ABC - Australia

The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games opened with a lavish, multisite celebration of Italian culture, harmony, and music — and an emotional farewell to one of sport’s most iconic stadiums.

With more than 1,200 performers across four venues, Italy put on a show as ambitious as it was elegant. The centerpiece unfolded at Milan’s 99-year-old San Siro stadium, which is scheduled to be demolished by 2032. Fittingly, the Olympic spotlight served as a grand sendoff.

“The San Siro was always full of emotions,” said former AC Milan player and manager Fabio Capello earlier this week. “For me, San Siro is history. San Siro is life. San Siro is a monument.”

Few would argue after Friday night’s spectacle. From a catwalk of models draped in the Italian flag to spine-tingling musical numbers, the Opening Ceremony pulled off a balancing act between tradition and forward-thinking — much like the Games themselves, which are being held across several locations, including Milan, Cortina, Livigno, and Predazzo.

The ceremony’s theme, “Armonia” (Harmony), was woven through every element. From the simultaneous lighting of cauldrons in Milan’s Arco della Pace and Cortina’s Piazza Angelo Dibona, to the real-time athlete parades across four locations, organizers emphasized unity across distance, ideas, and people.

Music was a driving force. Andrea Bocelli brought down the house with a powerful rendition of “Nessun Dorma,” his voice echoing through the rafters of San Siro in a moment that felt operatic in every sense. Earlier, Mariah Carey took center stage for a soaring version of “Volare” followed by “Nothing is Impossible,” delivered in full diva mode before her entourage whisked her off.

In the stands, some fans were left puzzled by the gaps in San Siro’s seating arrangement, but the visuals — bright, bold, and tightly choreographed — kept most eyes on the field. The director cut seamlessly between venues, ensuring athletes marching in Cortina or Livigno received the same attention as those in Milan.

The ceremony didn’t shy away from the realities of a tense global backdrop. Before the TV broadcast began, the crowd at San Siro was shown a video message from UN Secretary General António Guterres. Giovanni Malagò, president of the local organizing committee, reinforced the peace-through-sport message, saying: “At a time when so much of the world is divided by conflict, your very presence demonstrates that another world is possible. One of unity, respect and harmony.”

Ukraine’s athletes drew one of the loudest cheers of the night. “Politics and sport don't exist in separate spheres,” said IOC president Kirsty Coventry earlier this week. “But our game is sport. That means keeping sport a neutral ground. A place where every athlete can compete freely, without being held back by the politics or divisions of their governments.”

That sentiment may be tested over the coming weeks, especially given growing tensions in Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti and the Middle East. But on opening night, the Olympic flame — or flames, in this case — did its job: it lit up the Italian sky with hope, harmony, and a reminder of what global cooperation can still look like.

For now, let the Games begin.

Winter Olympics 2026 Opens With Message Of Harmony Amid Global Divisions

BBC News

Eighteen-year-old Luca Walton wasn’t expecting to make headlines during his gap year trip to New Zealand. He just wanted to kill some time on a rainy day. Instead, he ended up sinking a shot that’s only been done 14 times in over three decades — and walked away with NZ$10,000 (about £4,400 or US$6,000) in prize money.

The British teen from Woking, Surrey, hit a hole-in-one on a floating pontoon in Lake Taupo, a popular golf challenge located on New Zealand’s North Island. The goal? Launch a ball 104 meters (341 feet) from the lake’s edge and land it cleanly into the hole. Easy to try, almost impossible to nail.

“When I won, it shocked me for the whole day — it was special,” Walton said. “When the money arrived three days later, that’s when it hit me.”

Walton, who plays golf only occasionally with friends at Chobham Golf Club back home, said he never expected to win anything when he wandered into the challenge. “I had no idea what was going on,” he admitted, laughing that the staff were more excited than he was in the moment.

Hole in One Lake Taupo confirmed Walton’s shot was only the 14th recorded since the attraction opened in 1993. They handed over a giant novelty cheque and let him keep the club and ball he used — both of which he’s been carrying with him ever since.

“I’ve been lugging that around for the past two weeks,” he joked.

