Wrapping up the week with a global round up of good news.
In good news for those that like peace and quiet: Donald Trump has shut down the blog he started less than a month ago, a senior adviser to the former president said. Jason Miller told CNBC that the page “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” had been deleted from the former president’s website and “will not be returning.” Twitter suspended an account that pulled content from Trump’s blog, @DJTDesk, because the social media company said it violated the platform’s ban evasion policy.
Well done Kate Winslet! She refused the offer to edit a sex scene showing ‘bulgy belly’ for her latest television series. Winslet says the director of her new HBO series Mare of Easttown had offered to show her body in a more flattering light. She replied: “Don’t you dare.”
Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives, says a report published in Nature. Researchers have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from Covid-19. The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect”, says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
The Australian government has moved to create two new marine protected areas that cover an expanse of ocean twice the size of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The two parks will be established around Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean to the northwest of continental Australia. The new parks cover 740,000 sq.km (286,000 sq. miles) of ocean.
Tourism in Cyprus got a shot in the arm last week after Europe's environmental watchdog ranked the country first among the European Union's 27 nations for having the cleanest swimming waters.
“America is heading into a summer dramatically different from last year’s summer,” Joe Biden says. “A summer of freedom. A summer of joy. A summer of get-togethers and celebrations. An all-American summer that this country deserves after a long, long dark winter that we have all endured.” Biden also noted that Americans are lucky to have such easy access to the vaccines, saying, “All over the world, people are desperate to get a shot that every American can get at their neighborhood drugstore.”
A surprisingly cheap and easy way to improve air quality in your home or office is to add houseplants. Research by NASA found that many varieties of indoor plants help remove toxins including benzene, ammonia, toluene and formaldehyde from the air. Top picks include the areca palm, the snake plant and the money plant.
Member nations of the Pacific Pact (that includes Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand) have agreed to allow Britain to start the process of joining. The decision marks another step in Britain's efforts to pivot away from Europe, build global influence and form new trading links with faster growing economies following Brexit.
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Crazy kite surfer
From the Blue Lagoon on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, kite surfer gets airborne and rises an astonishing 150m into the sky.