The Olympic's independent athlete, and more

The Olympic's independent athlete

Guor Marial fled the confines of a child labor camp in war-torn Sudan when he was 8 years old. Now, two decades later, he will compete in this summer’s Olympic Games as a marathoner—under the Olympic flag. After escaping Sudan, Marial came to the U.S. as a teenager and won an athletics scholarship to Iowa State University. In his first-ever marathon, he posted a time qualifying him for the Olympics. But the country he’d most like to run for, newly independent South Sudan, still has no Olympic body. Inspired by his incredible story, Olympic chiefs will allow him to compete in London this month as an independent athlete.

Paralyzed father copies baby daughter to relearn skills

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A young father paralyzed by a debilitating stroke has taught himself to walk and talk again by copying his 2-year-old daughter. Mark Ellis, of Derbyshire, England, was immobilized by a stroke just two weeks after his baby daughter, Lola-Rose, was born. As she began to make baby noises, Ellis began to copy her in the hopes of regaining his speech. Father and daughter then learned to speak at the same time by reading books together. And just as Lola-Rose took her first steps, her father began walking with the use of a walker. “They have a strong bond,” said Ellis’s wife, Amy.

Johnny Karlinchak helps a neighbor

Johnny Karlinchak’s first reaction when he saw that a 60-foot tree had fallen on his neighbor Elissa Myers’s house in Springfield, Va., was to empty his piggy bank and hand her the total—five quarters. But the 8-year-old wanted to do more to help, so he set up a lemonade stand on his block with a sign labeled “Mrs. Myers Building Fund.” He has since raised $1,000. Karlinchak is sensitive to the needs of others, said his mother, because he lost his older sister in a car accident four years ago. “He just wants to help,” she said.