Today's Good News | OGN Daily

An eclectic smorgasbord of tasty news nuggets to perk up the day.

Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, Peruvian environmental activist — Credit: Goldman Prize

Making a Difference

Recipients of the 2025 Goldman prize underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption. One such environmental hero is Peruvian Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari. She led the Indigenous Kukama women’s association to a landmark court victory that granted the 1,000-mile Marañón River legal personhood, with the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination. The Marañón River and its tributaries are the life veins of Peru’s tropical rainforests and support 75 percent of its tropical wetlands – but also flow through lands containing some of the South American country’s biggest oil and gas fields. The court ordered the Peruvian government to stop violating the rivers’ rights, and take immediate action to prevent future oil spills. The Kukama people, who believe their ancestors reside on the riverbed, were recognised by the court as stewards of the great Marañón.

Stat of The Day

£20,000 ($26,600): The average daily cost of feeding an astronaut on the International Space Station. In a bid to cut that bill and reliance on supply missions, the European Space Agency has launched a project to test whether lab-grown food, created from animal and plant cells, could be produced in space.

Word of The Day

Olo: A newly discovered colour that no human eye has seen before, US scientists claim. The researchers experienced a colour - described as a “blue-green of unprecedented saturation,” according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances - which they dubbed olo, after laser pulses were fired into their eyes to stimulate specific cells in the retina.

A female Guam kingfisher (left) with a male on Palmyra Atoll | Martin Kastner

Cautiously Optimistic

A colourful bird that’s been extinct in the wild for nearly 40 years has been introduced on a new island in the Pacific Ocean - and the population has even started laying eggs. With help from conservationists, the Guam kingfisher seems to be settling in on the remote Palmyra Atoll, located halfway between Hawaii and American Samoa. Biologists are cautiously optimistic about the species’ future after recently discovering eggs in a nest roughly 12 feet off the ground. The Guam kingfisher, known locally as the “sihek”, is a brightly coloured, medium-sized bird with a long, thick beak. Males have cinnamon-brown feathers covering most of their bodies, but their wings and tails are a vibrant teal hue; females have pale white breast feathers.

Strip of negatives shot by Paul McCartney featuring portraits of other Beatles — Credit: Paul McCartney | Gagosian

Rise of Beatlemania

Opening tomorrow, a new exhibition at the Los Angeles Gagosian showcases previously unseen pictures taken by Paul McCartney during the rise of Beatlemania. The exhibition Rearview Mirror charts the rise of Beatlemania between December 1963 and February 1964 and marks the first time that 82-year-old McCartney has made signed editions of his photos available (a portion of proceeds from sales will go to Los Angeles-based fire relief organisations). A thousand images taken by the musician were found by his archivist during the coronavirus pandemic after being largely forgotten for half a century.

Social Tipping Point

A whopping 89 percent of people globally want stronger action on the climate crisis, but feel trapped in a “spiral of silence” because of the mistaken belief they are in the minority, according to research. Experts say making people with pro-climate viewpoints aware that they are in the majority could unleash a social tipping point that could drive leaders to take necessary climate action, reported The Guardian. “One of the most powerful forms of climate communication is just telling people that a majority of other people think climate change is happening, human-caused, a serious problem and a priority for action,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, a professor of climate communication at Yale School of the Environment. The data was the result of a worldwide survey of 130,000 people from 125 nations that found 89 percent believe their country’s government “should do more to fight global warming.”

Solar Efficiency Record

A Chinese solar technology company has achieved a significant breakthrough in solar cell R&D. A two-terminal crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem solar cell, developed by Longi, achieved a conversion efficiency of 34.85%. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) confirmed the efficiency. To give you a perspective on how that percentage relates to what's going on in the world currently, the average efficiency of household solar panels generally ranges from 15% to 22%, with some high-efficiency panels reaching up to 24%. This means that a panel with a 20% efficiency rating would convert 20 out of every 100 watts of sunlight into usable electricity.

“I hope beautiful things happen to you and when they do, I hope you can believe you are worthy of every single one of them.” F.E. Marie

On This Day

The Library of Congress main reading room

24 April 1800: The Library of Congress was officially founded as U.S. President John Adams approved the $5,000 appropriated to acquire “such books as may be necessary for the use of congress”; it eventually became the largest library in the world.