This Woman Risked Her Life to Save a Stray Kitten Stranded on a Highway

Ozgun Ozturk's ordinary commute to work in Turkey turned into a life-saving mission when she spotted a tiny kitten huddled dangerously close to speeding cars on a bridge. Despite the risks, Ozgun leapt into action and successfully rescued the kitten, now named Miracle. After receiving medical treatment for a lung infection, Miracle is expected to make a full recovery and find a loving forever home with Ozgun's help.

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Life-Changing Surgery Allows Boy With Rare Condition To Experience First Sleepover

Seven-year-old William from Bath, England, is experiencing new adventures thanks to a significant surgery that has transformed his life. Born with Treacher Collins syndrome, a rare genetic condition affecting skull and facial bone growth, William faced challenges with breathing, eating, and swallowing. In May, surgeons at Bristol Children's Hospital gave him an eight-hour operation that rebuilt his jaw using bone grafts taken from his ribs. This procedure allowed him to breathe and eat on his own for the first time. Now, as he looks forward to turning eight, he can enjoy activities most kids take for granted. William’s mother, Kate, shared with BBC Radio Bristol how severe her son’s condition was from birth. "From birth he struggled to breathe and was given a tracheostomy at two weeks old," she explained. A tracheostomy involves creating an opening in the neck where a tube is inserted to assist breathing. This meant William needed someone constantly by his side who knew emergency procedures if he stopped breathing. The recent surgery has changed everything for William. Surgeons removed the tracheostomy tube and used part of his rib bone to create new jaw joints. "A frame was put into his lower jaw and we were turning these screws to try and artificially pull it forwards," said Kate about the complex procedure. With this medical breakthrough behind him, William no longer requires constant supervision by someone trained in managing emergency airway issues. Now he's eager to experience things like water slides, sleepovers, and play dates—activities many children cherish but were previously out of reach for him. "He's desperate to go down water slides and he's lined up his little besties to have sleepovers and to go on play dates," Kate shared enthusiastically. She also admitted that when William finally has his first sleepover, she probably won't sleep at all due to excitement.

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Giraffe Undergoes Successful Surgery For Rare Knee Condition

Vets at Woburn Safari Park in Bedfordshire, England, successfully completed high-risk surgery on one of their tallest residents, Sahara the Nubian giraffe. Weighing in at 500 kilograms, Sahara had been suffering from a rare knee condition known as "locking stifle," which severely limited her mobility by causing her leg to lock. Nathalie Wissink-Argilaga, the head vet at the park, described it as one of the most complex cases they've ever tackled. Due to the lack of precedent in giraffes, the veterinary team decided to adapt an equine technique to stabilize Sahara's joint. This innovative approach marked a significant step forward in treating giraffes with similar conditions. The operation wasn't straightforward. The unique anatomy of such a large animal made anesthesia particularly unpredictable. Lying down for too long could also pose risks like compromised blood circulation and other life-threatening complications. To tackle these challenges, the team prepared a deep hay bed and supported Sahara's neck with a wooden board during the procedure. They used blindfolds and earplugs to keep her calm while keepers massaged her neck to maintain circulation. The specialist team included not just vets but also an equine surgeon and an anaesthetist. Their combined expertise paid off when Sahara was quickly back on her feet after the one-hour procedure. "Following her surgery, Sahara was quickly back on her feet - a moment of joy for the dedicated veterinary and keeper teams who supported her throughout," noted Woburn Safari Park in a statement. Sahara's recovery is progressing well under careful monitoring of her movement and behavior. Thanks to this successful operation, she has returned to her familiar self with renewed confidence.

