#021 — Best News of Last Week

💉 — Hope you had a great weekend. Let’s read some positive news :)

1. With nearly 5 million children getting COVID vaccines, no safety problems have been seen, CDC director says

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says real-world monitoring finds vaccines are safe for young children.

Crucially, the CDC hasn’t identified any concerns with the temporary heart inflammation known as myocarditis, a potential side effect of mRNA vaccines seen in rare circumstances in teenagers and young adults.

2. Spain officially Recognizes Animal Sentience Within Civil Code, Clarifying Animals Are Not “Things”

On April 18, 2021, the Spanish Parliament approved consideration of a bill that would amend the country’s Civil Code to recognize animals are “living beings endowed with sentience” rather than “things,” specifically “moveable property.” This approval is the first step toward updating animals’ legal status in the Spanish Civil Code.

This proposal was officially approved in December 2021 with widespread support.

3. Michael Sheen becomes a ‘not-for-profit actor’ so he can fund charity work

Hollywood actor Michael Sheen has revealed how he sold his houses and gave the proceeds to charity as he declared himself to be a “not-for-profit” actor.

The Welsh actor and activist, 52, who handed back his OBE in 2020 so he could criticize the monarchy without seeming a “hypocrite”, believed organizing the 2019 Homeless World Cup in Cardiff was a turning point for him.

When funding for the £2million project fell through at the last moment, Sheen sold his own houses to bankroll it.

4. Yale researchers develop mRNA-based lyme disease vaccine

Yale researchers have developed an mRNA vaccine that targets the antigens found in tick saliva in order to alert individuals to tick bites as well as prevent the tick from feeding correctly, thereby reducing its ability to transmit pathogens.

According to Matias dos Santos, when the tick bites an animal, it releases salivary proteins through the open wound. The mRNA vaccines are designed so that the immune system recognizes these proteins, sees them as an antigen and triggers a strong immune response at the site of the bite.

5. Claudette Colvin’s juvenile record has been expunged, 66 years after she was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a White person

The juvenile court records of Claudette Colvin, a civil rights pioneer who refused in 1955 to give up her seat to a White person on an Alabama bus, have been sealed, destroyed and expunged following a judge’s ruling.

Colvin, now 82, was arrested when she was 15 for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a bus in Montgomery. The incident came nine months before Rosa Parks’ far more famous arrest for a similar act of civil disobedience in the Jim Crow era.

6. ‘It Saved My Life’: Depression Treatment Is Turning Lives Around in Five Days

The remedy is a new type of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) called “Stanford neuromodulation therapy.” By adding imaging technology to the treatment and upping the dose of rTMS, scientists have developed an approach that’s more effective and works more than eight times faster than the current approved treatment.

‘This study not only showed some of the best remission rates we’ve ever seen in depression, but also managed to do that in people who had already failed multiple other treatments. ‘Shan Siddiqi, a Harvard psychiatrist

7. Germany: Mole digs out wedding ring thought lost for 25 years

One ring to rule the mole…

😀