The Oklalhoma teen’s eyes were covered by two blindfolds（眼罩）. She didn’t know she would meet her father, James, after 12-year separation.

“I had actually discussed with her the night before at a restaurant and talked over the details of where we would go and how we would pull them of,” said Amanda, Rory Beth’s mother.

A video shows Amanda led her blindfolded daughter out of their car and guided her across the parking lot of Broken Arrow Lanes in Broken Arrow.

Little did she know, her father was on the sidewalk holding a birthday cake that read, “Happy Birthday Rory Beth, Love Dad.” When the teen slowly pulled down her blindfolds, she was extremely surprised. Both the father and daughter stood silently looking at each other until James finally walked over and hugged her. James only broke their embrace to look at his daughter and hold her face. “There were definitely lots of tears from James, myself, and boys,

and even a few bystanders,” said Amanda.

James was a truck driver who spent a lot of time on the road, so Amanda ended the marriage with him when Rory Beth was a baby. “It was hard to figure out how to make it work,” Amanda said. Amanda felt Rory Beth was now old enough to understand and to ask any questions she may have, so the reunion happened.

The birthday surprise was on June 4, and the father and daughter had seen each other again since, even celebrating Father’s Day together. Amanda said her daughter and James were both delighted to be together.

“She’s already calling him ‘daddy’ and tells him that she loves him.” Amanda said.

It seems that some people go out of their way to get into trouble. That’s more or less what happened the night when Nashville Police Officer Floyd Hyde was on duty.

“I was on the way to a personal-injury accident in West Nashville. As I got onto Highway 40, blue lights and sirens (警笛) going, I fell in behind a gold Pontiac Firebird that suddenly seemed to take off quickly down the highway. The driver somehow panicked at the sight of me. He was going more than a hundred miles an hour and began passing cars on the shoulder (路肩).”

But Hyde couldn’t go after him. Taking care of injured people is always more important than worrying about speeders, so the officer had to stay on his way to the accident. But he did try to keep the Firebird in sight as he drove, hoping another nearby unit would be able to step in and stop the speeding car. As it turned out, keeping the Firebird in sight was not that difficult. Every turn the Pontiac made was the very turn the officer needed to get to the accident scene.

Hyde followed the Pontiac all the way to his destination (目的地). At that point he found another unit had already arrived at the accident scene. His help wasn’t needed. Now he was free to try to stop the driver of the Firebird, who by this time had developed something new to panic about.

“Just about that time,” Hyde says, “I saw fire coming out from under that car, with blue smoke and oil going everywhere. He’d blown his engine. Now he had to stop.”

“After I arrested him, I asked him why he was running. He told me he didn’t have a driver’s license.”

That accident cost the driver of the Firebird plenty -- a thousand dollars for the new engine --not to mention the charges for driving without a license, attempting to run away, and dangerous driving.

Fifteen years ago, when darkness used to fall in Yobe Nkosi, a remote village in northern Malawi, children did their school homework by candlelight: There was no electricity. But that started to change in 2006, when villager Colrerd Nkosi finished secondary school in Mzimba, and returned home—and found he could no longer live without power.

Aged 23 at the time, Nkosi soon figured out that a stream gushing past the house where he grew up had just enough force to push the pedals on his bicycle. He created a makeshift generator (临时发电机) that brought power into his home. Word spread quickly among the cluster of brick houses and neighbours began paying regular visits to charge their mobile phones. “I started getting requests for electricity and decided to upgrade,” said Nkosi, now 38.

With no prior training, he turned an old fridge compressor into a water-powered turbine and put it in a nearby river, generating electricity for six households. Today, the village is supplied by a bigger turbine, built from the motor of a disused maize seller (玉米剥粒机). The power is carried along metal cables strung from a two-kilometre line of tree trunks topped with wooden planks.

The users pay no fee for the power but give Nkosi some money for maintenance—slightly more than $1 per household per month. “The electricity is basically free,” Nkosi said, speaking in local Chichewa. He admitted that the maintenance income was too small to cover repair costs, which he mainly funded from his own pocket.

Despite the challenges, he is determined to expand his mini-grid to surrounding areas. “Once more villages and schools have electricity, people will no longer cut down trees for charcoal,” he said. “Students will have a lot more time to study.”

As dusk settles over Kasangazi Primary School, chatty groups of learners file into a classroom for a night-time study session. “Before we had electricity here, we used to use candles to study,” said student Gift Mfune, “Now we all have no excuse but to pass our examinations,” he exclaimed.