What Went Right: A Roundup of This Week's Best News

Let's face it - it's been a rough news cycle this past week. But even in the darkest of times, there is light, and there is so much good news to look back on. From environmental wins to a historic agreement for Ecuador's Indigenous groups, here are some of the best stories from this week.

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This Modular Playground is Bringing Safe Play Spaces to Children in Refugee Camps

What do children need when everything else has been stripped back? For London-based photographer Alexander Meininger, that question led to Playrise, a new nonprofit making modular, packable play equipment and furniture for children living in disaster zones and refugee camps. Meininger said he started paying closer attention to playgrounds after having children of his own. A tinkerer by nature, he built his sons an indoor treehouse, but he said he did not fully grasp the role of play until the war in Ukraine, when he saw footage of children being displaced from their homes, schools and stability. Playrise has now launched with a system of play structures designed with architecture studio OMMX. The structures use simple wooden components that can be assembled easily and adapted with accessories, including monkey bars, hammocks, basketball hoops and climbing ropes. The system is designed to be fully customizable. Structures can be reconfigured to suit each location’s needs and limits, parts can be replaced easily, and the bolts that hold everything together use playground-specific hardware. Meininger and his team also spoke with Sudanese, Palestinian and Eritrean child refugees to ask what children living in displacement actually wanted. That feedback aligned with the group’s view of play’s role in children’s lives. “In communities such as refugee camps, many children are displaced from home, living with trauma, cut off from education and essential healthcare, and suffering from high degrees of physical and psychological stress as a result,” Playrise writes on its website. “In such circumstances, play is a lifeline, helping children relieve stress, foster nurturing relationships, and re-establish conditions in which learning can occur.” Meininger first wanted to make the structures from rubble found in war and disaster zones. He later decided communities needed something “affordable, quick, and easy to assemble,” he told The Guardian. “Just like when you’re renting, you don’t want bespoke furniture, you need something from Ikea, in refugee camps, there is no appetite for anything permanent,” Meininger added. “The problem is that a lot of people end up in this temporary accommodation for a depressingly long time.” He then set out to create a system that could be scaled up and easily replicated, while still feeling personal and joyful for each refugee community. Meininger, OMMX engineers and other developers travelled to Aysaita in Ethiopia, which will be the first refugee camp to receive a Playrise prototype. The source text says 10,000 children under the age of 10 are housed there, and there is not a single playground. The team also spoke with children in two locations in Egypt that are hubs for displaced Palestinian and Sudanese refugees. They held co-design workshops with children and interviewed their parents. In the Aysaita refugee camp, which has operated since 2007, families reported that children even helped construct sample play structures sent out for testing. “We’re equipping them with the practical skills they will one day need in order to build and maintain their own homes,” Hikaru Nissanke, director of OMMX, told The Guardian. “This struck us as poignant, given the precarity with which they’re living.” The designs are intended to be simple to assemble while still focusing on safety. The team chose timber instead of metal so materials would not become too hot in desert climates. They also designed the structures to stop fingers getting stuck, and created options that can sit securely on terrain ranging from desert sand to concrete. “The simple modular kit comprises elements that allow for play for different ages, abilities, personalities, and settings. Some configurations focus on dynamic movement and popular games, others on more intangible forms of sensory play,” the Playrise website says. “With our system, children can create a playground, a theatre, a tunnel, or simply a safe space to call their own.” All frameworks and add-ons can be assembled with standard tools. Playrise hopes to offer international aid organizations a “menu” of playground parts and structures that can be deployed in the areas where they work. “We didn’t want to go into this with a western perspective of what kids should do, or be patronizing,” Nissanke said. “But from the countries I’ve visited, I’ve seen that, on a basic level, humans are humans, and they wish for the same things. One of those things is that they want to see their kids thrive and play.” Playrise representatives told Dezeen that after Ethiopia, refugee camps in Cairo and Wadi Karkar will be next. “Where we are born is arbitrary, but our right to play safely should be fundamental.” 📸 credit: Lewis Ronald for Playrise

