Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. Yes its the Monday  Good News roundup, where me and my Newsroom of Bhu and Killer300 bring you good news to get you through the day (And you have our word that the Monday GNR will never get buried by Warner Brothers as a tax write off… don’t quote me on that).

With that bit of topical humor out of the way, lets get on with the news.

Drawing from a group chat with 250 festival attendees, Yuliya created a Telegram channel to share resources for anyone looking to be evacuated or seeking shelter. She quickly got the word out by posting a link on the festival group, artist groups and other communities she was part of, saying that anyone who would like to host, drive people, translate or contribute in any way could join that Telegram channel. At the same time, she reached out to other Ukrainians who were organizing and, together, they thought of ways to pressure the German government into accepting refugees.

“What happened,” Yuliya explained, “is that the Telegram channel grew from 20 contacts into a group of 13,000 people.”

A similar chain of events happened to Sofia, an economics student from Bucha, currently on an exchange program in France. At first, she found herself in a situation no one could ever be prepared for — beginning with a call from her mom, who was still in Bucha, as Russian bombs exploded only six miles away. They eventually managed to escape in their car.

We haven’t forgotten you Ukraine, keep fighting the good fight against tyranny. Together we will overcome this age old barbarism.

As soaring rents force many out of their homes, advocates across the country are battling a slew of state and local measures that criminalize homelessness and imperil those living on the street.

Police in riot gear stormed the chambers of a Los Angeles City Council meeting on Tuesday after one protester climbed a bench to confront Council President Nury Martinez over an ordinance banning homeless encampments near schools and daycares.

Martinez briefly recessed the meeting as dozens of activists chanted “Abolish 41.18!” — a reference to the ordinance. Last week, around 70 protesters shut down a council vote over the same measure, carrying signs with messages like “If I die unhoused – forget burial – just drop my body on the steps of L.A. City Hall.”

As someone who feared homelessness for years, I feel for these people. We see you my friends, and we’re fighting alongside you.

As midterm election campaigns heat up in the Senate’s top battlegrounds, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is canceling millions of dollars of ad spending, sending GOP campaigns and operatives into a panic and upending the committee’s initial spending plan.

The cuts — totaling roughly $13.5 million since Aug. 1 — come as the Republicans’ Senate campaign committee is being forced to “stretch every dollar we can,” said a person familiar with the NRSC’s deliberations. Republican nominees in critical states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina — places the GOP must defend this fall — have failed to raise enough money to get on air themselves, requiring the NRSC to make cuts elsewhere to accommodate.

As victory in the Senate for Dems seems more and more likely it seems like the GOP are tightening their belts. Keep on your toes though, we still have a lot of work ahead of us.

Supply-chain hangups, tariff scares and limited inventory have hammered solar and storage developers this year. It’s nigh impossible to find a large-scale project hitting its original deadline anywhere in the U.S. But those delays were especially high-stakes in Oahu, Hawaii’s most populous island, which urgently needs new clean energy to replace the power generated by its last coal plant when it shuts down by September 1 .

Now, after a year of anxious anticipation, Hawaii has something to celebrate. Facing enormous challenges, developer Clearway Energy delivered Oahu’s largest solar and storage project on time, and it did so months earlier than originally planned.

Good news for Hawaii. Way to go guys.

That idea culminated in the Guarding the Right to Abortion Care for Everyone (GRACE) Act, a measure that directs the Austin Police Department (APD) to “deprioritize” investigations into criminal offenses related to abortion. Unanimously approved on July 21, the resolution prevents the city from making it a priority to devote its resources and personnel to support the prosecution of those who perform or receive abortions.

“It’s not an empty political statement; it’s a way to thread the needle between upholding state law and still taking action locally,” Vela told The Nation. “Every single day, cities across the nation are deciding how their police departments use and shift resources, [and] that’s within our scope of control.”

The city’s decriminalization resolution serves as an example of how progressive municipalities can help protect abortion patients and providers from draconian state laws within the boundaries of local power, a growing movement in the post-Roe world.

While Austin marks the first major metro city in Texas to pass the abortion decriminalization resolution (with smaller-sized Denton the first to officially greenlight it), a handful of Texas cities followed suit soon after, including Dallas and San Antonio (which passed the measure in part), while local coalitions in cities like Houston, Laredo, and Ft. Worth will be pushing for the resolution in the coming months. The GRACE Act is also spreading outside Texas, with cities including Nashville, Atlanta, and New Orleans passing similar resolutions. Local Progress, a national organization that coordinates with community officials to advance racial and economic justice, has worked to help municipalities across the country usher in such resolutions.

Despite the stupid cruelty of our enemies, we will not go back, and we will use every trick in the book to undermine them.

“Vote them out. Vote them out,” activists chanted outside of lawmakers’ offices in West Virginia’s capital in late July, as senators considered a bill that would outlaw abortion in West Virginia. One activist held a sign labeled “Don’t Tread on Me” below a rattlesnake wrapped around itself, forming a uterus. Another had a white, pink and blue striped sign, the colors of the transgender flag, stating, “Abortion is not just a women’s issue.”

