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Hello, this is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news, seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising.

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This is the Happy News podcast 20-20 from the BBC World Service.

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I'm Jacki Leonard, and this is a collection of our favorite stories from the past year, ranging from the inspirational to the uplifting to the silly. So we'll be hearing about the nine year old Kenyan inventor who helped his village manage coronavirus measures, the rock stars making the world better in their own separate ways. And good news on dengue fever and wild polio.

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Also in this podcast, The Power of music and the number one hit for a 79 year old musician and dementia sufferer. And why this year's playlist got faster.

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But let's just start with the elephant in the room, shall we? This has been a year dominated by one particularly nasty thing. It has interrupted everything education, family, life, work, travel, sport, weddings, parties, joyful occasions and serious ones. But it's from our joint experience of this wretched bug that some of the most uplifting and unifying moments have come. And we will hear about a few of them in this happy podcast. Beginning with this, our colleagues at BBC Radio One invited the whole world to share a joint message to the coronavirus.

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It's the challenge that's literally gone, global coronavirus results once you got your way, it all started on radio and breakfast fever and had an idea. I thought you just needed to go international and get some money from every country in the world to say, I'll be crying out for it for my British friends and family who can't visit me for one day, he says. Lavetta says Jordan says stay inside Zimbabwe.

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Marino says it must to be ugly in your mama, ugly to coronavirus. Wasn't that cathartic?

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The same message from over 193 countries. And now we have acknowledged that. Let's move on. This story is a bit more edifying than that. The Miraculous Love Kids are a band of teenage girls who used to work on the streets of one of the most dangerous cities in the world, Kabul. This year, they released their version of the 1980s hit Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics. They're joined by seven American musicians from some of the most famous bands in the world.

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Cahoon Kamlesh met the band Sweet Dreams are Made of the sweet dreams are made of this, a number one hit from the 1990s by the British duo Eurythmics.

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Now you're hearing it from Afghanistan, sung by six young girls from a band called The Miraculous Luckett's.

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All the members of the band used to be street children. Now the young guitarists who are between seven and 16 years old have established the help of members of famous bands like Rage Against the Machine, the Googles and Foo Fighters for their new music video cover of Sweet Dreams, which echoes their own stories of suffering and their resilience in the video. The teenage girls were colorful headscarves and are sitting in a round circle playing guitar and singing along. Getting here hasn't been easy for any of them.

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I first met Morsal four years ago. She had just started learning guitar and was working near a military base where a suicide attacker targeted the NATO headquarters in Kabul in 2012. Marcella's two sisters died in the blast there. This brought American musician Linacre Dollar to Afghanistan to open a guitar school for three children. And that is how the band, The Miraculous Love Kids was born.

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You. For starters, 16 now, she has been practicing guitar every day for the last four years and has become a guitar coach.

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She has big dreams one day and be like Mr. Sing famous and all the world, not just in Afghanistan.

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Tom Morello is a member of the band Rage Against the Machine in Los Angeles and plays guitar on this mission of sweet dreams.

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Working with these girls is part of an ongoing lifetime mission of mine to continue to use music as a divining rod for truth and justice and to see that connection and to see like how, you know, they're inspiring to me, you know, and the way that they've embraced music and they are using it to transform their lives. It's just another link in the chain of the power that music can have to help you.

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And that report was by Karen Carmouche on the 30th of July, NASA launched a rover to Mars to search for signs of life on the Red Planet. The name of the rover is Perseverence or Pursey for Short, and it was suggested by Alexander Mather, a 13 year old from the U.S. state of Virginia and picked from 28000 others submitted by children from across the USA. Alexander spoke to the BBC's Alan Kazuyo.

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Mars is fascinating, not only because it holds the promise of answering a key question Are we alone? But also because it holds the promise of a future world for us, for humans to live in one day. In both of those things, symbolically and literally, I think are very beautiful.

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Interesting indeed. And you chose the name Perseverence for the mission. Why did you do that?

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I chose perseverence because it's at least in my opinion, a very human quality. Humans have shown it ever since the Stone Age all the way up to the Great Pyramids of Giza. And then in 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first stepped on the moon. Perseverance has been such a pivotal part of human history that I felt that it was only saying to give that to the name of our robotic ambassador as it goes, and explorers whole new worlds.