After waking his dad up at 1:30 a.m. UK time to share the news, Walton now says the winnings will go toward making the rest of the trip more memorable for himself and his friends. “Now I owe it to my friends that we treat ourselves here and there,” he said.

Next up: Australia, Thailand, and Vietnam — before heading home to start university.

Not a bad way to break up a rainy day.

UK Teen Wins $6K on Rainy Day in New Zealand With Rare Hole-in-One Shot

Scientific American

For the first time in over half a century, astronauts are heading back toward the moon—and scientists are busy solving one of their most deceptively difficult problems: what they’ll wear when they get there.

NASA’s Artemis II mission, slated to launch as early as March, will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby, bringing humans closer to the moon than they’ve been since 1972. But it's the follow-up, Artemis III, that will grab headlines. That mission plans to land astronauts on the lunar surface, kickstarting a new era of deep-space exploration. Before they can do that, they’ll need space suits that can handle the moon’s brutal extremes—and let astronauts move like never before.

Forget flashy designs. A lunar suit is more like a personal spacecraft. It has to shield astronauts from cosmic radiation, extreme heat and cold, and lung-clogging moon dust. It needs to hold air, provide water for cooling and hydration, and give astronauts the mobility to work, climb, and stay out for hours. Designing a suit that can do all that—without turning its wearer into a human balloon—is one of the biggest challenges NASA faces ahead of returning to the moon.

That job has been given to Axiom Space, a U.S.-based company tapped to develop NASA’s next-generation lunar suit. Their design, called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), was unveiled in 2024 and is currently undergoing testing.

On the surface, the AxEMU resembles the bulky white suits of Apollo missions. But under the hood, it’s packed with modern technology. “It’s really pushing the limits of material science,” said Paul Spana, director of collections at the Space Center Houston museum. “There’s going to be a lot of new things introduced for the new suit that will be used for moonwalking on Artemis III.”

The lunar South Pole—Artemis III’s destination—is far more challenging than the near-equatorial region Apollo astronauts explored. The terrain is steeper, the temperatures more extreme, and light and darkness can last for weeks. “This region presents unique challenges,” NASA spokesperson Victoria Ugalde said, adding that the new suit needs to work across a range of landers, rovers, and spacecraft.

To survive that environment, the AxEMU offers improved temperature control and is built to resist damage from rocks and moon dust. But the real breakthrough is in how the suit moves. Apollo astronauts often struggled with their rigid suits, likening the experience to fighting against an inflated balloon. The AxEMU changes that with flexible joints that allow for kneeling, climbing, and a much broader range of motion—even enough, reportedly, to do the splits.

That flexibility is key for long-term missions and new lunar goals, like building a surface outpost or a future lunar space station. But one major concern remains: weight.

Axiom hasn’t said exactly how much the AxEMU weighs, but reports suggest it’s heavier than the 200-pound Apollo suits. Even with lunar gravity reducing the load to about one-sixth, the suit still feels heavy—and that’s before you add tools, samples, or portable equipment.

“Weight is always a key consideration in space suit design,” Ugalde acknowledged, but NASA remains confident astronauts will be able to perform essential tasks on the moon. Dr. Mike Barratt, a NASA astronaut and physician, warned that the added weight could pose injury risks during long surface excursions.

Still, the Artemis III mission will serve as a proving ground. When astronauts return, they’ll bring back firsthand data on how the AxEMU performs in one of the harshest environments in the solar system. That feedback will help engineers refine the design for future missions—not just to the moon, but eventually, Mars.

“Every step builds toward NASA’s goal of a sustained human presence on the moon,” Ugalde said, “as a stepping stone to Mars.”

NASA Unveils New Artemis Space Suit With Out-Of-This-World Mobility

Talker News

Visitors to museums in Germany and Denmark are now getting a chance to do something remarkable: smell the past.

Thanks to breakthroughs in biomolecular archaeology, researchers are using chemical signatures trapped in ancient objects to recreate the scents of rituals, medicines, and daily life from thousands of years ago. These “molecular fingerprints,” once invisible to visitors, are now becoming fully sensory experiences.

