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In the headlines...

🍎 The first 2,000 children were officially enrolled in New York City’s inaugural free 2-K class.

📰 Amid growing public backlash, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a moratorium on data center approvals until audits are completed by state regulatory agencies.

🤖 More than 1,000 employees at the biggest AI companies wrote an open letter urging the U.S. government to slow the pace of AI development.

Climate action

New basketball courts in New York City double as ‘sponges’ that mitigate flash flooding

Three years after Hurricane Ida flooded New York City, the city was looking for ways to mitigate future disasters. One solution was two “sunken” basketball courts built beside New York City Housing Authority’s South Jamaica Houses in Queens.

The Water Square courts are not just a vibrant transformation of the neighborhood’s once-derelict courts, but a built-in flood mitigation system, retaining water during flash floods. Each court can hold up to 330,000 gallons of water, half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

It can even support even more community purposes, like movie nights or farmer’s markets.

Why is this good news? As the climate crisis continues to bring more frequent, intense weather events to our communities, solutions like this demonstrate how mitigation techniques can serve multiple purposes in how it benefits the community.

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🧽 You may also like: As climate change worsens flooding, some places are becoming ‘sponge cities’​

More Good News

​In July, electric vehicles accounted for 97% of new car registrations in Denmark. The number of electric cars on Danish roads is expected to reach one million by 2027.

​Tens of thousands of young people received the first dose of the meningitis B vaccine in just 2 weeks. The NHS launched its largest-ever catch-up campaign for the virus, giving 89,261 first doses, many to people preparing to go to college in the fall.

​Effective immediately, France banned all imports of hunting trophies from protected species. Lawmakers noted that the country has been one of Europe’s largest importers of hunting trophies from protected species in recent years, making the measure an important milestone for wildlife conservation.

​New Mexico flipped the state’s electricity supply from majority fossil fuels to majority renewables in just five years. And even while it was building out its clean energy future, electricity prices remained cheaper than average.

​For the first time in three decades, a baby puffin was spotted on England’s Dorset coast. In the 1950s, there were about 80 birds nesting there, but the number of pairs dropped to three, and there had been no definitive sightings of fledglings for 30 years.

​To protect endangered animals, a wildlife vet is empowering and educating their human neighbors. Kalema-Zikusoka’s nonprofit, Conservation Through Public Health, has engaged more than 50,000 local people in health and economic initiatives – and grown Uganda’s mountain gorilla population by more than 50%.

Economics

Today’s children could be the first generation since the 1970s to do better than their parents, new studies suggest

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Clean energy

Germany delivered a historic 12 billion kWh of solar energy to its public power grid in July

In July 2026, Germany reached a historic milestone in its clean energy transition — feeding a record 12 billion kilowatt-hours of solar electricity into the public power grid in a single month.

An analysis also noted that the actual volume of solar power generated was even higher, since what’s consumed on-site isn’t included in public power grid statistics.

Average midday solar power output was over 40,000 megawatts, which displaced a significant amount of electricity that would have otherwise come from coal- and gas-fired power plants. The milestone underscores the country’s rapid expansion of solar power capacity.

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More Good bits

👑 Long live the Monarch butterfly.

🩸 Logos are “losing their color” to promote blood donations.

🧶 Your worn-out wool could help save a life.

📚 From “Girl Dad” to “Library Dad.”

🦀 Bamboo bridges are helping migrating crabs scuttle to safety.

🐋 A birth so big it was captured by drone.

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