Happy News Thursday

Editor OGN Daily
May 1
3 min read

Ensuring that May gets off to a bright start with today's eclectic bundle of positive news stories.

Barbara Papitto and her late husband, Ralph

Giving it Away

Barbara Papitto has been busy giving back over the last six years - she’s donated $100 million to 350 nonprofits in Rhode Island in that time period, every dollar in honor of her late husband, Ralph Papitto, who died in 2019. Ralph, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, told Barbara to enjoy the money when he died. And for her, that meant giving it away to those in need. In 2020, she founded Papitto Opportunity Connection to support organizations committed to serving local communities via skills training programs, literacy initiatives, entrepreneurship efforts, a health clinic and more. “Everything I do,” she told Providence’s NBC affiliate, “I do it with his name.”

Food Allergies

In a landmark UK trial by Kings College London, two-thirds of participating adults with a severe peanut allergy were desensitized thanks to oral immunotherapy. While oral immunotherapy has previously been successful in infants and children, this is the first study to provide evidence that adults can also benefit from the medical treatment - and it nods to a bright future for treating food allergies more broadly. “Up until 15 years ago we never offered anything other than complete avoidance and carry your epinephrine,” Robert Wood, the director of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins University, told The Guardian. “Now we have options.”

A “happy to talk” bench in a small park in London

Friendly Benches

Take a seat, look around, and maybe have a nice chat or two with a fellow passerby. That’s the concept of “happy to talk” benches, a sweet initiative that started in 2019 to encourage connection between strangers. The cause is still continuing to spread thanks to individuals like Oliver Chan, an artist on the autism spectrum who helped bring four benches to London’s Camden Town. “With all those lonely people out there,” Chan wrote, “I felt it was important to do something about it.”

The Picasso Snail

In yet another example of nature serving as the world’s largest open-air art museum, a tiny new species of snail with an unusual shell has been named after the painter Pablo Picasso. The 3-millimeter creature (about half the size of a medium grain of rice) was discovered by an international team exploring snail diversity in Southeast Asia. Belonging to the genus Anauchen, the A. picasso snail has rectangularly angled whorls, making it look “like a cubist interpretation” of its relatives with more typical, rounded shell shapes, say the scientists.

Don't Think, Twice

A man who was rescued by helicopter after getting into difficulties trying to climb Mount Fuji out of season had to be rescued a second time, four days later, when he "returned to find his mobile phone", said The Telegraph. The 27-year-old, a student from China, experienced altitude sickness while hunting for his belongings, and was "eventually carried down on a stretcher after another climber called the police".

Electric Nepal

Nepal is a global leader in electric vehicle imports - and the shift is cleaning up toxic air pollution. Part of a larger, ambitious goal for electric vehicle sales, last year more than 70 percent of four-wheeled passenger vehicles imported into Nepal were electric - one of the highest rates in the world. And there’s a new hope emerging as a result of the increasing popularity of EVs, both two- and four-wheeled: reducing chronic air pollution. Nepal’s government has set ambitious targets for wider take-up of EVs, with the aim that 90 percent of all private-vehicle sales and 60 percent of all four-wheeled public passenger vehicle sales will be electric by 2030.

"To have ego means to believe in your own strength." Barbra Streisand