Global Good News Summary
- Editor OGN Daily
- 21 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Quick synopsis of all last week's top good news stories.
Wildlife & Conservation
Keystone Species: Across Romania, Spain and Bulgaria, Europe’s skies are beginning to fill with giant silhouettes once again. Cinereous vultures are restoring a keystone scavenger that stabilises food webs, limits disease and signals the revival of functioning ecosystems. The birds have a wingspan up to 10 ft 2 in and strong feet, which are adapted for grasping prey.
Wisdom Returns: One of the world’s most famous birds has returned to her nesting site. Wisdom, the 75-year-old albatross is known as the world’s oldest breeding bird. She has reportedly returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the central Pacific Ocean for the 2025-2026 nesting season.
Pleasant Surprise: New study finds that a reserve in Mozambique has the largest documented breeding population of a rare falcon. Scientists estimate the Niassa Special Reserve hosts 68 - 76 breeding pairs of Taita falcons, likely the world’s biggest population of the rare raptor, given that other population centers have around 10.
Health & Wellbeing
More Vaccines: Gavi and UNICEF have secured a deal to cut the price of the R21 malaria vaccine by 25 percent, down to $2.99 per dose. The savings, roughly $90 million, will finance around 30 million extra doses and reach an estimated 7 million more children over the next five years, even as donor budgets tighten.
First US City: Amid climbing rent prices, many are left struggling to pay for other basic necessities - so one city is using a novel approach to help take financial pressure off residents. Minimum wage hikes in Santa Fe, New Mexico, have historically been linked to consumer prices. But in 2027, the state capital will raise its minimum wage from $15 an hour to $17.50, based on a more complex calculation that also takes fair market rent data into account. The first in the US to do so.
Victim Safety: Germany has taken a landmark step to protect survivors of sexual violence by classifying date rape drugs as weapons under criminal law. This decisive move allows for significantly stricter prosecutions and longer sentences for offenders. This reform sets a powerful new standard for justice and public safety across Europe.
Medical Advances
First Time Ever: In a significant moment for human tissue replication, a 3D-printed cornea has been transplanted onto a legally blind patient's eye, successfully restoring their sight - and could help millions of people around the world. Whilst donor tissue is readily available in some developed countries - it can take years in other countries that don't have eye banks and centralized infrastructure to make tissue available on demand.
Scorpion Venom: Amazingly, scorpions might help save a woman’s life some day. Researchers at the University of São Paulo’s Preto School of Pharmaceutical Sciences have identified that venom of the scorpion Brotheas amazonicus appears to attack breast cancer cells in a way similar to a widely used chemotherapy medication.
mRNA Flu Shot: In a Phase 3 trial, an mRNA influenza vaccine from Pfizer has outperformed standard seasonal flu shots by 34.5 percent. It's yet another sign that this biotechnology is here to stay. Making mRNA vaccines is significantly faster than developing traditional flu shots and this quick turnaround would mean vaccines could be developed in response to more currently circulating flu strains, potentially better protecting people from serious illness.
Medical Advances: Global synopsis of all the top good news stories about medicine and treatments that OGN spotted in November.
Clean Energy
First Country Powered 100 Percent by Solar: It's the eighth country to run exclusively on renewables, but perhaps even more intriguing is the way it was achieved here - they only used agrivoltaics.
Closing The Door: The UK has become the first major economy to call time on new fossil fuel exploration, confirming that no more licenses for oil and gas drilling will be issued in the North Sea. “Britain has just made history,” said Greenpeace.
Uruguay Hits 99 Percent: Uruguay did what most nations still call impossible: it built a power grid that runs almost entirely on renewables - at half the cost of fossil fuels. The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere - if governments have the courage to change the rules. Once the country adjusted the playing field that had long favoured oil and gas, renewables outperformed on every front: halving costs, creating 50,000 jobs, and protecting the economy from price shocks.
Balcony Solar: Germany has quietly become home to over one million mini solar power plants hanging from apartment balconies and mounted on terraces across the country. These simple plug-and-play solar systems, called 'Balkonkraftwerke' in German, demonstrates how regular people are taking clean energy into their own hands.
Utah First Mover: Whilst balcony solar panels are now widespread in countries such as Germany, they have - until now - been stymied in the US by state regulations. That looks set to change as many states are filing bills to join Utah in adopting permission for the panels. The panels simply plug into a standard wall socket and provide enough power to run home appliances free of charge.
Global EV Sales: Around the world, EV sales are up 23 percent from 2024, with 1.9 million new units sold in October alone. Last month, petrol and diesel engines combined fell to just over a third of EU new car sales, with electrified vehicles now dominant. Special shoutout to Latin America, where EV sales rose 55 percent in the third quarter, in a transition that remains largely subsidy-free, and another shoutout to China, where the electric truck surge is starting to seriously dent global demand for diesel.
Environment
Zero to Hero: Romania has achieved an astonishing recycling success and now operates the world's largest fully integrated deposit return system.
COP30 Good News: Whilst it failed on the big ticket stuff - sabotaged yet again by petrostates and their armies of lobbyists - there was plenty to celebrate elsewhere at the global jamboree in Brazil.