#084 - The Best News of Last Week - May 8, 2023
😷 - Mask off, but guard up! Seems like we're out of the tunnel
1. Abandoned dog seen wandering Detroit streets with stuffed toy rescued, now receiving care
An abandoned dog is preparing for a new home after animal rescue groups spent days trying to find her when she was spotted wandering Detroit with a stuffed toy. Nikki's owner recently died, and she was left to wander the streets with her favorite toy.
As Nikki receives her care, the animal workers are making sure she is ready to head to her foster home. Almost Home is collecting donations to help pay for the treatment and Niki's care. Donate here.
2. New foster care agency matching LGBTQ+ kids with queer carers to become ‘their amazing, wonderful selves’
A new foster care service has been launched to help match LGBTQ+ young people with supportive carers and families in the South East of England. Apex Q, a service from agency Apex Fostering, will help encourage more LGBTQ+ foster carers, provide training and create more placements for queer children.
Apex Fostering, which covers north and east London as well as several southern counties, including Hertfordshire, Essex and Cambridgeshire, launched in 2021 and claims to have already placed more than 60 young people with foster families.
3. Newquay Zoo celebrates birth of rare 'warty' piglets
A pair of rare piglets has been born at Newquay Zoo in Cornwall. The Visayan warty pigs, named for the three pairs of fleshy "warts" on the boar's face, which protect it while fighting rival pigs, are part of a breeding programme at the zoo.
The species lives in the forests of the Philippines, where there could be as few as 200 animals left.
4. New Alzheimer's drug slows disease by a third
We could be entering the era of Alzheimer's treatments, after the second drug in under a year has been shown to slow the disease. Experts said we were now "on the cusp" of drugs being available, something that had recently seemed "impossible".
The company Eli Lilly has reported its drug - donanemab - slows the pace of Alzheimer's by about a third.
5. Covid global health emergency is over, WHO says
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that Covid-19 no longer represents a "global health emergency". The statement represents a major step towards ending the pandemic and comes three years after it first declared its highest level of alert over the virus.
But Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the virus remained a significant threat.
6. Doctors have performed brain surgery on a fetus in one of the first operations of its kind
The baby’s condition, known as vein of Galen malformation, was first noticed during a routine ultrasound scan at 30 weeks of pregnancy. The seven-week-old is one of the first people to have undergone an experimental brain operation while still in the womb. It might have saved her life.
Before she was born, this little girl developed a dangerous condition that led blood to pool in a 14-millimeter-wide pocket in her brain. The condition could have resulted in brain damage, heart problems, and breathing difficulties after birth. It could have been fatal. The baby girl was born healthy. She didn’t need any treatment for the malformation.
7. Lastly, watch this father stork brings a blanket to warm up mother stork
That's it for this week :)
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