Euro News

Bordeaux, France just surpassed Paris in a new ranking of the world's most beautiful cities, with Europe dominating nine out of the top 10 spots. The rankings are based on buildings that adhere to the 'golden ratio' for balanced and harmonious structures. Venice takes the lead as the most beautiful city, followed by Rome and Barcelona in second and third place respectively. Despite iconic landmarks, Paris lands at 12th place. In fifth place is the only non-European city to make the top 10: New York City.

9 Out of 10 of the World’s Most Beautiful Cities Are in Europe, Says New Ranking

BBC News

Sheila Rendall never expected to become the steady heartbeat of a school kitchen, but that is what happened. For 39 years, the great-grandmother cooked and served meals at Good Shepherd Catholic Primary School in Coventry, long enough that staff estimates she prepared close to one million of them. The kids did not need the number to know what mattered. They were already talking about their favourites, from roast dinners to macaroni and cheese, and the buzz that always came with chicken burger day.

Rendall started in January 1987 and stayed put. She said she “dedicated her life to the kitchen,” and people at the school say that is exactly how it felt. On her final day, 30 January, pupils handed her flowers and a personalised rolling pin. It was a quiet way of saying thank you for four decades of consistency that showed up on a plate.

She talked about how much the place changed over the years but said her approach never did. “A lot has changed in the last 39 years but it’s always been a case of if the children are happy, then I’m happy, so I’ve always tried to make sure the food looks and tastes great.” It was the Christmas season that meant the most to her. “There have been so many highlights, but seeing the Christmas celebrations each year, cooking festive meals and hearing the children sing will stand out as my fondest moments, it’s quite a magical place to be at that time of year and I’ll certainly miss it.”

She said she always felt supported, and that the school felt like home from the first day. “I’ve had a brilliant last few days and I’m going to miss everyone, but I’m looking forward to retirement.”

Rendall plans to travel around the UK with her husband and spend more time with her five grandchildren and great grandchild. After nearly four decades of showing up for hundreds of kids at lunchtime, the next chapter is hers to enjoy.

Michael Kirby, the school’s principal, said what everyone else already knew. “Sheila has been a tremendous asset to Good Shepherd Catholic Primary School over the years and we will be sorry to see her go. She will be missed by staff and pupils alike and we wish her the very best for her retirement.”

Coventry School Celebrates Retirement Of Beloved Dinner Lady After 39 Years

Sunny Skyz

Kunal Nayyar is still widely recognized as Raj from The Big Bang Theory, the role he played for all 12 seasons. The show made him one of television’s most familiar faces and brought a level of financial security he never imagined. What he has chosen to do with that security is something he talks about with more pride than any storyline.

“Money has given me greater freedom,” he said in a recent interview. “And the greatest gift is the ability to give back, to change people’s lives.”

Nayyar, now 44, and his wife Neha Kapur fund university scholarships for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. They also contribute to animal charities, something he says comes naturally because they are devoted dog lovers.

But the gesture he connects with most happens long after the cameras are off. When the day winds down, he sometimes scrolls through GoFundMe pages and pays off medical bills for people he has never met.

“We also support animal charities because we love dogs. But what I really love to do is go on GoFundMe at night and just pay random families’ medical bills. That’s my masked vigilante thing!” he said with a quiet smile. “So, no, money doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like a grace from the universe.”

There are no announcements tied to these moments. No crews documenting them. He prefers it that way.

He also knows most people cannot give in the same amounts, but he insists the scale is beside the point. To him, kindness is not a celebrity project, it is a daily habit.

“Right now people are not happy because we are all expecting someone else to be kind,” he said. “We are expecting a president or a politician, some leader, to come and bring us world peace.”

He argues that real progress starts in the smallest moments, between neighbours and in everyday interactions.

“There is no world peace if your neighbour comes to your door wanting some sugar for their tea, and you lock it against them.”

