It wasn’t all bad

An 11-year-old boy who posted videos of himself singing his grandmother’s favourite songs during lockdown now has an album coming out. Cormac Thompson, from Lancashire, posted the videos on YouTube after the camera on his grandmother’s tablet broke, making face-to-face chats impossible. She watched them from her home in Northern Ireland – but his rendition of Danny Boy was also enjoyed by executives at Decca, who got in touch to offer him a record deal.

A rare green puppy has been born in Italy – and has been named Pistachio. The dog was born in a litter of five on a farm in Sardinia. Pistachio’s brothers and sisters all came out with white fur, like their mother. Green fur is rare, but is believed to occur when a pale-coloured puppy has contact in the mother’s womb with a green pigment called biliverdin – which also causes the green colour in bruises. Pistachio’s colour will fade over time, but while his siblings will be given away to new homes, owner Cristian Mallocci has decided to keep him on the farm to help look after the sheep. Green, he said, is a colour associated with good luck, and hope.

A detached coral reef rising more than 1,600ft from the ocean floor has been found at the northern end of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the first such discovery for over 120 years. Taller than the Empire State Building, the “blade-like” vertical reef is almost a mile wide at its base, and rises to within 130ft of the surface. The researchers who spotted the reef, 80 miles off Cape York, described it as “thriving”: it has “an incredible abundance” of sponges, sea fans and soft corals, and is home to a wide variety of reef fish.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM