Here’s just a bit of news from around the planet.

Just when you thought this year couldn’t get any worse – Snow White died!  Not the real one, obviously, but the one that Disney turned into a feature length anim … “Oh, for Godsake!  It was a cartoon!”  Anyway, Marge Champion has passed away.  She was 101.  Back in the 1930s, she was the teenage dancer Disney hired as a live model for his megahit Snow White.  She worked on and off for two years and was paid $10.00 a day (Actually decent money, back then.)  But Ms. Champion was only the body.  Adriana Caselotti was the voice, and she passed away in 1997.  Thus, Disney’s Snow White is no more.  But that’s okay: we all know that — like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and all the rest — Snow White is actually immortal.

In other news, the town of Asbestos, Canada (Pop. 7,096) has decided to change its name.  From now on, it wants to be known as Val-des-Sources.  Kinda cool, given that asbestos is one of the bogeymen these days.  However, there are a significant number of townspeople who aren’t happy about it.  They speak French, and they see this as another example of the Anglo-Canadian majority pushing them around.  You see, the French word for “asbestos” is amiante, so strictly speaking, to most of the people who live there “asbestos” is just a made-up English word, and changing the name is bowing to Anglo pressure.  Perhaps!  Personally, however, I think calling your town Asbestos is not the best way to attract tourists.  “Tired of the Covid Lockdown?  Why not spend two weeks in the breathtaking town of Asbestos?”

Meanwhile, NASA has taken the gloves off.  They’re going back to the Moon, and they’re taking one of the toughest companies on this planet with them — Nokia.  NASA has selected this bad boy to build the first cellular telephone network on the Moon as a prequel to a long-term human presence on our nearest celestial neighbour.  Kickass choice!  Nokia means NASA is serious.  Any network they build will be heavy-duty and probably permanent.  Remember, it was the good folks at Nokia who made the Nokia 3310, back in the 2000s.  That baby was the Chuck Norris of cellphones, and the stories about it are legendary.  People bounced the Nokia 3310 off concrete sidewalks, dropped it out of apartment buildings, threw it at speeding cars, ran over it, set fire to it, tried to drown it and there’s even a documented case where it stopped a bullet!  In your face, Huawei!

And finally:

Another Prime Minister (Katrin Jakobsdottir of Iceland) laughs off yet another earthquake!