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Alexander mother, whose 13, speaking to Alan Krueger, who isn't at a six year old Irish boy who shared his dreams of joining a space mission, has now captured the attention of NASA. Adam King, who has disabilities caused by brittle bones, appeared on Irelands The Late Late Toyi Show in November and spoke of his hope of working for mission control when he grows up. He got messages back from astronauts the Canadian Chris Hadfield, the Briton Tim Peake and American Shane Kimbra, as well as U.S. and European space agencies.

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NASA tweeted, We can't wait for him to one day join our team of dreamers. Now, this year, doctors, nurses and researchers have all been working flat out to deal with the global pandemic. And just a matter of weeks ago, we heard there were viable vaccines, not just one, but three, pretty much ready to go. So James Gallagher, our esteemed health and science correspondent, has vaccine development and its place in this year's Happy.

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But I think it has.

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Have you seen The Martian, Jackie? I have.

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You know, there's that scene where Matt Damon goes. I'm going to have to science the expletive out of this. That's basically been the solution to a pandemic. A lot of science has had to happen in order to get us out of this mess. And the vaccine has been the real success. But there have been others along the way, too. And who would have thought that we would already be vaccinating people? I mean, we've gone pretty much from the drawing board to immunizing people.

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And so to end this year with three vaccines and more on the way. Incredible.

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How did it happen so fast? And is it really safe? Well, the reason that happened so quickly is because a lot of the work took place before the pandemic. Now, that's not because people already knew about coronavirus or anything like that, but it was people have been working out. How could you respond really quickly to a new infection that suddenly emerged and it was called Disease X in all of the planning for it.

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And so the technologies that are the ones that have delivered the vaccines are all those ones which are known as plug and play vaccines. So you already know what your vaccine is going to look like or you've got to do is drop in a bit of the genetic code from whatever it is that you want to attack. So as soon as Chinese scientists publish the genetic sequence, that's like the Code of life or the instructions for building the coronavirus, then the people that were developing these types of vaccines were able to get right.

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I'll copy that. And I'll pasted into the half vaccine I've already built and bank. They've got that vaccine. It happens that quickly. All things in medicine are a balance of risks and benefits, even painkillers that you can buy in the supermarket. They will have side effects. And these vaccines do have side effects. Quite a lot of people will have a headache or fatigue or muscle pain after they have had the vaccine. But you're weighing those side effects up against a virus that is killing give or take one in 100 people that it infects.

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There is always, to be fair, with any research like this that the risk that there might be a side effect that affects a very small proportion of people. So these vaccines have been trials that have gone through rigorous testing in tens of thousands of people. But what if there's a side effect that affects one in a million people? You would never find that until you actually use the vaccine for real. But again, I think it's worth comparing just the facts, even if there is a side effect that effects that few people, one in a million you're comparing.

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Against one in 100 being killed by the virus itself, so the consensus is that these vaccines are safe now, coronaviruses mutate, don't they?

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But can we say that we're getting a grip on it?

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Well, the virus is mutating, but not in a way that we should care about too much at the moment.

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So a year ago, this was a virus that had just made the jump from animals into people and it's mutating randomly. And some of those mutations help it spread a little bit better in people, but it's not significantly changed its behavior. And all of that time, it's not mutating as rapidly as HIV does. You know, HIV mutates so rapidly, your body can never get on top of it or very rarely can your body get on top of it.

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And this virus is nothing like that in the very, very, very long term. That may be a concern that if it keeps on mutating, then you might need to design new vaccines. But if we end up having vaccines that work, then designing new ones won't be a problem either. I think with the development of vaccines, we really are starting the path to getting back to normal now.

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Oh, let's hope so. That was James Gallagher. Now, what do these songs all have in common?

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I just. Well, besides prompting some ill-Advised studio dancing, these are some of the biggest hits of 20/20 and BBC research found that they're part of a trend. Pop music is the fastest and happiest it's been for a decade and it's getting faster. So how do they measure these things? A question from music correspondent Mark Centage.

