Thirty Things: Did You Know...?

British actor John Boyega returns in the Last Jedi/DISNEY & LUCASFILM.

Navigable, negatory and negligent news nuggets picked from the press.

1. Scientists have found a new solar system filled with planets that look like Earth and could support life, NASA has announced.
2. Scientists are beginning to unlock the secrets of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. It is the biggest storm in the solar system which has been in existence for more than 150 years and is wider than the Earth.
3. A project searching for intelligent life in the cosmos is going to check the first known interstellar asteroid for signs of alien technology.
4. US technology giant Apple has bought the smaller London company Shazam in what is rumoured to be one of Apple's most expensive takeovers to date.
5. A hospital anaesthetist has slammed taxi firm Uber for quoting her up to £149 for a 10-mile trip to work in the snow, which she said was "outrageous and unethical" and chose to go with a local firm who charged £30.
6. A woman died at her Plymouth home after a call handler refused to send a crew to a fire in her house, an inquest was told.
7. British TV presenter Keith Chegwin, who has died aged 60, had a career spanning five decades.
8. Danish scientists believe they've discovered the longest-living vertebrate: a Greenland shark that could be as old as 512. If the data proves correct, the shark could have been alive before Galileo Galilei was convicted of heresy and before Dutch settlers arrived in New York City.
9. UK inflation rose to 3.1% in November, the highest in nearly six years, as the squeeze on households continued.
10. Part of one of London's biggest fatbergs - a congealed concoction of fat, oil, grease, wet wipes and sanitary products clogging up sewers below Whitechapel - is going to be put on display in the Museum of London next year.
11. A 24-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of trespass at Buckingham Palace.
12. In England, Wales and Scotland, sex work is illegal when someone is forced to sell themselves against their will, solicits for work on the street or keeps a brothel.
13. A court in India has disregarded a woman's right to choose her husband.
14. A court in Egypt has reportedly jailed for two years a singer who appeared in a music video in her underwear while suggestively eating a banana.
15. A Tennessee boy has been inundated with support from celebrities on social media after a video of him tearfully recounting being bullied at school went viral. It drew the attention of Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg and other celebrities, many of whom made offers of friendship and gifts.
16. Charlie Chaplin's family have written an open letter to ask for London's Cinema Museum to be saved. The museum, housed in the former Lambeth workhouse where Chaplin once lived, could be under threat when its lease expires next March.
17. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has the critics in raptures, but when it comes to critics, Star Wars usually baffles first time round, history shows.
18. Netflix has defended a tweet that revealed 53 people had watched its new Christmas film every day for 18 days in a row. Netflix has been studying its user data closely for some time but doesn't often share it.
19. Reindeer were a hugely important animal for the Stone Age, hunter-gatherer people of Europe.
20. The UK's highest mountain is not in the UK.
21. A mansion worth an estimated £2.3m is being offered as a raffle's star prize.
22. Seventy-two-year-old Barry Fox is one of hundreds of people saved from scams after bank staff stopped him spending £10,000 on a fictitious Rolls Royce in the UK.
23. "Heat-not-burn" tobacco products are harmful to health even though they are safer than regular cigarettes, say UK experts.
24. Facts that everyone can agree on are the cornerstone of democracy and do exist - despite the rise of "fake news", a UK minister has said.
25. The Washington Post says it has uncovered a failed "sting operation" by a group trying to peddle a sensational but false story to its journalists.
26. Decades ago, Jessica Leeds says Donald Trump groped her on a flight. It's a story she first shared during the 2016 election - and multiple other women soon followed suit. Some of them are now demanding that Congress holds the president accountable for the allegations.
27. President Donald Trump recorded an automated phone message backing Republican Roy Moore, a Senate candidate accused of sexual misconduct on the eve of an election, but it didn't help: Doug Jones became the first Democrat in 25 years to win a US Senate seat for Alabama.
28. The mother of a child abused by a paedophile hospital doctor says her son has been "destroyed" by what happened. Myles Bradbury was jailed for 22 years in December 2014 after admitting abusing 18 victims, some of whom had haemophilia, leukaemia and other serious illnesses, at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.
29. BBC Wales has reported of historic sexual abuse by monks at an abbey, where it later emerged a fugitive child sex offender had fled to hide out.
30. A man is being held after an attempted terror attack at New York City's main bus terminal.

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