Bite sized chunks of good news to ensure it's a sunny Sunday.
A little Scottish girl has become famous in her neighbourhood after drawing colourful messages of hope on her family’s garage door in lockdown. Her mother has been letting her five-year-old daughter Eilidh turn their black garage doors into a massive art project. Twice a week since April 2020, Eilidh has let her imagination run wild, covering the space with mermaids, dolphins, Spiderman, and dinosaurs. She has this week illustrated it with a rainbow, flowers, and the word ‘Hope’ as lockdown is further eased in Scotland.
A homeless retired U.S. Army Sergeant, who slept in his car, spent his time and income helping other veterans battling post-traumatic stress with his passion for art and poetry, has been given a brand new home in Virginia. HeroHomes, a non-profit organization, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week to hand over the keys to Vainuupo "AV" Avegalio, who grew up on the Samoan Islands. Nice!
Good news for those who enjoy peace and quiet, as Twitter thwarts Trump's latest attempt to get back on the platform. The site says it will "take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account.”
Japanese swimmer Rikako Ikee had to put her career on hold when she was diagnosed with leukemia in 2019. Rikako did 10 months of treatment before she beat the disease. She was discharged in December 2019. The leukemia survivor returned to competing last August, hoping to eventually qualify for the 2024 Olympics. But Rikako’s grit didn’t take that long to pay off as she just won the 100m butterfly at Japan’s Olympic Trials last month. That win secured her a spot at the upcoming Tokyo Olympics in 2021 - a few years sooner than expected.
Covid will no longer be circulating in Britain by August, one of the UK's top vaccine experts has predicted, as cases of the virus continue to plunge. A week after stepping down as interim head of the vaccine taskforce, Clive Dix said the population will be safe from the disease in a matter of months, as the UK remains on track to give all adults at least one jab by the end of July.
Belgium recently melted down over 22,000 firearms into 60 tons of recycled steel. Half of the firearms were handed in by members of the public (or seized in police raids), and half were police weapons that are no longer used. The governor of East Flanders said: “The result is good news: 22,457 firearms have disappeared from our society… It is obviously positive for the security of our citizens that these weapons are no longer in use.” Furthermore, steel is endlessly recyclable without loss of quality.
President Biden is encouraging Americans to treat 4 July as a kind of Covid-19 liberation opportunity among those who long for baseball and barbecues, parades and patriotism, and something approaching normal life. The key to celebrating independence from the virus is a dose of vaccine by July, Biden said. He wants the US to move closer to one-dose inoculation of at least 70 percent of adults, or about 160 million people. Currently, just under 60 percent of all US adults have received at least one jab.
Dive in Deeper
Inside Apple's $5 billion HQ:
It looks like a giant spaceship parked in the lush flats of Cupertino, California, and may be the most stunning - and ecologically efficient - modern campus in the world.