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Published:Saturday | July 17, 2021 | 12:08 AM
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A boy stands by messages of support left on a mural of Manchester United striker and England player Marcus Rashford, on the wall of the Coffee House Café on Copson Street in Withington, Manchester, England, on Tuesday. The mural was defaced with graffiti
AP
A boy stands by messages of support left on a mural of Manchester United striker and England player Marcus Rashford, on the wall of the Coffee House Café on Copson Street in Withington, Manchester, England, on Tuesday. The mural was defaced with graffiti in the wake of England losing the Euro 2020 soccer championship final match to Italy.
A view of the messages of support left on a mural of Manchester United striker and England player Marcus Rashford, on the wall of the Coffee House Café on Copson Street in Withington, Manchester, England.
AP
A view of the messages of support left on a mural of Manchester United striker and England player Marcus Rashford, on the wall of the Coffee House Café on Copson Street in Withington, Manchester, England.
Guo Gangtang (right), embraces his long lost son, Guo Xinzhen, during a reunion after 24 years in Liaocheng in Central China’s Shandong province on Sunday. Guo was abducted as a toddler outside their home.
AP
Guo Gangtang (right), embraces his long lost son, Guo Xinzhen, during a reunion after 24 years in Liaocheng in Central China’s Shandong province on Sunday. Guo was abducted as a toddler outside their home.
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Chinese parents, abducted son reunited after 24 years

BANGKOK (AP):

After 24 years of heartache and searching, a Chinese couple were reunited with their son, who was abducted as a toddler outside their front gate.

Guo Gangtang and his wife, Zhang Wenge, hugged their 26-year-old son with tears in their eyes Sunday at a reunion organised by police in their hometown of Liaocheng in the eastern province of Shandong, according to a video-recording released by police.

The story of their reunion after Guo criss-crossed China by motorcycle searching for his son and became an activist who helped police return other missing children to their parents prompted an outpouring of public sympathy and condemnation of abductions.

Guo Xinzhen, then age two and a half, was grabbed by a woman and her boyfriend who took him northwest to Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, the Chinese capital, according to police. From there, he was sold to a couple in central China.

Police experts found Guo Xinzhen in June by searching databases for images of people who looked like he might as an adult, according to a police ministry statement. A DNA test confirmed his identity.

The woman and her boyfriend, identified only by the surnames Tang and Hu, were caught and confessed to trafficking three boys, according to the ministry. They have yet to stand trial, but potential penalties range up to death.

Mural in soccer star’s hometown becomes anti-racism symbol

LONDON (AP):

Through the pens and pencils of children, England is fighting back against racism.

After Marcus Rashford and two other black players missed penalty kicks in the final moments of the national football team’s European Championship loss to Italy, bigots defaced a mural of the Manchester United star and hurled racist abuse at the three on social media. Children in Manchester rose to Rashford’s defence, filling spaces on the wall with messages of support, encouragement and consolation.

“I hope you won’t be sad for to (sic) long because you are such a good person,” nine-year-old Dexter Rosier wrote. “I’m proud of you. You will always be a hero.”

The mural, which occupies a brick wall not far from where Rashford grew up, has become a symbol of England’s fight against the bigotry that has blighted the sport loved by people of all backgrounds. The struggle is playing out across the country as politicians and pundits, athletes and activists, react to the racist comments that surfaced post-defeat and undermined the sense of national unity created by England’s uplifting run to its first major soccer championship final since 1966.

Woman looking to adopt puppy finds dog lost two years ago

ALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania (AP):

On June 18, former Allentown resident Aisha Nieves of Schuylkill County was scrolling through pictures of puppies up for adoption.

Nieves wanted to have a dog in their home again for her two boys to play with.

“I happened to be on the Lehigh County Humane Society adoption site, looking through pictures, when my phone just froze on this one picture, and I just stared,” she said Thursday.

The picture was of a tan pitbull-rottweiler mix.

“I thought, ‘Wait, that can’t be him,’” Nieves said, referring to her dog she lost two years ago.

Kovu is his name, after the character in The Lion King.

“Then, I saw the little scar over one eye, the scar from when he got caught in a gate, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s my baby, that’s Kovu!’” Nieves said.

Nieves got Kovu when he was seven weeks old in 2014.

She loved and cared for him in her 14th Street home in Allentown until May 2019.

Kovu, who never wandered away or ran off before, was suddenly gone, Nieves said. He left through a hole made two weeks prior by a car crashing into her front gate.

Weeks later, on June 8, 2019, the Lehigh County Humane Society picked up Kovu in an Allentown resident’s yard on Eighth Street, where he was spotted, and brought him to the shelter.

Now Kovu is back home and Nieves and her family are looking forward to celebrating his 7th birthday this Christmas.