Tribal artisans keeping India's crafts alive
30 September 2025 - Shweta Menon left her IT career to start Truly Tribal, a platform that revives India's traditional crafts, while ensuring fair earnings for artisans. Today, it supports over 500 artisans across 16 states, helping tribal art forms thrive with dignity and pride. (more)

Mexican entrepreneurs create vegan leather out of pricklypear cactus, helping save 1 billion animals a year
28 September 2025 - In 2019, Mexican entrepreneurs -- and longtime friends -- Adrian Lopez Velarde and Marte Cazarez Duarte threw their hats in the vegan leather trade by becoming the first people to make leather from nopales, or prickly pear cactus. In the last six years, Desserto has partnered with Adidas, Otterbox, Michael Kors, Fossil, BMW, and more to make plant-based outfits, shoes, bags, phone cases, watch bands, and whole car interiors. (more)

From war zones to city plots, grassroots growers are transforming land and lives
26 September 2025 - Across the world, from Ukraine to Zambia to south London, gardens are springing up and blossoming in some of the most unlikely places. They're doing so thanks to a rising wave of land defenders: people reclaiming the right to grow healthy food for themselves and their communities. (more)

US: The boom of backyard beekeeping in Florida
26 September 2025 - In Florida, you can keep bees in your backyard. That's a good thing because honey bees are vital to food and wildlife in the state. Despite threats like disease, habitat loss, and queen quality issues, bee populations are on the rise in Florida. Experts in the state say that's due in part to backyard beekeeping. (more)

Indonesia: This luxury resort in Bali has one request for its guests -- adopt a coral to save the reefs
24 September 2025 - The St. Regis Bali Resort has teamed up with the Nusa Dua Reef Foundation, aiming to give a new life to the coral reefs near its coastline. Together, they're working to restore fragile underwater ecosystems. Also, since 2018, St. Regis Bali Resort has started supplying its guest rooms with water produced in its own in-house bottling plant. This facility can produce and refill up to 10,000 glass water bottles each day. The resort also creatively turned 175 tons of food scraps and nearly 192,000 kilos of garden waste into nutrient-rich compost. (more)

US: New York finalizes rule for new buildings to be electric
24 September 2025 - New York is now the first state in the U.S. to require new buildings to be built entirely electric, without hookups to fossil fuels, including gas, the New York State Assembly reported. The rule was initially passed in 2023 as the All-Electric Buildings Act and was finalized with the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council's approval in late July 2025. It's a win for the climate and a win for owners' utility bills, Canary Media reports. (more)

Why a Brazilian favela facing eviction decided to go green
22 September 2025 - In Brazil's crowded favelas, green space is hard to come by, but this Sao Paulo community is showing how more sustainable favelas can give back to their residents. ''We didn't have sustainability specialists to teach us how to preserve the environment, so we came up with the idea of creating a community garden,'' says Maria de Lourdes Andrade Silva. ''And with the garden, we would bring environmental education.'' (more)

Hundreds plunge in Chicago River for first official swim in nearly 100 years
21 September 2025 - Hundreds of people plunged into the Chicago River's chilly waters on Sunday as part of the first organized swim in the river for nearly 100 years, a previously unthinkable act in what was once one of the most befouled waterways in the world. (more)

First open water swim in Chicago River in 98 years set for fall 2025
15 September 2025 - Hundreds of swimmers will dive into the first open water swim in the Chicago River in almost a century this fall. The landmark event, set for Sept. 21, will celebrate the city's environmental progress and generate funds for ALS research and youth swim education programs, event organizers said in an announcement Wednesday. (more)

Powering up: how Ethiopia is becoming an unlikely leader in the electric vehicle revolution
14 September 2025 - Until recently, electric vehicles were almost unheard of in Ethiopia. But last year it became the first country to ban imports of combustion engine vehicles. Now, EVs are a common sight in the capital. (more)

US: Charitable giving in 2024 was up, according to new Giving USA report
13 September 2025 - Charities received $592.5 billion in donations in 2024, a 3.3 percent increase over 2023, after adjusting for inflation, according to the most recent 'Giving USA' report, which takes a comprehensive look at U.S. philanthropy. (more)

