Global Good News Summary
- Editor OGN Daily
- Aug 3
- 5 min read
Quick synopsis of all last week's top good news stories.
Health & Wellbeing
Remote Surgery: A doctor in Florida used a robot to remotely perform surgery on a cancer patient thousands of miles away in Africa - with “enormous” humanitarian implications, according to the doctor. The patient was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March, and just months later, the surgeon was able to cut out the cancer.
New Sweet Spot: New research shows that 7,000 steps per day is the magic number.
Disease Elimination: Global progress on trachoma elimination is one of the best things you've probably never heard about. The number of people afflicted worldwide by this bacterial eye infection that can lead to blindness has fallen from 2.8 million in 2016 to 1.2 million in 2025. In the last 12 months alone, seven countries have eliminated the disease altogether.
Doubled in One Year: In 2015, then-mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo first started advancing the city’s cycling plan with a 150 million euro investment that would double the number of cycling lanes and dramatically build out infrastructure. Her vision was to make Paris a “100 percent cycling city,” and it's working. Between October 2022 and October 2023, a study found that the number of people cycling in Paris doubled in a single year.
Preventive Medicine: A trove of one billion MRI images is now open to researchers worldwide. Studies show the scans can flag dozens of diseases years before symptoms; scientists say the data set will transform preventive medicine by revealing how ageing and pathology evolve in unprecedented detail. On a similar theme...
Whole-Health Hospital: In Arkansas, a new medical school - the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine - has just opened that aims to train a new generation of doctors on preventative medicine and whole-health principles, financed by one of the world’s wealthiest women, Walmart heiress Alice Walton. She would like to see what the American health service sector would look like if doctors spent time focusing on preventing sickness from occurring rather than treating it once it arrives.
Sleep Apnea Pill: The first oral pill for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) could be around the corner after pharmaceutical company Apnimed reported positive results from its stage III clinical trial. The company plans to file a New Drug Application with the US FDA in early 2026.
Llamas & Schizophrenia: Scientists in France have harnessed a unique llama antibody to create ‘nanobodies’ capable of slipping through the blood-brain barrier to target receptors, and one day could be used to treat schizophrenia - one of the world’s most complex mental illnesses.
Wildlife & Conservation
Extinction Averted: “Big, fluffy, and dopey-looking,” the Livingstone's Fruit Bat is a species of flying fox that's endemic to only two islands in the world: Anjouan and Mohéli, off the African coast in the Western Indian Ocean. They have long been critically endangered in the wild, except, thanks to the work of a local NGO, that's not a thing anymore.
Marine Reserves: Spain now protects around 25 percent of its waters after adding five new marine reserves, as part of its drive to hit 30 percent by 2023, says EuroWeekly
Cause for Celebration: A little fury bundle of joy is the first snow leopard to be born at England's Chester Zoo. “It’s a truly historic moment and a real cause for celebration - not just for our teams here but also for the future of this magnificent species globally.”
Wildlife Overpass: Colorado is constructing what state transportation officials say will be the "world's largest" wildlife overpass crossing - designed to keep both animals (migrating elk, mule deer, pronghorn and other large game) and drivers safer on one of the state's busiest stretches of highway. It's expected to curb vehicle-animal collisions along the corridor by 90 percent.
New Tech
New High-Res Satellite: A pioneering, high-resolution satellite blasted into orbit this week in a collaboration between the US and India. It will track - in unprecedented detail - the ground under our feet and the water that flows through it, providing valuable information for farmers, climate scientists and natural disaster response teams.
A.I. Aeneas: A new A.I. tool developed by Google DeepMind helps scholars fill in words missing from ancient inscriptions and estimate historical data about the textual artifacts, making educated guesses based on context and similar inscriptions. The tool “reasons across thousands of Latin inscriptions, retrieving textual and contextual parallels in seconds that allow historians to interpret and build upon the model’s findings.”
Electric Vehicles
Nepal Now a Global Leader: Electric vehicles in the Himalayan nation now account for seven out of ten new car purchases.
A Good Extinction: The Norwegian Road Federation says almost 90 percent of new cars sold in Norway in 2024 were fully electric. By the end of this year, the government expects sales of new gasoline and diesel cars to fall to zero and meet its goal to end the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2025.
Climate & Sustainability
The Carbon Garden: A new attraction has opened at London's famous Royal Botanical Gardens, aiming to inspire visitors to take actions in their everyday lives to help support our planet.
Positive Tipping Point: The global switch to renewable energy has passed a “positive tipping point”, according to two new United Nations reports. Solar and wind are now almost always the least expensive and fastest option for new energy generation. In 2024, data reveals that additions to global renewable energy of nearly 20 percent over 2023 is the highest annual expansion since records began. Almost all new power capacity built around the world came from renewables, and almost every continent on Earth added more renewables capacity than fossil fuels last year. Better yet, over 90 percent of new renewables worldwide produced electricity for less than the cheapest fossil fuel alternative.
Zero Waste: Scientists have figured out how to turn Earth’s most abundant mineral into zero-waste battery metals. The most abundant mineral in earth’s crust is something called olivine and New Zealand engineers have figured out how to dissolve olivine to yield silica (50%), magnesium (40%) and nickel-manganese-cobalt hydroxide (10%) for lithium-ion cathodes, leaving only brine.
Industrial Symbiosis: Ben & Jerry’s is successfully recycling its food waste into renewable energy. Here’s the scoop: At a facility in Vermont, leftover ice cream and other ingredients go into an anaerobic digester, where microbes digest the waste and generate methane gas, which is then captured and converted into energy - powering the facility and contributes left-over energy to Vermont's grid.
Coal Collapse: Global coal cargoes shrank by 6 percent in the first half of 2025. Doesn’t sound like much, but that drop erased 46 million tons of trade. Plus, sanctions are squeezing Russia’s coal sector toward bankruptcy with 30 companies risk insolvency after devastating losses in 2024; and in the United States, coal generation is down 65 percent from its 2010 peak; analysts say cheaper renewables and batteries should keep the doors firmly shut on new plants.
That's it, you are up to date. Thank you for reading OGN Daily and please don't hesitate to share the good news by telling friends and family about us.
