Synopsis of last week's most important good news highlights.
Victory for Health: America is on the verge of an indoor air quality revolution - and it could prove to be one of the most important public health victories of the 21st century.
Fruit Preservation: Researchers in Thailand have developed an invisible, edible coating made with cannabidiol (CBD) that can preserve fruit for much longer.
Global Poverty: World Bank has announced that reduction efforts are back on track. After the severe setbacks of 2020, a majority of low and middle income countries have seen poverty decline again, and more than half are now on course to reach a lower poverty rate in 2023 than in 2019.
World's Oldest Homo Sapiens Footprints: Scientists have identified the oldest known Homo sapiens footprints. Found in South Africa, the tracks have been dated to over 150,000 years ago.
Forest Protection: The EU's highest decision making body just gave the final go-ahead for a new rule designed to stop the import of any products that destroy forests.
World's Top Selling Car: For the first time ever, an all-electric vehicle - the Tesla Model Y - is now the world’s bestselling car. And an electric car has driven nearly 2,000km (1,250 miles) without stopping to charge as part of a demonstration of an electric road that wirelessly charges vehicles as they drive.
Black Gold: It's a high-grade version of BBQ charcoal that's now being tested as a way of removing greenhouse gas from the atmosphere for centuries to come.
Short Haul Ban: A ban on short-haul domestic flights has come into effect in France, in a bid to curb carbon emissions. It feels like a portent of the near future for many countries.
Positive Thinking: A new study shows that a positive attitude about ageing can help recover mild memory loss. People with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are 30 percent more likely to reverse symptoms if they think positively about ageing, according to a study carried out by the Yale School of Public Health.
Unintended Benefit: In a discovery by researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands, offshore wind turbines have become a haven for benthos - the community of marine organisms that live in, on or around the seafloor.
Rights of Nature: A new law in Panama has given legal rights to turtles to live and pass freely. The law will allow any Panamanian citizen to be the voice of sea turtles and defend them legally - boosting the 'rights of nature' movement.
Fixing Fashion: According to Bloomberg, regulators in both the US and UK are working on new rules that would force clothing companies to pay for textile-recycling programs to deal with all of their waste worldwide.
5,000 New Species: Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 previously unknown species living at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean - in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast area of the ocean floor between Hawaii and Mexico.
India on Track: The country is set to meet its clean energy targets, says the Economic Times. Installed renewable capacity will reach 174 GW in 2023, accounting for about 37 percent of total energy supply, and is projected to hit 280 GW by 2025. In the space of a few years, the country has become a front-runner in the global renewable energy market.
Today's Articles
Record Year: New report shows renewable power capacity set to rise by a third globally this year, making it the largest yearly increase ever.
Last Week's Most Read Article: A dozen of OGN's favourite one-liners and short jokes from Britain's finest comics.