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Netherlands’ New Apple Museum Opens With Rare Apple I and 5,000 Tech Artefacts

It starts in a garage and ends with the iPhone. A new Apple Museum in Utrecht, Netherlands, opens today with a retelling of the company’s first 50 years, from its earliest machines in the 1970s to the devices that later shaped personal computing. Visitors begin by walking into a recreation of the garage often linked to Apple’s early days, where Steve Jobs and his friend and co-founder Steve Wozniak formally registered Apple Computer Company on 1 April 1976. “The museum is set up in a way that when you enter, you start in the garage, which is where it all began, and it's not so that it was their headquarters, but it tells a lot about the two people that founded Apple, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, and what the basis is of their vision behind the products,” museum founder Ed Bindels said. The museum then takes visitors through Apple’s history, with displays on how the company’s logo changed over time and how its design language developed. “So, step-by-step, we'll tell them things about how the logo developed, about the design language they use. So, I hope when people leave this museum, they know more about Apple and if they use an Apple product, they look differently at that product, that's what we hope,” Bindels said. The collection includes the original Macintosh, later Apple devices, and one of the museum’s headline pieces, the Apple I. The Apple I was Apple’s first product. Wozniak designed and hand-built it, and it was released in 1976. It is widely seen as the starting point of the company’s rise from a small startup to one of the most influential technology brands in history. At the time, Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator to help fund the computer’s creation. The machine looked very different from what buyers expect from a computer now. It was sold as a bare motherboard, and customers had to add the remaining parts themselves. “So, normally a computer would have a keyboard and everything, but they just sold the motherboard, and you had to add your own keyboard and there were interfaces to connect them," Apple Museum board member Antonie de Kok said. That stripped-back beginning is also part of what now makes the Apple I such a sought-after item. Only a small number still exist, and the surviving machines have become highly valuable collector’s pieces. “These are unique. They are very valuable. One has just been sold for more than $1 million, because there are only a few left. It's the start of Apple as we all know it now. This was the first thing they ever developed,” de Kok said. Museum officials say the site is Europe’s largest Apple Museum. The collection holds more than 5,000 items, including computers, posters, iPads, iPhones and other Apple products. Only part of that collection is on display. “We are showing less than 10 percent of what we have in total, because we have a big collection. But we want the products to support the story, and we don't want to have the products as the main star. So, they are here to tell the story, and that's why we select only a few items,” de Kok said. The museum’s final section focuses on the iPhone, tracing Apple’s path from the garage display at the entrance to a device that changed communication, design and everyday life over 50 years. Utrecht’s Apple Museum officially opens to the public on 2 April. 📸 credit: Apple Museum

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NASA’s Artemis II New Upgrade: A Space Toilet That Actually Works and Gives Privacy

