Day-after-day the Good Good Good staff collects the perfect excellent news on the planet and shares it with our neighborhood. Listed below are the highlights for this week!
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The Greatest Constructive Information We’re Celebrating This Week —
This 12 months’s Glastonbury Competition in England raised £5.9 million for charity
The ultimate numbers are in and the UK’s annual Glastonbury Competition raised £5.9 million — over $7.5 million — for charity, and people funds have been distributed to native and worldwide organizations.
Along with its continued help of charities like WaterAid and Greenpeace, this 12 months’s pageant made notably further donations to Conflict Baby, UNHCR, and different charities working in battle zones and “a number of the world’s most difficult locations.”
Regionally, the cash additionally supported tasks at main colleges, neighborhood meals banks, wildlife and the setting, and an area undertaking that works with landowners to develop accessible produce.
Why is that this excellent news? Large music festivals like Glastonbury definitely don’t have to add a charitable ingredient to the occasion — but it surely’s an unimaginable alternative to assemble a number of folks collectively to make a extremely huge distinction. The pageant additionally matched some donations, including an additional incentive to ask folks to offer again and do good.
9 nations in Africa have seen common incomes double within the final era
For the world’s poorest folks, financial progress is of vital significance. Higher financial safety opens the door to necessities like good well being, shelter, entry to training, diet, and a lot extra.
A lot of the world’s poorest folks reside on the African continent. Whereas heartbreakingly, many of those nations have seen their common incomes decline — various them have seen outstanding enhancements.
In 9 nations, together with Egypt, Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda, common incomes have greater than doubled since 1990.
This optimistic progress has made an enormous distinction for enhancements in dwelling requirements, the share of individuals dwelling in excessive poverty and baby mortality charges have additionally declined.
In simply 3 years, AI monitoring has helped scale back neonatal and toddler mortalities by 82% in Malawi
A brand new fetal monitoring program has been life-saving for deliveries at Space 25 well being heart in Malawi — the one one within the nation to make use of it.
Donated by a partnership by childbirth security expertise firm PeriGen, the software program tracks a child’s very important indicators throughout labor and provides medical doctors early warnings about abnormalities. It wants much less time, tools, and expert workers than different monitoring strategies — vital in low-income nations like Malawi that face extreme well being employee shortages.
Since they began utilizing it three years in the past, the variety of stillbirths and neonatal deaths on the hospital has dropped by 82%.
Why is that this excellent news? In Malawi, about 19 out of 1,000 infants die throughout supply or within the first month of life. Delivery asphyxia is a number one reason for neonatal mortality within the nation, and may imply newborns undergo mind injury and long-term results like developmental delays and cerebral palsy. This expertise helps massively enhance outcomes.
The 2024 CNN Hero of the Yr gives foster houses for canine whereas their house owners search habit therapy
After recovering from habit himself, Stephen Knight realized by a good friend that others usually delay or forgo looking for therapy as a result of they will’t discover secure housing for his or her pets.
So, in 2015, he formally began Canines Matter, a nonprofit that saves lives by offering foster look after canine whereas their house owners concentrate on habit restoration.
Right this moment, the group has helped greater than 1,200 canine and their house owners. Knight has a objective to make it a nationwide mannequin program to offer extra animals and people a second probability at life.
And he simply bought a step nearer to that objective: Knight was simply named the 2024 CNN Hero of the Yr and can obtain greater than $160,000 in addition to organizational and capacity-building help to broaden his work.
Fixing a serious conservation hole, a revolutionary lab is breeding bumble bee infants to save lots of them from extinction
Years within the making, scientists on the Bumble Bee Conservation Lab at the moment are celebrating an enormous milestone. Over the course of 2024, they efficiently pulled off what was as soon as deemed unattainable and raised a era of yellow-banded bumble bees.
Yellow-banded bumble bees, which reside in southern Canada and far of the USA, have been as soon as a typical species. Like different bee species, their populations declined sharply within the mid-Nineteen Nineties from threats together with pathogens, pesticides, and habitat loss.
