Eclectic bundle of good news nuggets from around the globe.
Happy Star Wars Fans
The big screen is going back long, long ago, to a galaxy far, far away, as three new Star Wars films have been announced by Lucasfilm. The three movies will take place at different stages of the Star Wars timeline. One of the movies will see Daisy Ridley reprise her role as Rey, who was the focal point of the final trilogy in the original Skywalker Saga. Lucasfilm, which is owned by Disney, said Rey will spend the film, which will be set 15 years after The Rise Of Skywalker, building a new Jedi order. The Star Wars films are the second-highest-grossing film franchise of all time worldwide, behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having grossed over $10 billion at the global box office.
Slip, Slop, Slap
A new study shows there's been a significant reduction in skin cancer in people below the age of 39 in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, following the 'slip, slop, slap' suncream initiative. "It's a really exciting thing to see the statistics coming in to show that all the hard work that schools, communities have been putting in, has actually paid off."
Move Over Ibiza
People were getting high on hallucinogenic drugs in Spain around 3,000 years ago. Scientists say that hair from a burial site in Menorca shows that ancient human civilisations used drugs derived from plants and bushes. It is believed to be Europe's oldest direct evidence of people taking hallucinogenic drugs. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, showed signs of human activity at the Es Càrritx cave, on the south-western side of Menorca. Thus unequivocally proving that Menorca was the original party island - until Ibiza took the crown three millennia later.
Canada's Fresh Water
Canada is making its largest investment ever in protection for its fresh water. The government just committed $650 million over ten years for the Fraser River, the Mackenzie River, Lake Winnipeg, the Lake of the Woods, Lake Simcoe, the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. According to CBC, the funds will be used for monitoring, restoration, preventing harmful chemicals and reducing algae blooms.
The Role of Hope
Washington Post contributing columnist Amanda Ripley has a message for mainstream news: Hope is critical to human flourishing, and it belongs in the news. Hope isn’t just thinking “everything will be OK.” “Hope is the belief that your future can be better and brighter than your past and that you actually have a role to play in making it better,” according to the authors of Hope Rising. If hope were an equation, it would look something like this: hope = goals + road map + willpower. Hope is more like a muscle than an emotion; it can be taught and learned and people with more hope skills perform better in school, sports and work. In order to bring a fuller picture into journalism, according to Ripley, journalists will need to ask different questions. Questions like: What are realistic goals, in the face of a wicked problem? What are some of the ways other communities have tried to get there? And how did they manage to press on when things didn’t go as planned? Ripley ends her piece saying, “For journalists, hope is a defiant way of being in the world: ever on the lookout for what is but always alert to what might be.”
"Summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." Henry James
On this Day
11 April 1966: Frank Sinatra records Strangers in the Night single for his album of the same name. Soon reaches #1 in the Billboard charts.
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Mood Booster
Time-Lapse: Watch flowers blooming.
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