Selection of good news snippets to perk up the day.
South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, has pledged to end his country’s reliance on fossil fuels with a Green New Deal that will see the country (like its neighbour, Japan) become carbon neutral by 2050.
Sensational footage of a flying sports car that can go from road vehicle to aircraft in just three minutes. This 2 minute video shows it driving on a runway, stopping to deploy wings, and then soaring through the air. Ooh yes, we want one of these.
Diners gathered around outdoor tables are now a regular feature in New York and Mayor Bill de Blasio aims to build on that momentum by introducing a new initiative - the “open storefronts” programme - that could further transform the cityscape. The Mayor said stores can now use nearby spaces outside to display merchandise and conduct transactions, which should be a great help in jump-starting sales for more than 40,000 small businesses as the holiday season approaches.
Despite their resilience, poaching and habitat loss has caused leopard populations everywhere to have a tough time. But the good news is that’s not the case for the big cats in the Loess Plateau of northern China, where numbers of the North Chinese leopard subspecies have increased, according to recent research.
It started out as a conversation between a husband and wife at a kitchen table in Yorkshire. Six years later, Veganuary, the movement to get people to go vegan for 31 days in January, has gone global and inspired one million people to take part.
A Series of Fortunate Events: A lighthearted exploration of the roles that chance and coincidence play in human existence. Any book described by Bill Bryson as 'fascinating and exhilarating' has got to be worth considering.
Since it's election day in America, OGN would like to take the liberty of reminding our readers in the USA about the $2 trillion reason to vote for Joe Biden. People and planet first, please!
How about this for serendipity: Uber driver picks up a chatty university student, Michael, whom he told about his daughter, Tori. She was born with one finger on each hand. It turns out, Michael was studying to be an engineer. Through his work, just a few months later, Tori had a new set of 3D-printed hands that changed her life.
Iowa farmers are growing more organic corn, soybeans, hay and oats, driving a 30 percent spike in the state's organic acres over the past three years. Gary Huber, president of the Iowa Organic Association, said that consumers have 'a growing sensitivity' about who they're getting their food from and how it was produced.
Dot joins the wedding Bash: A lovely community story from the Prince Edward Duke of Kent Court care home in Essex, England.
While you can’t always tell a book by its cover, it seems you can tell a bookstore by its customers - and one iconic shop in New York has some very devoted fans. Strand Bookstore, known for its “18 miles of books” has been a Greenwich Village fixture since 1927, and is the last remaining establishment out of 48 bookstores that once ran the length of 4th Avenue’s famous Book Row. Unfortunately, lockdown reduced crucial foot-traffic, and store proprietor Nancy Bass Wyden, granddaughter of the store’s original owner, was faced with the awful prospect of having to close the Strand’s doors for good. In a last-ditch effort to save her beloved family business, she reached out to her customer base with a plea for help. “I’m going to pull out all the stops,” she tweeted, “to keep sharing our mutual love of the printed word. But for the first time in the Strand’s 93 year history, we need to mobilize the community to buy from us so we can keep our doors open until there’s a vaccine.” The response from the Strand’s loyal clientele came in the form of an avalanche of 25,000 orders over the course of a single weekend that crashed the store’s website and brought in approximately $200,000 in sales. (One enthusiastic Bronx patron ordered 197 books.) Love it!