This week’s selection of unmissable stories from news brands from the past seven days includes competitive beard contests, a British inventor taking his creation to the sky and drone footage of a curious humpback whale…
1. Eco-friendly moves
Glastonbury organisers say sustainability was a key focus this year and the Guardian shared a video on Instagram exploring how eco-friendly a music festival can be. From using compostable plates and cutlery to the fields running on solar power, organisers are making a huge effort to reduce their environmental impact.
2. Fan-stache-tic
Husband and wife Natali and Aaron travel the world together competing in beard contests, the Metro revealed in an article this week. Competing in different categories but attending the same competitions worldwide, they couple have participated in 170 competitions since 2015. Natali uses fake hair taking part in ‘realistic freestyle category’ and often takes home gold. She spoke about the beard categories she enters, saying: “You can either compete in the realistic full beard or the creative full beards.
“They can be made of absolutely anything. For a realistic beard I use synthetic or real hair, but you can make them from absolutely anything like cutlery or bacon — anything you can imagine so long as it’s in a beard shape!”
Natali said she knows it’s not an “obvious hobby” for a woman to have but she loves it — and she wants other women to enjoy it as well.
3. Flying high
A British inventor has test-flown a jet suit in the mountains of Norway. Richard Browning of Gravity Industries started the business of designing and building jet-powered suits in 2017. The company offers ‘flight experiences’ for £2,200 for customers to try out one of the suits. The Independent shared a video of Browning demonstrating the suit’s capabilities in the Scandinavian mountains for the Norwegian Red Cross, which has expressed an interest in the suit as they think it could help them with mountain rescues.
4. Having a ‘whale’ of a time
The Telegraph shares a Kayaker encounter with a humpback whale off Bondi Beach. A drone pilot captured footage of an inquisitive humpback while following a kayaker near Bondi Beach in Sydney, as conservationists in the area celebrated a record number of whales passing the city over the weekend. A record 5,092 whales were spotted from various points along the New South Wales coast during June.
Up to 50,000 whales are expected to pass Australia’s east coast during annual migration from Antarctica to the Great Barrier Reef.
5. The end of homelessness
The i shared a video on Twitter exploring whether Prince William has made the role of Prince of Wales more political with the causes he pursues. The housing crisis is a political problem and so is homelessness. The heir to the throne has launched an initiative to tackle the rise of the issue in the UK, launching a transformative five-year programme named ‘Homewards’ that will demonstrate that is possible to end homelessness.
