Saturday's global round up of postive news to brighten the day.
Italy has banned cruise ships from the Venice lagoon (again) in what appears to be a final, definitive move and welcomed by anti-cruise ship campaigners. “We finally seem to have got there,” said Tommaso Cacciari, the leader of No Grandi Navi (No Big Ships), an activist group that has been protesting against the vessels for more than a decade. Spurred to act quickly after UNESCO threatened to put Venice on its endangered list unless Italy permanently banned cruise ships from docking in the world heritage site, this is nothing but good news for La Serenissima. Finalmente!
The Irish language has long wrestled with the description of people who are not white. An fear dubh could refer to a man of any colour with black hair or black skin. When capitalised, Fear Dubh has also referred to the devil. For generations, Irish speakers used an odd alternative, duine gorm (blue person), to indicate people who were not white. Others used duine daite (coloured person). Now the guardians of the Irish language have entered a new term in the National Terminology Database: duine de dhath (person of colour). Ola Majekodunmi, the writer and Irish language activist, put forward the new phrase.
Green is in vogue as sustainability becomes a necessity in urban planning. And the Marina Tower, near Athens, from Foster + Partners is slated to become the "first green high-rise building in Greece", in addition to the tallest building in the nation at 200m. And, with only sustainable materials used in its construction (which could involve a wooden superstructure), it also feels like the world's largest plant.
Following the sad news in June that the Hubble telescope had shut itself down after 30 years of remarkable service, NASA says it still has one or two tricks up its sleeve that may, just may, bring it back to life. In space, you can't hold your breath. But we're doing it anyway.
Volkswagen foresees EV price parity with ICE by 2025, with 50 percent of its car sales being EV by 2030. As Volkswagen lays out its roadmap for the rest of the decade, it thinks electric cars sales will really start to accelerate around 2025.
After two adult beavers were successfully reintroduced into a National Trust estate in Exmoor, south west England, in January 2020, park authorities announced this week that the female has given birth. The first time in the UK for 400 years! Hunted to extinction in the 16th century, beavers have been making a slow comeback since the early 2000s, thanks to reintroduction efforts at several sites.
The world’s largest renewables project has been proposed in Western Australia, covering an area half the size of Belgium. The Western Green Energy Hub would include as much as 50 gigawatts of wind and solar over more than 15,000 sq.km (5,800 square miles), according to the international group that’s planning the project. It could cost US$75 billion, with production starting in 2030.
You don’t have to eat much less to start seeing results. According to the UK’s expert group on calorie reduction in the new National Food Strategy report, weight gain at a population level could be halted completely if we all reduced our consumption of calories by 24kcal per person per day. That’s equal to not eating a Jelly Baby a day. Problem solved!
Tomorrow is issue No.5 of the OGN Sunday Magazine. We hope you enjoy it.
Dive in Deeper
Daredevil Ibex
Baby ibex, clearly with zero vertigo issues, hurredly descends a precipitous mountain to successfully escape the unwanted attentions of a wiley fox.