Woolly mice 🐁

Happy Monday. Scientists in Texas have hit a milestone in their quest to resurrect the woolly mammoth - woolly mice. 10,000 years after the woolly mammoth traipsed across Siberia, some of it’s genetics now live on through mice. A quick Google search and you’ll see the woolly rodents with their long hair and extra fat pads - ideal for surviving in the extreme cold.

While these scientists at Colossal aren’t exactly bringing the mammoth back as it was - their long term goal is to adapt the genetics of the Asian elephant with some woolly traits as the next best thing.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Legal & General Group (LGEN), Spirax Group (SPX), Balfour Beatty (BBY), Deliveroo (ROO).

Notable US earnings this week: Oracle (ORCL), Adobe (ADBE), Crown Castle Inc (CCI), Dollar General (DG).

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PROJECT WATCH

🏠 Kier scoops £117.7m for design and build barracks contract. Read more

🌊 LR partners with Microsoft for AI nuclear maritime power. Read more

🏭 Hinkley Point C pauses salt marsh plans to test fish deterrent. Read more

ECONOMY & FINANCE

Boots takeover deal struck for $10bn
Boots is getting new American overlords. US private equity firm Sycamore Partners has sealed a $10bn deal to take over Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), taking it private and potentially reshaping the future of the UK’s best-known chemist chain. While the transaction primarily concerns WBA’s US operations, there’s a lingering question: what happens to Boots and its nearly 2,000 UK stores?

Sycamore is snapping up WBA for $11.45 per share—an 8% premium—while Boots, one of the group’s strongest-performing assets, finds itself in a state of limbo. WBA recently shut down over 300 Boots stores in the UK in a brutal cost-cutting spree. With Sycamore in charge, further restructuring could be on the cards, meaning the great British high street might need to brace itself for more changes.

HSToo much spent on Lego?
HS2 has splashed out £20,000 on a Lego model of Old Oak Common Station, spending the equivalent of £1 per plastic brick. At that rate, they could’ve commissioned an actual brick-built shed, but instead, they hired consultants Bricks McGee to assemble the 15,000-piece miniature masterpiece. The model, roughly the size of a kitchen table, has been wheeled out to just 20 events in two years—so a grand per outing. Who knows, maybe there is some resale value in there?

Complete with Lego trees, Routemaster buses, black cabs, and even LED-lit platforms, the model was built to help communities visualise the new West London superhub. The real station promises 14 platforms and an eventual quarter of a million daily passengers. But for now, there's a tiny plastic version that’s spent more time in storage than on display.

POLITICS

School smartphones
The Safer Phones Bill—once a mighty attempt to pry smartphones from teenage hands, now a polite request for a software update. Labour MP Josh MacAlister had hoped to make schools mobile-free and clamp down on addictive algorithms, but after a good old governmental watering-down, the bill now simply suggests the government considers raising the digital age of consent and researching social media’s effects.

Ex-Education Secretary Kit Malthouse wasn’t impressed, calling the changes a “gutting” of a landmark bill. Parents, meanwhile, are crying out for help managing their children’s screen time—though, let’s be honest, many are just as addicted to doomscrolling as their kids. With the Online Safety Act already rolling out, ministers argue more rules aren’t needed.

Smackdown on smacking taking swings
England is still deciding whether to join the 21st century and ban smacking outright. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health wants to scrap the archaic “reasonable punishment” defence—still legal in England and Northern Ireland—following the lead of Scotland and Wales, where all physical punishment is banned.

Advocates argue that smacking has zero benefits and can harm children’s wellbeing, while critics worry a ban could turn a light tap on the hand into a criminal offence. With over 67 countries already banning smacking, will England follow suit?

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ACROSS THE POND

Canada bites back!
Canada is donning its metaphorical boxing gloves as it grapples with an unexpected punch from its next-door neighbour, the US. The land of maple syrup and Mounties is fighting back against tariffs imposed by none other than Donald Trump, with gusto usually reserved for a hockey match. Toronto's Madison Avenue pub has swept American products off its menu, opting instead for local brilliance and non-US imports

To continue the spirited response, The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) has decided to axe American-made products from shelves, leaving Jack Daniels and cohorts high and dry - more than 3,600 U.S. products, a whopping $965 million annual sale is on the rocks.

That’s quite a hangover for brands like Jack Daniels' maker Brown-Forman, whose CEO, Lawson Whiting, lamented this clash, noting that it hits harder than the tariffs themselves.

The really entertaining part - cafes in Montreal have started serving “Canadianos”, and taken Americanos off of the menu. Seems the goose isn’t the only Canadian looking for a fight!

Tariff tango turns hokey cokey
President Trump's tariff tête-à-tête with Canada and Mexico has been on more journeys than a London bus. One minute they're on, the next they're off, and then somewhere in between. With Trump claiming he wasn't so much as glancing at the market, it might not be something he wants to see - given last time out, the stock market was his rule of presidential performance. Both the Dow Industrial Average and the S&P 500 have dropped 3.75% and 4.99% in the last month.