The team behind this innovation, led by archaeo-chemist Dr. Barbara Huber of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the University of Tübingen, say it’s a major step forward in making science more accessible to the public.

“This research represents a significant shift in how scientific results can be shared beyond academic publications,” Huber said.

The process begins with biomolecular analysis: scientists examine residues on artifacts to determine what compounds were once present. From there, it’s up to perfumers to translate that data into a full, believable scent.

That challenge fell to Carole Calvez, who created a series of modern formulations based on ancient chemical profiles. But it’s not as simple as mixing a few known ingredients.

“Biomolecular data provide essential clues,” said Calvez. “But the perfumer must translate chemical information into a complete and coherent olfactory experience that evokes the complexity of the original material, rather than just its individual components.”

To bring the concept to life, the team created a scent called The Scent of the Afterlife — a recreation of the aromas once used in the Egyptian mummification process.

They developed two ways to share it: a portable scented card and a scent diffusion station built into a museum display. The scented cards are now part of guided tours at the Museum August Kestner in Hanover, where the original artifacts that inspired the scent are housed.

Curator Dr. Christian Loeben said the scent provides a welcome shift in how we view embalming. “Scent provides a new approach to mummification, moving away from the scare factor and horror movie clichés towards an appreciation of the motivations behind the actions and the desired results,” he said.

The permanent scent station format has also been installed at the Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, as part of the exhibition Ancient Egypt – Obsessed with Life. There, curator Dr. Steffen Terp Laursen said the added smell completely changed the visitor experience.

“Smell added an emotional and sensory depth that text labels alone could never provide,” Laursen said.

The project blends archaeology, chemistry, storytelling, and scent design — and could be just the beginning of a new way to experience history.

Sofia Collette Ehrich, a consultant who helped shape the project’s storytelling angle, said the team hopes to give museums “compelling new tools” for connecting visitors with the lived experiences of the past.

It’s a reminder that ancient history wasn’t just visual or textual. It had a smell, too — and now, for the first time, we’re breathing it in.

Sniffing History: Scientists Recreate Ancient Scents from Egyptian Mummification

A team of volunteers in Lincolnshire is gearing up for what they’re calling “toadmageddon” — the annual migration of toads across a busy road, and the potentially deadly traffic that awaits them.

Led by 52-year-old Emma Hallewell, the group, known informally as the Toad Patrol, is preparing to help hundreds of toads make it safely across Five Gates Lane in Belton, near Grantham. Last year, Hallewell counted more than 700 crushed toads on the same stretch of road.

“They’ll get a helping hand across the road to their breeding pond this year,” she said.

The toads’ journey takes place during their breeding season, typically in mid-February, and usually at twilight when temperatures are mild. If it's too cold, they tend to stay put.

To coordinate the rescue effort, the group uses a colour-coded alert system on its website: toad green, toad amber, and toad red. When the alert hits red, volunteers grab their high-vis jackets, torches, and buckets, and head out for what they’ve dubbed “toadmageddon.”

“We have a rota, and then we'll assess each night as it comes,” Hallewell said. “When it's full migration and peak, we call it toadmageddon.”

The volunteers don’t just show up and scatter. They’ve got a plan, a group chat, and a sense of camaraderie that keeps things running smoothly.

“We all chat to each other and make sure we have cover to make sure those toads are safe,” Hallewell said. “Knowing you are helping wildlife is just the best.”

She credits her inspiration to Froglife’s “Toads on the Roads” project, a national conservation effort aimed at protecting the UK’s declining common toad population. The species, known for its bumpy skin and slow waddling gait, often falls victim to cars while crossing roads at night, en route to ancestral breeding ponds.

According to Froglife, road traffic remains one of the biggest threats to toads during breeding season — especially since the animals tend to return to the same pond year after year, regardless of what urban development might have changed around them.

This year, the team hopes their efforts will make a difference — and that far fewer toads will meet an untimely end under car tires.

