good news

Plus: A gin distiller cooks up hand sanitizer; suburban aerobics at the recommended social distance

The earth heals, an expensive scandal investigation, and other stories we give a thumbs up or down to from this week

A manipulated study, an anti-ISIS coalition, and other good or bad stories that caught our eye this week

In the headlines: Quebec passes right-to-die legislation, and hope for peace in Afghanistan looks faint

Political football, spending scandals and a wedding ring — cheap!

Our best wishes to Brandon Grossutti, owner of the newest restaurant in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Since opening the doors, his customers have endured daily protests from a small but committed group of anti-poverty activists who claim the eatery, Pidgin, is Exhibit A of the regrettable gentrification sweeping the notorious neighbourhood.

Ann Weiszmann has an understandable fascination with Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews by giving them doctored identity papers called “shutz-passes.” After all, her mother, then known as Judith Kopstein, was one of those Wallenberg saved. So when Canada issued a stamp in January honouring the great man, Weiszmann bought several booklets in Toronto. When she gave the stamps a close look she was stunned to see a photo of her mother as a 14-year-old, staring back. Canada Post has used a copy of Judith’s 1944 schutz-pass as the stamp’s background. Judith Weiszmann, 83, a retired structural engineer living in Winnipeg, is honoured to be linked with one of her heroes, she told The National Post. She and her mother were stopped by the Hungarian Gestapo. “Those papers saved our lives.”

Canadians raised the most money of all the participating countries during Movember, a November funding drive where men grow moustaches to support prostate cancer and men’s health charities.

The Tesla Model S has been names Motor Trend magazine’s car of the year, marking the first time ever that an electric car has received the honour since the magazine started the competition in 1949.

‘You just wanted to belittle the president by linking him to people like me’

Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by Taliban for speaking up against the regime, is able to stand with assistance, doctors told The Associated Press Friday.

Author Mo Yan marked a first for China when he became the only Chinese person to win the Nobel Prize for Literature Thursday.