Today's tasty bite-sized chunks of uplifting news to put a spring in your step.
Doing The Extraordinary
Delima Silalahi led a campaign to secure legal stewardship of 17,824 acres of tropical forest land for six Indigenous communities in North Sumatra. Her community’s activism reclaimed this territory from a pulp and paper company that had partially converted it into a monoculture, non-native, industrial eucalyptus plantation. For her leadership, Delima Silalahi was one of the winners of this year's Goldman Environmental Prizes. “People of ordinary backgrounds doing extraordinary things to save our Earth,” is how Richard Goldman once put it. Now, the six communities have begun restoring the forests, creating valuable carbon sinks of biodiverse Indonesian tropical forest.
Cancer-Killing Pill
A "cancer-killing pill" has appeared to "annihilate" solid tumours in early research - leaving healthy cells unaffected. "Our cancer-killing pill is like a snowstorm that closes a key airline hub, shutting down all flights in and out only in planes carrying cancer cells," says Professor Linda Malkas of City of Hope, one of America's largest cancer research and treatment organisations, where they have been developing the drug over the past 20 years. It is now undergoing pre-clinical research in the US.
Cleansing
Six years ago, Belgian photographer Barbara Iweins decided to photograph every item she owned. The project took 4 years and 12,795 photos to complete. She decided to do the project after a divorce and having to move house for the 11th time. “I was exhausted to have all these objects to pack once again. I really wanted to see what it was like - a houseful of objects.” The result is an extraordinary inventory of the commonplace, the personal, the irreplaceable, and the intimate. No object was too mundane for inclusion. At the end of the project, she realized that “only 1 percent of these objects are important: 99 percent I could get rid of.” At the beginning of the process, she says, “I thought it was about overconsumption. And actually, I realized it was more a project about myself.” The photos are on display at Cortona on The Move in Tuscany.
Breastfeeding
The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding has increased from 38% to 48% globally in the last decade, just 2% short of the 2025 target set by the WHO back in 2014. 21 countries have increased their breastfeeding rates by more than 10%, showing that progress is possible when breastfeeding is protected, promoted, and supported.
Drastic Reduction
There’s been a 98 percent reduction in single-use plastic bags in England since the government forced supermarkets to charge shoppers 5p each for them. That’s according to figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which introduced the charge in 2015, then increased it to 10p in 2021.
e-Bike Act
If some U.S. politicians have their way, Uncle Sam will soon be cutting checks for up to $1500 to almost anyone who buys an e-bike. The Electric Bicycle Incentive Kickstart for the Environment Act (yes, it spells e-bike) is designed to plug a gap in Biden’s sprawling Inflation Reduction Act that last year provided generous incentives for electric cars but skipped their two-wheeled brethren. “Cycling is the most efficient form of human transportation ever devised,” said Earl Blumenauer, co-sponsor of the Act. “By burning calories instead of fossil fuels, we can make our communities healthier and more liveable.” E-bikes would seem to be that rare win-win: a zero-carbon alternative that’s also much cheaper to buy and run.
Congress Loves Snappy Acronyms: Congressional 'backronyms' have been on the rise for years - and currently account for around 10 percent of new bills...
Thin and Flexible
Traditional solar panels and solar cells come in one standard, flat, and fixed format, which greatly limits the ways they can be installed. To overcome this, reports Clean Energy Revolution, Belgian company EnFoil has invented solar panels that are only one millimeter thick, flexible, and extremely lightweight - and can come in all shapes and sizes. So could be used on truck roofs, swimming pool covers, corrugated roof tiles, etc. And even though they’re really thin - they’re still highly durable. In fact, it’s how thin they are that makes them more resistant to impact.
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." James Baldwin
On this Day
10 August 1846: The Smithsonian Institution was founded in Washington, D.C., by the U.S. Congress with funds bequeathed by English scientist James Smithson.
This weekend, sky conditions will be almost perfect to catch a glimpse of shooting stars during the year’s best celestial show. Perseids...
An analysis of the world's Top 10 news websites shows that they are all basically doom machines. Mainstream media...