For astronauts heading around the moon, one upgrade is unusually down to Earth. NASA’s Artemis II crew will have a toilet with a door, a system that can take urine and feces at the same time, and hardware designed for both male and female astronauts. That is a long way from Apollo. When astronauts first flew to the moon, they did so without a toilet. The Apollo program relied on plastic bags and funnels, a setup that crew members later described in a NASA report as “objectionable” and “distasteful.” More than half a century after those lunar flights and their toilet troubles, the four astronauts on Artemis II are set to fly with NASA’s Universal Waste Management System, or UWMS. The system was built to fix long-running problems astronauts have faced in space and to make the experience feel a bit closer to a bathroom on Earth. NASA says the Artemis II version includes handles to help astronauts stay steady in microgravity, a system that can process urine and feces simultaneously, urine-collection devices for both male and female astronauts, and a door that offers some privacy inside the small Orion crew capsule. The design has been in development for more than a decade. Collins Aerospace entered a contract with NASA in 2015 to develop the project. Since then, scientists working on the system have tackled problems seen in earlier space toilets while also aiming for a design that could be adapted for future moon and Mars missions. “I think of waste management as an evolution of design,” says Melissa McKinley, project manager and principal investigator for NASA’s UWMS team. “The toilet has built on designs from Apollo, the space shuttle and even the International Space Station.... There is so much learning that goes into it.” Apollo’s setup was rough. Inside the cramped crew capsules, astronauts had to strap adhesive-rimmed plastic bags and tubes to themselves to defecate or urinate. In weightless conditions, even attaching the bags was difficult. After using them, astronauts had to manually mix in a packet of germicide to stop bacteria and gases from building up inside the sealed bag. The system also leaked. During Apollo 10, astronauts spotted “a turd floating through the air.” During Apollo 8, the crew had to chase blobs of vomit and feces that had escaped into the cabin. A NASA report released after the Apollo missions said waste disposal “must be given poor marks” for crew satisfaction. Astronaut Ken Mattingly was blunt about it during Apollo 16. “I used to want to be the first man to Mars,” he said after describing the system. “This has convinced me that, if we got to go on Apollo, I ain’t interested.” Those reviews pushed NASA to come up with something better. David Munns, a science and technology historian at the City University of New York, said the stakes are high because “the toilet is a ‘mission-critical’ system, so if it breaks down, the whole mission is in jeopardy.” Before the space shuttle program, NASA engineers developed a toilet that could operate in low gravity. It looked more like a standard toilet on Earth, but astronauts still had to strap themselves in and use a vacuum hose so waste would not float back into the spacecraft. That vacuum-based approach carried over into the space shuttle and the International Space Station. The two systems worked in similar ways, but there was one major difference. The ISS system recycled some wastewater, while the shuttle version vented it into space. They were a big step up from Apollo’s bags and funnels, but they still had limits. They were not built with female anatomy in mind. They could not process urine and feces at the same time. And while they offered some privacy with a curtain, they did not have a solid door. NASA’s UWMS was built as the latest answer to those problems. It is 3D-printed from titanium, and NASA says its lightweight, standardized design makes it easier to fit into different spacecraft. That includes the ISS, Orion for the Artemis missions, and future vehicles that have not yet been built. The first version of the UWMS was tested on the ISS in 2020, and final installation was completed in 2021. That version included separate urine and feces systems that could be used simultaneously, changes to make the equipment more unisex, and the bathroom door. NASA later modified the design so it could work on a lunar mission, then installed a version in Orion for Artemis II, the first crewed launch of the Artemis program. Scientists on the UWMS project are now waiting to hear how the four astronauts rate it after the mission. “I am very excited for the crew to use this,” McKinley says. “We’ll know so much more when this mission comes back.... It’s really going to drive [waste management] on future Artemis missions and the lunar campaign, as well as the Mars campaign to come.” 📸 credit: NASA/JSC/James Blair

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80-Year-Old Woman Drives 2,000 Miles to Start Over in Tennessee — Finds Help From a Stranger

