It wasn’t all bad

A device that stems bleeding from stab wounds has won this year’s international James Dyson Award, worth £30,000. The Rapid Emergency Actuating Tamponade – or REACT device – works by expanding in the wound tract to apply internal pressure, which reduces bleeding. It was developed by Joseph Bentley, 22, while he was a student at Loughborough University. Bentley is now working on getting the device into the hands of as many first responders as possible.

Two former best friends whose lives were uprooted by the Nazis have been reunited in Florida, 83 years after they last saw each other in pre-war Germany. Betty Grebenschikoff and Ana María Wahrenberg were nine when they said their goodbyes in a playground in Berlin, soon after Kristallnacht. The former fled to Shanghai, while the latter went to Chile. She and her parents were the only members of her family to survive the Holocaust. “We just sat near each other and held each other’s hands and talked,” said Grebenschikoff. “We talked so much that we didn’t have time to cry. The crying is over with.”

In the past seven years, residents of Trawden in Lancashire have acquired and reopened their village shop, their library and their community centre. Now, they have saved their only pub. When the 126-year-old Trawden Arms’ former landlord decided to sell up, villagers had it listed as a community asset, and raised £520,000 to buy it, rather than see it fall into the hands of developers. The pub will be leased to tenants, who will run it on a commercial basis but with the needs of the community in mind.