It wasn’t all bad

British language-students who are unable to go to France to practise their conversation skills are being matched instead with elderly French citizens, who have time on their hands, and are glad to have someone to chat to on video. The ShareAmi scheme has found talking partners for 107 students – and has thousands on its waiting list. Elliot Bellman, 20, says he has enjoyed his weekly chats with Mme Tolu, a Parisian care home resident in her 80s, who has no family living nearby.

A GP in Leicester has found a solution to vaccine hesitancy: if a patient is unwilling to come in for a Covid jab, just ring them up to talk to them about it. Dr Azhar Farooqi picked up the phone after noticing that a worrying number of his patients were declining invitations. Now, he has nine members of staff on the case, who spend up to 20 minutes on each call. He says 70% of the patients they talk to are persuaded to make an appointment, and 90% of them turn up to it. The key, he says, is simply to listen to people’s concerns. “You’ve got to go into it without being too dogmatic or dictatorial.”

A chunk of rare carbonaceous chondrite – a stony material that retains unaltered chemistry from the formation of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago – fell to Earth in the driveway of a home in the Cotswolds last week. Scientists who had tracked a meteorite that burnt up as it entered our atmosphere knew fragments of it had landed in the Gloucestershire area, and were thrilled when the Wilcock family not only came forward with the valuable space rock, but also agreed to donate it to the Natural History Museum in London.