At 80, Lois Mayo pointed her SUV toward Tennessee and started driving. She had never been there before. She left California with her two cats, Vanilla and Bubbs, and a simple plan to head east. “The history and the people and the southern hospitality, people are so nice,” she said. Mayo told News Channel 5 she did not have a map or a detailed plan for the 2,000-mile trip. “I knew I-40 would take me to Tennessee,” she said. Five days later, Mayo and her cats arrived in Murfreesboro after crossing the country together. Mayo, who is widowed, said the move gave her a fresh sense of purpose. “It makes you feel more alive,” she said. The move also brought immediate problems. The trip used up her latest Social Security check, and Mayo had nowhere to stay when she arrived. She prepared for the possibility of sleeping in her car while she worked out what to do next. Even then, she said she stayed hopeful. “I feel I can meet new people… and there’s angels everywhere,” she said. One of those people turned up during a visit to a local Walmart, where Mayo met employee Paris Barnes. What started as a simple meeting quickly turned into something much bigger. “I think it was meant for us to meet,” Barnes told Mayo. “God is using me to help you.” Barnes helped Mayo get a temporary stay in a motel. She also started a GoFundMe campaign to help cover what Mayo needed next. Barnes later learned Mayo had lost contact with her son during the trip from California. She spent 24 hours trying to find him, eventually locating him through an old Facebook page and working with a police department to reconnect them. According to the source text, Mayo’s son had no idea his mother had left California and had been trying to reach her. Mayo’s son is now offering what help he can. But Barnes said Mayo wants to remain in Tennessee. “She has expressed that she loves Tennessee and wants to stay,” Barnes said. For now, Mayo is staying in a motel while Barnes works to find long-term housing, medical care and basic necessities for her. The source text said Mayo has limited income and faces long waitlists for affordable housing. Barnes explained why she stepped in. “I truly believe we are called to serve others, and in this moment, this is what that looks like,” she said. The GoFundMe campaign had raised nearly $10,000 to help Mayo, according to the source text. Mayo has continued to speak openly about what brought her to Tennessee in the first place. She said she was drawn by the state’s history, its people and the idea of southern hospitality. She also said the move, while difficult, made her feel alive. Her arrival in Murfreesboro came after five days on the road with only her SUV, her two cats and the belief that she could start again in a place she had never visited. That belief carried her through the uncertainty of arriving with no place to stay and little money left. It also led to the Walmart meeting that connected her with Barnes, who arranged temporary shelter, raised money and helped restore contact with Mayo’s family. Mayo said she is taking the unexpected turns in stride. “You gotta follow your dreams,” she said. “Life begins at 80.” 📸 credit: News Channel 5 Nashville

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South Korea’s New Doolysaurus Fossil Reveals First Dinosaur Species Found in 15 Years

A cartoon dinosaur helped give South Korea’s newest dinosaur species its name. Scientists have identified the first new dinosaur species in South Korea in 15 years and named it Doolysaurus huhmini, after Dooly, a green cartoon dinosaur that has long been popular in Korea. "Dooly is one of the very famous, iconic dinosaur characters in Korea. Every generation in Korea knows this character," said Jongyun Jung, a visiting postdoctoral researcher at UT's Jackson School of Geosciences who led the research. "And our specimen is also a juvenile or 'baby', so it's perfect for our dinosaur species name to honor Dooly." The fossil was found on Aphae Island in 2023 by co-author Hyemin Jo. The findings were published in the journal Fossil Record on March 19. Researchers said the find is also the first fossil from South Korea to include parts of a dinosaur skull. At first, the team could only see a few bones, including parts of the legs and spine. A micro-CT scan at the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography facility showed much more still inside the rock, including skull fragments. "When we first found the specimen, we saw some leg bones preserved and some vertebrae," Jung said. "We didn't expect skull parts and so many more bones. There was a fair amount of excitement when we saw what was hidden inside the block." The second part of the species name honours Korean paleontologist Min Huh. Researchers said it recognises his decades of contributions to dinosaur research in Korea, his role in founding the Korean Dinosaur Research Center and his work helping preserve fossil sites through UNESCO. The animal was about two years old when it died and was still growing. Researchers said it was roughly the size of a turkey, and adults of the species may have been twice as large. Scientists also think it may have been covered in soft, fuzzy filaments. "I think it would have been pretty cute," said study co-author Julia Clarke, a professor at the Jackson School. "It might have looked a bit like a little lamb." Most of the fossil remains are still locked in hard rock. Researchers said removing it by hand could take years, so they used micro-CT scanning to visualise the skeleton in a few months. Jung, Clarke and their collaborators then spent more than a year studying the anatomy in detail. Clarke said CT scanning has become an essential method for studying delicate fossils, especially small dinosaurs and early birds trapped in solid rock. Doolysaurus lived between about 113 and 94 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous period. Based on its features, scientists classified it as a thescelosaurid, a group of two-legged dinosaurs found in East Asia and North America that may have had fuzzy coverings. Researchers confirmed the fossil was a juvenile by examining growth patterns in a thin section of its femur bone. The fossil also contained dozens of gastroliths, small stones the dinosaur swallowed to help digest food. Researchers said the stones suggest the animal had an omnivorous diet that included plants, insects and small animals. The arrangement of those stones also pushed the team to look more closely at the fossil. Because gastroliths are small and light-weight, researchers said their intact cluster suggested much of the skeleton might still be preserved in the rock. "A little cluster of stomach stones, with two leg bones sticking out indicates that the animal was not fully pulled apart before it has hit the fossil record," Clarke said. "So, I encouraged [Jung and co-authors Minguk Kim and Hyemin Jo] to visit Texas and the UTCT, to try scanning the fossil." South Korea is well known for fossilised dinosaur tracks, nests and eggs, but dinosaur bones are relatively rare. Researchers said many fossils may still be hidden inside rock, like Doolysaurus. Kim and Jo are now applying the CT scanning techniques they learned to other fossils in Korea. Jung also plans to return to Aphae Island to search for more specimens. "We're expecting some new dinosaur or other egg fossils to come from Aphae and other small islands," he said. 📸 Credit: Jun Seong Yi

