Mid week collection of good news nuggets.
If 2020 could take the form of an object, it would surely be toilet paper. Not only has this year been crappy, but reports of people hoarding toilet paper in large quantities during lockdown will live in the memories of many. Or so some in Austria seem to think: On Friday, the country's postal service announced it is issuing a postage stamp made from three-ply toilet paper, to commemorate one of the year's stranger phenomena.
The Best Reason to Vote for Biden: The presidential hopeful calls climate change the ‘number one issue facing humanity’ and plans to spend $2 trillion tackling the issue. On the other side of the aisle, Trump has denied the science of climate change and reversed more than 70 major environmental regulations during his four years in office, with nearly 30 more in progress.
British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca says its potential Covid-19 vaccine had produced a similar immune response in both older and younger adults. Adverse responses to the vaccine among the elderly - the age group at highest risk from the coronavirus - were also found to be lower, AstraZeneca said. The drugmaker’s potential Covid-19 vaccine is being developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The announcement is likely to boost hopes of a Covid vaccine being developed before the end of the year.
Busker Matt Grant had his guitar broken by a passer by in Edinburgh, but when Jack White, the frontman for the White Stripes, heard about it, he paid for a new one. In fact, White's manager rang all the different guitar shops in the area to try and find him and Matt now has his dream guitar, a Fender Stratocaster.
It’s less than two months until Christmas and there's a new radio channel to deliver yuletude tunes by playing non-stop festive bangers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So, if you want it to, it really will feel like it’s Christmas every day. Even today! Available online Heart Xmas may just be what you've always longed for...
World's First $10m Car is Back on the Market: This gorgeous Ferrari has a remarkable provenance, having been purchased by Hollywood actor James Coburn when he and Steve McQueen went into Brussels during the filming of blockbuster movie, The Great Escape.
The UK government has quietly reduced the £35,800 minimum salary for migrants to settle in the UK by almost 30%, it has emerged. Migrants on salaries of £20,480 but with enough points under Boris Johnson’s new Australian-style immigration system to qualify for jobs where there is a shortage of workers will also be entitled to settle after six years and become citizens.
This will brighten the day: Remarkable drone footage (just 59 seconds long) of a massive school of rays off Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.
Here's an interesting thought: On the week of the US election, social media should go dark. It's being suggested that CEOs should voluntarily shut down their platforms to help staunch the spread of misinformation - and protect democracy.
After decades extracting fossil fuels from the UK’s North Sea, a consortium of oil companies is preparing to pump Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions back beneath the seabed to help meet the government’s climate ambitions. BP has set out plans to lead an alliance of energy companies in siphoning off the carbon dioxide from factory flues under new plans in which almost half the UK’s industrial emissions will be stored beneath the North Sea from 2026.