Volunteers Mobilize To Save Migrating Toads From Traffic In Lincolnshire

GoodGoodGood

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the country was already struggling with a large stray animal population. Then came the mass exodus — 6.8 million people forced to flee — and more than a million pets left behind. Two years later, the number of strays had exploded, and Ukraine was teetering on the edge of a rabies crisis.

That’s the situation Dr. Colleen Lambo walked into in 2024.

The U.S.-based veterinarian traveled to Ukraine with support from Roo, a veterinary relief organization. What she found was a country holding onto normal life in extraordinary circumstances.

“The Ukrainians we met were carrying on with their lives despite the war,” Lambo said. “They were considerate, generous, and tolerant.”

In the small western city of Brody, Lambo met Oleg and Oksana, a married couple who had turned their home into an informal shelter for strays. While they offered her “endless pots of borscht and bread,” she and her team focused on the animals — sterilizing over 600 dogs and cats, treating illnesses, and helping keep disease at bay.

In total, Lambo estimates she’s helped more than 1,000 animals across Ukraine since the war began. But she says the true credit belongs to people like Oleg and Oksana.

“The most meaningful aspect of my work in Ukraine has been the gratitude we feel from the community,” she told Nice News. “It feels like we’ve accomplished so little … but every person we’ve met has been so kind and so generous. Our work is a drop in a bucket, but no one has treated it as such.”

The war’s impact on Ukraine’s animals is still ongoing. Shelters remain overcrowded. The threat of rabies hasn’t disappeared. But thanks to local volunteers and international support, countless animals are surviving, and even thriving, amid unimaginable conditions.

In Ukraine, One Veterinarian Has Helped Over 1,000 Animals — And Says Locals Are the Real Heroes

Sunny Skyz

A Memphis family sheltering from last week’s brutal winter storm is back on their feet, thanks to an unexpected act of generosity from a complete stranger.

Gerald Driver, his wife, and their three kids had no choice but to seek refuge at the Ed Rice Community Center after freezing temperatures and icy roads made it impossible to stay in their home. For days, they slept on the floor, bundled up in whatever blankets volunteers could find.

“We slept on the floor from Friday till today,” Driver told reporters. “Me and my wife, a 12-year-old, a 9-year-old, and a 1-year-old. The people here, the staff, they rallied with other people from other centers to bring us hot meals when they could and provide blankets.”

It might have ended there — one family among many enduring tough conditions during the storm — if not for a local TV news segment that aired their story.

One viewer, a therapist who asked not to be named, saw the broadcast and couldn’t let it go.

“They hadn’t had anything hot for several days,” she said. “Beef jerky and fruit cups were all they’d had to eat. Three children and an older woman, and they’re all sleeping on the floor.”

She immediately opened a delivery app and searched for any restaurants still operating. “They were hungry, and I thought, I can’t tolerate that,” she said. “So I went on DoorDash and looked around for places that were still delivering. I found a station that was still open. They made things like pizza and fried chicken.”

She sent hot meals to the family that same night.

But she didn’t stop there. Knowing they were still sleeping on the floor, she also sent over air mattresses, wipes, and other essential supplies. She kept in touch with them throughout the weekend, checking in and offering support.

“She reminded us that someone cared,” said Driver. “It wasn’t just the food. It was knowing we weren’t alone.”

The woman said she didn’t want recognition. “This wasn’t about me,” she said. “It was about doing the right thing. Sometimes people just need to know someone’s thinking about them.”

The gesture offered relief during a week when thousands in the region faced power outages, limited shelter access, and dangerous road conditions.

For the Driver family, the help was more than a warm meal — it was a sign that someone out there was paying attention.

Local Therapist Delivers Unexpected Aid To Stranded Memphis Family During Winter Storm

When a horse named Mouse vanished during a fishing trip in Wyoming last July, his owners assumed the worst. The Wind River mountains are remote and unforgiving, especially in winter. As the months passed and snow began to fall, Mouse’s chances of survival seemed almost impossible.

Then, in late January, nearly six months later, a group of snowmobilers spotted something incredible: Mouse, alive and alone, deep in the backcountry — about 10 miles from the nearest easy access point.

