In the bustling city of Nairobi, Kenya, a high school physics teacher named Paul Waweru has found a creative solution to one of the city’s biggest problems – transportation. With the use of old laptop batteries and a little ingenuity, he has started a company called Ecomobilus that is dedicated to creating electric motorbikes out of recycled materials.

Paul’s journey into electric bike production started with a personal experience. When his electric bike’s lead acid batteries stopped working after a few months, he found himself grounded and unable to get to work. Frustrated by the lack of affordable replacement options, he turned to his physics background and started tinkering with old laptop batteries. After sorting them into working and non-working cells, he began using them to power a motor and attached them to an old bike frame. And thus, the first Ecomobilus electric bike was born.

Since then, Paul has been perfecting his design and creating a company that is dedicated to creating sustainable and affordable transportation options. The frames of the bikes are made from old motorbikes with the engine removed, while the laptop batteries power the motor. A fully charged bike battery can travel up to 100 kilometers, making them a great option for commuters.

One of the biggest advantages of the Ecomobilus electric bike is its cost-effectiveness. A fully charged battery costs less than $3, while traditional gasoline-powered motorbikes can cost upwards of $7 per day to run. Additionally, the electric bikes require no maintenance, as there are no mechanical parts that need to be repaired or replaced. This makes them a more affordable and sustainable option for people living in Nairobi.

The Ecomobilus electric bikes have been met with great success in Nairobi, with many people using them for daily commutes and even as taxis. Not only do they provide a more sustainable option for transportation, but they also help to reduce air pollution in the city. With Nairobi being one of the most polluted cities in Africa, this is a much-needed solution.

Leave it to a pandemic to practically change the way people live and work for years to come. While in some locations companies and businesses are scrambling to find enough workers to staff tables and cook food, the town of Westport in Ireland is struggling to find enough people to staff its hotels. The local industry normally depended on university students out of school to take on the seasonal demand. Coupled with key long-term employees, the hotels in the area kept things running. However, once the pandemic hit, the students stopped showing up and regular employees started reassessing their life path. Long story short, the Westport hotels are scrambling to keep things covered at a minimum level, and tourism hasn’t waned.

Given the loss of expected staffing resources, Westport hotels have instead had to lean on teenagers as well as foreign visa workers to close the gaps in labor needs. Even more interesting, the same hotels have been moving into the real estate market to provide dedicated housing for their staff to make sure that they have their primary needs taken care of and can focus on work even more. The last thing any of the hotel management teams want is to see a new staff-person disappear or not stay on board due to struggling to find a place to rent or similar. Westport is not the exception; seasonal tourist towns all over Ireland are in the same boat and competing for the same worker population.

Restaurants in bigger cities have been just as challenged. Galway, for example, can barely keep the staff in the food-serving industry. Every restaurant owner is fretting because they can’t even stay fully staffed through the normal business week, midday. A restaurant having to skip lunch hours is literally a nightmare in the food business.

Finding enough to hire is bad enough for Irish hospitality, but holding onto experienced help is even worse. At the same time that companies are strapped for new hires, they are losing the ones who know their work their best and have the highest productivity on average. Experienced workers have been reassessing their hospitality careers in droves, no longer willing to work the long hours of a typical shift or taking on evening and graveyard assignments. That leaves the extended hours over-staffed with rookies and new recruits and one or two burnt-out managers trying to keep a lid on things.

Add to the complexity, the number of employees with prior hospitality experience is dwindling as well. Driving competition, bar owners, restaurant owners and hotel owners are shifting to becoming landlords, providing free residence to attract foreign workers to stay during the heavy season. Yet even then, with the added bonus of living accommodations covered, these businesses still find it challenging to attract help to their Irish towns, even with aggressive advertising. It’s a wicked curse; many food businesses cut their hours due to social distancing restrictions, but now they are still cutting hours due to a lack of staff.

