OGN Friday

Editor OGN Daily
Sep 19
4 min read

Wrapping up the week with a global collection of positive news nuggets.

A cat's whiskers seen from below — Credit: Katie Brockman | International Pet Photographer of the Year

The Winner is...

With an expanded 2025 edition, the International Pet Photography Awards is showing an even wider range of talent in the world of animal photography. This year's contest had over 4,000 entries from 45 different countries. The competition was fierce, but in the end, photographer Katie Brockman walked away with the title of International Pet Photographer of the Year. You an see many, many more fabulous images on the International Pet Photography Awards website.

Ozone Layer Healing

The Earth's protective ozone layer is on track to fully recover by mid-century, according to a new report from the UN's World Meteorological Organization. The bulletin hailed the success of international agreements like the Montreal Protocol (signed in 1987), crediting them with sharply reducing the use of ozone-depleting chemicals and slowing the annual growth of the Antarctic ozone hole. "Today, the ozone layer is healing," United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said. "This achievement reminds us that when nations heed the warnings of science, progress is possible."

First Time in Millennia

For the first time in more than 10,000 years, wild horses once again roam Spain’s northwestern highlands. The 35 horses introduced by Rewilding Spain are bringing renewed resilience to the land. In 2023, an initial 16 Przewalski’s horses - the world’s last fully wild horse - were introduced to a municipality in Guadalajara, a sparsely populated province two hours from Madrid, Spain’s capital city. Horses are a key element for rewilding the Iberian highlands, which today are mostly made up of land left degraded by abandoned crops and pastures. Through grazing, the horses are helping to restore ecosystem health and prevent wildfires. Today, the reintroduced animals roam 23,000 hectares (57,000 acres) of land, but Rewilding Spain’s ultimate goal is far more ambitious: to eventually rewild roughly 850,000 hectares (2.1 million acres) of land.

Credit: Friends Wiki - Fandom

Central Perk in NYC

One of TV’s most memorable hangouts is becoming a real-life establishment in New York City. The Central Perk Coffeehouse from Friends will be arriving in Times Square later this year, two years after an inaugural location opened in Boston. The new eatery comes courtesy of the same creative team as the first, including Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio. The new establishment, which will be at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 47th Street, is meant to be a contemporary take on the gathering spot from the beloved NBC sitcom, which was famously set in New York. Friends, which starred Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc, ran from 1994 to 2004, and has continued to find new fans in the decades since. It’s currently available to stream on HBO Max.

In Odder News

Sorry, no chips or French fries. Would you like deep-fried potato sticks with that? Trainee tour guides in North Korea must refer to hamburgers as “double bread with ground beef”, in a bid to crack down on certain English loanwords and South Korean expressions. As well as “dress codes and behavioural guidelines”, trainees must learn “phrases foreign tourists commonly use” - and their party-sanctioned equivalents, said Daily NK. The South Korean term aiseukeurim (from the English “ice cream”) is also blacklisted, in favour of the native Korean eoreumboseungi (“ice confection”).

Airliner wrapped in a massive airbag — Credit: James Dyson Awards

In Even Odder News

A “crash-proof plane” has supposedly been nominated for a James Dyson Award for problem-solving design, said Metro. Developed by two academics at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Dubai, the plane would use AI to detect emergencies and deploy a “massive airbag ‘cocoon’ to cushion the aircraft” along with drag parachutes to slow impact speed, said Metro. The airbags, which are made of layered fabric, shoot out ‘from the nose, belly, and tail in under two sec,’ absorbing the impact. The Project Rebirth website includes various mock-ups of the system, which appear to be AI-generated, and - ominously - the descriptions are riddled with spelling mistakes.

"Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up they will change the world." Jack Ma

On This Day

Drawing celebrating New Zealand becoming the first country to grant all women the right to vote.

19 September 1893: New Zealand becomes the first country to grant all women the right to vote. Canada followed in granting women the vote in 1917, the United Kingdom in 1918 and the United States in 1920. By contrast Switzerland didn’t grant women full voting rights until 1971, Portugal in 1976 and Liechtenstein in 1984.