Trump’s initial “Trump Bump” is now morphing into the dreaded “Trump Slump.” Over $3 trillion has evaporated from the market since the flutter of his re-election ticker tape settled on the floor. Investors watch Trump's Twitter fingers as his tariffs cha-cha in and out of favour, crossing their own fingers for some stability.

TECH

AI meets the human mind
An Australian startup has unveiled the world’s first commercial biological computer powered by human brain cells. The “body in a box” merges neurons with silicon chips to create an AI system that learns and adapts with minimal energy.

Early versions of this Frankensteinian tech have already taught themselves to play Pong because obviously, step one in the AI revolution is reviving 1970s video games. The ethical implications? A little murky, with the company assuring us that they’ve put “guardrails” in place to prevent their brain-in-a-box from gaining too much... well, brainpower. Either way, it’s another step toward the age of sentient technology, so maybe be extra nice to your gadgets this week and don’t follow the trend of humans bullying the latest humanoids.

Trump’s ‘Digital Fort Knox’
Donald Trump’s latest economic brainwave? A Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The idea is to stash confiscated crypto in a government-run vault, alongside a separate “Digital Asset Stockpile” for other tokens. No actual Bitcoin buying—just rebranding what the government already holds.

Crypto markets initially soared when Trump hinted at his top five preferred coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Cardano), only to wobble when it became clear that Uncle Sam wouldn’t be actively shopping for digital gold. Whether it’s Bitcoin or maple syrup (yes, Canada has a reserve for that), strategic stockpiling is apparently the new global trend.

Space: the final facepalm
It’s been a rough week in the cosmos. First, the privately run Athena spacecraft landed lopsided on the Moon—while not quite a full-on faceplant, it does mean its mission to search for water ice is now on shaky ground. On board was a hopping robot, designed to bounce around the lunar surface in search of, let’s say, prime rabbit holes—potential natural cave-like structure shelters that could one day protect future astronauts from cosmic nasties like radiation and meteorite showers. But, with Athena taking a nap on its side, the little hopper’s grand adventure seems to have been cut short.

Then, SpaceX’s Starship rocket, after successfully catching the booster with its chopsticks, went full bonfire night during a test flight, scattering debris across the sky in a dazzling but unplanned display. Elon Musk, ever the optimist, called it a learning experience—which is, of course, a pro’s way of saying, “Let’s not do that again”.

WORLD

South Korea’s state-sponsored swiping
South Korea’s birthrate has inched up for the first time in nearly a decade, but don’t pop the soju just yet. At a record-low 0.75 children per woman, the country still holds the unfortunate title of ‘World’s Lowest Birthrate’—despite a flurry of government incentives, from baby bonuses to mandatory paternity leave, and even taxpayer-funded speed dating.

While more couples are tying the knot post-pandemic, experts warn that a proper baby boom is unlikely, as financial pressures, brutal work-life balance, and the sheer cost of raising a child continue to put people off parenthood. Turns out, throwing money at the problem helps—but fixing societal expectations and job stability? Now that’s the real romance killer.

Mesopotamia’s mega plumbing
While we struggle to fix potholes, ancient Mesopotamians were out here building a massive canal system that would put modern infrastructure to shame. Researchers have uncovered an extensive network of irrigation canals—some stretching nearly 9km—designed to keep crops thriving in the Eridu region (now modern-day Iraq) over 3,000 years ago.

Using satellite imagery and drone footage, scientists mapped over 4,000 smaller canals, proving that early civilizations were nothing short of hydraulic geniuses. Unfortunately, the Euphrates river eventually ghosted them, shifting course and leaving the region high and dry—much like the British high street after a bank holiday downpour. But hats off to these ancient engineers, who managed to keep the water flowing long before plumbing was even a thing.

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🏺🔍 The prehistoric Flagstones monument in Dorset, UK has been redated to 3200BC, making it older than Stonehenge.

🎨🖼️ Banksy's "Crude Oil (Vettriano)" sells at Sotheby's for £4.3m.

⚽️💰 The Sidemen FC charity match at Wembley raised £4.7m with YouTube Allstars winning a penalty shootout after a 9-9 draw.

📬💷 Royal Mail announces a price hike for first-class stamps to £1.70 and second-class to 87p, effective 7 April.

🏉🇬🇧 England boosted their Six Nations hopes with a 47-24 win over Italy, scoring seven tries, and moving second in the table.

🚴‍♀️🏅 Five-time Olympic gold winner Dame Laura Kenny has been appointed as the youngest president of Commonwealth Games England.

🎙️🔕 Jeremey Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show went silent for the first time in two decades due to a fire alarm evacuation in London.