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A video of the passionate haka performed by the comrades of three fallen New Zealand soldiers has gone viral, with tens of thousands of people around the world watching the clip.

The 2nd and 1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment performed the moving tribute for Corporal Luke Tamatea, 31, Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker, 26, and Private Richard Harris, 21, at their funeral service at the Burnham Military Camp in Christchurch on Saturday.

The trio were killed instantly when a roadside bomb destroyed their Humvee in Afghanistan's northeast Bamiyan Province on August 18.

A video of the haka put on YouTube by the New Zealand Defence Force has gone viral, with more than 122,000 views.

The emotional tribute was given publicity by CNN host Piers Morgan, who shared the clip with his 2.6 million followers on Twitter.

CLICK HERE for more.

Thanks to Angela for sharing.

May the victims rest in peace and may their families and loved ones have the strength to come to terms with the loss.

Thanks to Linda who shared this post.

A  truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while travelling and enjoy detouring to browse through old cemeteries.

There are some fascinating inscriptions engraved on old tombstones:

Harry Edsel Smith of Albany , New York :

Born 1903--Died 1942.
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down. It was.

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In a Thurmont, Maryland , cemetery:

Here lies an Atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.

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On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102.
Only the good die young.

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In a London , England cemetery:

Here lies Ann Mann, who lived an old maid but died an old Mann.
Dec. 8, 1767

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In a Ribbesford, England , cemetery:

Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread, And the Lord sent them manna.
Clark Wallace wanted a wife, And the Devil sent him Anna.

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In a Ruidoso, New Mexico , cemetery:

Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon him for not rising.

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In a Uniontown, Pennsylvania , cemetery:

Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake,
Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.
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In a Silver City , Nevada , cemetery:

Here lays The Kid, We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,  But slow on the draw.

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A lawyer's epitaph in England :

Sir John Strange.
Here lies an honest lawyer,
and that is Strange.

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John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England ,cemetery:

Reader, if cash thou art in want of any,
Dig 6 feet deep and thou wilt find a Penny.

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In a cemetery in Hartscombe , England :

On the 22nd of June,
Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.

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Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls , Vermont
:
Here lies the body of our Anna,
Done to death by a banana.
It wasn't the fruit that laid her low,
But the skin of the thing that made her go.

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On a grave from the 1880s in Nantucket , Massachusetts
:
Under the sod and under the trees,
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod,
Pease shelled out and went to God.

==================================

In a cemetery in England :
Remember man, as you walk by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so shall you be,
Remember this and follow me.


To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone:
To follow you I'll not consent,
Until I know which way you went.

Just a while ago, AP reported HERE that Bollywood actress Jiah Khan, who made her debut starring opposite acting legend Amitabh Bachchan, died in an apparent suicide at her home in the Indian city of Mumbai.

A blog that I enjoy reading is Discourse in C#minor at this link. The authoress is a deep thinker who writes with much sincerity and feeling. Honestly, I wish I could write like her. Humble about her abilities, her discourses are varied but interesting. Her latest post is about 'The Death of Marie Colvin' and I am reposting it this evening as a tribute to the late journalist from the UK Sunday Times.

Excerpt:

A little less than a year ago I wrote about a number of women whom I admired over the course of March (Women’s History Month). Two days ago, one of them, Marie Colvin was killed in Syria where she was covering the government-mandated slaughter currently taking place there. This is what I wrote about her in 2011. The whole post is here, if you’re interested.

Marie Colvin is a correspondent for the UK Sunday Times and has been one for over twenty years. She has covered conflicts in the Balkans, Chechnya, East Timor, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, and pretty much anywhere else things are blowing up. She was on CNN reporting from Libya last week. Though I can find tons of her work, I can’t find any biographical profiles. This piece, written in 2000 for the American Journalism Review, and this five-year-old article from the New York Daily News are the best I could do. I love her work because she goes places few will and stays after most leave. Such actions make good copy, but come with some with serious risk to life and limb. In 1999, Ms. Colvin lost her left eye while covering the Sri Lankan civil war in an incident which reads remarkably like a set up. Her work has not gone without recognition. In 2010, Ms. Colvin won the British Press Award for Best Foreign Journalist of the Year.

CLICK HERE for the rest of the entry.

I will always remember and admire Marie Colvin's courage and perseverance to report truth as it is. May she rest in peace always.

Earlier this evening when I was at my physio session, I posted two links about Margaret Thatcher's peaceful demise as I was in a horizontal position undergoing therapy and could not do much.

CNN news reported it HERE.

The Telegraph reported it HERE.

The latest report this evening is by The Mirror HERE which reported that the Iron Lady will be receiving a ceremonial funeral.

Excerpt:

As tributes poured in for the former premier, it was announced that she will receive a ceremonial funeral with military honours at St Paul's Cathedral.

Downing Street gave details of the event after the Tory former prime minister died this morning. She had been in ill health for several years and was rarely seen in public in recent times.