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San Jose Airport Tests AI Robot José to Help Travelers Find Gates and Get Answers

Lost on the way to your gate? Hunting for a charger or something to eat? Airport help in San Jose now comes in robot form. At San José Mineta International Airport in California, travelers can now get help from a humanoid robot named José. The robot greets passengers, answers questions and helps people find their way around the terminal. José is in Terminal B near Gate 24, where travelers are already stopping to try it out. The robot was developed by IntBot, a Silicon Valley startup focused on building machines that understand human behavior and intent. José is powered by IntEngine, IntBot's proprietary system that combines vision, audio and language in real time to coordinate speech, facial expressions and gestures. IntBot says that allows the robot to understand social context and decide when and how to interact with people in busy public spaces. José can communicate in more than 50 languages, provide directions and real-time terminal updates, answer questions in a natural, conversational way, and handle busy public spaces without constant human oversight. The robot stands about 167 centimetres tall and weighs roughly 69 kilograms. It runs on a 700 watt-hour battery that lasts about two hours per charge. It also has more than 40 points of movement and can turn within about 61 centimetres, helping it navigate tight airport spaces. "This marks our first airport deployment," Lei Yang, CEO at IntBot, told Fox Cyberguy. "José is our first real-world test of how humanoids can help travelers navigate airports across language barriers. Our goal is to help travelers feel more confident before they depart. But we're also learning something harder to measure, which is how people actually respond to embodied AI systems in their daily path. These learnings will shape how IntBot brings humanoid robots into the world responsibly." The airport rollout comes as airports face pressure to move people faster while improving the experience, according to the source article. It also says cities want to show they can lead in tech innovation, and San Jose is leaning into both. "San José continues to lead in applying emerging technologies in ways that improve everyday experiences for residents and visitors," said San José City Manager Jennifer Maguire. The source article says major global events like the FIFA World Cup are expected to bring waves of international travelers, making language barriers and navigation challenges a bigger issue. José is intended to address that by offering instant answers without lines, confusion or the need to track down staff. "By piloting IntBot, we're exploring how artificial intelligence can enhance the passenger journey while reinforcing SJC's role as the gateway to Silicon Valley," said Mookie Patel, director of aviation at San José Mineta International Airport. The rollout is part of a four-month pilot program, not a permanent installation. The airport is watching closely to see if travelers actually use the robot, if it reduces confusion or delays, and if it can operate reliably in a crowded environment. The source article says that if the pilot works, more robots like José could appear in airports, hospitals, hotels and public buildings. It describes the broader idea as "social intelligence" for machines, meaning robots that do not only follow commands but also understand context, tone and human behavior. For travelers, the robot is designed to answer practical questions on the spot, including where a gate is, if a flight is delayed, or where to find food nearby. The source article says the impact could be even bigger for international travelers because a system that instantly switches languages can make things clearer and quicker. The same article also notes there are still questions. It says not everyone will feel comfortable interacting with a robot, some people will prefer a human, and others may wonder how much data is being collected during those interactions and what happens to it. For now, José remains a test case in Terminal B near Gate 24 as the four-month pilot continues. 📸 credit: Intbot

