We all know why we might be in need of some good news, so let’s just get straight to 5 things I found in the news that should make you feel pretty good about the state of humanity.
1 – A man has donated $25 million to a school of social work in order to relieve student debt, “because they’re heroes”.
Steve Hicks, Texas resident and telecommunications entrepreneur, has donated millions of dollars to the University of Texas students of social work as he thought “that’s where it can make the most impact”. A social work degree incurs about $45,000 worth of debt, which is not quickly paid off in an industry with a typically high workload and low salary.
2 – A breakthrough in melanoma research means a treatment type has been found to reduce the chance of it recurring by more than 50%.
Melanoma is usually unaffected by chemotherapy and the usual modes of treatment, and has a very high recurrence rate for those who do manage to fight it off the first time around. A new combination of drug therapy for one year after the diagnosis has been found to slash the odds of the cancer spreading in a trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
3 – Drinking coffee might add years to your life.
According to research commissioned by the European Society for Cardiology, regular coffee consumption increases longevity. The study followed 20,000 participants for ten years and found that those who drink four cups of coffee per day had “64% less risk of all-cause mortality than those who never or almost never consumed coffee”.
4 – Both the UK and France have decided to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040.
A Dutch bank has also predicted that all new sales of cars in Europe will be electric at least 5 years before that. Uber has committed to making all its cars in London electric by 2025, and has already made great strides to go hybrid. Electric cars offer cleaner air for everyone, not to mention avoiding the huge impact that oil drilling has on marine life.
5 – More good news for the environment, as Kazakhstan works to reintroduce wild tigers, 70 years after they became extinct in the country.
The Ili-Balkhash region is being turned into a nature reserve, which will be carefully restored to support a variety of wildlife that will eventually allow the reintroduction of tigers by 2025. The tigers will complete the restoration of an entire ecosystem that was decimated last century by illegal poaching and habitat loss. The project is supported by the WWF and required cooperation between Kazakhstan and Russia in order to come to fruition.
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