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Catholic HS Student Gets Full Ride to St. Francis College With Robert J. McGuire Scholarship

Currents News Staff

A senior from Nazareth Regional High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn is feeling the love after learning he got a full ride scholarship to St. Francis College!

The scholarship is in honor of former police commissioner Robert J. McGuire. While it fully covers the tuition at the Catholic college, it also provides $1,000 dollars for textbooks, a free summer course and a personal advisor.

Catholic News Headlines for Wednesday, 4/6/22

The U.S. is rolling out new sanctions against Russia and even members of President Vladimir Putin’s family to stop the war in Ukraine.

Pope Francis is critical of the United Nations as he unveils a tattered flag from a besieged Ukrainian city.

We speak with Mark Wahlberg about what it was like to play “Father Stu” in his new movie.

A 99-year-old WWII Veteran Reflects On Her Service With the U.S. Coast Guard

Currents News Staff

Looking back at the good old days is something special for Marie Goff.

“It makes me feel young again to see all those pictures,” Marie said.

She’s a 99-year-old World War II veteran who served in a very unique role as a SPAR.

“I liked the SPARS very much and I always would be in the company of the best of the SPARS,” Marie said.

She enlisted after her brother died overseas serving his country, she felt it was her duty to serve.

“After that, my mother did not want me to join anything with the service but after my brother was killed, I joined the service,” Marie said.

Marie was stationed in Palm Beach, Florida and served at one of the stores in the Assembly Hotel. These memories she’s flipping through are some of her most fond ones, including the day the U.S. declared victory.

“Oh, it was the most fun,” Marie said, “we declared victory and it was the end of our SPARS.”

By her side is her granddaughter Kaitlin Dunckel, an Air Force veteran herself. She says her grandma was the reason she joined.

“She was always so proud of it,” Kaitlin said. “My grandpa was always so proud of it. They have always been so proud of their service I just wanted that pride that i was just like, I want part of that. I wanted to be as amazing as she is.”

A woman reflecting back on life looking at the role her service played soaking in the joy and pride it brings her.

A Spanish Caravan of Strangers Drives Donated Vans to Rescue Ukrainian Refugees

Currents News Staff

Gloria wanted to go to Poland to help Ukrainian refugees escape to Spain to live with host families in different cities in the country. But she needed a van. So she posted an ad on Instagram.

“Out of nowhere, a woman I didn’t know in Valladolid had a van, and I said, ‘well, great.’ I called her and said ‘thank you very much.’ I was a bit uneasy thinking about how a random person was going to let me use her van and put 6000 kilometers on it,” said Gloria. “But she wanted to help and she wasn’t able to go, so she let me use the van.”

She posted another ad on social media to see if others wanted to use their vans to help. In the end, nine more vans signed up. Three from Barcelona, three from Madrid, and three from Asturias.

Through Facebook, she contacted a volunteer in Poland who was able to help her with the logistics of the trip.

“So I was in contact with him and he kept telling me, for example, that we needed people in Barcelona to stay at the border,” Gloria said. “Now that the border is flooded, some should stay and help in Krakow. I kept in contact with all these people and we helped each other.”

Each van would go to the border that needed them most and pick up refugees. On their way back to Spain, they would stop in hotels to sleep and eat – and nobody charged them to pay for anything.

Gloria says this trip left a deep impression on her. She says there was a mix of funny and shocking moments. Like when a Ukrainian girl wouldn’t get out of the car to go to her new home in Spain.

“When we told her that this was her home and that the house was super cool, she suddenly told us that she didn’t want to stay,” Gloria said. “She didn’t want to get out of the car because she had not faced the reality that she had to go to move into another house. The entire trip – the train and car rides – she didn’t seem to be in shock.

“But then all of a sudden, when we got to the house, she didn’t want to stay; she didn’t want to get out of the car. We all got really sad because you realize how difficult it must be for these people to have to leave everything with just the clothes on their backs.”

Gloria and her nine vans were able to bring 65 Ukrainians out of the country to safety, showcasing the beauty of solidarity in action.

Learning the Game of Chess Helps Afghan Children Refugees

Currents News Staff

It’s game time for this special group of students at Stough Elementary in Raleigh, North Carolina. They came to learn the game of chess.

Elshan Moridiabadi is a chess grandmaster – now living in Durham. He introduced the students to kings – queens – bishops – and noble knights.

The students and their families are refugees from their homeland of Afghanistan where chess, some say, was born.

