Each week, Ben Hopkinson looks back at a serious, crazy and happy news story from the past week.
Serious News
This week an official investigation was launched to seek answers on how home improvements at Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat were funded. The regulator of political and electoral finance, The Electoral Commission have stated in quote “There are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence or offences may have occurred”. This has all began after speculation that the cost was approximately £200,000; however, the Prime Minister only receives an annual public grant of £30,000. Former chief adviser Dominic Cummings has said that there had been plans to have donors “secretly pay” for the work while slamming Johnson and calling it “unethical, foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations if conducted in the way he intended”.
Crazy News
Only in America would you find a gathering of Josh’s battling it out to determine the one true Josh”. The battle took place in a field within Nebraska as they battled using pool noodles with some dressed up as SpiderMan, Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca. What makes the story even better is that the winner was eventually crowned quite literally with a Burger King Paper Crown. Yousef Nasser who was only 5, got involved within the safe battle with a man chanting “he’s five everyone” with the youngster then being lifted in the air by the crowd. The concept of the battle began on Facebook with Josh Swain adding people with his name into a group ut it then spiralled with a website being launched too.
Happy News
It has been announced during the recent Climate Summit that three governments and nine huge companies have announced a collaboration called LEAF which hopes to raise $1billion this year in order to protect large scale forests and sustainable development. Involved are the UK, US and Norway governments as well as companies including Amazon, Bayer, Glaxo Smith Kline, Nestle and Unilever just to name a few. The goal is for governments, businesses, and NGOs to pay for high-quality emissions reductions from tropical forests, verified against an independent standard. The LEAF Coalition offers an important new approach that can help protect swaths of trees by offering the financial assurance needed for countries to start prioritizing policies that reduce deforestation.
