Today's Good News | OGN Daily

What better way to start the day than with a global round up of positive news stories?

an ancient Canaanite scarab — Credit: Israel Antiquities Authority

Toddler Finds Treasure

Ziv Nitzan was out on walk with her family when a rock on the ground caught her eye. But when the 3-year-old girl picked up the small stone and cleaned it off, she realized it was no ordinary rock. Instead, the toddler had chanced upon a 3,800-year-old treasure, the Israel Antiquities Authority has announced. Archaeologists say Nitzan picked up an ancient Canaanite scarab that dates to the Middle Bronze Age. When her siblings realized what she’d found, they asked their parents to take a look. The family then handed the scarab over to the government. “There are thousands of stones over there and it was upside down, but somehow out of all those stones, she picked this one,” the girl’s mother told the Washington Post. The family made the discovery at an ancient archaeological site called Tel Azekah, the site of the biblical battle between David and Goliath.

Dementia Vaccine?

A new study led by Stanford Medicine has added powerful evidence to the findings of previous studies showing a link between the shingles vaccine and lower dementia risk - demonstrating that receiving the shingles vaccine reduces dementia risk by 20 percent. “This is a landmark finding in brain health and disease prevention,” said Professor Tissa Wijeratne, of the World Federation of Neurology.

Wooden bus stop bench made by the SFBA Bench Collective — Credit: Mingwei Samuel

People Doing Good

Software engineer Mingwei Samuel saw a post from a friend on social media. It was a photo of his friend’s neighbour, who’d just had surgery, sitting on a curb at a bus stop because there was nowhere for him to sit. Samuel got to work building a bench of his own, and posted a photo of it at the bus stop. Since then, Samuel has created a guerrilla bus bench-building movement called the SFBA Bench Collective in San Francisco's East Bay area, installing benches at bus stops lacking the essential infrastructure.

Old Man Builds Bench for Sick Wife: Whilst that may not be the most exciting headline you've ever read, it is - never the less - a very sweet story about an old married couple in Spain.

Billion Dollar Fine?

European Union regulators are preparing major penalties against X, including a fine that could exceed $1 billion, according to the New York Times. The European Commission determined last year that Elon Musk's social network violated the Digital Services Act. Regulators are now in the process of determining what punishment to impose, as it moves to reign in digital media platforms who don't comply with the law. "The penalties are set to include a fine and demands for product changes," the NYT report said. The penalty is expected to be issued this summer and would be the first one under the new EU law.

Nambys

"Nothing should get in the way of a good night out," says Angela Rayner (Britain's deputy prime minister) as she vows to take on the "Nambys", the "Not After My Bedtime complainers" who object to noise from London's nightlife hotspots, and are making it harder for pubs, restaurants and clubs to stay open late. A new scheme will give the city's mayor the power to overrule local council decisions about noise-disruption complaints in key central areas.

A Przewalski horse on a Kazakhstan prairie — A Przewalski horse

Przewalski’s Horses

Following up on a successful introduction of 5 mares and 2 stallions from Berlin and Prague, Hungary’s Minister of Agriculture István Nagy announced the country would be shipping 150 Przewalski’s horses to Kazakhstan in order to safeguard the animal’s future from disease and inbreeding. Around 6,000 years ago at an unspecified place on the Eurasian Steppe, of which Kazakhstan makes up a major component, human beings domesticated the horse. It changed history forever, but not more so than for the ancient residents of Kazakhstan and related topographies who used them to roam, trade, raid, and conquer for millennia. From that first day until now, all individual species interbred themselves more or less out of existence with the exception of Przewalski’s horse, which is why its return is such good news. The future of the world’s last non-domesticated horse species is looking bright.

“Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.” Philip Pullman, Lyra's Oxford