Ensuring the weekend gets off to a sunny start with a global round up of positive news nuggets.
Nicknames Last Forever
Margot Robbie is one of us after all. No, we may not all have made a seamless transition from daytime TV to Hollywood, or been nominated for an Oscar. Yet we can relate to the actress’s experience in Sydney earlier this week, where she was attending a premiere for her new film, Babylon. Giving a red carpet interview, Robbie, 32, was interrupted by a friend shouting “Hey, Maggot!” from behind a barrier. Robbie turned around with a mixture of glee and nerves to wave at the source. “I saw my school friends,” she explained to her interviewer. “We have been friends since we were four years old.” No matter how accomplished, rich, famous or beautiful you might be, you can never escape your childhood, which means you can never flee a nickname. Few things can cut through time and space like a moniker you picked up when you were six.
What's in a Name? A man from Luck, Wisconsin, population 1,191, just won the Megabucks lottery jackpot of $15 million.
Your Cup of Coffee?
You won’t find this at IKEA. For those who use a coffee table as a place to put coffee and books, it might not be the best choice. For fans of Italian sports cars, a coffee table with a Ferrari 360 Modena engine in the middle of it might be just the thing. Now decorated with Ferrari red valve covers and a silver prancing horse badge, this 3.6-liter Ferrari V8 was once a working engine. That was before Alain Gervasoni of Gervadino Design (well known for creating such object d'art) got his hands on it. The table will go to auction at Bonhams in Paris on 2 February, where it’s expected to attract lots of speculators and hopefully a fanatic willing to spend an estimated $20,000 to $27,000 for the pleasure of staring at it over a croissant in the morning.
Dancing Bear Cubs
Photography, sometimes, boils down to being in the right place at the right time. A teacher was out exploring the Finnish taiga around the town when he came across an unusual gathering amidst the trees. Valtteri Mulkahainen, who captures (on camera) wildlife and magical sights around his country in his free time, quickly found a spot to discreetly capture the once-in-a-lifetime shots he'd stumbled upon and the results are truly fascinating. Before his eyes were a mother bear and her 3 adorable cubs who, unaware of Mulkahainen's presence, put on quite a show. Forming a circle in the gathering, the cubs stood on their hind legs playing with each other almost as if they were dancing.
Bears Dancing in the Forest: As winter turns to spring and the bears stop hibernating, they need to shed their winter coats the only way they know how. Watch...
Animal Testing
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has lifted the requirement for new medicines to be tested on animals before moving to human trials, a rule that has been in place since 1938. This won’t mean that testing on animals will stop overnight, but it does signal a willingness from the FDA to consider a slow fade-out of it. This move from the FDA is a thumbs up for those concerned with animal welfare as well as those concerned with getting life-saving drugs more quickly and cheaply to market.
Mystery Solved
A bust of Sir Winston Churchill has been sitting in Joe Biden’s private dining room off the Oval Office, it has emerged. The whereabouts of the bust by Jacob Epstein had been unclear since Mr Biden decided to remove it from the Oval Office following his inauguration in Jan 2021. He replaced it with one of Robert Kennedy, but the White House did not say what had happened to the Churchill bust. A photograph released this week showed it is now sitting in the Private Dining Room near the Oval Office.
Hairy Solution
A Belgian NGO is using human hair clippings to absorb environmental pollutants. Clippings are collected from hairdressers across the country then turned into matted squares. These can be used to absorb oil and other hydrocarbons polluting the environment. The mats can be placed in drains to soak up pollution in water before it reaches a river. They can also be used to deal with pollution problems due to flooding and to clean up oil spills.
Pfizer's Promise
U.S. drugmaker Pfizer says it will offer its full portfolio of drugs on a not-for-profit basis to 45 low-income countries in the world. In an expansion of the company's "An Accord for a Healthier World" program, which is aimed at increasing access to innovative treatments in some of the world's poorest countries, Pfizer said it will now offer a total of 500 products.
“The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.” P. J. O’Rourke
On this Day
21 January 1976: Generating a sonic boom as it traveled through the atmosphere at supersonic speed, the Concorde, a commercial aircraft built with funding from the British and French governments, began regular service.
What do you get the tech fan who has everything? Perhaps Twitter’s logo for a mere $100k. Read on...
Mood Booster
Photographer shagged by a rare parrot, much to the amusement of Stephen Fry.
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