The West Virginia Republican Party failed to pass an abortion ban during a July special session called by Gov. Jim Justice, in part because of activist efforts in the state legislature. Reproductive justice activists made themselves heard by testifying during a public hearing and protesting at the capital for over 11 hours.

Activists are adamant that their actions, which included speaking at a public hearing, emailing legislators, organizing sit-ins, and packing and protesting at the capital have delayed the vote, leaving abortion legal for an anticipated few weeks.

We’re also going to fight tooth and nail against these bans as well, so get ready for that GOP, this is gonna get ugly… for you.

Of the IRA’s more than $430 billion in total spending—paid for largely through a 15 percent minimum tax on large corporations, prescription drug price reforms, and increased IRS enforcement—$369 billion will go to climate and clean energy investments. These include subsidies and tax credits to drive both consumers and US manufacturers toward electric vehicles and cleaner energies and help lower energy costs. Many of the bill’s manufacturing tax credits are aimed at spurring the domestic production of renewable technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. Consumers, meanwhile, can get rebates for installing solar, buying electric vehicles, and making a host of energy-efficient upgrades to their homes. On top of these and a slew of other clean energy incentives for companies and communities, the bill also includes $60 billion to help clean up pollution and reduce environmental injustice in disadvantaged communities.

Lets hear it again for the IRA, its really gonna help the environment I think.

MELBOURNE/SYDNEY, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Two-thirds of Australia's Great Barrier Reef showed the largest amount of coral cover in 36 years, but the reef remains vulnerable to increasingly frequent mass bleaching, an official long-term monitoring programme reported on Thursday.

The recovery in the central and northern stretches of the UNESCO world heritage-listed reef contrasted with the southern region, where there was a loss of coral cover due to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) said in its annual report.

Australia has been through some shit in recent years, so they can definitely use all the good news they can get.

UC Berkeley chemists say they've created a simple, and very inexpensive way to capture carbon dioxide using a polymer called melamine, that's far cheaper than metal-organic frameworks. It could capture carbon emissions from smokestacks or tailpipes.

Some 75% of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States come from fossil fuel burning, and while the race to zero emissions by 2050 is primarily focused on replacing fossil fuel use with cleaner, electrified solutions, carbon capture is definitely going to play an important role.

Sometimes its really cool to be living in the future.

Ultra-strong fibers, multi-legged robots, pain relievers — all are human innovations inspired by spiders.

Now, conservationists in Indonesia are rehabilitating coral reefs using what’s known as the coral spider technique.

The method is a type of reef restoration project involving the installation of man-made “spiderwebs” onto which new corals are grafted. It entails placing small, lightweight rods “made from cast iron that is welded into a hexagonal shape, like a spider web,” Imam Fauzi, head of the National Aquatic Conservation Center (BKKPN) in Kupang, a port city on the island of Timor where one such project is underway, told Mongabay.

Two coral reef stories in one week. I’m spoiling you guys I know, but this is really cool news. Not real spiderwebs of course, but something inspired by them.

Over the course of a year, Sansone created a prototype of a novel synchronous reluctance motor that had greater rotational force—or torque—and efficiency than existing ones. The prototype was made from 3-D printed plastic, copper wires and a steel rotor and tested using a variety of meters to measure power and a laser tachometer to determine the motor’s rotational speed. His work earned him first prize, and $75,000 in winnings, at this year’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest international high school STEM competition.

Great job Mr. Sansone. Hopefully this will make electric cars more affordable and widespread.

Many vaccines — including several used to prevent COVID-19, such as Novavax’s shot — use a protein taken from a virus, or a weakened or killed version of the pathogen, for this training. Because temperatures outside of 2-8 C (35-45 F) degrade those components, vaccines often must be shipped along a refrigerated supply chain.

Maintaining this “cold chain” can be difficult, particularly in developing nations and rural areas where reliable electricity and refrigerated trucks can be hard to come by — a broken cold chain is a major reason why 50% of vaccines are wasted annually, according to the WHO.

What’s new? Scientists from ETH Zurich and Colorado-​based startup Nanoly Bioscience have now developed a hydrogel that could help minimize this vaccine waste.

It works by wrapping around the heat-sensitive components in a vaccine — this allows them to remain viable at room temperature or higher: 25-65 C (75-150 F). When it’s time to use the vaccine, a sugar solution is added, and the hydrogel dissolves in about an hour.

Keeping vaccines from being ruined is very important. what with the COVID and Monkeypox and apparently Polio is back because I HATE ANTI VAXXERS SO MUCH GODDAMMIT. Sorry, got off topic for a bit, but seriously though. Seriously. Polio is a thing again, Polio. POLIO.

Hosted by police departments, local churches, nonprofit organizations, and even sports teams, these events are seeing unprecedented numbers of guns being donated to be decommissioned to organizations like RAWtools, which turns them into gardening tools.

