness. A very appreciative mom, Leah.” The girl, Bella, wrote her own thank-you note to the officer. “You are very thoughtful. Thank you for the hockey toy and the soccer ball. I hope you have a good day. – Bella.” The Hartford Police Department later shared the story on Facebook and said the moment reflected the kind of work that matters most to officers. “This is what policing is about, showing up, paying attention, and making a difference when it matters most.” 📸Credit: Hartford Police CT

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