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Wildcats Set To Roam England Again After Successful Reintroduction Efforts

Wildcats might soon roam the English countryside once again. Conservationists are working on plans to reintroduce these critically endangered animals to England by 2028. The South West Wildcat Project aims to bring back 50 European wildcats to mid-Devon, where a study suggests they could thrive. These efforts follow a breeding program in Scotland designed to boost wildcat numbers. However, concerns persist about the potential threat these carnivores might pose to poultry, gamebirds, and native bird species. There is also the risk of wildcats cross-breeding with domestic cats. The Countryside Alliance warns that without addressing hybridization risks, maintaining a genetically pure wildcat population could fail. Reintroduction plans involve multiple stakeholders; the South West Wildlife Project is leading this initiative under Devon Wildlife Trust's guidance. Research conducted by the University of Exeter indicates that about 80 percent of people surveyed support the idea of reintroducing wildcats. Yet not everyone is on board. Oliver Edwards, an Exmoor farmer, voiced his concerns about possible negative impacts on existing wildlife, particularly barn owls that rely on voles for food. "They say wildcats live on voles," he said, "Well, voles are feeding my barn owls so if you reduce the vole population you are having an effect on the barn owls." Edwards believes there needs to be more consultation with farmers and landowners regarding suitable areas for reintroduction. Historically known as woodcats, European wildcats were once widespread in Great Britain until human activities and habitat loss led to their disappearance from England and Wales. Today, their last remaining population in the UK resides in Scotland’s Highlands, but is critically endangered with only around 115 individuals left. Despite a protective status since 1988, they face extinction risks within the UK. Cath Jeffs from Devon Wildlife Trust assures that her team will work closely with locals throughout this phased reintroduction process while addressing any issues raised. Measures used against other predators like foxes should suffice for managing wildcats, too. Jeffs also dismissed fears of a population explosion since wildcats live at low densities across large areas and would be monitored closely. Tim Bonner from Countryside Alliance supports well-planned reintroductions but stresses concerns over maintaining a “genetically pure” population due to hybridization threats: "Reintroducing wildcats in the south-west without addressing this issue would seem doomed." To counteract hybridization threats effectively, Devon Wildlife Trust plans collaboration with local welfare groups implementing neutering programs for feral/domestic cats near introduction zones.

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Officials Approve $7 Million Project To Tap Into Powerful Underground Energy Source

Colorado is taking significant strides in clean energy, betting big on geothermal technology to heat and cool its buildings. The Colorado Energy Office has allocated $7.3 million to kickstart four geothermal projects across the state in Denver, Colorado Springs, Vail, and Steamboat Springs. This funding is part of the Colorado Geothermal Energy Tax Credit Offering and will support three installations and a feasibility study. Geothermal energy, which harnesses heat from beneath the earth's surface, is increasingly seen as a sustainable alternative for heating and cooling needs. Unlike fossil fuels, it doesn't emit planet-warming gases, making it a cleaner energy source with a smaller environmental footprint. The Clean Air Task Force points out that reducing air pollution through geothermal development could translate into health advantages valued between $6 billion and $23 billion. This makes a compelling case for expanding geothermal technology statewide. In Vail, the project involves setting up a thermal energy network connecting the Vail Public Library with the Dobson Ice Arena. Colorado Springs School District plans to link new and old high school buildings through a similar network. Meanwhile, Denver’s Colorado Bathhouse will retrofit two 1948-era structures with geothermal systems. In Steamboat Springs, experts will conduct a feasibility study to evaluate potential applications for municipal facilities. Colorado has positioned itself as a leader in this field by previously investing $23.2 million in 40 different geothermal projects across the state. Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, underscored this momentum by saying, "We are seeing growing interest in geothermal heating and cooling across the state." He added that such initiatives not only help meet climate goals but also reduce energy costs while improving indoor air quality.