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There are a couple of ways you can measure it. The most obvious one is the tempo of a song. Slow songs tend to be sadder. Faster songs tend to be happier. And one thing that we've seen this year is that songs are the fastest that they've been for almost a decade. And then the second measure, which is something that Spotify has come up with, is called Valence, and that looks at lots of things. So not just the tempo, but also the key.

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That song is written, whether it's major or a minor key. It looks also at the lyrics, whether the words tend to be more positive or negative. And they've come up with that score to measure every single song in their database. And the thing that we discovered in the summer is that this year, the average balance or happiness of a hit song is the highest it's been since 2016.

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Looking back over the decades, is this something that tends to happen in troubled times?

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Absolutely. If you go back to the Great Depression, the Second World War, people tended to listen to uplifting music at those times because music is a mood enhancer is one of the few things that you can do that can artificially change the way you feel.

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And is there actual physical, psychological measured evidence that it works? I mean, there's a lot of research into the power of music to change people's minds. We even know that for patients with Alzheimer's and things, music can reconnect them to the world because music is one of the few things that you require the knowledge of time to understand. So it can change the way that your brain is processing information just by concentrating on the beat and the tempo. But also we know, you know, some of the things that music makes you do.

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If you're listening to your power playlist on Spotify and going out for a jog, well, then the physical activity can also raise your mood. Some music isn't just a stimulant on it, but it can also help you to do things and perform activities that make you feel better.

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Mark, I'm so glad you mentioned the Alzheimer's link, because later on in the Happy podcast, we will be talking about that very thing. It's almost as if we planned this. So this year's Music 2020 music, faster, happier. What has been your favorite tune of the month?

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Oh, that is a tough question. I mean, if we're talking about happy music, Duleep, this album came out in the first couple of weeks of locked eyes. In fact, Rush released it. And that album is literally 10 tracks of pure adrenaline positivity. It's completely covered in disco, glitter and sweat, and it just lift you out of your mood all the time. If I had to choose one album, it would probably be the current single levitating contest with me.

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And then we have just a little bit of lipo with levitating the favorite track this year for Mark Savage, it was also often to be found covered in disco, glitter and sweat. For a lot of us, 20-20 has seen our world shrink as we have restricted our physical movements because of coronavirus restrictions. But to kids in the US found a way to visit any destination on Earth in total safety. Our reporter Peter Gougne explains.

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In the last few months, Kamden Everett has climbed Mount Everest and floated down the canals of Venice. He's fed giraffes on safari and propped up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He's even helped the Beatles cross Abbey Road, all without leaving his home.

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He's traveling while we're still on our driveway.

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That's Kamden Sister MacAir every day for 100 days during the coronavirus pandemic. She's drawn a vivid landscape in chalk on the family's driveway in Libertyville, Illinois. Lying down on the pavement, Camden becomes a part of the scene and he's transported anywhere he wants to go. Photos of these adventures have been a hit on social media. Here's Camden.

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It really makes me happy. Are the people like care in cold? It is very sad time.

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Camden and McNair's mother, Christine Everett, says the response has been overwhelming.

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When this started, my husband and I thought of it as a way to really empower the kids so that they could create their own joy. But as we started to hear from others and as we started to really spread, I would say to many different parts of the globe, it's just exciting that joy can be spread this way and then it can be spread by kids.

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Now, McNair has met her goal of 100 drawings in 100 days, but the journey does not stop here.

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It's not that they won't do it every day. I won't talk every day, but I will continue to do so.

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Camden's travels are far from over. And with each trip, he's. Taking the rest of us stuck at home, sometimes stuck far away from our own families to some of the places that we miss so much.

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That was Peter Gougne. It's been a few months since we spoke to the efforts. MacAir, now 15 years old, and Kamden, 10, are still doing amazing chalk drawings and getting worldwide recognition. Their work has even been compiled in a new book. You can see more on their Instagram feed, and that's at McArthur's MEUs.

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Still to come, a happy ever after for the giant who was once called the world's loneliest elephant.

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Now, there hasn't been a huge amount of sport in 2020, but what that was produced, one of the most extraordinary stories of the year, when to the relief and astonishment of Formula One fans, Roman Grugeon walked away almost unscathed from the burning wreckage of his car at the Bahrain Grand Prix. It happened on the very first lap of the race where the last vehicle smashed into the barrier. The car split in half with the front part bursting into flames.

