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Five stories worth your Sunday.
FROM A HOSPITAL BED TO A WORLD TITLE
Llywelyn Williams was 16 when a car hit him while he was skateboarding near his home in Abersoch, Wales. Doctors amputated his right leg to save his life. He says he came around from the coma believing a surfboard had appeared between him and a bright light. He decided it wasn’t his time.
Surfing had been his passion before the accident. It became his rehabilitation after it. Friends carried him into the sea as he recovered. At 18 he wheelchaired himself into his parents’ kitchen and announced he was moving to Australia to surf.
This March, Williams won the kneeling division of the Bright Sky Australian Pro Adaptive Surfing Championship at Byron Bay, holding the Welsh flag on the beach. He was third at the North Shore Prosthetics Hawaiian Surfing Championships in May. He self-funds his competitions by working as a digger driver in his family’s construction business, and is lobbying for adaptive surfing’s inclusion in a future Paralympic Games.
“Disability for me has elevated my life,” Williams said. “Anything is possible if you have any kind of disability.”
Source: BBC (UK, public broadcaster — Williams’ account, family interviews, documentary tie-in)
THE COMMUNITY THAT SHOWED UP FOR A DOUGHNUT SHOP
Daniel Tes and his wife, Margarita, opened The Local Donut in Scottsdale, Arizona, ten years ago. The shop runs on an unglamorous schedule: staff arrive at 11 p.m. or midnight to hand-cut and fry the next morning’s batches. Tes says it’s worth it for the creative side of the work, coming up with new flavors and combinations.
This summer tested that commitment. Business slowed the way it does most summers for small food shops, but this year hit harder. Tes told FOX 10 Phoenix that the shop couldn’t catch up after spring training season, and that last week was the worst the business had seen: they couldn’t make payroll.
With his employees’ paychecks on the line, Tes posted about the shop’s struggles on social media, asking the community, and God, for help.
Then something really cool happened: Within a day customers packed the shop. Other local businesses began prepaying for strangers’ orders, a pay-it-forward chain that kept spreading through the following week. Regular customer Harris Dozier told FOX 10 he was glad to see the shop stay open, calling it one of the friendliest spots in town.
“There’s a lot of selfless people out there, a lot of generous people,” Tes said.
Source: Fox News (US — Tes interview via FOX 10 Phoenix)
A COLLEGE STUDENT, A LAKE, AND THREE GIRLS WHO COULDN’T SWIM
Lillie Vehling was in Seattle for a summer internship and attending Seafair, the city’s massive summer festival, for the first time. She was sitting in Genesee Park on July 31, reading a book while she waited for the U.S. Navy Blue Angels air show, when she glanced up and saw three young girls about 15 yards offshore in Lake Washington.
“There were three girls who were out pretty far by the buoy lane that they had set up, and they did not look very good,” Vehling said. “They were already bobbing up and down trying to get breaths, and one of the girls was actually drowning the others in order to breathe, and that’s when I knew I had to jump in.”
Vehling is a water polo player at UC Davis who had completed certified lifeguard training and started her own swim lessons program. She recognized the signs of drowning immediately and swam out. She pulled the girls to shore one at a time. By the time she reached the third girl, the child was unconscious, barely floating, and tangled in a buoy rope. Vehling got all three to shore before Seattle Fire Department paramedics arrived. One girl was taken to Seattle Children’s Hospital in stable condition.
Vehling said afterward that she hadn’t thought twice about her own safety, and that she was simply relieved everyone made it out safe.
Seafair President and CEO Emily Cantrell tracked Vehling down afterward and invited her to that evening’s festival gala, where she was knighted “Lady Guardian of Lake Washington.”
Sources: Sunny Skyz (US — Vehling account, Cantrell statement); KOMO News (US — Seattle Fire Department response, hospital confirmation)
THE ORANGUTANS WHO WERE BORN FREE
Since 2011, the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) has released nearly 200 rescued orangutans into the Jantho Pine Forest Nature Reserve in Indonesia’s Aceh province, a forest where the species had no prior wild population. Most of the animals arrived as confiscated illegal pets or as orphans rescued from the wildlife trade, and many bore the physical and psychological marks of captivity.
Rehabilitation isn’t fast. Wild orangutans normally spend years alongside their mothers learning which fruits are safe, how to build a nightly nest, and how to move through a rainforest canopy. Animals separated too early sometimes miss that education entirely, so SOCP staff work with each orangutan for months or years, checking that it can forage, climb, and nest before release.
Jantho has now recorded at least ten wild births. On July 29, Aceh’s Natural Resources Conservation Agency confirmed the birth of a female infant to Wenda, a rehabilitated orangutan rescued in 2009 and released into Jantho in 2014. It was the second birth from a Jantho-released mother in eight months. In May, field monitors confirmed a male infant, later named Badar, born to Bulan, another rehabilitated female released in 2018.
SOCP director Dr. Ian Singleton has spoken generally about the program’s timeline, noting that most orangutans arrive at Jantho years younger than the age at which wild females typically have their first infant, so it was always expected to take years before regular births began. He has also noted what makes each birth significant beyond the numbers: the new generation grows up having never known captivity or human contact at all.
Sources: Good News Network (US — SOCP figures, program history); The Jakarta Post (Indonesia — Wenda birth confirmation, BKSDA statement); Mongabay (US-based conservation news — Bulan and Badar detail); Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (program primary source — Singleton statement on release-age timelines)
PLASTIC THAT TURNS INTO BUG FOOD
Polyethylene and polypropylene, two of the world’s most common plastics, are also among the most stubborn: left in the environment, they can persist for decades or centuries. A British firm called Polymateria has developed an additive that changes that. Mixed into the plastic during manufacturing, it causes the material to break down, after sufficient weathering, into a low-molecular-weight wax that soil microbes can actually consume.
Researchers from Polymateria, Imperial College London, and Malaysia’s SIRIM standards body tested the treated plastics for biodegradation and ecotoxicity. In peer-reviewed results published this week, treated samples reached more than 90% biodegradation in soil within roughly nine to ten months. Untreated plastic tested alongside them did not break down. Earthworms, plants, and aquatic organisms in the tests showed no adverse effects.
The technology is already used in UK stadiums and by more than 300 brands across Asia.
Imperial College London’s Dr. Jose Jimenez Zarco said the findings show how “almost indestructible” plastics can safely return to nature.
Source: Positive News (UK — Polymateria, Imperial College London, and SIRIM research; npj Materials Degradation publication)
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