Tuesday's Positive News
- Editor OGN Daily
- Jun 3
- 3 min read
Some tasty bite-sized chunks of positive news to perk up the day.

Habitat Protection
California has approved $59.5 million in funding to preserve some of the state’s most ecologically significant habitats. In the face of federal funding cuts for some of the country’s critical habitats for rare plants and animals, California’s Wildlife Conservation Board just approved the funds to ensure they’re protected, and will preserve nearly 23,000 acres of some of the state’s most ecologically important habitats, including the Salton Sea. While it's wonderful news for Californians, the reality is that protecting critical ecosystems is good for the entire country (and the world).

New V & A Outpost
Millions of visitors head to British museums each year, but the items on display often represent only a small fraction of what institutions hold in their collections. V&A East Storehouse, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new outpost in east London at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, offers an innovative solution: its groundbreaking £65m facility provides full immersion into the behind-the-scenes world of museum conservation. Unlike traditional museum stores, visitors can walk freely and “breathe the same air” as its 250,000 artefacts. They can wander the aisles and watch curators at work - unloading porcelain, polishing a priceless spoon collection, or carefully packing poison darts.

The Latest Banksy
Banksy's latest piece of graffiti art, revealed to the world late last week, has now been traced to a street in Marseille, France. Images posted on the elusive artist's Instagram depict a lighthouse stencilled on a drab, beige wall, along with the words: "I want to be what you saw in me." A false shadow appears to have been drawn on the pavement from a nearby bollard, giving the illusion that the lighthouse is itself a silhouette of the mundane street furniture.
Criminalising Ecocide
Scotland is poised to become the first UK nation to criminalise ecocide - severe and reckless harm to nature - under a new bill published in the Scottish parliament. The bill would make it a criminal offence to cause widespread, long-term or irreversible environmental damage, with potential penalties including up to 20 years in prison for individuals and unlimited fines for companies.

Second Chance
Gorillas are making headlines again - this time, not for sparking a viral debate over who would win a fight between 100 men and one gorilla, but for a historic conservation success story. Four female eastern lowland gorillas are roaming free in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, marking the largest reintroduction of the subspecies in history, the conservation organization Re:wild has announced. As babies, they were rescued from the illegal wildlife trade and, following years of rehab, they were deemed ready for the wild.
Energy Milestone
CleanTechnica reports that South America just achieved a remarkable energy milestone, quietly setting a global benchmark: for the first time in history, the entire continent now has zero new coal-fired power plants planned. To grasp how remarkable this is, we need only glance back a decade. When the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, South America had eighteen coal-fired plants on the drawing board, reflecting global uncertainty about the role coal would play in powering emerging economies. Today, that uncertainty has vanished. Coal, once perceived as a staple of industrialization and economic stability, has essentially vanished from the continent’s energy future.

Sleek Curb Charger
There are several types of curbside chargers dotted around cities, but this one from German company Rheinmetall is probably the least obtrusive. The street-level charger replaces concrete curbs with a Level 2 charge point. The steel and aluminium module includes a 4G modem and Ethernet, RFID technology and a display. It can be activated via a mobile app or by scanning a QR code, and is capable of delivering up 22 kW of juice to a parked vehicle's battery. Unlike public charging stations, drivers will need to use their own charging cables, but many European EV owners carry such things around anyway.
"One man can make a difference and every man should try." Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
On This Day

3 June 1965: Ed White emerged from the orbital spacecraft Gemini 4 and became the first American astronaut to walk in space.
Today's Articles
Most 'Intelligent' Photo: How many geniuses can appear in one photograph? The front row is particularly amazing.
Mood Boosting Video
Cymatic Frequencies: What happens when science meets music?