shoot your shot...

🎥 The Cannes Film Festival is underway, and to kick it off, a group of more than 350 actors, directors, and producers signed a letter condemning the killing of the Palestinian protagonist of a documentary premiering at the festival, as well as the silence of the industry.

💉 According to the results of a new clinical trial, a combined COVID-19 and flu shot outperformed existing standalone vaccines. A combo shot would make it easier for people to get vaccinated and protected against both at the same time.

Climate action

After farmers sued the administration, the USDA is putting climate change information back on its website

When President Trump took office, the administration deleted web pages that contained information that farmers say helped them make time-sensitive decisions about business risks related to climate change, like heat waves, droughts, floods, and wildfires.

The purge included resources like the U.S. Forest Service’s “Climate Risk Viewer,” which included maps showing how climate change could impact national forests and grasslands.

A group of farmers sued the administration over the deletion, and now the Agriculture Department is restoring the information, including pages on federal funding and loans, forest conservation, and rural clean energy projects.

Why is this good news? Climate change is impacting all of our lives, and farmers feel this perhaps most intensely. They need accurate, up-to-date information on how climate change-fueled extreme weather events are impacting their livelihoods — and ultimately, we *all* need them to have that in order to literally have food to eat.

→ Read more (Gifted link)

More Good News

​Oregon State University purchased over 3,000 acres of private forestland to be part of its new research forest. OSU leaders say this landscape will become more ecologically diverse under the university’s ownership, as it plans to research what effects different types of logging practices have on tree diseases, pests, and fire resilience.

​After its population was decimated by brushfires and drought, Australia’s mountain pygmy possum is making a comeback. There are now estimated to be as many as 950 of the tiny mammal adults in the wild, up from 700 in 2020, as efforts to protect the endangered species from the threats of climate change continue.

​Small-scale community energy programs are helping bring clean energy to remote villages in Latin America. More than 16 million people do not have access to electricity in Latin America and the Caribbean, despite often living in the shadow of fossil-fuel extraction projects, and these systems are tackling energy poverty while contributing to a just energy transition.

​Hundreds of participants from more than 55 countries joined Italy’s first-ever “Dyke March.” The march was part of a four-day conference in Rome and served as a powerful moment of solidarity and visibility amidst a nation grappling with intensifying political conservatism and regular assaults on civil liberties.

Governments doing good

While this country slows down climate action, its capital city is stepping up — and is taking its job as a role model seriously

→ Read more​

Politics

Instead of attack ads, a Gen-Z congressional candidate is using campaign money to feed people

Kat Abughazaleh is a 26-year-old running for Congress in Illinois — and she believes politicians need to do things differently.

A journalist, social media influencer, and political commentator, Abughazaleh is leveraging her established online platform and campaign dollars to help people in her community long before their ballots are cast.

Seeing “how much money gets wasted in politics,” she wanted her run for office to be “dual-purpose,” in which she can get her message out and help people in the process.

For example, her kick-off event’s entry “fee” was a box of period products — it collected over 5,000 — and she hosted a food drive that’s actively “feeding people right now” in the community.

→ ​​Read more​

More Good bits

🎶 Hozier will never beat the forest creature allegations.​

🐆 Meet the woman saving cheetahs from extinction.​

🫎 And a new initiative wants to bring elk back to the U.K. after 3,000 years.

🪒 Don’t toss it, 3D print a fix for it!​

🖼️ Permission to spend hours at an art museum.

What’s good?

I looooooove to see this growing trend of political candidates going about campaigning differently than what we traditionally see or expect.

What do you think of Kat’s approach?

Love to see it? Got your vote? Reply and tell me!

— Megan

P.S. Thank you for all the happy birthday wishes! Love you, mean it. 🥰