Since then, scientists have been working to offer bees a serving to hand. However it was solely within the final decade that Woolaver and his staff found this hole in bumble bee conservation and got down to remedy it.
Why is that this excellent news? Bees are vital to not solely the survival of vegetation and animals — however of people, too. They’re a key a part of wholesome ecosystems which maintain life, and pollinate the meals you eat! Whereas bigger elements are at play in threatening bees, it’s superb information that scientists are discovering an answer for this conservation hole, too.
2,000-year-old poop samples from Yellowstone provide clues to local weather change and wildlife administration
In a historic rescue mission, 1,000 endangered turtles have been simply saved from smugglers in Bangladesh
On Monday, December 9, the Wildlife Crime Management Unit of the Forest Division of Bangladesh responded to an nameless tip that took them to a warehouse the place they discovered almost 1,000 endangered turtles on the heart of an deserted smuggling den.
It was the largest-ever rescue of endangered freshwater turtles within the historical past of the unit — and so they arrived simply in time. Amazingly, all of the turtles have been nonetheless alive.
The entire rescued turtles are protected underneath the 2012 Wildlife (Conservation and Safety) Act, which forbids the captivity, transportation, and sale of the endangered species.
Why is that this excellent news? Along with being nice information for shielding endangered wildlife, tortoises and freshwater turtles are very important in the case of serving to their pure environments and protecting waterways clear, which advantages their whole ecosystem.
Two Australian cooks turned down high restaurant jobs to serve premium meals in nursing houses
Desirous to “break the stereotype that aged care meals is only a lump of meals on a plate,” two cooks who’d been burned out by working within the restaurant business introduced their abilities to a brand new endeavor.
Whereas the nursing dwelling the place David Martin and Harry Shen work is extra upscale than different choices in Australia, it’s nonetheless a far cry from the fantastic eating environments they’d spent most of their time in.
Nonetheless, they wished to use their abilities to supply residents a greater eating expertise — and so they’re no much less challenged by it. The cooks should take into accounts situations like dysphagia, a geriatric syndrome that impacts swallowing and impacts 10% to 33% of older adults.
Whereas they notice not all amenities have the sort of workers and price range, they hope their efforts will assist elevate the usual of care general.
After years of warnings from environmentalists, the U.S. is extending threatened species protections to monarch butterflies
For years, environmentalists have been warning that monarch butterfly populations are shrinking as a consequence of warming temperatures, the usage of herbicides that hinder milkweed progress, and extra — and so they might not survive local weather change.
In response, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service introduced its plans so as to add the butterfly to the threatened species record, giving it in depth safety. Notably, folks can be prohibited from making adjustments to a panorama that render it completely unusable for the species.
It’s going to additionally designate 4,395 acres in seven California counties as vital monarch habitats, because it’s the place they migrate for the winter.
Why is that this excellent news? Greater than an iconic butterfly species, monarch butterflies are vital pollinators within the U.S. These protections will be sure that no adjustments to land or a panorama can happen with out first contemplating and minimizing the impression on a key a part of the ecosystems that plant, animal, and human life depend upon.
A Ukrainian lady helps amputees rehab and rebuild their lives — and normalize incapacity within the nation
Within the almost three years of battle with Russia, at the least 50,000 Ukrainians — civilians and members of the army — have misplaced limbs. And with a couple of million folks nonetheless on the entrance line of the battle, numerous extra amputees are anticipated because the battle rages on.
This actuality led Olga Rudneiva to discovered the Superhumans Middle, which has raised funds from everywhere in the world to supply high-quality prosthetics and reconstructive surgical procedure for amputees.
Along with these companies, the middle additionally works to empower amputees by their accidents and traumas, amid a bigger mission to normalize incapacity in Ukraine — as a result of it’s merely “how the nation goes to look.”
Providing supplemental help to the nation’s army hospitals, it has attracted movie star supporters and has handled greater than 1,000 sufferers — troopers and civilians, younger and outdated.
