Each week, Ben Hopkinson looks back at a serious, crazy, and happy news story from the past week.
Serious News
Construction of a permanent memorial to the victims of Grenfell Tower could begin in 2026, according to a new report.
The Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission says that the location of the current site of the tower should include a garden, monument, and grieving space – as they call for the government to honour a commitment of funding the site and its maintenance long-term.
There were mixed views on using parts of the tower in the memorial site, with some people saying it should be used, while others do not think so.
Responding to the report, Housing Secretary Michael Gove says: “My department will continue to work with the commission to take forward their recommendations for a lasting and fitting memorial”.
Crazy News
An Air Atlanta Icelandic plane had to make a U-turn after some cargo escaped mid-flight.
Leaving New York only half-an-hour before, a horse had escaped from its stall and was free within the cargo-hold meaning the plane had to return to the airport and abandon its route to Belgium.
FlightRadar24 had shown that the aircraft had climbed to 31,000ft as it had to dump around 20 tonnes of fuel over the Atlantic to make sure that it did not go over the safe weight limit for landing.
Happy News
A supermarket chain is set to get rid of self-service checkouts and return to fully-staffed lanes instead.
Booths who operate in the North are the believed to be the first UK supermarket to move away from self-service tills in a response to customer demand.
To some this will be good news, as they can be very fiddly, especially with those “unexpected item in bagging area” alerts. I still haven’t got used to the idea and it is always a problem for myself!
There is a petition calling on Tesco to “stop the replacement of people by machines”, which has already received almost 250,000 signatures, so this may be a U-turn across a number of stores too.
A spokesperson says: “We believe colleagues serving customers delivers a better customer experience”.
