The Know Daily - Monday 3rd April 2023

_{Read in 5m 38s ∙ Listening to Maisie Peters} 

Four cheetah cubs have been born in a wildlife sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh more than 70 years after they were declared officially extinct in India. The “momentous event”, as India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav described it, is the result of a wider, decades-long project to reintroduce the big cats to the South Asian country. “I congratulate the entire team of Project Cheetah for their relentless efforts in bringing back cheetahs to India and for their efforts in correcting an ecological wrong done in the past,” said Yadav when he announced the news.

 🛂 Passport problems

Passport Office workers have today begun a five-week strike over pay, pensions and job security. The action comes at one of the busiest times of the year for the service, as people rush to renew their passports ahead of the summer holidays.

Why are workers striking?
Over 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union will walk out in eight locations across the UK. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka has previously said the action was over the government refusing to increase a proposed 2% pay rise. The government has urged the union to “recognise what is reasonable and affordable”, according to the BBC.

Will passport wait times be affected?
At peak times - which includes the month of April - the Passport Office can receive 250,000 applications per week, according to travel expert Simon Calder. But while the PCS Union has warned of delays in processing and sending out passports in the run-up to summer, the Home Office has said that its guidance remains the same. "There are currently no plans to change our guidance which states that it takes up to 10 weeks to get a passport," it said.

Current waiting times for first adult passports are just over 18 days, according to an independent crowd sourcing website which relies on people inputting their own application wait times.

Is there anything else I should know?
Simon Calder told ITV’s This Morning that a recent surge in passport applications may be down to the fact that people think they need to change from a red passport to a newer blue one. He reminded viewers that this isn’t the case and urged them to check official guidance.

 📞 Half a century of handheld calls

Fifty years ago, on 3 April 1973, an inventor called Marty Cooper made the first public call on a handheld portable telephone from a street in New York. Using a prototype developed by his team at Motorola, he famously rang a rival at Bell Laboratories (owned by AT&T). The phone was a true brick of a device, weighing over a kilo and measuring 27cm.

The call “kick-start[ed] the mobile phone revolution” but it didn’t feel like a historic moment at the time, Cooper told the Associated Press (AP) at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. “The only thing that I was worried about: ‘Is this thing going to work?’ And it did,” he added.

What happened next?
Despite the success of Cooper’s call, many people at Motorola “felt mobile phones would never be a mass-market consumer product”, reported The Guardian in 2013.

It wasn’t until 1984, a decade later, that the company brought portable phones to market with the launch of the DynaTAC - a handheld device nicknamed “The Brick”, worth around $10,000 in today’s prices. Another decade later, the first smartphone went on sale. The $899 IBM Simon weighed 500g, had an hour’s battery and could be linked up to a fax machine.

In the years since, phones have undergone a dramatic transformation from simple communication devices to an integral part of modern life. Today, these handheld devices are used by billions of people worldwide on a daily basis.

What’s the situation now?
There are signs that the smartphone market has stagnated over the last few years. Global shipments at the end of 2022 plunged to the lowest levels since 2013, with experts citing “significantly dampened consumer demand, inflation, and economic uncertainties”.

But serious innovation is still a theme of the mobile phone world. Several startups - including Elon Musk’s Neuralink - are working on technologies that would insert Bluetooth-enabled implants into the brain, allowing users to control a smartphone anywhere they go.

Cooper, now 94, thinks this science fiction-sounding initiative isn’t far off from becoming a reality. “You ingest food, you create energy,” he told AP. “Why not have this receiver for your ear embedded under your skin, powered by your body?”

🐝 Manchester’s tourist tax: Overnight guests in hotels or apartments will now be charged £1 a night visitor tax, in the first scheme of its kind in the UK. Officials hope it will raise £3 million a year for the city.

🛴 The wheels come off: Parisians have voted overwhelmingly to ban rental e-scooters from the French capital - the vote was non-binding, but city authorities have vowed to follow the result.

🇫🇮 Finland votes: Finland’s prime minister Sanna Marin has lost her battle for a second term in office, after her centre-left party was narrowly beaten into third place by its right-wing rivals.

🐮 Making mooves: Dairy cows could soon be fed methane suppressants as part of a plan to cut down on greenhouse gases, according to Sky News.

🏆 Olivier Awards 2023: Paul Mescal won best actor for A Streetcar Named Desire, Jodie Comer won best actress for Prima Facie, while My Neighbour Totoro picked up six Oliviers.

Trivia answer: A) American Florence Griffith-Joyner, known as “Flo-Jo”, has held the women's world record in the 100-metre sprint since 1988, with a time of 10.49 seconds.

Got a friend who might love The Know? As a tiny team with a big mission, we’re so grateful when readers spread the word about us - and we’ll reward you with things like a £30 HURR gift card, free Grubby recipe kits, CRU Kafe coffee and merch to say thanks.

How did you find today's email?
😍 Loved it 😕 Could be better

Daily emails too much for you? Switch to our weekly Friday edition.