“Both Persia and India claims chess as its own,” said Carol Meyer.

Before long, the students set up their own armies for battle. Meyer, Executive Director of U.S. Chess, says the game itself has been attacked in Afghanistan.

“There was a time back in the early 2000’s when the Taliban government was first installed where chess was actually banned,” Carol said.

With the Taliban back in control, chess may once again become a crime. Principal Chris Cox says here, the game has helped to break down barriers.

“Obviously – in a new place, at a new time – and feeling very foreign to them, this is something that really gives them a little familiarity with something that they love – as simple as the game of chess,” Chris said.

“And again, that’s why we do what we do right? Just to have our kids and see that twinkle in their eyes when they’re learning. And all of these students are still trying to master the English language, so one connection for them with the game of chess has been really, really great.”

In the end, each student took their own new chess set home.

“We see chess as a universal game – and it’s a universal language,” Carol said. “Today these kids were able to move the pieces even though they haven’t yet mastered the language that we were speaking in the room.”

 

How a Ukrainian Teen Refugee Fled To Hungary For School and Safety

Currents News Staff

She’s got a pink backpack, a warm smile and started making new friends. Seventeen- year-old Alla Renska, a Ukrainian, has only been in Budapest, Hungary for a month. In an empty classroom of her new school, Renska says she never thought she’d end up here.

“No…no war. It’s 21st Century. It’s Ukraine. It’s Europe. Why?” asks Alla.

Before the war, she was a normal teenager making goofy videos with her friends, taking selfies. But then she recalled exactly when the war reached where she lived in Kyiv.

“When we heard explosions and our house was shaking,” Alla said.

Her parents made the agonizing decision to send her to stay with friends in Budapest. Alla’s dad took her to the train station on March 4. But in the crush of people also trying to leave, they were separated.

She took pics from the train: a bleak landscape she says matched how she felt. But then, she had an idea. She wrote an email to Korosi Baptist High School, one of the best in Hungary talking about the war and what happened to her.

“I really want to go to school and continue studying,” she wrote. “I kindly ask you to help me.”

Help they did.

The school converted these old containers into dorms  where Alla now lives and studies. Her days are spent in classes and at night. She chats with a few other Ukrainian girls just like her who also fled now living there too, even though she does still miss her family.

“It’s unfair,” she says. “It’s so unfair that I should be here and my parents there.”

The U.N. says more than four million refugees have fled Ukraine since the start of the war more than a month ago.

 

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Accuses Russia of War Crimes During Address to United Nations

Currents News Staff

A sobering and graphic account of alleged atrocities at the hands of Russian soldiers.

“They killed entire families, adults and children and they tried to burn the bodies,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy demanded accountability telling world leaders that Russia’s actions are no different than a terror group.

“The most terrible war crimes of all times we see since the end of World War II,” he said.

One big distinction he says is that Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

“Where is the security the security council is supposed to guarantee?” Zelenskyy asked.

His address comes just one day after visiting mass graves in Bucha, Ukraine. The scene was a massacre exposed for the world to see. A growing number of leaders, including President Biden, want Russian president Vladimir Putin on trial for war crimes.

“It’s a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to write to commit atrocities,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

NATO is now gathering evidence to prove it, according to the alliance’s U.S. ambassador. Yet the Kremlin is doubling down, calling the massacre, “fake.”

 

Yankees Fans Struck By Lightning While Leaving Spring Training Game

Currents News Staff

It’s not too often people get hit by lighting and live to talk about it. Ashley Moberg and her dad were on their way back to Chicago and shared what they could remember.

“We are big Yankees fans and had never seen spring training,” Ashley said, “so when we heard that the baseball strike had ended we jumped on getting some tickets and I’ve never been to Disney either, so we went to Disney for the first time as well.”

But they ran from a thunderstorm at Steinbrenner field in Tampa on Saturday. The dream trip then became a nightmare when they found themselves under a tree unable to locate their car.

“And there was a bright flash and the loud boom that I heard,” Ashley added. “The next thing I knew I was flying out of my shoes and my ears were ringing and my dad hit his head on the ground and then I hit the ground. I thought my dad was dead for about ten seconds there while I was lying on the pavement trying to figure out whether I had died.”

Her father hit the ground, breaking his cheekbone and the necklace Ashley was wearing: burned through her neck.

“For everyone who is asking,” Ashley said,  “yes, we got super powers and no we are not allowed to talk about them.”