Saturday, April 4, 2026 — Edition No. 49 — The Cornmill Intelligencer

← Past Editions · Edition No. 49 · Saturday, April 4, 2026

Today’s outlook: 6,000 years is a long nap, but spring has a way of waking everyone up

Dogs & Animals Wildlife

'A Once-in-a-Lifetime Discovery': Animals Thought Extinct for 6,000 Years Have Been Found Alive in the Wild

Two marsupial species known only from ancient fossils have been confirmed living in the rainforests of New Guinea — rewriting what science thought it knew about extinction

Imagine holding an animal that the world believed vanished before the pyramids were built. Before Stonehenge. Before the wheel.

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News Glasgow

Glasgow's Heart Is Coming Back: George Square to Reopen to the Public This September

After months behind hoardings, the city's most famous public space is about to welcome Glaswegians home

There's a moment every Glaswegian knows. You step off the train at Queen Street, walk out into the daylight, and there it is — George Square. The statues. The pigeons. The City Chambers standing grand across the way. The place where you met your pals, watched the Christmas lights come on, or just sat on a bench and watched the world go by.

That moment is coming back.

Council Leader Susan Aitken confirmed this week that George Square will reopen to the public in September, following the completion of an ambitious £20 million transformation that has been years in the making. The physical work is expected to be finished by the end of August, with a formal civic reopening event planned for the following month.

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What's On Glasgow

Dance, Dragons and a Haggis Called Hamish: The Easter Show Glasgow Families Will Love

A colourful, BSL-integrated adventure for ages 4–7 arrives at Platform Glasgow on 10 April

If your Easter weekend plans extend no further than chocolate eggs and a wet walk round the park, allow us to suggest something rather more magical.

On 10 April, Platform Glasgow in the city's East End plays host to A Home For Hamish — an immersive, interactive performance that weaves together dance and British Sign Language in a sensory wonderland aimed at children aged four to seven and their families.

Created by Deaf dance artist Clare Adam and Autistic dance artist Lesley Howard, and presented by the company Just Us, the show follows the story of May and their imaginary friend Hamish the Haggis as they travel across Scotland in search of the perfect night's sleep.

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What's On Glasgow

Grammy, BRITs, MOBOs — and Now Glasgow: Olivia Dean Brings Her Triumphant 2026 to the OVO Hydro

The most decorated British artist of 2026 brings her Art of Loving tour to two Hydro nights this month — with an extra date added after phenomenal demand

There are good years in music, and then there is what Olivia Dean has had. A Grammy for Best New Artist. Four BRIT Awards — Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, Pop Act, and Song of the Year. Three MOBOs — Best Female Act, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year. No other British artist has come close to sweeping all three major ceremonies in a single season. And on Wednesday 22 and Thursday 23 April, she brings it all to Glasgow's OVO Hydro.

If you are not yet familiar with Dean, the short version is this: she is a 26-year-old Londoner, the granddaughter of an immigrant, who first fell in love with music after buying a Leona Lewis CD from Woolworths. She has been building towards this moment for a decade, working alongside her best friend and manager Emily, releasing her critically acclaimed debut album Messy in 2023, and then, late last year, delivering the record that changed everything.

The Art of Loving, her second album, is the kind of record that arrives fully formed and immediately feels as though it has always existed. A richly textured exploration of love, dating and human connection, it blends soul, bossa nova, trip-hop and jazz with a pop sensibility that has won fans across every generation. The Guardian described her songcraft as "sophisticated and cosmopolitan," while the BBC's Mark Savage called the album "timeless" — and he is not wrong. Songs like "Man I Need," which spent months lodged in the UK Top 10 and reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "So Easy (To Fall In Love)" have that rare quality of sounding both intimately personal and universally understood.

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What's On Glasgow

Glasgow's Biggest Summer Party Returns: TRNSMT 2026 Hits Glasgow Green This June

Richard Ashcroft, Kasabian and Lewis Capaldi lead an all-star lineup as Scotland's largest music festival takes over the city's iconic park

Glasgow Green is about to become the centre of the musical universe once again. TRNSMT, Scotland's biggest music festival, returns from Friday 19th to Sunday 21st June 2026, bringing three days of live music, sunshine (we live in hope), and that unmistakable Glasgow festival atmosphere to one of the city's most beloved parks.

And what a lineup it is.

Friday night belongs to Richard Ashcroft, the former Verve frontman whose anthems — "Bitter Sweet Symphony," "Lucky Man," "The Drugs Don't Work" — have soundtracked three decades of British music. Fresh from supporting Oasis across the UK and Ireland in 2025, Ashcroft brings a catalogue of era-defining songs to Glasgow Green.

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Dogs & Animals Wildlife

Hundreds of Elephants Are Coming Home to Virunga — and the Mountain Gorillas Just Had Twins

After decades of conflict, Africa's oldest national park is witnessing an extraordinary wildlife comeback — and the rangers who made it possible are finally seeing their sacrifices rewarded

For years, Anthony Caere saw nothing but rebels when he flew his anti-poaching helicopter over the forests of Virunga National Park. Now, the Belgian pilot looks down and sees elephants — hundreds of them — reshaping the landscape below.

