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The Good News Roundup
I found this on http://www.gnn.tv/articles/1146/The_Good_News_Roundup . With all the bad stuff goin on maybe we need a bit of good news.
A bus bridge reunifies Kashmir, Amazon tragedy spurs forest protection, McLibel overturned..
International outrage over the assassination of rainforest activist from Ohio brought dramatic results this week: as sisyphus reported here, Brazil??s president responded by signing a plan to ??set aside an area three times the size of Belgium for conservation and for restricted logging.?
??This is the most important package of measures for the Amazon in Brazil??s history,? Nilo D??Avila, Amazon coordinator for Greenpeace, told Reuters. Thousands of landless peasants blocked Amazon highways in Brazil to protest a recent spate of killings by gunmen working for loggers, and Sister Dorothy Stang??s death put the crisis in an international spotlight, forcing Lula to show a commitment to stopping the timber mafia??s exploits.
India and Pakistan are warming up over Kashmir, and in a major breakthrough for Kashmiris, the diplomats have agreed to re-open a bus route between the two capital cities of Kashmir. This artery, part of a centuries-old trade route, will reconnect Kashmiri families separated by the conflict and perhaps open the door to lasting peace in the long term, as relations between India-controlled and Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir improve.
As part of the implementation of the new ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestine, the crossing into Egypt at Gaza has been re-opened to youth, ending a travel ban for 16-35 year olds. Israel??s cabinet has also given its support for the plan to remove settlers from Gaza in July. Israel??s High Court has also approved the early release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, allowing another critical component of the ceasefire to move forward.
The latest U.S. voting reform bill sponsored by Clinton and Kerry sounds promising, including a federal holiday for elections, restored voting rights for released felons, and required federal funding for effective implementation of poll worker training programs and ??black box voting?? fixes like required paper receipts.
David Walker ?? the chief of the U.S. Government Accountability Office ?? issued a formal warning against dishonest advertising to all federal agencies, stating that they ??may not use appropriated funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials.? A paper warning may be less than a slap on the wrist, but official (non-partisan) acknowledgement and confrontation of the Bush administration??s aggressive spin machine puts this problem on the public??s radar.
The European Court of Human Rights overturned a libel ruling for McDonalds against a British couple who had the nerve to point out that their food is shit.
Also in Europe, Parliament killed a software patent law which would have protected monopolies like Microsoft at the expense of the open source software movement.
The FDA has officially announced the creation of a new oversight board that will be responsible for re-examining the safety records of already-approved drugs after they reach the market, to ensure that those which turn out to be more dangerous than previously supposed are quickly identified and recalled.
A prostate cancer ??vaccine?? is working, prolonging the lives of patients with advanced cancer by training their immune systems to attack the tumors.
Peace