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Perseverance Rover Discovers Unusual Iron-Nickel Meteorite on Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover is still rolling across Mars, doing what it does best—checking out rocks. But this time, it has come across a peculiar find in the Jezero Crater. Meet Phippsaksla, an 80-centimeter-wide rock that’s turning heads at NASA. Scientists noticed something unusual about Phippsaksla right away. Its composition of iron and nickel suggests it might not be from Mars at all but could instead be a meteorite. These types of meteorites usually form from the core of large asteroids, which makes Phippsaksla a potential cosmic traveler that crash-landed on Mars long ago. Perseverance has been equipped with some high-tech gear to study Martian geology. Using one of its Mastcam-Z cameras, the rover took detailed photos of Phippsaksla from various angles. Then it got to work with its SuperCam instrument, employing lasers and spectrometers to measure the rock’s chemical makeup. The results? A significant presence of iron and nickel. While this find is exciting, it's not entirely unexpected. Scientists have found similar iron-nickel meteorites on Mars before. What’s surprising is that Perseverance hadn't encountered one until now. To confirm Phippsaksla's extraterrestrial origins, further analysis will be necessary. If confirmed as a meteorite, it would mark another milestone for Perseverance in understanding Mars’ history. One of Perseverance's standout features is its ability to collect Martian rock samples using an onboard drill. It also carries a mini-laboratory to analyze these samples directly on Mars. If NASA decides that bringing a piece of Phippsaksla back to Earth is worthwhile, they’ll need another spacecraft to retrieve it since Perseverance can't handle return trips solo. Since landing on Mars in February 2021, Perseverance has explored ancient lake beds and volcanic regions and even set records for traveling distances on another planet. While there's no end date set for its mission, this little rover seems poised to continue making groundbreaking discoveries for some time yet.

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Startup Develops Incredible Tech To Pull Water From Unexpected Source

Imagine if the water inside fruits and vegetables could help ease drought conditions. It might sound far-fetched, but Botanical Water Technologies (BWT) is making it a reality. This agricultural start-up has teamed up with Ingomar Packing Company, a tomato processor in California's San Joaquin Valley, to tackle water scarcity. Tomatoes are mostly water—95 percent, in fact. But when processed into paste or canned, much of this moisture is lost. BWT saw an opportunity here and developed Water Harvest Units (WHUs). These units capture steam and wastewater during processing, purify it, and make it safe for reuse. The company calls this "the world's first plant-sourced pure water." The San Joaquin Valley is crucial for U.S. agriculture, producing a significant portion of the country's fresh foods. However, it’s also one of the areas hardest hit by drought. In 2022 alone, over 1,000 wells dried up in this region. This problem isn’t just local; more than 4 billion people worldwide struggle with access to clean water due to rising temperatures and reduced rainfall and groundwater levels. While WHUs won’t solve everything, they offer a promising solution. Each unit can generate about 570,000 liters of repurposed water daily. Through their partnership with Ingomar Packing Company, these water savings are directed to farmers and communities within the Central California Irrigation District. It's not just about providing more water; it's about economic benefits and maintaining healthier ecosystems by keeping natural waterways fuller for wildlife. BWT aims to expand its reach further into California's vast fruit, vegetable, and wine sectors to enhance water resilience across these industries. The company is also launching similar initiatives in India and Australia. "This is just the beginning of what's possible when industry collaborates to grow water," said Terry Paule, Founder and CEO of BWT.

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Scientists Harness AI To Build Most Detailed Milky Way Model Ever Created

