Friday Five News 8/4/16

If you're looking for an A-Z entry you will find it here.  Otherwise here is my round up of some of this week's news:

The INTERNATIONAL story I’ve picked out this week is more uplifting than usual.  It’s about “baby boxes”.  This Finnish concept dates back to the 1930 and involves all new parents in Finland being sent a box that contains essential supplies for a new baby including a mattress that enables the box to be used as a bed for the baby.  This is Government funded and “It has been credited with helping Finland achieve one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates.”

It seems the concept is now spreading around the world and boxes are being supplied on a commercial basis to various countries, adapted as necessary for the target market.  For example in South Africa the box is made of plastic, instead of cardboard, so that it can be used as a bath. 
More information can be found by clicking the link.

In local news last week I wrote about the protest taking place at Lambeth library.  The protestors have occupied the building all week but today the protestors have been served with an eviction notice giving them 24 hours to leave.  Otherwise they will be forcibly evicted by the police.

Another eviction story caught my eye for LOCAL news this week.  This time the story is about a man who has built and lived in a mud hut in London woodland for the last four years.  I can’t imagine why you would want to live like that although he does have solar panels which presumably provide power for heating and lighting.  But I can see the point the Woodland Trust are making.  If they don’t take a stand against this it would open up the possibility of the practise spreading.

In SPORT I found this clip showing how hard it can be to be a sports reporter sometimes.  The clip shows the reporter being interviewed but then disappearing before being shown running off to get back to the indoor studio.

Under ENTERTAINMENT I noticed this article about controversy over the Australian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest.  (yes it must be that time of the year again and don’t even get me started on how Australia counts as being in Europe.  Europe are clearly aiming to take over the world.  Let’s not tell the Chinese, or the Russians and as for Donald Trump or ISIS well…)

Anyway this article is about how the Australian entry has been cleared of breaking rules concerning product placement.  The lyrics of the song contain the words face time.  "trying to feel your love through face time," which some have interpreted as a reference to Apple's video-chat service FaceTime.

That would not be allowed as it promotes a product, but   "The Merriam-Webster dictionary refers to 'face time' as 'time spent meeting with someone'... so in this case the song lyrics have been cleared."  

Hmm, strange how when you google face time, even as two words, all the entries on the first page refer to the Apple app Facetime.  I wonder if you polled people on the meaning of the song lyrics what their responses would be?  Wouldn’t it be great if Australia won the contest and then there was a backlash when it was revealed that Apple had financially backed their entry in return for product placement!  It would just be another controversy associated with Eurovision that most of us would soon forget.  Like the winning song.  (Except for Waterloo or maybe Love Shine A Light by Katrina and the Waves, the last UK winner in 1997.)

Finally under MISCELLANEOUS  I’ve flagged this item about a puzzle that was causing a lot of confusion on the internet this week.  You know how I love a puzzle.

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

Have a great weekend.