As for hospitality in Westport, the local commerce membership is pushing for far more creative thinking. That includes a better, overall strategy on how to attract seasonal workers with support, residence and coordination, benefitting both the employers as well as making it attractive for workers. Many of the owners are comparing notes to similar approaches they’ve seen elsewhere in Europe. At a minimum, Irish local governments are being pressured to get a handle on short-term rentals like AirBnBs and similar. Safety requirements need to be complied with to a business level, not residential, and the residence demand needs to be contained rather than the havoc being seen in Westport and elsewhere currently.

In the short run, locals are hoping the spike wears off and things get back to some level of normalcy. However, the pandemic fundamentally changed how work is provided in Westport and elsewhere in Ireland. And that change is going to be felt for at least a decade forward.

Many people are so afraid of crocodiles or reptiles as a whole that at the mere mention of their names or the fact that one could be nearby, they begin to get anxious.

No surprise there, since these reptiles can grow up to 17 feet long and run up to twenty-two miles per hour.

So what happens when these creatures, which are natural predators, require the assistance of human beings?

Well, we have to muster up the energy and gather a team to do whatever it takes to bring the creature to safety, whether they are big or small.

This was the case for several hundred-kilogram crocodiles that ended up in a ditch recently and had to be saved by humans. The crocodile, estimated to weigh nearly half a ton, was removed using a hydraulic excavator system.

This is a device that utilizes energy from hydraulic cylinders to haul a bucket at the edge of a boom back to the machine via earth or rock, then to lift up the bucket, allowing removal of the dug up away from the excavation.

Here is how that story played out:

There was construction underway in the Vadodara community vicinity, and somehow, the crocodile ventured into the deep drainage line of the construction project. Luckily, several residents spotted the reptile and alerted officials immediately with the hope that it could be rescued in time.

A team of rescuers took out the 12-foot-long crocodile from the 25-foot-deep trench in Asoj village near Vadodara that Saturday.

This was after the local residents alerted the forest officials to the mugger stuck in the under-construction drainage line. The crocodile, estimated to weigh 400 kg, was removed using a hydraulic excavator system, an idea that the quick-thinking rescuers came up with.

Hemant Vadhwana, who headed the team which went to free the crocodile, knew that traditional rescue methods would highly likely have done more harm than good.

He said the team knew that if they were to attempt to pull it out with the ropes, they might have harmed the creature or possibly cause strangulation. With that in mind, they huddled and decided that the best option would be to utilize the hydraulic machine that was already available to them.

At that point, the crocodile had already been injured since it had broken its snout, which they believe transpired when it toppled over into the deep trench.

Vadhwana went on to say that since it is the migration season of crocodiles ahead of their mating and nesting periods in the summer, crocodiles are normal.

Residents know that now and are therefore on the lookout for more crocodiles for more reasons than one. They are concerned about the safety of the creatures passing through the community as well as their own.

The reptile is presently recovering in the Department of Social Forestry of Vadodara.

In the meantime, while the crocodile population has been seriously diminished due to human activity, there are many people who still treasure them for multiple reasons.

One main reason is that they are believed to be the only creatures in existence from the time that dinosaurs roamed the world.

Meanwhile, crocodiles are extremely quick swimmers, which enables them to catch their prey. They are capable of swimming up to twenty miles per hour with the impressive capability of holding their breath for nearly 60 minutes beneath the water.

On land, crocodiles are much slower, running just over ten miles an hour for a very short distance.

When you hear about Dave Grohl, you don’t instantly think of teachers and politics. Dave Grohl rose to fame as a rockstar in the early 90s as the drummer for Nirvana. Now a decorated musician in his own right, selling millions of records as the singer of the Foo Fighters, Grohl is coming to the support of teachers everywhere. As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to put people at risk, President Donald Trump has been pushing for schools around the country to reopen. Out of all the folks who could stand up to President Trump, it was Dave Grohl who seemed to make the largest impact.

Dave Grohl was like many other Americans when he read that President Trump was pushing for schools to reopen during a deadly pandemic. Dave was shocked, taken aback, and disbelieving of what he was seeing. Not only had President Trump been pushing for in-school sessions, he had also been attacking schools that decided to follow remote learning practices, as well! Remote learning is a viable educational tool that has become increasingly important during the pandemic. Apparently, this latest attack on education was a bridge too far for Foo Fighter singer, Dave Grohl.. but why?