His message is as steady as it is simple. “No one is going to come and change the world for you. You have to do it for yourself.”

For Nayyar, it comes down to doing what he can, quietly and consistently, guided by the belief that kindness spreads further than we think.

A Big Bang Theory Star is Secretly Paying Off Strangers' Medical Bills On GoFundMe

Great landscape art can transport you to another world: the sweeping hills of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Southwest, the gentle quiet of Monet’s water lilies. But for years, groups of amateurs around the globe have been gathering with sketchbooks in hand to turn their attention to something far more ordinary — skyscrapers, sidewalks, train stations — and uncover the beauty hidden in everyday urban life.

The movement known as Urban Sketchers began nearly two decades ago when journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario set out to get to know his new home in Seattle — and sharpen his drawing skills.
“We had just moved to Seattle, and I started drawing. Like every day I drew the commuters on the bus, I would draw the mountains, the buildings,” Campanario recalled.

He posted those drawings on Flickr and invited others to join. What began as an online group quickly turned into in-person meetups, then chapters, then global gatherings. Today, Urban Sketchers reports more than 500 chapters across more than 70 countries.
“You can go to another town and meet up with a Sketchers group there,” Campanario said. “And you may not speak the language, but they all can look at your sketchbook and somewhat relate.”

One of the earliest chapters, Urban Sketchers Portland, meets monthly. Organizer Amy Stewart says they choose a different neighborhood each time — sometimes sketching old houses, sometimes corner markets, sometimes a vintage movie theater.

Stewart, a writer by profession, says most participants are amateurs, with a few experienced artists mixed in. At a recent meetup at Portland’s historic Union Station, roughly 50 sketchers gathered to capture its red brick walls and tall clock tower using everything from watercolor to pen and ink.

For some, the appeal is in breaking old habits. Self-described “recovering architect” Bob Boileau enjoyed trading rigid drafting lines for something more expressive. “It’s nice to just get some squiggly in there and put some color, and draw how I feel,” he said.

For others, it’s about rediscovering the world in front of them. Sketcher Karen Hansen said the practice forces her to slow down and notice shapes, shadows, and textures she used to overlook.
“When you’re drawing and painting something, you’re really looking,” she said.

Newer participants, like Noor Alkurd, find the geometry of cities surprisingly accessible — and inspiring. “I mean, come on — cityscapes are so fun!” he said with a laugh. “Drawing has helped me see more of everyday life. It helps you train your eye for what you find beautiful.”

As the sketch session wrapped up, artists laid their finished pieces side by side. There was some talk about technique, some celebration of progress, but mostly a shared appreciation for capturing a moment — and noticing a little more of the city they move through every day.

How Urban Sketchers are Finding Beauty In Everyday Cityscapes Across The Globe

Scientists say they’ve developed a way to store humanity’s most important information inside a piece of glass — and it could last longer than civilisation itself.

From floppy disks to USB drives, preserving personal or historical data has always been a technological challenge. Even today’s data centres and cloud storage run on hard disks and magnetic tapes that eventually wear out and need to be replaced.

Now, researchers have found a new solution that could preserve knowledge for more than 10,000 years: laser writing inside glass.

Scientists at Microsoft’s Cambridge research lab in the United Kingdom say they’ve created a system that encodes digital information using a specialised laser. Instead of storing data magnetically, the laser transforms bits into groups of symbols, then engraves them as microscopic 3D deformations — known as voxels — within a thin piece of glass.

To read the data, the glass is placed under an automated microscope, where a camera scans and decodes the tiny structures.

The laser operates at 10 million pulses per second, writing one voxel with each pulse. By shifting the depth of focus, it can inscribe hundreds of distinct layers throughout a 2-millimetre-thick glass slab.

The result: a single piece of glass can store 4.84 terabytes of data, roughly equivalent to two million books.

The breakthrough, known as Project Silica, was detailed this week in Nature. Researchers say it could one day be used to archive scientific papers, cultural records, and other information meant to survive far into the future — even beyond our civilisation.