"They're restoring everything back to what it was 50 years ago and doing so much faster than we could have imagined," Caere said. "If the elephants continue to stay here in these numbers, this place will look totally different in just a few years."

Some 480 African bush elephants have crossed back into Virunga from neighbouring Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, drawn by improved security after decades of devastating conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a homecoming that few dared to hope for.

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News International

Humanity Returns to the Moon: Artemis II Launches Four Astronauts on Historic Lunar Flyby

First crewed mission beyond Earth orbit since 1972 marks the dawn of a new era in lunar exploration — with Scotland playing its part in the space renaissance

The last time human beings headed for the Moon, Richard Nixon was in the White House, the Vietnam War was still raging, and the BBC was broadcasting in black and white on some channels. That was December 1972. On Tuesday evening, after a wait of more than 54 years, we finally went back.

NASA's Artemis II mission launched at 6:35 PM EDT on April 1 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft on a ten-day voyage around the Moon and back. The SLS (Space Launch System) rocket — the most powerful NASA has ever flown — lit up the Florida sky with 8.8 million pounds of thrust as an estimated 400,000 spectators cheered from causeways and beaches along the Space Coast.

"We have a beautiful moonrise. We're headed right at it," said mission commander Reid Wiseman, as the spacecraft climbed into orbit.

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What's On Glasgow

Beluga Lagoon Takes the Barrowland — Not Once But Twice

Wildlife filmmaker Andrew O'Donnell brings his nature-inspired music back to Glasgow's most iconic stage for two headline nights next weekend

There are gigs, and then there are Barrowland gigs. And then — rarer still — there are two-night Barrowland gigs.

Next weekend, Beluga Lagoon — the musical project of Scottish wildlife cameraman Andrew O'Donnell — headlines the Barrowland Ballroom on both Friday 10th and Saturday 11th April, a back-to-back run that places him in very select company at Glasgow's most storied venue.

It's a remarkable moment for a musician who, by his own admission, never planned on performing live at all.

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AI Model Releases

Google Opens the Vault: Gemma 4 Brings Frontier AI to Every Developer — Free, No Restrictions

Search giant switches to the most permissive open-source licence ever applied to frontier AI models — and Scottish developers stand to benefit

Here's what just happened: Google released a family of powerful AI models that anyone — hobbyist, startup founder, university researcher — can now use to build whatever they like, commercially, with no permission needed, no fees, and no strings attached.

That's the practical upshot of Gemma 4, launched this week under the Apache 2.0 licence, the gold standard of open-source permissiveness. It is, by any measure, one of the most significant licensing moves a major Western AI lab has made.

Previous versions of Google's Gemma models came with a bespoke Google licence that many developers found uncomfortably restrictive. The old terms included a prohibited-use policy Google could update unilaterally, required developers to enforce Google's rules across all Gemma-based projects, and could even be read to claim rights over other AI models trained using Gemma-generated data.

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Dogs & Animals Wildlife

Scotland's Red Squirrel Revolution: How Volunteers Are Protecting Britain's Last Great Stronghold

Scotland is home to 80% of the UK's remaining red squirrels — and an army of citizen conservationists is helping them stage a quiet comeback

Spring has arrived in Scotland's woodlands, and with it comes the sight that has charmed generations: red squirrels darting between the branches, bushy tails catching the light, as the breeding season gets under way.

It is a scene that feels timeless. But behind the charm lies a story of survival — and of the remarkable human effort keeping it alive.

Scotland is home to an estimated 230,000 red squirrels, according to Scottish Forestry — roughly 80% of the entire UK population of 287,000. That makes Scotland the last great stronghold for one of Britain's most iconic mammals, and the place where the battle for the red squirrel's future will be won or lost.

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Audio Equipment

Built for the Road, Not the Listening Room: Telegrapher's Carbon Fox Refuses to Trust DSP

London startup's carbon-fibre reference monitor, co-designed with Muse's FOH engineer, bets everything on analogue in a digital world

When every other monitor manufacturer is racing to add more DSP calibration, more software correction, more room-analysis algorithms, one London startup has gone in exactly the opposite direction. Telegrapher Speakers' new Carbon Fox is a touring reference monitor built around a completely analogue signal path — no digital signal processing, no calibration software, no room correction. Just signal in, sound out.

It is, the company claims, the world's first fully carbon-fibre reference monitor, and it was born not in a laboratory but on the road — specifically, the world tours of Muse.

Marc Carolan has mixed front-of-house for Muse since 2001 and has also toured with Snow Patrol — more than two decades of arenas, stadiums and festivals across the globe. He had been using Telegrapher's original Fox monitors as his personal reference on tour, carrying them from venue to venue to tune PA systems before each show. But he wanted something tougher.

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