“I was pretty worried because it's a horse that me and my friends are partners on, and I didn't want to lose that,” co-owner Preston Jorgenson told MTN News. Even after all that time, he hadn’t entirely lost hope. “I never completely gave up on him.”

Finding Mouse was one thing. Getting him out was something else entirely.

Horses don’t move well through snow. As one rescuer explained, “They have no ground pressure, and the horse was probably four miles off any groomed trail in backcountry terrain. We needed specialized equipment to get in there.”

Volunteers quickly mobilized. They brought in snowmobiles, a snow groomer, and even a Snow Cat — a massive tracked vehicle designed for deep snow. But one major problem remained: how do you move a full-sized horse across miles of powder?

That’s when someone floated a truly unusual idea.

“Hey, we’ll get a river raft,” said volunteer Buster Campbell. He approached a local rafting company with the strange request. When they asked why he needed a raft in the dead of winter, he joked, “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

Surprisingly, the plan worked.

The team guided Mouse into the raft. “He walked right up in there,” Jorgenson said. “So we let him stand there for a little bit and let him know everything’s okay.”

Mouse seemed to understand. At one point during the rescue, the exhausted horse even lay down inside the raft as the team carefully hauled him across the snow.

Snowmobiles and the Snow Cat pulled the makeshift sled mile by mile until they finally reached safety. By Sunday afternoon, Mouse was back home — hungry but healthy.

“Oh yeah, he's doing great,” Jorgenson said. “He's eating and drinking water just fine. I actually seen him trotting around in a field today.”

For those involved, the operation wasn’t just a rescue. It was a reminder of what’s possible when people come together.

“That's what makes it so amazing,” Campbell said. “People on different fronts of life and everybody just able to sit down and come down together on a situation, with one thing in mind. We're going to get him out of there.”

A Lost Horse Survived 6 Months in the Wyoming Mountains — Then it Got Rescued by a River Raft

Science Daily

New research out of Dublin has found that babies begin organizing the world around them much earlier than scientists previously thought — as early as two months old.

A team of neuroscientists at Trinity College Dublin discovered that even at this young age, infants can group what they see into distinct visual categories, such as animals, objects, and natural scenes. The finding suggests that the building blocks of visual cognition are present almost from the start of life.

“Although at two months, infants’ communication is limited by a lack of language and fine motor control, their minds were already not only representing how things look, but figuring out to which category they belonged,” said Dr. Cliona O’Doherty, the study’s lead author. “This shows that the foundations of visual cognition are already in place from very early on and much earlier than expected.”

The study was published in Nature Neuroscience by researchers from the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and the School of Psychology.

To conduct the study, the team recruited 130 two-month-old babies from Coombe and Rotunda Hospitals in Dublin. Each baby lay on a soft beanbag, wearing noise-canceling headphones, while viewing a series of bright, colorful images from 12 different categories — including birds, cats, shopping carts, rubber ducks, and trees. The viewing sessions lasted about 15 to 20 minutes.

During that time, researchers used functional MRI (fMRI) to monitor activity in the babies’ brains while they looked at the images. The setup allowed the team to gather real-time data from awake, non-sedated infants — something that’s been difficult to do until recently.

Once the data was collected, the team used artificial intelligence to help decode it. AI models trained to recognize visual patterns were compared against the babies’ brain activity to better understand how infants process and sort the images they saw.

“This study represents the largest longitudinal study with functional magnetic resonance imaging of awake infants,” said Professor Rhodri Cusack, who led the research. “The rich dataset capturing brain activity opens up a whole new way to measure what babies are thinking at a very early age.”

Cusack, who holds the Thomas Mitchell Professorship of Cognitive Neuroscience at Trinity, added that this kind of research could help improve how we build future AI models.

“Babies learn much more quickly than today’s AI models,” he said. “By studying how they do this, we hope to inspire a new generation of AI models that learn more efficiently, so reducing their economic and environmental costs.”

Dr. Anna Truzzi, a co-author now based at Queen’s University Belfast, said the work was only made possible by recent advances in brain imaging and computational modeling.

