Odd News
Students with hearing impairment recite Qur’an in sign language
Concerned about how Indonesian students with hearing impairments often miss out on religious education, Cleric Abdul Kahfi founded an Islamic boarding school to help them study and recite scripture from the Qur’an using sign language.
Opened in 2019 in the city of Yogyakarta in Central Java, the Darul A’shom school now has 12 staff and teaches 115 students aged between seven and 28 years from across the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country.
A picture taken on June 22, 2022 shows students studying at an Islamic boarding school for deaf children in Sleman.
Abdul hopes the school will make it easier for future generations to learn about Islam.
“Nowadays hearing-impaired adults barely know religion in depth because from school age they have never learned about it,” said the cleric, noting how interest in his school had spread quickly.
In Indonesia, the curriculum in public schools provides limited religious teaching to children with special needs, starting at the age of eight or nine rather than at kindergarten as is the case for many other students.
Only three out of 10 children with disabilities in Indonesia are able to go to school, according to a survey by the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF).
Hearing-impaired students typically take about five years to learn to recite and memorise the Qur’an at the school. -arabnews.com
Odd News
Message in bottle floats from Canada to Ireland in 13 years
A message in a bottle launched by visitors to Newfoundland’s Bell Island was found washed up on an Irish beach nearly 13 years later, after apparently crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
Kate Gay said she was walking a Dingle Peninsula beach this week when she spotted the wine bottle with a sheet of paper inside.
Gay showed the bottle to members of Creative Ireland NeartnaMacharaí during a meeting at her house that evening, and they broke the bottle open.
The note, written by a couple named Brad and Anita, was dated Sept. 12, 2012. The letter described the couple’s day trip to Bell Island.
There was a phone number on the letter, but there was no answer when group members tried to call.
The Maharees Heritage and Conservation group posted photos of the bottleto social media on Monday, and within an hour group members were messaging with Anita.
Group member Martha Farrell said Anita reported that she and Brad had married in 2016 and are still together to this day. -upi.com
Odd News
Woman earns world record for collection of 15,485 egg cups
A Spanish woman who has been collecting egg cups for over 50 years earned a Guinness World Record when her collection was tallied at 15,485 items.
María José Fuster recruited two witnesses to help her tally her collection at a community center in her hometown of Campo, Spain.
Fuster’s collection includes multiple patterns, colors, designs and even novelty cups bearing the images of characters including Superman, Betty Boop and Garfield.
Fuster maintains two blogs related to her hobby — one to catalog each piece, and one to list the names of the people who have donated egg cups to her collection.
Some of her most prized egg cups, about 1,143 of them, are currently on display at a local museum.
-upi.com
