Making sure the week gets off to a sunny start with today's global round up of positive news nuggets.
Happy Holi!
It's time for the most colourful festival of the year! The Hindu festival of Holi is today, and people in India and across the world celebrate love and the brightness of spring with colourful powders commonly called gulal. Though the powders can be natural or artificial, the natural versions are often made of well-known minerals and spices, like indigo and turmeric. A large part of the festival focuses on ancient legends that tell of the triumph of good over evil. And, of course, there's plenty of music and food to go around.
Rembrandt Online
The seventeenth-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn was known for his use of contrast and experimental brushwork in his stunning paintings, but many people would be hard-pressed to name more than one or two of his works. Now, thanks to the work of New York's Morgan Library and Museum, you can view almost 500 original Rembrandt etchings online for free. Take a look...
Kindness of Strangers
Strangers came together in Utah to milk 50 goats that were stuck in a snowstorm. Jose Garcia was stopped in traffic for five hours and knew the goats he was transporting had painfully swollen udders. Once cars started moving, he drove to a livestock supply store in Stansbury Park and asked for help. Garcia gave a quick tutorial, and soon, employees and locals were milking goats in the parking lot. "I now consider them all friends," he told The Washington Post.
Righting Wrongs
Under an historic “memorandum of understanding” just signed, the Yurok Tribe of California officially became the first Native people to manage tribal land with the National Park Service. The Yurok had 90 percent of its land taken in the mid-1800s during the gold rush, and this new agreement is a step in righting those historic wrongs, and “starts the process of changing the narrative about how, by whom and for whom we steward natural lands.”
Anybody Out There?
Well, there just might be. Astronomers have detected a distant planet - described as a “water world with a boiling ocean” - in deep space, a significant discovery by NASA’s James Webb telescope that advances the search for habitable conditions beyond Earth. The observations revealed water vapour and chemical signatures of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet, which is twice Earth’s radius and about 70 light years away. It’s a chemical mix consistent with a water world where the ocean would span the entire surface, reckon researchers from Cambridge university.
Bike Lane Sweeper
A bicycle-towed electric street sweeper may soon be clearing gravel, broken glass, bits of metal and other debris off a bike lane near you. Known as the Bike Lane Sweeper, the device is already being trialled at multiple locations in Canada and the US. They appear to provide an economical, ecological, and practical way to clean bike lanes and roadsides, making the lanes safer for cyclists.
Auto Emissions
America's EPA is imposing the strictest limits on greenhouse gas emissions from light-duty vehicles in U.S. history. It’s the Biden-Harris administration’s latest climate move, and will further solidify and accelerate the EV transition.
Good News For Somalia
Somalia has had 99 percent of its debt cancelled - a breakthrough for the country as it tries to recover from an ongoing three-decade conflict. Rich creditor nations cancelled more than $2 billion of Somalia’s debt. In a post on X, Somalia’s finance minister said the debt relief would “allow our government to create fiscal space for basic public services.” Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said the breakthrough was a “major stride towards economic development and poverty reduction” for Somalia.
"What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it." Gabriel García Márquez
On This Day
25 March 451: According to tradition, Venice was founded.
Sapphire discs etched with “the essence of humanity” to be sent to the Moon by NASA’s Artemis programme to act as a repository of human knowledge. Inclusions...
Mood Booster
Hilarious moment a baby elephant tickles a TV presenter.
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