The overall goal of gun buyback events is to reduce the number of firearms available in a community overall, and a lower rate of gun ownership would correlate with a lower rate of gun violence. However, it's important to note that research shows gun buyback programs are most effective at reducing gun violence when implemented along with other programs, like universal background checks, firearm registration, and more. Additionally, critics of the events say it can disproportionately target communities with a statistically higher likelihood of finding themselves in a position of needing to defend themselves with a firearm.

That’s great and all, but will it still cost only one White mana and will I still gain light equal to the sacrificed guns power? (Points to whoever gets this intensely nerdy reference).

Massachusetts’ Republican governor, Charlie Baker, signed a sweeping climate and energy bill into law on Thursday, approving an array of policies intended to advance the state’s goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

As the law’s name suggests, “An Act Driving Clean Energy and Offshore Wind” includes significant provisions to boost the development of offshore wind, such as granting access to state funds. The law requires that the state’s electric utilities procure 5,600 megawatts of new offshore wind capacity by 2027, up from a former goal of 4,000 megawatts. It also removes a controversial price cap that required every new wind project to offer cheaper electricity than the previous one — a mechanism that critics argued was stifling economic development.

Yeah even members of the GOP are realizing that all their money wont matter if they end up baking to death, so lets get to fixing things.

he U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday that it will cancel all remaining federal student debt taken on by borrowers who were defrauded by ITT Technical Institute since 2005, delivering $3.9 billion in relief to some 208,000 people.

ITT Educational Services was at one point one of the largest operators of for-profit technical schools in the U.S., and shut down in 2016. Borrowers shouldn’t have to apply for the relief, the Education Department said.

The Education Department found that ITT Tech engaged in widespread and pervasive misrepresentations, including lying about students’ ability to get a job or transfer credits.

Great to hear. Now, about my student debt…

Food banks in Illinois got a special treat last year: more than 600,000 pounds of peaches, nectarines and apples. Marred by a dimple here or there, the fruit was bounty that previously might have been left to rot, deemed unsuitable for grocery stores.

Instead, a three-year pilot program distributed tons of such fresh fruit to food pantries, shelters, senior centers and other groups serving people in need. The Farm to Food Bank project shores up local supply chains by creating another market for local growers, while also eliminating food waste and relieving hunger.

As someone who works at a grocery store, this is very intriguing to me.

On Monday, more than 2,000 mental health care workers at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California began an open-ended strike to demand the health care giant increase staffing and address dangerously long waits for therapy appointments.

“They’re turning us into a patient assembly line,” said Ilana Marcucci-Morris, an Oakland-based therapist for Kaiser, who called the work stoppage a “last resort” after years of failed negotiations.

As demand for mental health care soars, Kaiser’s mental health workers, including psychologists, social workers, therapists and addiction counselors, say they’ve faced increasingly unmanageable workloads, even as patients are forced to wait two to three months for appointments.

As someone who is currently waiting until January to get a diagnosis for Autism, I can definitely feel their frustrations. I hope things work out for them.

On Friday, a Michigan judge blocked county prosecutors from enforcing the state’s 1931 abortion ban, which has exceptions only if the pregnant person’s life is at risk. This means that Michiganders will retain access to abortion—at least for the next few months, until the November elections.

Really guy? You’re that desperate to make life miserable for women? How pathetic can you get?

Former President Donald Trump and his team have spent days since the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago trying to assemble a "team of respected lawyers" but keep getting rejected, according to The Washington Post.

"Everyone is saying no," a prominent Republican lawyer told the outlet.

Trump is scrambling to find an experienced team of attorneys to defend him amid mounting legal crises. The Justice Department is investigating him under the Espionage Act after he took classified records, including some labeled "top secret," to his Mar-a-Lago residence. He also faces legal scrutiny in the DOJ's investigation into the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as well as a state civil probe in New York and a Fulton County, Ga., criminal investigation into his efforts to overturn his loss in the state.

Yeah I think this might be the thing that finally brings down Trump (Don’t quote me though but still though. Wow).

Researchers have developed1 an approach to break down a class of long-lasting chemicals that they say is easier and cheaper than the harsh methods currently used. The work also hints at how these chemicals, which have been linked to health problems, fall apart — a finding that could help to ultimately destroy these persistent pollutants.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs, are widely used in products such as firefighting foams, waterproof clothes and nonstick cookware. Dubbed ‘forever chemicals’ because they don’t break down under typical environmental conditions, PFASs accumulate in soil and water and can persist in the human body once ingested. A 2015 study2 found PFASs in the blood of 97% of Americans, and scientists have linked them to conditions including thyroid disease, high cholesterol and cancer.

Looks like they are only forever until they aren’t. Nothing lasts forever.

Including this GNR. I hope you all enjoyed our little look into the news of the world. Have a good week, stay healthy, happy and hopeful (Seriously though, POLIO!?!).