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How One Stranger’s Kindness Helped an American Student Overcome Loneliness in France

What Holly Deiaco-Smith wanted most was a jar of Skippy peanut butter from home. Instead, she got a stranger’s help, and a friendship that has lasted for decades. In the early 1990s, Deiaco-Smith boarded a plane at JFK airport in New York City, excited to spend a year studying abroad in Nancy, a city in northeast France. She was 19. Within a few weeks of arriving, that excitement had turned into what she described as “an overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness.” Daily life in a new country was much harder than she expected, especially when she had to speak French. “I could understand the language somewhat, but I was terrible about speaking it. My accent was terrible. People could not understand me,” Deiaco-Smith said to NPR. Trying over and over to make herself understood left her emotionally drained, and she said she had little hope for the rest of her year. One thing kept her going, a care package her mother had sent from home. “My mom had sent me a care package, and in that care package I knew she had sent Skippy peanut butter, which, at that point, I could not find anywhere in France. So this was really exciting for me. I had these visions of me digging my spoon in and eating my peanut butter right from the jar,” Deiaco-Smith recalled. To collect it, she had to go to the post office. When she got there, she tried to explain to the attendant why she was there. But the attendant did not speak English, and could not understand Deiaco-Smith’s French because of her accent. “The more I repeated myself, the more frustrated I got and the more hopeless I felt. I was about ready to break down in tears because I just really needed that package from home, [when] in walked my unsung hero.” That person was a French woman named Chantal Jouve. “She stepped in and she looked at me and said, in English, ‘Can I help you?’ And she spoke to the attendant, and within two minutes, the package was in my hands.” The help did not stop at the post office. After getting the package for her, Jouve invited Deiaco-Smith to dinner at her house the following Sunday. “It became a regular thing every Sunday to have dinner with her and her family. It was a safe place for me to practice my French without all those feelings from before, where I would feel sad [or] frustrated. I really felt like I was at home there.” What began with one difficult moment at a post office turned into a lasting relationship. Decades later, Deiaco-Smith and Jouve are still in touch. They exchange cards every Christmas and have visited each other’s families. Deiaco-Smith said that one act of kindness stayed with her and shaped how she responds to other people. “To this day, her act of kindness has influenced my life in many ways,” Deiaco-Smith said. “I tend to pay attention a little bit more for people who might need help, and I offer kindness and offer that help to a stranger. And I’m forever grateful that Madame Jouve did that for me.” 📸 credit: Holly Deiaco-Smith

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This French Recycling Non-Profit Turns Old Shoes Into Refurbished Resale Sneakers

