Miscellaneous
Thousands of Ethiopians join together for the country’s first Car Free Day
Thousands of people, both young and old, have joined in the streets of Ethiopia’s capital to mark the country’s first Car Free Day. Major roads have been temporarily closed to allow for the mass transit where people walked and exercised together. The event was held to promote healthy living, Read More...
London unveils terminals that accept contactless donations to help the homeless
Thanks to the U.K.'s capital’s mayor, people in London will be able to donate to charities through contactless payments at public terminals. The scheme aims at helping charities combat homelessness, and currently includes 35 terminals which take £3 donations by card. This is a remarkable Read More...
Airbnb removes 200 settlement listings from the West Bank
The hospitality service decided to stop its operations in Israel’s disputed territory after continuous pressure from anti-settlement groups and human rights advocates. The West bank is host to 200 Airbnb listings, some in settlements which even Israeli authorities question the legality Read More...
Possibility: Milk without the moo
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 Our parents knew milk comes from cows. Our children may think, as the joke goes, milk comes from the supermarket. Their grandchildren, however, may think it comes from breweries. A pair of young, vegan bio-engineers in the U.S. are producing milk in a radical Read More...
Possibility: Keeping refugees afloat
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 A quarter of a million. That’s the number of immigrants and asylum seekers who have already tried to get to Europe in 2015 by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. It’s the highest number on record, according to the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees. Thousands Read More...
This is what Tibetan monks and Navy SEALs have in common
Abraham Maslow once famously said, “When all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” What he meant was, when it comes to problem-solving, we tend to get locked into using familiar tools in expected ways. The technical term for this is the Law of the Instrument. Give someone Read More...
Research finds common grass could help boost food security
Australian researchers have discovered that the common Panic grasses could hold the secret to increasing the yields of cereal crops and help feed the world with increasing temperature extremes and a population of nearly 10 billion people by 2050. The findings, published in Nature Plants, show the Read More...
Bitcoin has hit a three-month high
Bitcoin rose to an almost three-month high amid a surge in volume as the yuan extended a six-year low, bolstering Chinese demand for alternative assets. The cryptocurrency jumped as much as 4 percent from Friday to $655.50, the highest since July 29, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Read More...
Regenerative agriculture: More important now than ever
Last week’s news that Monsanto and Bayer would merge to form the world’s largest agribusiness company sent shockwaves throughout the food industry. Will our food system continue to unify under a few conglomerates? Or can alternatives, like regenerative agriculture, shift the Read More...
'One million children' join Buddhist meditation event
Every year, a project called V-Star Change the World brings schoolchildren to a Buddhist temple in Thailand for a day of meditation. Organisers claim that one million children attended the most recent event at the Phra Dhammakaya temple near Bangkok. The temple has attracted controversy in the Read More...