Puerto Rico's solar-powered village - in pictures
12 September 2025 - In 2023, Puerto Rico launched a community-owned solar microgrid, the island's first. Today the town's five microgrids provide 228 kilowatts of photovoltaic capacity and additional storage to homes and 15 local businesses. Casa Pueblo, founded in the mountain town of Adjuntas in 1980, regularly hosts researchers and students who come from around the globe to learn about the town's community-based energy-resilience project. (more)

Octopuses prefer to use different arms for different tasks, scientists find
11 September 2025 - Octopuses favor front arms for most tasks, study suggests, despite fact all eight arms are capable of all actions. Researchers say they have completed the most comprehensive study of its kind, not only identifying the actions and small motions involved in different types of movements, but revealing that -- like primates, rodents and fish -- the cephalopods prefer to use particular limbs for certain tasks. (more)

'Good for the soul': public urged to look up with Saturn on show
10 September 2025 - Saturn will be highly visible all September and scientists say gazing at planets and stars lets us see 'the biggest picture'. (more)

An unprecedented view of merging black holes
10 September 2025 - New views of two colliding black holes confirm predictions made by Stephen Hawking using Albert Einstein's theory. (more)

Ringing black hole confirms Einstein and Hawking's predictions
10 September 2025 - A decade ago, scientists first detected ripples in the fabric of space-time, called gravitational waves, from the collision of two black holes. Now, thanks to improved technology and a bit of luck, a newly detected black hole merger is providing the clearest evidence yet of how black holes work -- and, in the process, offering long-sought confirmation of fundamental predictions by Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. (more)

Not just resisting, but leading the fight: five women who refuse to be ignored
1 September 2025 - A report published this year to mark the 25th anniversary of the International Indigenous Women's Forum (Fimi) cites the many ways women are the key protectors of cultures and land. We [The Guardian] spoke to five women leaders about their work and inspiration. (more)

Bumper whale calving season a 'sign of hope' for South Australia's oceans
22 August 2025 - Scientists say a bumper season for southern right whales in South Australia is a 'sign of hope' for the state amid the ongoing effects of a devastating algal bloom. The bumper season coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Great Australian Bight marine park, one of the primary calving grounds for southern right whales. (more)

Hundreds of historic tall ships sail into Amsterdam for a maritime festival
20 August 2025 - Crowds packed vantage points along a major canal and took to the water themselves Wednesday [20 August] to watch a flotilla of hundreds of historic ships sail into Amsterdam at the start of a five-day festival celebrating the Dutch capital's maritime history. (more)

10-year-old chess prodigy makes history with win over 60-year-old grandmaster
15 August 2025 - A 10-year-old girl who started playing chess five years ago has made history by defeating a grandmaster, according to the International Chess Federation. Bodhana Sivanandan won against Peter Wells, a 60-year-old grandmaster, in the final round of the 2025 British Chess Championships in Liverpool on August 10... The win makes Bodhana the youngest female chess player in history to score a win against a grandmaster. (more)

Six planets are hanging out in early morning skies this month. Here's how to spot them
14 August 2025 - Six planets are hanging out in the sky this month in what's known as a planetary parade. Catch the spectacle while you can because it's the last one of the year. ...To catch the planets, go out in the morning shortly before sunrise and look east. Try to find Jupiter and Venus clustered together first. Saturn is off to the side and Mercury will be close to the horizon, trying to rise before the sun. (more)

Why many Americans are rethinking alcohol, according to a new Gallup poll
13 August 2025 - Fewer Americans are reporting that they drink alcohol amid a growing belief that even moderate alcohol consumption is a health risk, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday [13 August]. (more)

Praggnanandhaa looks to achieve the No. 1 chess ranking to add to India's dominance
9 August 2025 - India has become a major power in international chess led by its highest-ranked player, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. He's No. 4 in the world, one place above compatriots Gukesh Dommaraju, the current world champion, and Arjun Erigaisi, who are tied for fifth. Praggnanandhaa, who will celebrate his 20th birthday on Sunday [10 August]', has an ambition to be the best. (more)

How Afghan women under Taliban rule are coding their way to a brighter future
8 August 2025 - Like so many other Afghan women, Sodaba could do little but watch as her country's new Taliban government imposed a stranglehold on women's lives. ...But one of the cruelest blows for the pharmacology student was the ban on education beyond primary school. Pushed by necessity, she went online. And there, she found hope: a free computer coding course for women in Afghanistan. Taught in her own language, Dari, by a young Afghan refugee living half a world away, in Greece. (more)