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Our sports reporter Ben Croucher was watching.

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This is one of the worst accidents we have seen in Formula One for a generation. Not since the late 80s, early 90s have we seen a car hit a barrier and then burst into flames. Immediately, the car split into two. It looks dramatic. They are designed to break up and dissipate the energy. But to have the fuel cell burst and then burst into flames is highly unusual. Corrosion was stuck in the car for around about 10 to 20 seconds before he managed to extricate himself from the vehicle.

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The medical car was on the scene almost immediately as well because it happened very early on. On the first lap, he was seen shaking his hands due to some of those minor burns that he received. He walked away from the incident, but clearly in distress and clearly in shock. It's also been reported that he suffered suspected broken ribs in the incident. Two collided with Daniel Caveats. The fatality driver pitched them into the barrier. The race was red flagged immediately.

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It took an hour and a half before it restarted due to the damage that was sustained to the barrier itself. The medical dry medical car driver who was on the scene has praised the safety work that has gone on within Formula One, saying without any of the different aspects that are designed into the car, things like the Halo system that protects the drivers head, things like the safety cell around the cockpit, if any of those had failed and Grecians injuries could have been much more severe.

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The fact that he managed to walk away from the incident is a miracle in itself.

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A few hours later, man gradually posted a video message from his hospital bed. His hands were bandaged, but his spirits were high, and he praised his car's Halo safety bar, which helped save his life.

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I just wanted to say I am OK. Well of OK. Thank you very much for the messages. I mean, I was in for the halo some years ago, but I think it's the greatest thing that we've both the Formula One and without it I wouldn't be able to speak to you today. So thanks. Thanks to all the medical staff at the people and hopefully I can write you quite soon some messages and tell you what's going on.

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He has since had more surgery on his left hand, but posted a very smiley picture on social media saying everything went well and again thanking his fans.

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Once dubbed the world's loneliest elephant, Chavannes has experienced a turnaround in his fortunes thanks to the pop star's share and animal welfare activists. For years, he led a miserable existence in a barren enclosure at the zoo in Islamabad in Pakistan. But in November, he was transferred to a sanctuary in Cambodia. Our correspondent in Pakistan, Secunda Kamani, told us more about Kavan in the hours before his big move, the story of Govind.

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The Elephant goes back to 1985, when he was just around one year old. He was given away by the civilian government to Pakistan as a state gift, really, that he was kept in Islamabad Zoo and he was really quite miserable there, often at times being left chained up, being forced to perform for visitors, being poorly fed. And his situation had gotten even worse over the last eight years because his only mate, the owner of the elephant in the zoo, died allegedly partly as a result of neglect, really.

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And he started displaying this very depressive behaviour. He was shaking his head from right to left and just spending hours and hours like that, it seemed. And elephant experts say that that is a sign of distress in elephants. And about four years ago, a social media campaign sprang up calling for him to be relocated, calling for his conditions to be improved. And it caught the attention of the pop star Cher. And she really spearheaded this campaign trying to get him moved.

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And earlier this year, finally, the Islamabad High Court ruled that the conditions at the zoo were so bad that it should be shut down and all the animals relocated and given the elephant should be taken to a wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia. It's a huge logistical challenge. I mean, the elephant itself weighs around five tons. And in fact, when I was speaking to this specialist international charity for Paws, who had been managing this this move, they were saying that caviling was actually quite obese.

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The combined weight of him and his crate and the food that he's been given for this journey comes to around 11 tons of he's going on a special cargo plane. They had to try and prepare Cabonne. Get used to the crates you would be traveling in that involved kind of getting in and out and comfortable with the idea of spending large amounts of time in that crate. That's what they've been doing over the past few weeks.

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Secunda Kamani in Islamabad. And we are happy to report that Caven has arrived safely in his new home and he was greeted by share because, of course, he was. There have in fact been a wealth of animal stories that we liked this year. Our producer Peter Guffin is back. He has been rounding up and corralling some of our favorites.

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Yes, that's right, Jackie. Now, during the lockdown's this year, as humans were obliged to stay home and stop driving and stop flying, one of the themes that kept coming up on social media was hashtag nature is healing. And while some of these stories turned out to be fake, like dolphins swimming in the canals of Venice, some of them were definitely real. So the town of Glen did know in Wales became the playground of a herd of more than 100 Kashmiri goats who wandered around the empty streets, climbed walls and ate hedges and flowers in people's gardens.

