One sad story and two cool stories

[serenissima]

AP: Marriages fall victim to Kenya violence

"The kids always ask me, 'Where is he?' And I always say he is going to come back," Kering, a 34-year-old of the Kalenjin tribe, told The Associated Press as she stood in the rubble of her home, torched by a mob last month because her husband is a Kikuyu. "But I hope he stays away, because I love him and I want him to be safe."

Since the Dec. 27 vote, marriages that united different ethnic groups have felt the strain as communities shun the Kikuyu tribe of President Mwai Kibaki, whose disputed re-election unleashed a wave of bloodshed that has killed at least 685 people.
[...]
Kering says she never imagined the bloodshed would jeopardize her marriage to Isaac Guthua. The couple fell in love more than 15 years ago, when he would stop by the beauty salon where she worked nearly every day just for a glance at her.

On the night the election results were announced, however, Guthua said he could not stay. Kikuyus were being hunted down and slaughtered. As Kering cooked dinner and Guthua watched the news, they heard screams in the distance — a mob was coming for Guthua and other Kikuyus, including his two brothers who lived next door with their Kalenjin wives.

Guthua, knowing his wife would be spared because she is not Kikuyu, told her to take care of the children, ages 17, 15 and 8. Then he took off at a run with his brothers, Steven and Mwangi, and they haven't been home since.
[...]
Kemei Gilbert, 18, a Kalenjin who was manning a roadblock in the area, said the women deserved no sympathy.

"These women are not our problem," Gilbert said. "In Africa, when a woman marries, she belongs to that community."
[...]

We watched "Hotel Rwanda" a few weeks ago. I simply don't grok hatreds like these.


And now the cool stories.

Reuters: Australian girl changes blood group, immune system

Demi-Lee Brennan, now 15, received a donor liver when she was 9 years old and her own liver failed.
[...]
Brennan's body changed blood group from O negative to O positive when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ by her body's immune system.

Her new liver's blood stem cells then invaded her body's bone marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no longer needs anti-rejection drugs.

Doctors from Sydney's Westmead Childrens' Hospital said they had no explanation for Brennan's recovery, detailed in the latest edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.
[...]
Stuart Dorney, the hospital's former transplant unit head, said Brennan's treatment could lead to breakthroughs in organ transplant treatment, because normally the immune system of recipients attacked the transplanted tissue.
[...]

AP: Photo clues lead to camera's owner

At dusk on New Year's Eve, Erika Gunderson got into a taxi in New York City and entered a digital-age mystery.

Sitting on the back seat was a nice Canon digital camera. Gunderson asked the driver which previous passenger might have left it, but the cabbie didn't seem to care. So Gunderson brought it home and showed it to her fiance, Brian Ascher. They decided that the only right thing to do was to find the owner.

But how? The only clues were the pictures on the camera: typical tourist snapshots, complete with a visit to the Statue of Liberty. How could they find a stranger among the huddled masses?
[...]

There's no passage I can quote to summarize neatly the way they tracked down the camera's owner. Suffice to say, it took some doing, but they succeeded.