Old trainers do not always belong in a garbage bin. In a workshop east of Paris, a French non-profit is betting that many of them still have miles left. SneakCœurZ collects used sports shoes, sorts them and decides which pairs can be resold, redistributed or rejected. The group says the aim is to cut waste in a sector under growing pressure over pollution, while getting wearable shoes back onto people’s feet. Hundreds of used sneakers arrive every week at its workshop in the French capital. Staff starts with a basic question: Can the shoe be saved? For director general and co-founder Mohamed Boukhatem, the answer is often yes, and he wants the group to handle far more pairs. “Over the next three years, the goal is to triple or even quadruple these volumes and move to an industrial scale,” says Boukhatem to the Associated Press. “Today, there is no project of this scale in the sneaker sector. We are the only ones able to industrialise both the processes and the collection of sneakers for reuse.” The non-profit says it resold 2,000 out of 30,000 pairs of used trainers collected last year. It also says it redistributed more than 7,000 pairs to people in need and helped create 19 jobs. Its work points to a broader waste problem in France, where shoe sales remain high and collection rates lag behind. Refashion, France’s government-approved eco-organization for clothing, household linen and footwear, says 259 million pairs of shoes were sold in the country in 2024. It says only about a third of used textiles and footwear are separately collected. Much of the rest is left in cupboards or thrown away with household waste. At SneakCœurZ’s workshop in Champs-sur-Marne, workers inspect each pair to see if it can go back into circulation. Shoes that pass are cleaned from the sole upward, disinfected inside and, in some cases, whitened under UV light. Workshop manager Paul Defawes Abadie says cosmetic problems are rarely the reason a pair fails. “The structural elements of the shoe are what determine whether we can refurbish it or not,” according to workshop manager Paul Defawes Abadie. “A damaged Velcro strap isn’t a deal breaker. A lace isn’t a deal breaker. Dirt is never a deal breaker,” he says. “What really matters is the wear of the structural materials, especially the outsole.” The group is working in a country that has already started to respond to waste in fashion and footwear with new rules and financial support. France’s 2020 anti-waste law requires unsold non-food goods to be reused, donated or recycled instead of being destroyed. In November 2023, authorities introduced a state-backed repair bonus for clothing and shoes. Lawmakers are also still working on a bill aimed at reducing the textile industry’s environmental impact. The pressure for action is tied to the scale of the sector’s footprint. According to the United Nations, the fashion and textiles sector accounts for up to 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The European Parliament has said textiles were the third-largest source of water degradation and land use in the European Union in 2020. That leaves groups like SneakCœurZ trying to build a business around reuse in one of France’s biggest consumer markets. Sports shoes have long since moved beyond gyms and playing fields. They are now worn by young, middle-aged and older people across daily life, making them one of the most common types of footwear and, when discarded, a growing part of the waste stream. SneakCœurZ wants to turn that stream into supply. Last year it resold 2,000 pairs, redistributed more than 7,000 to people in need and says it is now aiming to triple or quadruple volumes over the next three years. 📸credit: Sneak'CoeurZ/Facebook

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Art UK Catalogues 6600 Public Murals in a Nationwide Digital Archive

From church walls painted in medieval times to Liam Gallagher’s blunt verdict on Cardiff, Art UK says public murals are turning up all over Britain, and fast. The charity has now identified, photographed and digitised more than 6,600 murals in a project that launched in January 2024, far above its target of 5,000. The collection stretches from Penzance to Orkney, and from Lowestoft to County Fermanagh. It includes some of the UK’s smallest public murals, painted on bollards in Shrewsbury, and one of the biggest, on a 1960s 16-storey block of flats in Gosport. Among the lighter entries is a mural in Cardiff painted ahead of last summer’s Oasis concerts, a copy of Gallagher’s viral X post saying: “Because Cardiff is the bollox.” The mural project sits within Art UK’s wider mission to catalogue as much of the nation’s public art as possible, including oil paintings, watercolours and statues. Katey Goodwin, Art UK’s deputy chief executive, said the final number reflected a sharp rise in murals across the UK. “It has gone from seeing a few murals here and there to them being everywhere,” she said. Art UK said murals have shifted from something subversive and underground into the mainstream. Goodwin said the rise is partly because more councils and regeneration bodies are commissioning them, often in an effort to encourage people back into town and city centres after Covid. The growth in street art festivals has also helped. Cost is another factor, she said, with a mural much cheaper and quicker to commission than a statue. The catalogue shows a wide range of subjects. Art UK said 23 percent of recorded murals feature wildlife and animals. Examples include a nuthatch, squirrel and robin among spring crocuses on a wall in Moseley, Birmingham, and a spray-painting raccoon in Worcester. Another 19 percent are commemorative, reflecting national events, sporting triumphs, protest movements and mourning. Art UK said 11 percent deal with heritage and industry, often recalling industries in decline or already gone. One example is a large mural in Wrexham showing a miner holding a canary in a cage. Other murals deal with issues including the climate crisis and women’s safety. Others, Goodwin said, are simply there to lift a street. An example is Lola the Barras Pirate, a mural in Glasgow showing a little girl dressed as a pirate. “A lot of murals are there to add a bit of colour and life to the streets,” said Goodwin. “Others are actually incredibly poignant.” “Some of my favourites are the really massive murals which can stop you in your tracks,” she said. “Some of the skill involved in creating a mural is very, very impressive.” The project has relied heavily on volunteers to find and photograph works. Art UK has also used online searching and worked with the growing number of street art festivals. The charity said graffiti and tagging were left out of the project “as this would have made the project too large and expensive, but also because of the fleeting nature of many such works”. Murals can also be temporary. Some are painted over and some disappear when buildings are demolished. “There’s just under 6,700 on the website now and we can’t say this is every single mural in the UK because things come and there will be new ones which weren’t there last week,” said Goodwin. Some of the oldest murals in the catalogue are medieval church wall paintings at St Thomas’ church in East Shefford, Berkshire. Among the newest are works from 2025, including two columns supporting the M4 at Junction 41 in south Wales. They resemble Rolo packets, but say Port and Talbot. The project has also been welcomed by street artists. Essex-based Scotty Irving said street art “connects people to true stories”. He added: “Just this week I was painting a new mural and a local school passed by in a big group, on foot. The kids were buzzing and the teacher immediately used it as a live lesson, gathering the children and encouraging their interests. By that evening, through social media, they were already aware of Art UK’s free resources.”