Scientists Are Storing Humanity’s Data In Glass, and it Could Outlast Civilization

The plan was based on lessons learned at the Palm Beach Zoo, where animals are trained to voluntarily participate in their own care.

Corralling a wild rhinoceros into a small chute to give it eyedrops might sound absurd. But sometimes the absurd approach is the one that works.

Animal behaviourists partnering with the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society in Florida travelled to Africa in August to help an endangered white rhino suffering from a life-threatening parasitic eye infection.

Daniel Terblanche, security manager with Imvelo Safari Lodges, said no one in Zimbabwe would have considered such a plan.
“Believe me, we didn’t think of it; it was a completely ridiculous idea to us," Terblanche said. "But without trying all of the things that we could to rectify that situation, we would have been in trouble, I think.”

‘A Blind Rhino Is A Dead Rhino’

Outside Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, the Community Rhino Conservation Initiative works with Imvelo Safari Lodges to reintroduce southern white rhinos to communal lands for the first time in the nation’s history.

Palm Beach Zoo CEO and President Margo McKnight was visiting last year when Imvelo managing director Mark Butcher explained that a male rhino named Thuza had a severe health issue.
“This rhino had bleeding eyes. He was rubbing his eyes,” Butcher said. “I was looking at a potential where this guy was gonna lose his eyesight. And this is in a pilot project with a fantastic vision for conservation throughout Africa.”

Thad and Angi Lacinak, founders of Precision Behavior, travelled to Zimbabwe to help the anti-poaching scouts. They adapted a strategy used at Palm Beach Zoo, where animals are trained to voluntarily accept medical care.

“With this few animals in this location in Africa, it was essential that we save all of them," Angi Lacinak said. “When they called and said Thuza is going to lose his eye, a blind rhino is a dead rhino. No matter what it took, we were going to go over there and try.”

Teaching A Rhino To Accept Eyedrops

The idea: lure Thuza into a narrow space with his favourite foods, then slowly desensitise him to human touch and having water sprayed on his face.

“Within about a week, we were actually putting the eyedrops strategically in his eyes while he held for it," Lacinak said. “And by the end of two weeks, we had transferred that skill set not only to Daniel, who led the guards, but to the guards themselves.”

Southern white rhinos are classified as near threatened, with about 16,000 remaining in the wild. Poaching and habitat loss continue to pose serious risks. But at least for Thuza, one danger has been eased.

“They’re consistently getting the medications into his eyes every day," Lacinak said. “And the rhinos are thriving now. They feel really confident that this solved their problem.”

How A ‘Ridiculous’ Idea Saved a Rhino’s Sight In Zimbabwe

Ian Drewery was on a routine train journey home from visiting his son in Swindon when everything suddenly stopped. The 69-year-old collapsed without warning as his Great Western Railway service approached Reading in September 2025. What happened next, he says, is the only reason he is alive today.

The train was halted at Reading Station, where staff rushed a defibrillator on board. Among the passengers was an unidentified GP who immediately began CPR.

On a return visit to thank the responders he could find, Ian reflected on the chain of events that kept him alive. “I was in the right place at the right time, to be surrounded by the right people,” he said.

One of those people was Veronika Rogers, part of the GWR crew that day. She remembered kneeling beside Ian and refusing to give up. “I told Ian: ‘I do not let you go. You are going to make it, you will be here with me.’”

At Reading Station, staff member Jack McIntyre recalled how quickly everything unfolded. “Veronika alerted me on the platform and it was quite extraordinary the way she came out and alerted all of us,” he said. “We got the defib, got on the train, give it to the GP that was on the train and they worked on him. It is just extraordinary that he is here today.”

South Central Ambulance Service said the GP’s early CPR almost certainly saved Ian’s life.

Meeting the staff who helped him was emotional. “It’s really good to be here, to meet the people that were involved in saving my life,” Ian said. “That lady, she give me such effective CPR and I would not be here today were it not for her.”

