OGN Wednesday
Mid-week global round up of positive news nuggets to brighten the day.
'The Different One'
This brilliantly timed pic is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the 2026 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Award finalists, a photo collection showing animals of all kinds being hilarious without realizing it. The photographer of this fabulous shot says: "I took this in 2025 in the Maasai Mara, Kenya, in the Oltepesi area. Three young giraffes were standing side by side on the savanna and looked back at me with great curiosity. Right behind the middle one stood a single umbrella acacia, perfectly lined up with its head and neck. The giraffe seemed to be wearing the tree, like a green hairdo or a fancy hat. Nothing was staged or arranged; it was a matter of being in the right spot at the right moment."
Common Sense
Data centers produce massive amounts of heat which typically goes into our atmosphere, but one in Denmark is choosing to do something different. It’s channeling its heat straight into the homes of the local community, helping to keep 11,000 homes warm. Water from the district-heating network is circulated through the data center’s cooling system, where it absorbs heat from the servers. The warmed water then travels to a nearby plant, before it’s redistributed through the local heating network. “Heat pumps are not a new invention, nor are coils for capturing heat. What is new and innovative is the pairing of these two in hyper scale.” This Danish data center offers an example of how they can benefit surrounding communities with the right infrastructure and planning.
Not One But Four
Researchers have identified a brand new penguin, species - Pygoscelis kerguelensis - also known as the southeastern gentoo. It is the first new species of penguin discovered in 100 years. It lives on the remote Kerguelen Islands, around 1,200 miles north of Antarctica. They look almost identical to other gentoo penguins and until recently experts thought they were all the same species. But researchers studying their genes now believe there are actually four separate species - northern, southern, southeastern and eastern - who all evolved differently.
Reclaiming Top Spot
Avengers: Endgame has powered its way back to the top spot on the all-time global box office chart. From the second weekend of Disney‘s Avengers Endgame: Encore re-release that is timed to drum up excitement for this year’s Avengers: Doomsday, the 2019 superhero blockbuster collected $18.8 million globally. This brought the overall global sum for Avengers: Endgame to $2.9255 billion, just enough to surpass the total of $2.9237 billion achieved by Avatar. After hitting theaters from Twentieth Century Fox in 2009, James Cameron‘s Avatar held the crown for a decade as the highest-grossing movie of all time globally until Avengers: Endgame moved past it in 2019. Two years later, Avatar reclaimed the crown with its re-release ahead of the 2022 sequel Avatar: The Way of Water.
Will 'Dunesday' be The Biggest Weekend of Cinema Ever? Since the huge success of the same day release of Barbie and Oppenheimer in 2023, Hollywood has announced another blockbuster matchup for December of Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday.
Unintended Consequences
Donald Trump's push to rename AI is almost certainly behind an "unprecedented" rise in registrations for domain names in Slovenia, according to its official national registry. The US president wants AI to be called "super intelligence" - or SI - the same initials used by Slovenian websites. 44,000 web addresses with the .si suffix had been registered in September, compared to less than 2,000 in August. These registrations will be bringing a nice little windfall to Slovenia, in much the same way as the fortunes of the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla have boomed in recent years, thanks to their domain name suffix .ai.
Hot Turkey
Since 2022, the share of electric models among new car sales has increased from 1 in 100 to 1 in 5 today. In 2023, the Turkish government introduced tax relief for electric cars, making registration significantly lower compared to petrol and diesel cars. This coincided with the launch of Turkey’s first domestic electric car manufacturer, Togg, which has since become the market leader. Imports of cheaper electric car models also made the market more cost-competitive.
"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory." Friedrich Engels
On This Day
7 October 1929: Ramsay MacDonald is first British Prime Minister to address US Congress, where he spoke before informal sessions of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. MacDonald traveled to the United States to meet with President Herbert Hoover and finalize the London Naval Treaty, which aimed to limit naval armaments and prevent future global conflicts.
Today's Articles
Impressionists' Saviour: Paul Durand-Ruel's collection is heading to auction. “Without Durand, we would all have starved... we owe him everything,” Monet said.
Mood Boosting Video
Official Trailer: Emmy Award-winning documentary History Of The Eagles now available worldwide on Netflix.