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Fortunately, a town councillor welcomed these invaders, saying they'd provided people with free entertainment. And you may also have noticed a change to the way birds sounded in lockdown. If so, you were not imagining it. A study by Dr Elizabeth Dary, Barry of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee found that when you reduce noise pollution, there's an almost immediate effect on wildlife behavior in the silence of locked down male birds, improve their vocal performance and sang sexier, lower amplitude songs to woo females and defend their territory.

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Now, in other animal news, Uganda says the gorillas in Bwindi National Park have experienced a baby boom. At least seven baby gorillas have been born since January, compared to just three for the whole of 2019. A spokesman for the Uganda Wildlife Authority called it an incredible blessing and said, As conservationists, we are chest thumping. We are excited. Also, let's hear it for the tiny elephant shrew or sengi and the African country of Djibouti that had been lost to science or at least successfully avoiding scientists since the 1970s.

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These creatures are about the size of a mouse. They have a long nose and a little tufted tail. And Stephen Heritage, research scientist at the Duke University Lemur Center in the U.S., said he was thrilled to put the species back on the radar. Of course, we're not sure how the elephant shrew feels about this sudden notoriety. Next, let's go to Germany, where a new law was created to make sure the nation's nine point four million dogs are getting enough exercise and stimulation.

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Under the Dogs Act, owners will have to walk their pets twice a day for an hour each time. Dogs cannot be left at home alone all day. And keeping dogs on a lead or on a chain for long periods will be banned and will stay in Germany for one last animal story. Jacqui, it's about Elsa, the wild boar and her piglet. I love this story. We all love this story and we love the photo as well. Now, you've almost certainly seen the picture of Elsa running away with a yellow bag in her mouth while she and her piglets are chased by a naked man.

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It seems the man had been for a swim, a natural at a Berlin lake when Elsa snatched his carrier bag, which contained his laptop computer. This incident prompted concern that the local bores were getting too bold and there was even talk of culling them. But Elsa's fans created such an outcry that the bores got a reprieve. And the lesson, of course, is when you swim naked in Berlin, don't take your laptop very wise.

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Thank you for that, Peter. Now, we have all had it drummed into us how important handwashing is. And in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, a school in Taiwan found a creative way to encourage children to get with the program. All it took was some Lego and a good dose of technological know how. Khari Allen reports.

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This is the sound from a school playground in Taiwan. And that robotic sound you can hear is actually a robotic hand sanitizer dispenser that's been made out of Lego. There are several of these at a primary school in Gorshin, a city in the south. They have automated sensors that detect when someone's hand is nearby and they're connected to a spray bottle that dispenses alcohol disinfectant. I can see children queuing up with a big space in between them, of course, to get their hands sprayed by these Lego devices.

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When they put their hands under the dispensers, the machine shouts in Chinese washing hands is super children. They need to touch the machines themselves. They connect to a motor and a gear wheel mechanism so the bottle sprays automatically. They use by more than 1600 students in the school here between the ages of six and 12 years old. And some of the students actually build machines themselves. With the help of experts, so it's been a nice little way that one school has shown how handwashing can be fun.

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Khari And there well, of course, though, not everyone has easy access to hand washing facilities. So let's hear it for Steven WAMU Chota, an inventor in Kenya. He came up with a wooden hand washing machine to help users avoid touching surfaces to reduce infections. The video of his device went viral and he was honored with the presidential order of service was a Lindow award. Did I mention he's nine? He and his dad have been speaking to our reporter, Oliver Jarvis.

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He lives in this tiny little village in rural Kenya called McQuire Village, which is in Bungoma County, which actually is quite a low income part of the world. His father, James, is the only owner of the family, and James is roaming around the village as a sort of handyman. He used to talk all the time. He's been constantly nagging him for just a small sum, small coins that he'd make each day just so that Stephen could start to really buy some materials for his devices.

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And the idea came that Stephen just wanted to help out with the village that go under. Can you just give me, like, these small coins? I just need to buy some wood, some pine or whatever just to put this back together. I really want to help the local school. So here's Stephen telling us about how his invention works. Well, good luck.