In a leap forward for both astrophysics and AI, scientists have created the most detailed simulation of the Milky Way ever made — one that models the galaxy’s 100 billion stars individually, and runs 100 times faster than previous techniques. Led by Keiya Hirashima at Japan’s RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences, the team used deep learning to dramatically accelerate how galaxy-scale physics is computed. The result: a simulation that captures 10,000 years of galactic evolution at true star-by-star resolution, compressing what would have once taken decades into just hours. For decades, modelling the Milky Way has involved compromise. The sheer complexity of the physics — from gravity and gas flows to chemical enrichment and supernova explosions — forced scientists to group stars into clusters, smoothing over the fine-grain details. But that meant missing the smaller-scale events that ultimately shape the galaxy. This new method changes that. By blending physics-based modelling with a deep learning surrogate trained on high-resolution simulations of supernovae, the team created an AI that understands how gas disperses in the 100,000 years following a stellar explosion — a notoriously difficult process to simulate. That shortcut allowed the main model to skip the slowest, most computationally intensive steps without losing physical accuracy. Running on Japan’s powerful Fugaku supercomputer and the University of Tokyo’s Miyabi system, the simulation can now process 1 million years of galactic evolution in just 2.78 hours. At that pace, scientists can model an entire billion-year history of the Milky Way in under four months — a task that would have previously taken 36 years. “This marks a fundamental shift in how we tackle multi-scale, multi-physics problems across the computational sciences,” Hirashima said. “It shows that AI-accelerated simulations can move beyond pattern recognition to become a genuine tool for scientific discovery.” Beyond space science, the implications are wide-ranging. The same hybrid AI-physics methods could be applied to climate and weather simulations, black hole dynamics, turbulence, and even Earth system modelling. Researchers say these approaches may lead to faster and more accurate models in fields where complexity and scale have long been barriers. As for the Milky Way itself, this is the first time scientists can track the movement and interaction of every single star across millennia — a breakthrough that could help explain how our galaxy formed, how elements that make up life were distributed, and how structures like spiral arms and stellar nurseries change over time. The next step for the team will be scaling the method even further — and possibly using it to model entire regions of the universe, not just the stars in our own backyard.

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4 Hunters Rescued With Their Dogs After Getting Lost in California Mountains

Four hunters and their dogs were rescued after getting lost in a mountainous area of Placer County, northern California, on Saturday morning, November 8, according to local officials. The Placer County Sheriff’s Office said a helicopter crew located the group near Little Grizzly Canyon, outside of Foresthill, and that one of the hunters was injured. “The injured hunter was hoisted out first and transported for medical care. The remaining three hunters and four dogs were then safely hoisted out of the canyon,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a Facebook post. Everyone was “doing well,” they added. “The dogs – Lilly, Hassle, Crooked Pate, and Reba – were true champs through it all and even made friends with our team!” the sheriff’s office said.

