Friday, March 27, 2026 — Edition No. 41 — The Cornmill Intelligencer

← Past Editions · Edition No. 41 · Friday, March 27, 2026

Today’s outlook: Warm front of interspecies cuddles moving in — with scattered acts of heroism

Dogs & Animals

The Crow Who Fed a Kitten, the Dog Who Calmed a Cheetah: The Science Behind Unlikely Animal Friendships

From zoo conservation programmes to an Ayrshire wildlife rescue, interspecies bonds are more than viral fluff — science suggests they reveal something profound about how social attachment really works

In 1999, a crow in a Massachusetts garden began feeding a stray kitten — bringing it scraps and standing guard while it ate. The pair were inseparable for months, grooming, playing, and sleeping side by side. The footage, captured by a bewildered homeowner, became one of the earliest viral animal videos. A quarter of a century later, the internet's appetite for such stories has only grown. But scientists are now asking a far more interesting question than "isn't that adorable?" They want to know: why does it happen at all?

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Science

Fifty Years On, Apollo Moon Rocks Finally Reveal Their Magnetic Secret

A half-century of patience pays off as Oxford scientists solve the riddle of the Moon's vanishing magnetism

Somewhere in a laboratory at the University of Oxford, a small piece of the Moon sits under a light it has not seen for four and a half billion years. It is roughly the size of a thumbnail — grey, unremarkable, ancient beyond comprehension. And it has just answered a question that has nagged at planetary scientists since Neil Armstrong's crew brought it home.

Why were the Apollo Moon rocks magnetic?

The Moon, after all, has no magnetic field. It is a cold, quiet world with no molten churning core, no invisible shield deflecting the solar wind. Yet when NASA's astronauts returned from the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972, the samples they carried told a different story. Locked inside those rocks were unmistakable signatures of intense magnetism — evidence of a field that, at times, rivalled or even surpassed Earth's own.

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Community

Heroes Among Us: Scotland's Unsung Champions Show Why the BBC Make a Difference Awards Matter

Nominations for the 2026 awards close on Monday 31 March — and last year's Scottish winners prove that extraordinary kindness is closer than you think

The BBC is calling on communities across the UK to nominate their local heroes for the 2026 Make a Difference Awards — and with nominations closing on Monday 31 March, the clock is ticking.

Now in their fifth year, the awards celebrate the volunteers, neighbours and community champions who quietly transform the lives of those around them. Last year, more than 12,500 people were nominated across the UK, and the Scottish winners offer a powerful reminder of just how much goodness exists on our doorsteps.

At 90 years old, Glasgow's Jane Finnie could be forgiven for putting her feet up. Instead, she spends her days cooking soup for neighbours, befriending young men fresh out of difficult circumstances, and supporting people with dementia so their carers can catch a breath.

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News Clydebank

Clydebank's Derelict Radnor Park Hotel to Make Way for 34 New Homes

Long-standing Kilbowie Road eyesore set for demolition as Cruden Homes plans accessible apartments on prominent corner site

If you've walked up Kilbowie Road in recent years, you'll know the sight well — the old Radnor Park Hotel, boarded up, crumbling, and doing nothing for anybody. That's about to change.

Cruden Homes has submitted plans to demolish the derelict 1960s hotel on the corner of Kilbowie Road and Young Street and replace it with 34 new apartments, designed by Anderson Bell + Christie architects.

The development will be built to Housing for Varying Needs standards — a Scottish framework that ensures homes are accessible and adaptable for people of all abilities. In practice, that means wider doorways, level access throughout, and layouts designed so that residents can remain in their homes comfortably as their needs change over time. The plans include wheelchair-accessible flats alongside a mix of one and two-bedroom apartments.

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Audio Equipment

The Holy Trinity of Neve: Three New Products Land at NAMM — and All Three Ship in April

Console-grade 88RS EQ for under a grand, a dual 1073 with built-in conversion, and mastering-grade Dante — Neve has just refreshed every tier of the studio market in one announcement

There are moments in pro audio that make you put down your tea and pay attention. Neve rolling up to NAMM 2026 with three simultaneous product launches — spanning EQ, preamps, and conversion — is emphatically one of them.

All three ship in April 2026. All three are priced to actually sell. And taken together, they represent the most comprehensive single announcement Neve has made in years, touching every tier of the professional studio market from the bedroom producer to the broadcast facility.

Let's start with the one that will have engineers reaching for their wallets. The 88R LBEQ takes the four-band fully parametric EQ section from Neve's flagship 88RS console — the desk you'll find in Abbey Road, Air Studios, and facilities where the coffee costs more than your rent — and packs it into a single-slot 500-series module.