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Structured Eating and Stable Calories May Help Adults Lose More Weight, Study Finds

For people trying to lose weight, the answer might be a little less exciting than a fresh meal plan every day. New research suggests sticking to similar meals and keeping calorie intake steady may help people lose more weight. The study, published in Health Psychology and reported by the American Psychological Association, found that adults in a 12-week behavioral weight loss program did better when their eating patterns were more structured. Participants who repeated meals and kept their calorie intake stable over time lost more weight than those whose diets changed more often. "Maintaining a healthy diet in today's food environment requires constant effort and self-control," said lead author Charlotte Hagerman, PhD, of the Oregon Research Institute. "Creating routines around eating may reduce that burden and make healthy choices feel more automatic." Researchers looked at detailed, real-time food logs from 112 adults who were overweight or obese and taking part in a structured weight loss program. Participants recorded everything they ate in a mobile app and weighed themselves every day using a wireless scale. The analysis focused on the first 12 weeks of the program. The researchers said that period is usually when participants are most engaged and provide the most accurate data about their eating habits. To measure how structured each person's diet was, the researchers used two markers. One was caloric stability, which looked at how much daily calorie intake changed from day to day and between weekdays and weekends. The other was dietary repetition, which tracked how often people logged the same meals and snacks instead of regularly choosing new foods. The results showed a clear link between consistency and greater weight loss. Participants who often ate the same foods lost an average of 5.9 percent of their body weight. Those who ate a wider variety of foods lost 4.3 percent on average. More stable calorie intake was also tied to better results. For every 100-calorie increase in daily fluctuation, weight loss dropped by about 0.6 percent over the study period. The findings suggest that simplifying food choices, such as using a set rotation of meals and keeping calorie intake steady, may help people build habits that are easier to keep up. But the researchers said the study shows a correlation, not cause and effect. They also said factors such as motivation or self-discipline may play a part in the results. The paper also pushes back on the idea that more variety is always better. The researchers noted that earlier studies have linked dietary variety to better overall health, but those findings usually focus on variety within healthy food groups like fruits and vegetables. "If we lived in a healthier food environment, we might encourage people to have as much variety in their diet as possible," Hagerman said. "However, our modern food environment is too problematic. Instead, people may do best with a more repetitive diet that helps them consistently make healthier choices, even if they might sacrifice some nutritional variety." The study also turned up an extra finding about weekends. Participants who reported higher calorie totals on weekends than on weekdays also lost more weight. Hagerman said that the result likely reflects more consistent tracking, rather than higher food intake, because people often log their meals less reliably on weekends. The study's overall message was simple: in this group, people who kept their eating habits more consistent tended to lose more weight than people whose diets were more varied. Participants who frequently ate the same foods lost an average of 5.9 percent of their body weight, compared with 4.3 percent among those who ate a wider variety of foods. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-black-shirt-holding-black-and-silver-weight-scale-3775540/)

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