Insect-Eating Birds in France Show Signs of Recovery After Pesticide Ban

Bird populations in France that rely on insects for food are showing early signs of a comeback, thanks to a European ban on a controversial class of pesticides. But researchers say it could still take decades before numbers fully rebound. A new study has found that insect-eating birds like blackbirds, blackcaps, and chaffinches increased by about 2 to 3 percent between 2019 and 2022 — the first few years after the European Union banned outdoor use of neonicotinoids. These pesticides, once widely used in agriculture, have been linked to dramatic insect losses, including mass die-offs of bees. “Even a few percentage [points’] increase is meaningful – it shows the ban made a difference,” said lead researcher Thomas Perrot from the Fondation pour la recherche sur la biodiversité in Paris. “Our results clearly point to neonicotinoid bans as an effective conservation measure for insectivorous birds.” The findings, published in the journal Environmental Pollution, are the first to directly tie the EU-wide ban to a population shift in wildlife. Researchers looked at long-term data from over 1,900 monitoring sites across France, collected by skilled volunteer birdwatchers. They compared bird populations five years before the ban, from 2013 to 2018, with data from 2019 to 2022. Across those sites, birds that depend on insects had been hit hardest by pesticide use. The study found that numbers were 12 percent lower in areas where neonicotinoids had been used, compared to untreated areas. Birds with more flexible diets, like house sparrows and wood pigeons, were far less affected. While the UK also banned outdoor neonicotinoid use in 2018, the chemicals are still widely used in the United States, which has lost nearly 3 billion insect-eating birds since the 1970s. Perrot said the recovery in France is likely still in its early stages. “Neonicotinoids persist in soils for years and can keep affecting insects,” he said. “It will take several decades for insectivorous bird populations to recover. But we think that’s normal, because studies on other pesticides like DDT show that most bird populations take 10 to 25 years to fully recover.” Other wildlife that depends on insects — including small mammals, bats, and fish — may also be starting to see benefits, though they weren’t included in this study. The modest but promising results were enough to surprise some experts. “I was surprised you could already see recovery,” said Frans van Alebeek, a rural policy officer at BirdLife Netherlands. “It’s extremely difficult to study this – which makes this study so special. The positive message is that it helps to ban pesticides and it will result in the recovery of wildlife.” James Pearce-Higgins, director of science at the British Trust for Ornithology, offered a more cautious take. “It’s a study that shows there may be early signs of weak population recovery but the results are uncertain and could be down to other correlated factors,” he said. Variables like habitat and climate could also be playing a role, he added, and long-term data will be needed to confirm the trend. Neonicotinoids, introduced in the 1990s, quickly became the most widely used insecticides in the world. Because they’re systemic — meaning they spread throughout plant tissues — they made entire plants toxic to insects. Even small traces of the chemicals were shown to impair bees’ ability to forage and navigate, contributing to widespread colony losses reported in the early 2000s. By 2018, amid mounting evidence and public pressure, the EU banned almost all outdoor uses of neonicotinoids, despite strong opposition from agribusiness and chemical manufacturers. That ban, Perrot said, is now showing real ecological dividends, even if the road ahead is long. Birds are especially vulnerable to farming practices, from habitat destruction to pesticide exposure. And while the EU does offer green infrastructure funding to support more sustainable farming, Perrot warned that systemic change will be needed. “If agriculture keeps focusing on maximum yields instead of sustainability, we’ll keep seeing the same declines,” he said. Alebeek agreed, and pointed to a deeper issue: how pesticides are tested in the first place. “Industry is getting better and better at finding chemicals that are extremely effective at low concentrations – you use less but the toxicity is not going down,” he said. “To me, it shows that our system of testing pesticides before they are allowed on the market is not good enough.” While the initial signs are hopeful, both researchers and conservationists agree: meaningful wildlife recovery doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, data, and policies that prioritize biodiversity — not just short-term crop yields.

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40 Years, $3 Billion Later: This Nonprofit Is Turning Surplus Into Support

Delivering Good, a nonprofit celebrating its 40th year, has made an impressive impact by distributing over $3 billion worth of new merchandise to families in need since its inception in 1985. Originally founded as Kids In Distressed Situations (K.I.D.S.) by Karen Bromley, Barbara Toback, and Ezra Dabah, the organization has grown into a powerhouse for philanthropy. The founders asked nonprofits if they preferred money or products. The unanimous response was for new products. This simple question led to a mission that has touched countless lives. Karen Bromley, who spent time in foster care during her early years, understood how much receiving something new could mean to children living in poverty or difficult situations. "I knew that giving a child a brand-new coat or a toy could make them feel special," she said. In 2005, after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated communities across the Gulf Coast, Allan Ellinger stepped up with his industry expertise. He realized that while monetary donations were helpful, people needed immediate support through tangible goods like clothing and home essentials. This led to the creation of Fashion Delivers, which focused on providing relief through new products for adults affected by disasters. The organization distributed $6 million worth of goods in its first year. Eventually, K.I.D.S. and Fashion Delivers merged under the name Delivering Good. Their shared belief in restoring dignity through new products solidified their partnership and expanded their reach nationwide. "Delivering Good has always been fueled by heart and passion," Bromley remarked about their efforts. The nonprofit's work extends beyond just addressing disaster relief; it also helps alleviate poverty by redirecting surplus inventory from retailers to those who need it most. Over the years, Delivering Good has partnered with thousands of brands and manufacturers to distribute essential items from clothing to toys. Allan Ellinger reflected on their journey: "We started to solve a problem; we never imagined we’d still be here 40 years later—more vibrant and needed than ever." As they look toward the future, Matthew Fasciano, President & CEO of Delivering Good, noted that they are scaling up operations with plans to improve 50 million lives in the coming years. For those interested in supporting this cause or learning more about their initiatives, visiting their website offers opportunities for involvement and donation options.

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