It wasn’t all bad
■■Until now, naturalists had thought all wild descendants of Britain’s native honeybees had gone extinct, wiped out by invasive species and disease. That changed when bee conservationist Filipe Salbany discovered 50 colonies of rare forest honeybees on the 400-acre Blenheim estate.The bees appear to have adapted to cold temperatures, letting them survive in the oak forest. While DNA samples have yet to return, Salbany believes their wings and veins strongly suggest they are descendants “of an old English bee, of something that was here many, many years ago.”
■■When Abraham Olagbegi, 13, learned he qualified as a Make-A-Wish recipient, his mother, Miriam, asked him what he wanted most. His answer surprised her: “I really want to feed the homeless,” he said. Before he got sick with aplastic anemia, a rare blood disorder, Abraham and his family would provide food for the homeless every month—a tradition started four years ago by his great-uncle. Now, Make-A-Wish Mississippi has committed to feeding at least 80 homeless people in Poindexter Park in Jackson, Miss., once a month for a year to fulfill Abraham’s wish. “It was a milestone for us. His wish is selfless,” said Make-A-Wish’s Linda Sermons.
■■ToekTik was a teenage foot soldier for Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge in the 1970s when he realized he could make money by looting priceless ancient statues from temple ruins. He continued his plundering through the late 1990s, selling Khmer masterpieces like sandstone sculptures of deities. Now he’s working with Cambodian investigators to get them back, by providing evidence of his own crimes. His testimony has aided in the return of artifacts from a NewYork collector and the Denver Museum of Art. “I regret what I did,”ToekTik said. “I want the gods to come home.”