Even though Dave Grohl famously dropped out of high school to pursue music, he knows how important education is to the children of America. Dave would pen an open letter to the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as well as President Trump. In the letter, Grohl would lay bare his feelings for school. Dave would discuss how his mother worked as a public school teacher and the impact she had on generations of children. Grohl said, “Though I was never her student, she will forever be my favorite teacher.” 

Exploring the letter further, Dave would go on to outline how difficult and thankless a job that teaching can be. Grohl pointed to a list of considerations that have to be dealt with before teaching can be undertaken in a manner that is safe for students, teachers, and faculty workers alike. Dave’s mother would tell her son over the phone, “There’s so much more to be addressed than just opening the doors…” 

As the letter continued, Dave laid bare the inadequacies of President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. In particular, Grohl took a shot at Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. DeVos has no teaching background nor has any member of her family ever attended public school. Dave wisely pointed out that he would not take drumming lessons from a person who had never drummed. Why then should Betsy DeVos and President Trump ignore the advice of professionals in the educational world?

Whether or not Dave Grohl’s words have any impact remains to be seen. What we do know and understand is that teachers and faculty members are particularly at risk should schools rush to reopen. The vast majority of staff members in the school system are older and increasingly more vulnerable to the virus. Children on the other hand are resilient to COVID-19, though they are excellent carriers of the sickness. 

At the end of the day, no matter what side of the aisle you fall on, Dave’s words are particularly poignant. The drummer of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ would go on to say, “Teachers want to teach and not die. We should support and protect them like the national treasures that they are.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the work operates, to put it mildly. As the coronavirus continues to cause upheaval around the world, citizens of every country are finding new ways to adapt. For residents of Norwood, Massachusetts, acclimating to COVID means getting used to wearing a mask while out and about. While masks can be annoying to wear, they also provide a host of health benefits that can stem the spread of COVID-19. When one masked shopper visited the ReMARKable Cleanouts antique shop, he asked to sit down and play the only piano in the shop. What happened next, well, that’s what you are here to find out!

It was a regular weekend like any other during COVID-19 when John Thomas Archer visited the ReMARKable Cleanouts second-hand shop in Norwood, MA. Wearing a mask and ready to look at instruments, John approached the owner of the shop to inquire after an antique piano. The piano looked gorgeous but a sign read, “Do Not Touch.” Not wanting to ruffle any feathers, John made his polite request and the piano owner quickly acquiesced! With both parties wearing masks, it would be hard for either party to recognize the other and you’ll soon find out why this is important!

It was July 11th when John sat down at the piano with his mask firmly around his face. The young architecture student would look around the room before settling on a song. Within the blink of an eye, Archer was hammering out a gorgeous and uplifting version of ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey. The antique store quickly filled with singing and jovial laughter as everyone got in on the action. A random onlooker would film the performance and once shared the video would quickly go viral! 

John would leave the shop behind without the piano, not knowing that he would quickly go viral. The only problem was that John had been masked while in the store, thus making sure to follow COVID procedures. The owner of ReMARKable Cleanouts was stunned by the community reaction to John’s playing and decided there and then that he would gift the antique piano to the mysterious masked player. Unfortunately, the owner didn’t know how to reach John or even who he was. The mask had left the man anonymous! Fortunately, the video on Facebook would go viral before catching the attention of John’s significant other. John’s girlfriend would tell him that the owner of ReMARKable Cleanouts was looking for him!

After announcing that they had located John, ReMARKable Cleanouts would invite the man to come to the store to take the piano. John said, “I didn’t know so many people would be affected by watching me play.” John would return to the store after finding out about the offer, only this time he would gift the audience with a rendition of ‘All of Me’ by John Legend.

In these trying times when tensions are high and the future unknown, it is important to find comfort in familiar places. Sometimes all we need to hear is a good song by a good person to feel a little better. Hopefully, John gets to play the piano after COVID-19 for a real concert with ReMARKable Cleanouts!