The Queen was said to be "sad" at news of her death and Prime Minister David Cameron praised her as a "great leader" and a "great Briton".

Her spokesman Lord Bell said: "It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning.

"A further statement will be made later." Follow live reaction.

Over the last couple of years her health had visibly deteriorated due to the affects of dementia and Alzheimer's.

Among the events she was forced to pull out of were an 85th birthday bash hosted by David Cameron at 10 Downing Street and the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in April 2011.

In July 2011 it was announced that her office in the House of Lords had been closed down, just weeks after she was named the most competent British Prime Minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos Mori poll.

MORE here.

May she rest in peace.

After a two-year battle with cancer, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died at the age of 58. The news was delivered by Vice President Nicolas Maduro, who said, "It’s a moment of deep pain."

CLICK HERE to read the report by BBC.

CLICK HERE to see interviews that Democracy for Now conducted with Hugo Chavez before his demise.

CLICK HERE for an indepth article on Hugo Chavez by The Independent.

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic Science, AAFS president Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:

On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building
intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency).

As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly.

Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this.

Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his
suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.

The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by and elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when
he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and pellets went through the window striking Opus.

When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B.

When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded.

The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her - therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident.

That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot
his mother.

The case now becomes one of murder on the part of
the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

There was an exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son, one Ronald Opus, had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder.

This led him to jump off the ten- story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window.

The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide

Neil Alden Armstrong born on August 5, 1930 passed away yesterday. He was an American astronaut and the first human to set foot on the Moon. He was also a test pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor and United States Naval Aviator. I can still remember how I was filled with excitement when he first landed on the moon at 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969 and then spoke the famous words "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." May he rest in peace always and may God comfort his loved ones during this time of grief.

Here's a press statement from his family as released in the official NASA website.

FAMILY STATEMENT REGARDING THE DEATH OF NEIL ARMSTRONG

WASHINGTON -- The following is a statement from the Armstrong family regarding the death of former test pilot and NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong. He was 82.

“We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.

Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.

Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. He also found success back home in his native Ohio in business and academia, and became a community leader in Cincinnati.

He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits.

As much as Neil cherished his privacy, he always appreciated the expressions of good will from people around the world and from all walks of life.

While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.

For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

Additional information about Armstrong is available at this LINK TO NASA's official website.

CLICK HERE to read CNN's news article on Neil Armstrong. The site has put up many memorable photographs of Neil Armstrong.

Biodata of Neil Armstrong

Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was a United States Navy officer and had served in the Korean War. After the war, he served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he logged over 900 flights. He graduated from Purdue University and the University of Southern California.

A participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man In Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs, Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962. His first spaceflight was the NASA Gemini 8 mission in 1966, for which he was the command pilot, becoming one of the first U.S. civilians in space. On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft with pilot David Scott.

Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2½ hours exploring, while Michael Collins remained in orbit in the Command Module. Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon along with Collins and Aldrin, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
Read more HERE.

It was in 1997 when I first met Brenda Chiah. She was a student in my Business Communication and Presentation Class in the ABE Certificate course (1997) and the Diploma I class at a private college in Penang (1998).

Her jovial character and energetic laughter was most infectious and I cannot remember any moment when she did not have a smile on her face. I believe towards the end of the course, she found fame in a competition and eventually became a famous tv artiste.

Those of you who enjoy Chinese serial dramas might have seen her in The Descendant which was aired from 9th February, every Monday to Thursday at 10 p.m. on ntv7.


She played the role of Jiang Hai Qi in Tribulations of Life, the 19th co-production of MediaCorp TV and ntv7 and a blockbuster drama for 2011.


Imagine my shock when another student messaged me to tell me that Brenda passed away on Saturday from breast cancer at the age of 34. She married Chai Kher Lik, an actor with the DreamTeam Studio on January 10th this year.

Guang Min Daily carried the news of her tragic death this morning..


Two nights before her death, she had a romantic dinner with her husband who drove back from Kuala Selangor where he had been busy with Dream Team Studio in the shooting of a new production.


Even though he realized he had only two hours to see Brenda and was very tired, he wrote in his Facebook update for the photograph that it did not matter that two hours for he needed to tell her how much he loved her.  There, he said he had known her for eight years and had never quarrelled but have loved  her the same the way she loved him. May God comfort him and the loved ones during this time of grief and loss.

I just wish I had had a chance to see her again before she left us. I did not even know she had been suffering from cancer. That is the Brenda I knew - resilient and always with a smile on her face no matter how she felt within. Positive and determined, it has been amazing how with steadfast determination she worked to achieve her dreams and now, she left us all too soon but with footprints in the hearts of many, including mine.

Brenda, may you rest in peace always. You will always remain in the hearts of your loved ones, friends and fans who love you.

*Updated: This is a photo of Brenda's final journey....R.I.P.