Friday Five News 15/1/16

The INTERNATIONAL  story I have followed for a while now is the space mission that Briton Tim Peake is currently on.  He is on the International Space Station and today he did his first spacewalk.  He is the first Briton to do this.  There has been a lot of coverage of this in the UK about this and it is clearly being used to promote interest in science in schools.

Unfortunately the spacewalk was cut short because his colleague noticed water in his space helmet.  You could be forgiven for thinking, like me, that this could just have been sweat from his own body.  However I heard later about how on an earlier mission an astronaut had lots of water enter his helmet, possibly from the cooling system in the suit, and he had difficulty in seeing, hearing and breathing before they managed to get back inside the safety of the space station. 

The good thing was that Tim and his fellow astronaut had managed to complete the planned repairs to an electrical circuit on the solar panels before having to head back.  Well done Tim.

I heard about this LOCAL  news item on the TV and found this article on the BBC site.  It’s about Eglwyswrw, a village in Pembrokeshire, Wales that has had rain on each of the last 81 days!  (Don’t ask me how to pronounce it.)

It’s not really that local to me and although we’ve had some awful wet weather here lately it’s good to see it could be worse.  81 days!  Apparently the longest spell recorded was 89 days in a Scottish village in 1923.  Eglyswrw are keen not to break the record and the forecast for tomorrow is looking promising.  There’s going to be a lot of dry weather about with sunshine for some but it is cold.  But Winter should be cold.  We Brits just love moaning about the weather!

In SPORT: I noticed this post about the “This Girl Can” campaign.  Apparently this campaign has been running for a year and “The initiative aims to inspire women of all ages to participate in physical activity and exercise.” Also “Independent research says 2.8 million women aged 14 to 40 who recognise the campaign say they have done some or more activity as a result.”

Unfortunately I hadn’t heard of the campaign so this girl can’t.

The Entertainment stories of the week included the sad news of the deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman.  Of course David Bowie was a music legend and Alan Rickman will be remembered for many roles especially as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films.  Both will be sorely missed.

Under MISCELLANEOUS  I found this article about an electronic cat.  If you haven’t got time to read it all skip down to the video clip.

All links are courtesy of the BBC website. Opinions are my own.