“Until recently, we could not reliably measure how specific areas of the infant brain interpreted visual information,” she said. “By combining AI and neuroimaging, our study offers a very unique insight, which helps us to understand much more about how babies learn in their first year of life.”

The implications extend beyond neuroscience. The researchers say this foundational knowledge could help guide early-years education, support early diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders, and even inspire more human-like learning in AI systems.

“There is a pressing need for greater understanding of how neurodevelopmental disorders change early brain development,” said Professor Eleanor Molloy, a neonatologist at Children’s Health Ireland and a co-author on the paper. “Awake fMRI has considerable potential to address this.”

The research was also supported by a creative component. Irish artist Cian McLoughlin, who served as artist-in-residence at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in 2024, created a series of artworks inspired by the study. His work accompanied an exhibition and essay exploring the themes of early brain development and perception.

As for Dr. O’Doherty, she’s now based at Stanford University. But her work in Dublin is leaving a lasting impression on how scientists view the infant mind — not as a blank slate, but as a brain already hard at work making sense of the world.

Two-Month-Old Babies Are Already Making Sense Of The World, According to This Study

People

In 1996, John Leonard became famous for attempting what sounded like a joke: trading 7 million Pepsi Points for a military-grade fighter jet. Nearly three decades later, he’s finally getting something out of it — just not a Harrier.

Leonard, now in his 50s, is the face of a cheeky new Super Bowl campaign by Frontier Airlines, which has given him 7 million frequent flyer miles — one for every Pepsi Point he once tried to redeem. That’s enough to fly free for life.

The stunt rewrites the ending of a story that began with a Pepsi ad showing a teenager scoring prizes with points from soda purchases. In the commercial’s punchline, the kid lands a Harrier jet — with on-screen text declaring it could be his for 7 million points. Leonard took that literally.

“I was a scrappy kid,” Leonard recalled. He tried to collect the points, even finding a legal loophole to buy most of them outright. But when he submitted his claim, Pepsi said the jet wasn’t a real offer. A legal battle followed, eventually ending in court, where a judge ruled that no reasonable person would expect a soda company to hand over a fighter jet.

Leonard never got his plane. But his story lived on — eventually becoming the subject of a 2022 Netflix documentary titled Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?

Now, 30 years after his failed soda scheme, he’s back in the spotlight — this time with a win.

Frontier Airlines approached Leonard with an idea: What if they gave him the “jet” he deserved — in the form of flight rewards? “The first conversation was, ‘Hey, we want to get you the jet we think you should have got 30 years ago,’” Leonard said. “I was like, ‘Well, I’ve been down this route before. No thank you.’”

But Frontier kept pushing. Eventually, Leonard bought in. “They just had this creative cleverness and mischievousness that I really enjoy,” he said. “Frontier is super serious in how they take care of their planes, how they treat their customers… but at the same time, they can make it fun while doing it.”

In the airline’s Super Bowl commercial, Leonard receives the keys to a Frontier Airbus A320neo and makes himself comfortable — lounging across seats and claiming it as his own. The ad highlights both the absurdity of his original quest and the modern-day payoff.

For Leonard, the 7 million miles are a meaningful reward. “I’m an avid traveler,” he said. “We travel all the time with three kids. It’s not cheap to travel.” He admitted the fighter jet fantasy was never realistic. “I couldn’t fly a jet. I couldn’t have maintained it. It’s even a little bit more laughable when I look back.”

Frontier is using the partnership to promote its own loyalty program. From February 5 to 22, customers can convert unused points from other brands into Frontier miles — up to 5,000. “When someone goes the distance on loyalty, they should actually feel rewarded,” said Bobby Schroeter, Frontier’s chief commercial officer. “Giving John seven million miles is simply a bold example of how we believe loyalty should work: straightforward, meaningful, and genuinely fun.”

Reflecting on the long arc of his story, Leonard said he has no regrets. “If you asked me 25 years ago if I’d do it again, I’d tell you ‘No way,’” he said. “But after this last experience with Frontier, I would do it again in a heartbeat. It’s been fun.”

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