He is now hoping the GP will come forward so he can thank her in person. “If she’s listening or sees this, I truly would like her to get in touch with the BBC so we can arrange to meet,” he said.

For now, Ian’s gratitude is undimmed. A stranger’s quick actions in a moment of crisis turned a train carriage into a place of rescue — and gave him back his future.

A Mystery Doctor On a Train Saved This Passenger's Life in the UK

Science Daily

Scientists at the University of New Hampshire say artificial intelligence is dramatically speeding up the hunt for advanced magnetic materials. Their new resource, containing 67,573 magnetic compounds, even flagged 25 materials that had never been recognized as magnets capable of staying magnetic at high temperatures.

“By accelerating the discovery of sustainable magnetic materials, we can reduce dependence on rare earth elements, lower the cost of electric vehicles and renewable-energy systems, and strengthen the U.S. manufacturing base,” said Suman Itani, lead author and a doctoral student in physics.

The Northeast Materials Database, unveiled in a study published in Nature Communications, gives researchers a powerful tool for exploring materials at the heart of modern technology. Magnets make smartphones vibrate, power generators spin, and electric vehicle motors run. But the strongest magnets today rely on rare earth elements that are expensive, imported, and increasingly difficult to secure. Even with thousands of known magnetic compounds, researchers still haven’t identified a brand new permanent magnet from that pool.

The team’s AI system was designed to sift through scientific papers and automatically extract experimental data. That information trained computer models to determine whether a material is magnetic and to predict the temperature at which it loses its magnetism. The results were then organized into one searchable database.

The challenge has always been sheer volume. Millions of potential element combinations exist, far too many for researchers to test in a lab. AI compresses years of work into weeks.

“We are tackling one of the most difficult challenges in materials science, discovering sustainable alternatives to permanent magnets, and we are optimistic that our experimental database and growing AI technologies will make this goal achievable,” said physics professor Jiadong Zang, a co-author of the study.

Co-author Yibo Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in physics and chemistry, said the same large language model behind the database could play bigger roles in science and education. One example is converting old images into rich text formats to help preserve library archives.

The project was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering at the U.S. Department of Energy.

AI Just Helped Scientists Find High-Temperature Materials — It Could Change How We Build EVs and Smartphones

Science Alert

Cancer treatment usually begins after symptoms appear, a diagnosis is made, and doctors race to stop the disease. But a growing group of researchers believes the fight should start far earlier, long before a tumour forms. They call the idea “cancer interception,” and it aims to catch the earliest biological shifts that eventually lead to disease.

The concept is simple: instead of waiting for visible signs of cancer, identify and target the slow, predictable steps that happen years, even decades, before a tumour appears. Those early steps are now becoming easier to track.

Scientists have found that as people age, their bodies accumulate small clusters of mutated cells called clones. These mutations quietly build up, giving certain cells advantages over others. In blood cancers such as leukaemia, studying these clones has already helped researchers predict who is more likely to develop the disease later.

A long-running study of around 7,000 women helped clarify how these mutations behave. Some clones grew faster because of the genetic changes they carried. Others reacted strongly to inflammation, expanding whenever the body was under stress. Understanding these patterns could allow doctors to identify people at higher risk years before any symptoms emerge.

The research highlights a key truth. Cancer is not something that appears suddenly. It develops through a slow, multi-step process, with small warning signs that can be detected if we know how to look.

One of the most promising tools is a new class of blood tests known as multi-cancer early detection tests. These tests scan the bloodstream for tiny fragments of DNA shed by cancerous or precancerous cells. Even very early tumours release this DNA, often long before they show up on scans.

Some of these tests have shown encouraging results, especially for colorectal cancer. When caught at stage one, 92 percent of patients survive five years. At stage four, that number falls to 18 percent. The hope is that spotting the disease earlier could drastically improve outcomes.