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Community

Time to Get Your Gloves On: The Great British Spring Clean Is Back — and Scotland Needs You

From Glasgow's parks to the banks of the Clyde, thousands of volunteers are rolling up their sleeves for Scotland's biggest mass litter pick. Here's how to join them.

Spring has arrived, and across Scotland something rather wonderful is happening. In parks and riverbanks, along canal towpaths and suburban streets, thousands of people are pulling on their gloves, grabbing a bin bag, and doing something magnificently simple: picking up litter.

Keep Scotland Beautiful's annual #SpringCleanScotland campaign is well underway, running from 13 March through to 24 April, and the numbers are already impressive. More than 10,000 volunteers have registered across the country, with 21 clean-up events planned in Glasgow alone and 29 across West Dunbartonshire.

The Scottish campaign runs alongside the Great British Spring Clean, organised by Keep Britain Tidy, which has mobilised more than 400,000 volunteers across the UK since 2016 and seen over 4.5 million bags of litter pledged for collection.

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Audio Film & TV

Steinberg Drops Nuendo 15 — and Post-Production Engineers Have a Brand New Toolkit

Folder Group Tracks, a dedicated Analyzer Track, and a raft of automation improvements land in the industry-standard post-production DAW

Steinberg released Nuendo 15 on March 25, and for post-production engineers who spend their working lives inside the industry's most widely adopted film and TV audio DAW, this one feels different. After several cycles of incremental updates, version 15 delivers the kind of structural changes that actually reshape daily workflow.

Two features lead the charge: Folder Group Tracks and the new Analyzer Track.

Here's the problem Nuendo 15 solves. In every previous version, folder tracks and group tracks were separate entities. You'd create a folder to organise your dialogue tracks visually, then create a separate group bus to route those same tracks for processing. Two track types doing related but disconnected jobs — and in a feature-length dialogue edit with 200-plus tracks, that redundancy adds up fast.

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News Clydebank

West Dunbartonshire Balances the Books — and Keeps the Swimming Lessons Free

Council protects breakfast clubs, music tuition, bowling greens and free parking despite £6.44m funding gap

Free swimming lessons for primary school children, breakfast clubs, music tuition and bowling greens have all survived West Dunbartonshire Council's latest round of budget deliberations — despite the authority facing a £6.44 million funding gap.

Councillors agreed the 2026/27 budget at a meeting this month, choosing to protect a raft of community services that had been earmarked as potential savings. The decision means P6 and P7 pupils across the area will continue to receive free swimming lessons, while early-start clubs providing nutritious breakfasts to around 350 young people will remain free of charge.

Free music tuition in schools has also been retained, as has funding for six bowling clubs across the authority — services that were on the chopping block during budget consultations.

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Dogs & Animals

Back from the Brink: The Remarkable Conservation Wins Giving Nature — and Us — Real Hope

From 22 California condors to 600, from silent Yellowstone valleys to wolf song — the comeback stories that prove we can get it right

There are days when the news from the natural world reads like a long, slow elegy. Species lost. Habitats shrinking. The relentless arithmetic of decline.

But buried in the data — and sometimes soaring magnificently above it — are stories that run the other way entirely. Stories of creatures hauled back from the very edge by human effort, stubbornness, and something that looks very much like love.

Here are four of the most extraordinary.

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What's On Glasgow

An Evening With Gregor Fisher: Scotland's Comedy Legend Comes Home to the Pavilion

From Rab C. Nesbitt to Love Actually, Gregor Fisher brings a career's worth of stories and laughter to Glasgow's beloved Pavilion Theatre on 22nd and 23rd April

There are certain faces that belong to Glasgow the way the Clyde belongs to the city — inseparable, irreplaceable, and liable to make you laugh even when the weather is doing its worst.

Gregor Fisher is one of those faces. And on 22nd and 23rd April 2026, he is bringing it — along with four decades of stories, characters, and comic genius — to The Pavilion Theatre for An Evening With Gregor Fisher, two nights that promise to be among the most entertaining Glasgow has seen in years.

To call Gregor Fisher "Rab C. Nesbitt" is both perfectly understandable and hopelessly incomplete. Yes, the string-vested, bandage-headed philosopher of Govan is the role that made Fisher a household name — and what a creation it was. From his first appearance on BBC Scotland's Naked Video in 1986 to the full series that ran from 1988 to 2014, Nesbitt became more than a sitcom character. He became a mirror held up to Glasgow itself: funny, furious, tender, and utterly unafraid of the truth.

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