It wasn’t all bad

A dog that spent a week waiting patiently for its owner outside a Turkish hospital has finally gone home. When Cemal

Şentürk was taken away in an ambulance, his faithful dog Boncuk followed the vehicle to the hospital, in Trabzon. She stayed outside it until nightfall, then returned every morning, to wait again. “When the door opens she pokes her head inside,” said a security guard. Six days later, Şentürk emerged – and an overjoyed Boncuk was there to greet him

A four-year-old from Birmingham who’d learnt the alphabet by the time she was 14 months old has now become one of the youngest members of Mensa. Dayaal Kaur took the test to join the society when she was three, and was accepted on her fourth birthday, with an IQ of 145. “She says things all the time that I have to Google,” said her mother, Rajvinder Kaur, a solicitor. “She is fascinated by space, so she is always asking me things like ‘Why does the Moon orbit the Earth?’” Her father says her social skills and sense of humour are as “breathtaking” as her intelligence.

In their second such lockdown collaboration, The Gruffalo creators Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler have reimagined some of their best-loved characters, to show them coping with life in the pandemic. “Iggety, ziggety, zaggety, ZOOM, / I really want somebody real in my room,” says the witch, from Room on the Broom, while the old lady in A Squash and a Squeeze asks: “Wise old man, won’t you tell me please / When will it be over, this viral disease?” The images are free to download on The Gruffalo Facebook page.