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When you step on the local level, there's a second level that comes up and pushes the water tank, flipping it to little water. The same applies to hand sanitizer.

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The video of Stephen got about eight million views. And from there, this reaction, this worldwide reaction started to happen. The hero, Kenyatta, the Kenyan president each year as these awards for Kenyans who have done notable things throughout the year, and Stephen being only nine years old and with this incredible yet simplistic but beautiful invention, he got the award. And at nine, as I say, he was the youngest to ever receive the award. And then you have charities reaching out, just trying to work out how they can help Stephen.

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And people, well wishers around the world have just sent out bits of money to Stephen so that he can continue to build these inventions and enhance the closer to home his county governor. The government has promised, Stephen, that he will give him a scholarship of choice to whichever engineering school he wants to go to in Kenya, and that will likely be the one in Nairobi. And here's what James thinks of his son's work.

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I was really touched when I left. My young boy got could. And to that extent and I'm so proud to say that he's amongst the heroes that are fighting against the infection of this virus across the world.

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The fact that it's had such a great worldwide reaction has not only brought Stevens and his family some money that they really need, but also to make Stephen himself believe in himself, you know, to understand that he is this fantastic engineer you're going to on a jumbo jungle.

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I am so happy that veterans globally know my next project is a homeland I'd want to be when I finish school.

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It's really nice to see this nine year old's ambitions just grow and his belief in himself actually grow alongside that.

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Oliver Jarvis on the genius that is Stephen WAMU. Bravo, Stephen. Now, as we were mentioning earlier, quite a lot of us have spent quite a lot of this year stuck at home, access to the world, limited to the view outside the window. But a website created during lockdown gives users a chance to share their view with people around the world. Windows Swap Dotcom presents a rotation of videos shot through people's windows. Sonali Ranjeet and her husband, Vaishnav Bhala Subrahmanyam are originally from India, but now they live in Singapore and they told us more about this site.

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We were knee deep in the lock down in Singapore and we live in a one bedroom apartment. So things were starting to get a bit stifling. We were scrolling through Instagram and we happened to see this friend of ours in Barcelona posted this image of his beautiful view. But he was complaining about the view and saying he was so tired of looking through the same window every day. But that's when we realized maybe we can swap places, but we could swap videos and sort of pretend that we were there.

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Even people talking in the background or kids playing around or folks clapping in the kitchen. We find even those things very interesting. The one that I love the most is this little backyard somewhere in Hawaii. And you can see a bunch of chickens running around. I don't know what they were chasing, but just running around in circles like a puppy. And that that was that brought a lot of happiness to me. Yes.

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Now, do you remember what you were doing when you were 15 years old? Gitanjali Rao is 15 and she's already achieved an impressive amount, created devices to tackle contaminate. Drinking water, cyberbullying and opioid addiction, which is why she has been named Time magazine's first ever kid of the year. So when did you decide to help make the world a better place?

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I can never really say. There was one aha moment when everything came together, but instead it was like a series of wanting to learn more and grow more. But my initial love was science, and technology actually was developed when I was four and my uncle got me a chemistry kit, one of my biggest and well known devices, but also one that I've been working on for the longest, is called Tetris, which helps to detect a lead in drinking water faster and more inexpensive than the current techniques that are already in the market.

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I heard about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and it was just so appalling to me to see how many kids my age were basically drinking a poison every day. And I wanted to come up with a way to solve it. I'm quite literally inspired by anything and everything that life throws my way, whether that's some sort of news network that I'm watching or show that I'm listening to or a magazine that I'm reading. If I'm able to find a personal connection with something where if I want to find a way to solve it, as soon as I hear about something, I realize that if no one else is going to do it, I'm going to have to do it.

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Gitanjali Rao, the very impressive Time magazine's first kid of the year, making adults feel inadequate the world over. Now, you could be forgiven for thinking that all the scientists were concentrating on other things this year. But let's hear it for the researchers who made a breakthrough in August against dengue fever. It followed a large trial which demonstrated a 77 percent reduction in cases in Yogyakarta, a city of nearly 390000 in Indonesia. The novel approach involves infecting mosquitoes, which spread dengue between people with the Wolbachia bacteria, which blocks their ability to transmit the virus.

