Good News Monday
What better way to start the week than an upbeat collection of news nuggets?
Passage of Time
Photographer Angel Fux spent more than a year planning The Shadow Between, a composite image that captures the total solar eclipse that took place over Pico Gilbo in northern Spain on 12 August 2026. Combining multiple landscape panoramas with photographs of the eclipse and the Perseid meteor shower, the final image traces the changing light from sunset into a star-filled night. “I wanted to explore something that I find particularly difficult to communicate through photography: the passage of time,” Fux tells My Modern Met. The photographer chose Pico Gilbo for its mountain scenery and alignment with the eclipse’s path of totality. The event offered an opportunity to combine a rare astronomical phenomenon with the landscape’s gradual transition from day to night.
Some Good Numbers
42: The percentage share of seats held by women in Taiwan’s legislature, the highest in Asia.
70: The Indian government is imposing a price cap on 100+ cancer drugs after supreme court judges found that hospitals’ and retailers’ mark-ups amounted to “extortion.” This should drop prices by 70 percent.
12: Pittsburgh nurses have won the first county-wide paid parental leave policy in the US. The policy covers 12 weeks for either parent in the first year after childbirth.
44: An experimental lung cancer drug from Swiss drugmaker Roche reduced the risk of death by 44 percent in a late-stage trial.
29: The percentage of US marriages in which both partners earn about the same, up from 11 percent in the 1970s.
86: London’s new 20-mile super sewer has reduced the amount of raw sewage going into the Thames by 86 percent.
42: Study results are in for Merck and Moderna’s personalized mRNA cancer vaccine. It cuts the risk of death or recurrence in melanoma patients by 42 percent.
Repatriations
The Financial Times reports that more than a million antiquities have been returned to their countries of origin since 1950. The Museum of Looted Antiquities has built the first database of these returns, worth at least $2 billion, and finds that repatriations have surged since 2020. Museums used to say “come and get it, and I’ll see you in court,” says director Jason Felch. “That has changed.”
Pope Votes in Midterms
Pope Leo XIV has become the first pontiff to vote in a U.S. election. The Vatican has confirmed that the American-born pope submitted a mail-in ballot in his native Chicago ahead of November's midterm elections, citing his longstanding belief in civic participation. The pope, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, "has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen, whenever he was eligible to do so," the Holy See press office said. "The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes."
Good News From Ukraine
Ukraine has brought in its biggest wheat crop since Russia invaded. Farmers finished the wheat harvest at 26.2 million tonnes. The US Department of Agriculture puts the national yield at a record 4.73 tonnes per hectare, up 11 percent on last year. Grain and pulses together stand at 41.7 million tonnes, and the figures leave out farmland under Russian occupation.
Two Year Pay Back
In Nigeria, small-scale solar capacity now exceeds what Nigeria’s national grid delivers, and the country has already installed as much solar this year as in 2024 and 2025 combined. The end of the petrol subsidy in 2023, followed by the Iran war, has pushed generator running costs to about $200 a month; that means a $4,500 home solar system pays for itself in less than two years, says Bloomberg. “Even tomato sellers have put signs up saying they collect solar batteries and all kinds of solar waste,” said Nnamdi Nkemka, the owner of CNN Global Solar. When his shop opened in 2008, it was one of a handful of specialized dealers, tucked down an alley in the belly of the market. Now, it’s among well over 200 solar shops and sits right on the main street, with an adjoining warehouse to hold additional stock.
"Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old." Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels
On This Day
2 November 1898: Cheerleading begins in the United States as student Johnny Campbell leads the crowd cheering on the football team at the University of Minnesota. Cheerleading started exclusively as an all-male activity, and participants were originally called "yell leaders".
Women first joined cheerleading squads at the University of Minnesota around 1923, and their participation grew extensively during World War II as male students left for military service.
Today's Articles
Olaf II Haraldsson: Archaeologists find an extraordinarily rare silver coin in in amongst a Viking Age hoard.
Mood Boosting Video
Star Trek Theme: Buckingham Palace pays a moving tribute to Sir Patrick Stewart.