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Extra excellent news of the week —
Brown College transferred possession of a portion of its land in Rhode Island again to a Native tribe. The transfer ensures that entry to the land and waters extends to tribes and Native peoples of the area for whom the land has significance, because it’s the ancestral dwelling of the chief of the Pokanoket folks.
Providing another type of psychological well being care, the world’s first “poetry pharmacy” prescribes poems as an alternative of tablets. Clients affected by “damaged hearts” and “existential angst” are given poems by Mary Oliver and Derek Walcott in lieu of conventional prescriptions on the first-of-its-kind UK pharmacy.
A Hawaiian crow that went regionally extinct many years in the past was simply reintroduced on Maui. Conservationists launched 5 of the final survivors of all of the Hawaiian crow species for the primary time as a part of an ongoing effort to return the species to its dwelling.
A pair of orphaned cougar cubs have been rescued and re-homed on the Oregon Zoo. The zoo is dwelling to many animals discovered orphaned or injured within the wild, dubbed “second probability” residents like sea otters to black bears that function ambassadors for his or her species.
Scientists discovered a trove of uncommon metals wanted for clear vitality hidden inside poisonous coal waste. Scientists analyzed coal ash from energy vegetation and located it may comprise as much as 11 million tons of uncommon earth parts, providing an enormous potential supply of home uncommon earth parts with out the necessity for brand spanking new mining.
A breakthrough method to desalination expertise may gain advantage billions of individuals worldwide. As much as 36% of the world’s eight billion folks presently undergo from extreme freshwater shortages for at the least 4 months of the 12 months, and this might probably improve to 75% by 2050.
MIT engineers developed a biodegradable different to microplastics present in numerous magnificence merchandise. Discovered throughout the planet and even inside our our bodies, it’s effectively documented that microplastics are a hazard impacting almost each half of the environment — and numerous client merchandise.
In a milestone for animal rights, Mexico simply added animal welfare into its structure. For years, animal rights campaigners have been drawing consideration to pervasive animal cruelty and excessive confinement within the nation’s rising meat business.
A North Carolina city simply launched the nation’s first local weather accountability lawsuit towards a utility firm. It claims Duke Vitality waged a “deception marketing campaign” with the intention to obscure the local weather hazards of fossil fuels, which led to delayed motion in curbing planet-warming emissions and triggered the prices of local weather motion to extend.
Due to a scarcity of human exercise, the grey seal inhabitants at a distant UK shoreline has doubled in three years. Orford Ness, a coastal nature reserve, is now dwelling to Suffolk’s first breeding colony of gray seals after the primary 200 got here in in 2021 when customer entry was considerably lowered following COVID-19 closures.
A report discovered that flood safety from mangrove forests saves $885 billion in damages globally. It additionally discovered that even with declining mangrove cowl within the face of coastal growth and agriculture, the financial worth of mangroves has continued to extend since 1996.
Saudi Arabia is popping degraded desert sand into lush, thriving soil utilizing an considerable native useful resource. It plans to plant 10 billion timber and rehabilitate over 74 million hectares of land, which requires water and soil administration — which they plan to attain by a carbon-enriched compost derived from hen manure.
In “a monumental win for animal rights,” New Zealand introduced it’ll ban greyhound racing. The business has lengthy been criticized, had an “unacceptably excessive” charge of accidents, and breeders have been accused of mistreatment.
Scotland will introduce a first-of-its-kind invoice to impose harsh penalties, together with jail time, for executives of main polluters. The Ecocide Prevention Invoice would deliver accountability for ecocide, together with oil spills, mass deforestation, air or ocean air pollution, mining injury, and carbon emissions.
Relieving bottlenecks to getting photo voltaic panels put in, robots are saving money and time within the clear vitality transition. Although the world virtually doubled the quantity of capability put in from 2022 to 2023, it’s nonetheless too gradual to maintain the local weather inside habitable limits — photo voltaic set up should proceed to develop at a document tempo.
