Good News Friday
- Mar 20
- 4 min read
Wrapping up the week with a tasty smorgasbord of good news nuggets.
World's Longest
A new footpath stretching around the entire coast of England has just been officially inaugurated. At 2,689 miles long, it is the longest managed coastal walking route in the world, according to Natural England, the government body which created it. Its name is quite a trek too - King Charles III England Coast Path - but for the first time it creates a continuous trail, allowing walkers to explore England's shoreline step by step. Along the way, it passes through some of the country's most beautiful and varied landscapes, from salt marshes and sandy beaches to cliffs, dunes and historic coastal towns.
Ocean Protection
Chilean President Gabriel Boric has signed a decree adding 140,000 square miles (360,000 sq. km) of full protection to waters around the Juan Fernández archipelago. The move brings the fully protected area around these parks to almost one 386,000 square miles (almost million sq. km), making it the third-largest fully protected marine area in the world (behind the Ross Sea and the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument) and taking Chile past 50 percent protection of its exclusive economic zone, reports Oceanographic Magazine.
New Discovery
This is an orange-headed rock monitor - Varanus umbra - a never-before-described species of rock monitor. Dr. Stephen Zozaya, a research fellow at the Australian National University, described the shock he and his colleagues experienced when seeing the animal for the first time to ABC News AU. “I was like, ‘What is that?'” Dr. Zozaya said. “I had no idea these things existed.” The orange-headed rock monitor is just one of a trio of newly-described monitor lizards that Dr. Zozaya and his colleagues identified on an expedition into the savannahs of north Queensland state.
Beginning of The End
Sleeping sickness is a notorious disease - immortalized in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. A single bite from a tsetse fly carrying the parasite is all it takes to infect someone. Without treatment one form of the illness can progress from mild symptoms to death in a matter of weeks. Now, a new drug holds the promise of helping the World Health Organization meet its goal of eliminating the disease by 2030. A committee of the European Medicines Agency has given an important green light to the first single-dose treatment - a medication called acoziborole, which could be in use by early next year.
Nigeria Education
Nigeria has committed $552 million for basic education - the largest individual tranche of education financing in Nigeria’s history. It aims to build 13,000 classrooms, improve learning for more than 29 million children, support half a million teachers, and bring back more than 1.5 million out-of-school children. It’s part of a bigger surge; education spending has increased more than fourfold in Nigeria since 2022, reaching $2.5 billion in the latest budget.
Pakistan Solar
When prices of fossil fuels surged to record highs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, millions of people in Pakistan were repeatedly left without electricity. But people soon started to realise there was an alternative. The falling costs of solar panels and generous government incentives to feed excess power back to the grid made rooftop solar an attractive option. Since then, there has been a stunning surge in rooftop solar deployment in Pakistan. Nationwide, the share of electricity generated by solar jumped fivefold between December 2021 and December 2025, according to data from Ember. Renewables First estimates the figure reached about one-fifth of the country’s grid-supplied electricity in 2024, and that as of February 2026, Pakistan’s solar surge had helped to avoid about $12bn in oil and gas imports - and will avoid a further $6.3 billion through 2026. The bigger point: three-quarters of the world’s population live in fossil-importing countries, and every time oil and gas prices spike they have to send more of their wealth to another country. Renewables and electrification do the opposite.
"I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate." George Burns
On This Day
20 March 1800: Italian Alessandro Volta reports his discovery of the electric battery in a letter to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London. The battery was a huge success and was immediately recognized as a useful device. The first known use occurred later that year when William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used the current generated by a battery to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Today's Articles
Africa's Galapagos: People in the archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe are being paid as stewards to protect the ecosystem.
Wise Words: Having a bad day? Feel like quitting on something you care about? Try this advice from an Olympic gold medalist.
Bird Brain: It should be a compliment. Perhaps not for every bird, but certainly in the case of male song sparrows.
Mood Boosting Video
Remarkable Highways: NASA's mesmerizing view of Earth's ocean currents.
