22 October - The Knowledge

In the headlines

Actor Alec Baldwin has accidentally shot and killed a cinematographer in New Mexico, on the set of his upcoming film Rust. The 63-year-old fired a prop gun, unexpectedly launching a “projectile” that hit Halyna Hutchins, 42, in the stomach. She was flown to hospital in an air ambulance, but died shortly after. The Queen is “in good spirits”, having spent Wednesday night in hospital, says Buckingham Palace. Booster jabs of the Pfizer vaccine offer “near-total protection” from Covid, says The Times, after a study showed a third shot raises protection by “a further 95%”. The PM has “piled pressure” on vaccine chiefs to let people have boosters less than six months after their second doses.

Snapshot

Noted

Fishermen have landed a vast sunfish off the North African coast. The 10ft whopper was too heavy to be weighed on the boat’s scales, but was estimated at two tonnes – that’s 50% more than a hatchback car. Sunfish enjoy bathing near the surface, and this one got caught in tuna nets. It was released safely.

Tomorrow’s world

A kidney bred in a pig has been successfully transplanted into a braindead woman, says Jason Koebler in Vice. It processed urine as normal for 54 hours before the woman was removed from life support and died. The operation was funded by United Therapeutics, whose CEO, Martine Rothblatt, wants to build futuristic pig farms growing human organs on a mass scale.

Zeitgeist

Right-wing American radio host Dennis Prager, 73, has finally fulfilled his ambition of catching Covid. Suspicious of vaccines, he sought “natural immunity” by hugging “thousands” of strangers. After testing positive last week, he announced on his radio show on Monday: “I have walked the walk on this matter and here I am.” He plans to treat himself with ivermectin, an unapproved medicine used for skin conditions.

Quoted

Quoted 22-10

“Control your own destiny or someone else will.”

General Electric CEO Jack Welch

Snapshot answer

These are some of the 400 items of clothing belonging to the late author Gabriel García Márquez that went on sale for charity this week in Mexico. The Colombian Nobel laureate, whose novels include Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude, died in 2014. He was quite the dandy, according to his granddaughter Emilio García Elizondo: “Gabo had favourite tailors and designers.” There’s even a jacket with one of his pens in its pocket.

On the money

When Apple announced a $25m profit in October 1996, after a string of quarterly losses, executives were understandably over the moon. As developer James Dempsey recalls on Twitter, they held a company-wide meeting and gave employees postcards boasting “I was there”. In the same quarter of 2021, the tech behemoth generated $25m in profit every 2½ hours.