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Professor Cameron Simmons in Melbourne, Australia, is from the World Mosquito Program, and he spoke to Connie Sharp.

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Wolbachia is a very common insect bacteria. You can find it in up to 50 per cent of insect species, but it didn't naturally exist in the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads dengue. What our program did a decade ago was establish stable infections of the Wolbachia bacteria in Aedes aegypti, and we're able to spread the word back to your bacteria into Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in disease affected communities.

[00:34:54]

How do you actually go about infecting these mosquitoes with the bacteria?

[00:34:59]

So this is a very painful, slow and tedious approach of micro injecting, a suspension of the Wolbachia bacteria that came from a fruit fly into the one hour old egg of a female. It is the Aedes aegypti mosquito. So the clever trick is we only need to be successful once. And so we create the EHV mosquito, if you like, over a decade ago. And all of her progeny that we can farm in the laboratory or in anywhere around the world have all got Wolbachia.

[00:35:31]

And so really what we are now, mosquito farmers and producing bakkie mosquitoes for release into communities that are affected by dengue from complex urban environment of Rio de Janeiro through to Jogjakarta, in Indonesia, through to Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

[00:35:48]

Professor Cameron Simmons speaking to Kanae Shop. Now let's talk some more about the power of music. Paul Harvey is a former music teacher here in England. He has dementia and the condition has been getting worse. But he's still a brilliant pianist, as his son Nick explained.

[00:36:05]

He started trying to play some classical pieces, but it wasn't really happening. And I could tell that he was getting frustrated and his foot was slipping off the pedal. But then I remembered that an old party trick of Dad's was to request for random notes from anybody else, natural a and then improvise a D be natural.

[00:36:28]

Those euphonious de de de de.

[00:36:47]

Well, in October, the BBC Philharmonic expanded on that piece, playing an orchestral arrangement over the top of a recording of Paul playing the piano. Can I just add that the bit with the orchestra joins in is just.

[00:37:00]

We'll have Lisa. And here is how people reacted when he heard that for the first time. Oh, wow. Fantastic. I was just listening to a wonderful piece of music and then all of a sudden I say to myself, I wrote that, I wrote that you wrote it on the spot. You didn't just write it, you improvised. Well, I won't forget that. That was very, very wonderfully special.

[00:38:14]

The resulting song, Four Notes, Paul's tune made it to number one on the iTunes charts. Now, it's not easy being a single parent, so let's pause to admire a single dad, Robert Carter from the U.S. state of Ohio. He adopted five siblings aged between four and 10 so they wouldn't be separated. Charlotte Gallagher reports.

[00:38:36]

Robert Carter and his five children, Mariona, Robert Junior, McKayla Geovani and Kiante are spending their first Christmas together as a family of six. Robert, who's 29, originally fostered the three brothers while the two sisters lived with someone else. But when Robert saw them all together and they wouldn't stop hugging each other and crying, he realized he wanted to adopt all of them to ensure they'd never be apart again. Something that's outdated. Five experienced himself. He grew up in foster care and was separated from his eight siblings, not seeing his youngest brother for 14 years.

[00:39:15]

Adoption officials say Robert was the only person willing to take on the five siblings and put in extra hours at work so he could afford a house big enough for the family. The adoption was finalized in November, and photos show the smiling Carter family dressed in matching black and red outfits. Robert says he tells his children every night, I'm your dad forever. I know what it's like and I'm always here for you.

[00:39:42]

Charlotte Calaca. Now we've been asking you to send us your thoughts on what 20-20 has taught you and what you hope to see in 2021. Among those sharing their wisdom was Mark Dijana, an American doctor working in Germany who caught covid-19 earlier in the year. This is what he told us.

[00:40:01]

While most folks would probably call 20-20 their annus horribilis. I'd have to call 20-20 my honest mirabilis, that's to say a year full of miracles. Miraculous that both my wife Joe and I and like so many on earth, survived pretty severe cases of covid without much after effects. Miraculous that even though I work in health care, I haven't had to witness a patient or colleague suffer death or grievous harm from this terrible disease. Miraculous that I've discovered the incredible healing properties from the love and affection of a family pet.

