What better way to start the week than with a global round up of positive news nuggets?
Pitt Stop
Brad Pitt is no stranger to the Formula 1 paddock, but the Hollywood actor was more than just an interested observer at Silverstone over the weekend. He is filming for his role as the main character in a highly anticipated F1-inspired film. Pitt is set to play a former driver returning to the sport with fictional team APXGP. This is the first glimpse fans have had of the production, with filming taking place during empty track slots at the British Grand Prix. The APXGP team even had their own garage on the pit wall - between Mercedes and Ferrari. The film has the full support of F1, which sees it as another way to further draw in a new audience that have come to the sport in recent years, especially with the popularity of the Drive To Survive series.
Templeton Prize
Nurse-midwife, hospital founder, and health care advocate Edna Adan Ismail, who for decades has combated female circumcision and worked to improve women's health care in East Africa, has become the first African woman to win the $1.4 million Templeton Prize, one of the world's largest annual individual awards. Born in 1937 in Hargeisa, Ismail became British Somaliland's first medically trained nurse-midwife after studying nursery and midwifery in Britain. Since 2002, when she opened the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in Hargeisa, more than 30,000 babies have been delivered there. Its education program, which became Edna Adan University in 2010, has trained more than 4,000 students to become health professionals. Previous prize winners include Mother Teresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and conservationist Jane Goodall.
Malaria Vaccine
The WHO has announced that 12 countries in Africa will receive the first 18 million doses of the world’s first malaria vaccine. Malaria is one of the continent’s deadliest diseases, killing nearly half a million children under the age of five every year. “The malaria vaccine is a breakthrough to improve child health and child survival; and families and communities, rightly, want this vaccine for their children,” said Dr Kate O’Brien, WHO Director of Immunization.
De-Listed
New research shows that 26 Australian species - 14 mammal, eight bird, two frog, one reptile, and one fish - no longer meet criteria to be listed as threatened. Their names are spectacular, including the greater bilby, burrowing bettong, eastern barred bandicoot, and sooty albatross.
Sphere Arena
Looking a bit like a huge high-tech snow globe, the Sphere stands out even among Las Vegas' numerous architectural oddities. The incredible building, which is the world's largest spherical structure, also features the world's largest LED display on its exterior, which has just been officially illuminated for the first time with a Hello World message. The Sphere rises to a height of 366 ft (111m) and has a width of 516 ft (157m). The building has a capacity of 17,600 seats, or 20,000 with standing spaces, and will host large concerts as well as sporting events like boxing and mixed martial arts.
India Conservation
The conservation of the world’s only Asiatic lion population, in Gujarat, India, has been so successful that the lions became overcrowded, and a court has had to mandate some of them to be relocated elsewhere in India. The country is also celebrating 50 years of Project Tiger, which began in the 70s but didn’t begin to bear fruit until after 2008. Now India is home to the world’s only stable and growing tiger population, with thousands of tigers across 53 reserves.
Deep Sleep
World's deepest hotel lets guests climb down 1,375 feet for a deep sleep. Literally. Called ‘Deep Sleep,’ the hotel has been built in an abandoned slate mine below the mountains of Snowdonia in Wales. There is no grid connection down there, so the hotel is self-powered using the force of falling water within the mine itself via micro-hydro turbines. Deep Sleep’s website says that guests can easily descend to the hotel in an hour!
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“Sorry, but right now I’m at the beach.”
An Italian teacher fired for 20 years of absence during her 24-year career, replies to a media request to give her side of the story.
On this Day
10 July 1962: Telstar 1, the first communications satellite to transmit live television signals and telephone conversations across the Atlantic Ocean, was launched, inaugurating a new age in electronic communications.
Life is improving in most major cities, according to the latest Index, recording highest average score for 15 years. The best...
New research estimates that embracing regenerative agriculture could draw 150 percent of global CO2 emissions into the ground every year. Wow!
Mood Booster
Wonderful World: David Attenborough speaks the words to Louis Armstrong's classic song.