Boy finds mother with Google Earth

Another news piece for today's post. I had mixed emotions about the following article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17693816

On one hand, I was delighted to read about a man in India who had re-united with his mother thanks to his use of Google Earth. Twenty-five years ago, at five years of age, he went out with his older brother but ended up taking a nap then erroneously boarded a train he assumed his brother was on...only to return to sleep while on that train and awaken fourteen hours later far away from home. While he was in a new place and frightened, he was clever enough to survive, ended up in an orphanage, and was adopted by a couple in Australia. In the last year or so, he did his research using Google Earth to work out what town he originally came from, then he was able to return there and see his mother again.

The part of the article that saddened me was the bit about his older brother: it was awful to read that he was discovered a month after the younger boy had disappeared...and it was his remains that were found. It is not known if his death was an accident or a deliberate killing. It must have been devastating for the mother to have one child missing and the other meeting a brutal end.

Overall, it was a positive article, and it is refreshing to read about a missing child re-unite with their parent(s). Thousands of children go missing worldwide every year, and too often those children never see their families again.