But the tests are not perfect. They miss some cancers entirely. And when they flag a possible cancer, doctors still need imaging or biopsies to confirm a diagnosis. False positives can send healthy people through stressful rounds of testing they don’t actually need.

Researchers imagine a future where doctors use cancer risk scores the way cardiologists already use heart risk calculators. Age, lifestyle, inflammation, genetics, and MCED blood test results could be combined to guide personalised prevention, possibly including medication years before cancer develops.

But this shift carries big ethical questions. What happens when a doctor tells a healthy person they’re at high risk? How much anxiety does that create? Unlike statins, which broadly reduce heart risk across many groups, cancer prevention tools vary widely in effectiveness. Overdiagnosis remains a serious concern.

There are also issues of fairness and access. If MCED tests are expensive or only offered privately, they could widen health inequalities, especially in lower-income countries. Regulators in the U.S. and U.K. are now examining how reliable these tests must be, and what follow-up care should look like, to keep patients safe.

In England, the National Cancer Plan released on February 4, 2026, committed the NHS to performing 9.5 million additional diagnostic tests each year by 2029. The plan also supports continued ctDNA testing for lung and breast cancer, with expansion to other cancers if proven cost-effective.

All of this points to a shift in how scientists understand cancer. It is not an abrupt disease but a long process. Intervening early could save countless lives. The challenge now is ensuring these tools are used in ways that are safe, equitable, and grounded in evidence.

Scientists Aim To Stop Cancer Decades Early, Now A New Approach Called ‘Interception’ Could Change Everything

USA Today

The surviving members of a Georgia Little League team that made history during the Jim Crow era have been honored at a ceremony in Atlanta.

The Simpson Road Trojans, described by CBS News as “one of Atlanta’s best Little League baseball teams” were recognized for their achievements, decades after they, as the state’s first all-black team, were invited to the Little League World Series.

That dream was dashed due to a false accusation about a player’s age, CBS said, but the players were getting their recognition at Atlanta City Hall on February 16 ahead of the release of a new documentary.

“These young men made history right here in our community, and their legacy continues to inspire generations,” said Atlanta Councilman Byron Amos.

“What started on Simpson Road became a story of excellence, resilience, and pride. We are proud to celebrate their impact and preserve their story,” he continued, adding: “A documentary highlighting their journey is coming soon – stay tuned.”

Georgia's First All-Black Little League Team Honored 64 Years After Making History

The Cool Down

Wildlife rescuer Debbie Nelson, who operates under the name Debbie Doolittle, says she knew immediately that the call she received in September 2025 was unusual. A nightjar, a bird rarely seen in Northern Ireland, had been found behind a trash bin on a Belfast street, the BBC reported.

Nightjars are nocturnal birds with mottled brown feathers, wide mouths, and a distinctive call sometimes compared to a spinning wheel or a wind up toy. They are more common in the southern UK, and spotting one in the north is almost unheard of.

“They were about to put some rubbish in the bin and they saw the bird behind it,” Doolittle told BBC News NI. She believes the bird may have become disoriented and collided with something before ending up on the ground.

For Doolittle, the chance to work with the bird was rare and meaningful. Nightjar populations in the UK have fallen sharply. Insecticides have devastated their insect based diet, and habitat loss has compounded the decline. Between 1972 and 1992, the population dropped by 51 percent, and breeding pairs remain scarce in northern regions, though recent studies show hints of recovery.

That made this rescue especially important. Doolittle and her team cared for the nightjar, feeding it and monitoring its condition until it was strong enough to return to the wild. “It’s very rewarding getting to release something back into the wild and knowing you’ve given it that second chance,” she said, calling the experience a “once in a lifetime” moment.

Other rare bird sightings have been reported in China and elsewhere, offering a glimmer of hope at a time when many species are struggling. For Doolittle, helping this one unusual visitor was a small but powerful reminder of what careful intervention can do.

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