#036 — The Best News of Last Week — April 18, 2022
📚 — Now I really wanna start a “Banned Books Club”
David Gilmour said the song was a show of “anger at a superpower invading a peaceful nation”
Hey Hey, Rise Up! features David Gilmour and Nick Mason alongside long-time Floyd bassist Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards. But the song is built around a spine-tingling refrain from Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the band Boombox.
2. Major solar breakthrough means energy can be stored for up to 18 years
Dr Kasper Moth-Poulson and his team have found a novel way to store solar energy. In 2017, scientists at a Swedish university created an energy system that makes it possible to capture and store solar energy for up to 18 years, releasing it as heat when needed.
Now the researchers have succeeded in getting the system to produce electricity by connecting it to a thermoelectric generator. Though still in its early stages, the concept developed at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenberg could pave the way for self-charging electronics that use stored solar energy on demand.
A homeless teen who surrendered his dog to a Mississippi animal shelter because he couldn’t care for her has been reunited with his dog. We’re told the teenager has a place to stay now and was scheduled to reclaim Jada and take her to their new home Friday.
“He left Jada there with a bag of dog food.” — This broke me. He’s homeless, doesn’t even have a tent anymore, and he still has dog food.
4. Book banning efforts are inspiring readers to form banned book clubs
Book banning — or at least, book banning attempts — appears to be having a resurgence. The American Library Association recorded 729 challenges to library, school and university materials and services in 2021, the most since the organization began tracking those attempts in 2000.
And while attempts to remove those books from library shelves or classrooms haven’t all been successful, the efforts themselves have garnered interest in banned books from readers across the country.
That was the impetus for the Banned Books Book Club. Nicole Cardoza, the company’s founder and CEO, said that young readers had increasingly been asking for resources on how they might engage with books being targeted for removal.
“This conservative pushback is actually generating a lot of interest in books that might not be something the average student is being exposed to otherwise,” she said.
5. Wildflower believed to be extinct for 40 years spotted in Ecuador
A South American wildflower long believed to be extinct has been rediscovered.
Gasteranthus extinctus was found by biologists in the foothills of the Andes mountains and in remnant patches of forest in the Centinela region of Ecuador, almost 40 years after its last sighting.
Extensive deforestation in western Ecuador during the late 20th century led to the presumed extinction of a number of plant species, including Gasteranthus extinctus — the reason scientists gave it that name.
6. Wildlife Sanctuaries Welcome Lions, Tigers Rescued From Circuses
Four Bengal tigers and four lions have been rescued, after much of their lives were spent in circuses and tight living quarters, as part of two rescue operations. They will now live in wildlife sanctuaries in South Africa.
In the case of the tigers, two of the Bengal tigers had been part of a circus, but the traveling circus operators asked a local farmer in San Luis, Argentina to watch after the animals temporarily. But the circus never returned. The tigers later had two cubs, and the big cats spent over 4 years together in a metal train carriage.
7. ‘Historic’: global climate plans can now keep heating below 2C, study shows
For the first time the world is in a position to limit global heating to under 2C, according to the first in-depth analysis of the net zero pledges made by nations at the UN Cop26 climate summit in December.
Before these pledges it was more than likely that at the peak of the climate crisis there would be a temperature rise above 2C, bringing more severe impacts for billions of people. Now it is more likely that the peak temperature rise will be about 1.9C.
That’s it for this week. Until next week, stay safe and don’t forget to share this post with your friends :)
