OGN Monday

1 day ago
3 min read

Ensuring the week gets off to a great start with today's global round up of positive news nuggets.

Paul Newman lounges on a pool table reading 'Star Warriors' | Heritage Auctions

Nostalgic Charm

For another few days, posters from an iconic literacy movement - the American Library Association’s READ campaign - will be available in an online auction held to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the ALA’s founding. The posters, a staple of classrooms, libraries and book fairs, are recognizable today for their nostalgic charm and earnest aesthetic. Each features an unmissable message in capital letters encouraging students to “READ,” while celebrities and fictional characters pose in portrait with their favorite titles. Plenty of household names have been featured in the promotion, including sports figures, actors, musicians and puppet protagonists. Shaquille O’Neal, Oprah Winfrey, Elvis Presley, David Bowie, Yo-Yo Ma and the Muppets are just a few of the celebrities who have helped encourage literacy.

Philanthropic Initiative

Intercept is a new $500 million philanthropic initiative that aims to catalyze the development and deployment of the technologies needed to radically reduce the burden of respiratory infections, and eventually eliminate them altogether. The money will go into developing preventative products (a shot, a nasal spray or pill) in combination with air-cleaning technologies to combat colds, flu, RSV, coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses. The potential payoff is huge: respiratory infections cause billions of infections every year, imposing enormous health and productivity costs, yet they are largely neglected by pharmaceutical companies. A century ago, diseases like cholera and typhoid were also widely accepted as an inevitable feature of human life, until better medicines, tools and infrastructure changed the game. What’s to say we can’t do the same here?

A red kite turning in flight — A red kite

Returning The Favour

Protected by English royal statute in the 1400s because they picked city streets clean of offal and rotting meat, red kites later lost their usefulness as sanitation improved and were driven into the countryside, where guns, poison and gamekeeping nearly finished them off. Spanish and Swedish birds helped rebuild England’s population from 160 breeding pairs in 1995 to at least 4,600 by 2023; now 126 English-born kites have been released in Spain’s Extremadura, where conservationists are working to rebuild a 11,000 sq. mile safe haven after human activities left just one breeding pair in 2018.

Europe's EV Boom

Europe’s argument over the 2035 combustion-engine ban is being reshaped by what EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra called “spectacular EV sales.” Germany, Italy and carmakers still want the rules softened, but France and Sweden are pushing back, arguing that it will hamper Europe as it tries to catch China. Reuters reports that EV sales rose 39% in Germany, and a whopping 93% in France and 85% in Italy in May 2026, making the transition harder to dismiss as policy fantasy. Meanwhile, says Carbon Brief, UK electric car sales have overtaken petrol for first time as drivers bought more battery-electric cars than petrol cars over the past 12 months.

Leo

Amazon says it has launched enough satellites to offer internet service this year, challenging SpaceX's Starlink. Amazon expects to roll out initial internet service with its Leo broadband satellite network later this year after the company's latest launch put the orbiting constellation's satellite count over 390.

Three little icebergs in the Arctic Ocean — Credit: Matt Horspool | Ocean Image Bank

Cool Down

Still suffering from a heat wave? Cool down with the Polar Ocean Image Collection, over 500 high-quality photos taken in the Arctic and Antarctica that capture “remote seascapes, glaciers, iconic wildlife, icebergs, and rarely seen underwater life.” No promises you won’t still need to blast the AC while scrolling, though.

Shrinking Deserts

Official figures from China claim that more than 46,000 sq. miles (120,000 sq. km) of desertified land was restored between 2021 to 2025. In the last three years alone, Beijing has invested $13.2 billion in the world’s largest restoration project - the Three-North Shelterbelt programme - restoring forests and grasslands.

"True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter." Jony Ive