Starting the week with more positive news. As always!
2020 was remarkable year for rhino protection in Kenya where not one single rhino lost its horn or lost its life - a feat not achieved since 1999. Contributing factors include tackling poverty in rural areas, greater numbers of protection rangers and increased policing efforts to seize rhino horns being trafficked.
A 'universal vaccine' that can conquer all variants could be available within a year thanks to British scientists. It would work on all Covid-19 variants by targeting the core of the virus instead of just the spike protein. British scientists at the University of Nottingham are developing a "universal” Covid-19 vaccine which, if successful, would end the need to keep tweaking existing jabs as the virus mutates.
Guide to the new lexicon of love: From coronazoned to lockblocking - the dating language we’ve learnt this year.
Michelin star food delivered. Simon Rogan, chef of the two-Michelin starred L’Enclume in Cumbria, north west England, had to think quickly when lockdown hit. In April 2020, he became one of the first Michelin-starred chefs to launch a range of meal boxes for customers to order and finish off cooking at home. The success of Simon Rogan at Home has been “simply ballistic,” Rogan says, with over 900 boxes a week sold from his kitchen at £45 per head ($62), and delivered nationwide. Yes, that's over £40,000 every week. He even has a weekly waiting list of around 400 customers.
Sustainable construction materials: The American Association for the Advancement of Science met last week to discuss lowering carbon emissions by erecting skyscrapers, amongst other buildings, built of wood.
As many people have been asked to work from home during the pandemic, several companies - including Microsoft and Twitter - have decided to make it a permanent thing and give their employees more flexibility to choose when and where they work from. Salesforce is the latest tech giant to announce plans for most of its employees to work remotely part- or full-time after the pandemic, declaring that the “9-to-5 workday is dead”.
Impoverished Thai fisherman was picking up oyster shells along the beach with his family last month when they stumbled upon three beautiful shells sticking to a discarded buoy ball. He picked them up, took them home and cleaned then up. One of them turned out to be a rare Melo pearl worth $320,000 and the lucky fisherman is now in the final stages of negotiating a sale to a Chinese buyer, and says that "The money won’t just change my life… My whole family will have better lives.”
The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine achieves 94 per cent efficacy after the second dose, according to the first major “real world” study to be published on the jab’s performance. says Israel's Clalit Institute.
UK set to roar back: Bank of England chief economist declares Britain a 'coiled spring' and predicts a spending boom when Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.
Fifteen million first doses of the vaccine have now been administered in the UK – on paper enough to vaccinate every person in the Government's top four priority groups for jabs. Remarkably, the figure was reached just over two months after the first jab was delivered in the UK and comes just days before the Prime Minister is to review lockdown measures in England, having set a target of offering vaccines to high priority recipients by mid-February.
Fox News and Trump lawyers face huge lawsuits: If America is ever to get the truth re-established (and become a fact based democracy again), painful as it will be, it's good news that two maligned companies are aiming to set the record straight.
Is this the greatest drum solo of all time? The legendary Ginger Baker lets rip...