An eclectic bundle of good news snippets to perk up the day and wrap up the week.
You will know that Whitney Houston had a smash hit with I Will Always Love You, but did you know that it was written by Dolly Parton in 1973? The country star earned $10m in royalties as a result and has just revealed in an interview that she decided to invest her windfall to support a Black neighbourhood in her home town of Nashville. Nice!
More than 99.99% of people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 have not had a breakthrough case resulting in hospitalization or death, according to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data highlights what leading health experts across America have highlighted for months: Covid-19 vaccines are very effective at preventing serious illness and death from Covid-19 and are the world's best shot at slowing the pandemic down and avoiding further suffering.
Twenty forest strongholds in Scotland would save the red squirrel from extinction even if grey squirrels were to colonise the whole of Britain, according to modelling led by Prof Andy White, a mathematical biologist at Heriot-Watt University. “This is great news for red squirrels,” said White. “When I started this research 10 years ago I was pretty pessimistic about the outcome for red squirrels in Scotland. Now I’m very optimistic. The work done by conservation bodies has prevented the spread of grey squirrels beyond certain boundaries over the last decade.”
The future for sustainable flight just got a little bit brighter with the announcement that a major commercial airline (Brazil's Azul) is in talks with the German all-electric aircraft startup, Lilium, to purchase 220 aircraft, for $1 billion. The 7 seat electric vehicle takeoff and landing (eVTOL) planes have a range of 155 miles and will travel at 170 miles per hour. They are expected to provide a regional network for Brazil by 2025.
An 85-year-old awarded the trophy for heaviest gooseberry has expressed his pride, saying he thought his “winning days had come to an end”. Bryan Nellist’s victory, in the Yorkshire hamlet of Egton Bridge, went to the wire, decided by a “berry-off” that came down to fractions of a gram between his white gooseberry – of a variety known as Belmarsh – and its rival. The hotly anticipated competition was cancelled last year, due to the pandemic, for only the second time in its 220-year history. The competition is still governed by rules laid down in 1823.
It appears that Tesla China is making good progress in its development of the highly-anticipated $25k compact electric car. If recent rumours from China are any indication, the upcoming affordable EV is planned for trial production for the end of this year.
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