[00:40:34]

To be specific, my wonderful labradoodle named Guinness and a miracle that 2021 is nearly here and we're seeing the world come together to save us from this terrible virus. And hopefully now we'll work together to save the planet from ourselves.

[00:40:51]

Thank you, Dr. Bajada. And if you would like to see the lovely Guinness, if you're on Twitter, just look for the hashtag Global News Pets' or Global News, because I'm nothing if not inconsistent. And you will find him now more excellent medical news that perhaps didn't get the celebration it deserved this year. In August, the entire continent of Africa was declared free of wild polio by an independent commission. There are a few cases of vaccine derived polio across the African continent.

[00:41:20]

But the disease, which once crippled millions of children, is now endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is under reports from Nigeria, one of the countries that was worst affected.

[00:41:36]

This is the life of Miss Bahaullah, 22, sat on a skateboard. He and his friends played Paris soccer football with their hands, a game he invented over 30 years ago. He and the rest of the players are paralyzed because of polio. Bahu is the president of the Polio Survivors Association. He and others who have had the virus have been trying to get parents to understand the importance of having their children vaccinated. Many people rejected polio vaccine, but by the time we approached them for advocacy, they see how much we struggle for us to get there just to help people to have health.

[00:42:13]

I mean, while polio is a highly infectious virus normally picked up by contaminated water, it affects children under the age of five and it weakens muscles and can cause paralysis. There's no cure, but there are vaccinations.

[00:42:28]

Immunization for getting people vaccinated in Nigeria has been a logistical challenge. And not just for Miss Bahu and his colleagues. Conflict in Nigeria's Lake Chad area and deep suspicion over the vaccine has made it difficult for health care workers. In 2013, nine female health care workers were shot in the northern city of Kano, as rumors say. Elated that the vaccine was the Western plot, it took the combined efforts of religious and traditional leaders, the government and community workers, to work together to convince parents to change their polio.

[00:43:05]

Less than 10 years ago, Nigeria accounted for more than half of all global cases of polio. The country will be the last in Africa to be declared free from the virus. Teachers and reporting.

[00:43:20]

Are you ready for more music? Of course you are. One of the joys of the Internet this year was a 10 year old girl taking on a rock legend in a drum battle. Nandy Bushell is the 10 year old and the rock legend Dave Grohl. This year. Nandy, who has been a bit of an Internet sensation since he was just eight, posted a video of herself drumming to the song Everlong by the Foo Fighters. In a caption, she said it was her dream to play with the band's frontman and former Nirvana drummer.

[00:43:49]

Nande told the BBC what happened next.

[00:43:52]

I posted a video of something I know sounds crazy, having fun, I think a week later he said, Oh, he has what?

[00:44:03]

Many in the last week I thought at least a hundred texts for people all over the world saying this girl is challenging. You know, this is my response to your challenge. And now the ball is in your court. Say, take me about three days. You learn it, I will pay it, and that I need to take it out for a couple hours. Make the face I just pulled out, said that I would say that was great and always gracious in defeat.

[00:44:44]

Dave Grohl wrote Nandy her very own song.

[00:45:07]

Day with his anthem, Nandy not jealous at all. And speaking of rock solid rock stars, do you remember Octobers story about the street musician or Busca in the beautiful Scottish capital, Edinburgh, whose guitar was grabbed and broken by a drunken philistine? Well, Matt Grant posted about the attack online. And much to his surprise, Jack White, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the band The White Stripes, heard about it and bought him a brand new Fender Stratocaster.

[00:45:36]

Matt Grant, unsurprisingly, thinks Jack White is, and I quote, a legend.

[00:45:43]

And you are all legends, too. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen and a huge thank you to everyone who has been in touch, especially the ones who sent him pictures of their dogs and cats and snakes and birds and horses, cows and indeed lizards. That's it from us for now. But normal service will resume with the Global News podcast later. If you would like to comment on this podcast or you just want to say hello.

[00:46:05]

The email address remains a global podcast at BBC dot com dot UK the studio manager. Today was Joe Leeds. The producer was, of course, Peter Goffin. And our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Lannett. If you are celebrating Merry Christmas and whether you are or not, we wish you peace, health and joy until next time.

[00:46:25]

Goodbye.