This week I dug particularly for the stories that are easy to miss: people doing remarkable things, and community achievements, and a few wonderfully unusual initiatives. No routine politics. No dirty laundry. Every Wednesday my belief in humanity gets renewed.
Africa
South Africa
University conservation students joined primary-school children at Johannesburg’s Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve for an Arbor Day devoted to hands-on conservation. Young visitors learned about plants, water, wildlife and environmental protection through interactive activities rather than textbooks.
Nigeria
Nigerian businessman Abdul Samad Rabiu has been named one of Leadership Newspapers’ 2026 Persons of the Year, with the citation highlighting his philanthropy as well as investments in jobs, manufacturing and infrastructure. Media entrepreneur Nduka Obaigbena shares this year’s recognition.
Asia
Japan
Japan’s wonderfully eccentric Birdman Contest returns to television tonight after 28 teams gathered at Lake Biwa to compete in homemade human-powered aircraft.
Eleven teams entered the propeller-aircraft category and 17 entered the glider competition. The contest began in 1977 and is now in its 48th edition.
Japan / South Korea
Japanese composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda has been named the 2026 winner of South Korea’s Nam June Paik Prize.
Ikeda is known for transforming data, sound, mathematics and light into large-scale installations. The award also gives him a solo exhibition at the Nam June Paik Art Centre next year.
South Korea
Japanese-British artist duo Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves, working as A.A. Murakami, opened their first Korean exhibition yesterday.
One installation uses a 6.4-meter mechanical tree whose branches produce soap bubbles like flowers. Other works use fog, light and technology to reproduce changing natural phenomena.
Australia & Pacific
New Zealand
The population of the critically endangered kākāpō has passed 300 for the first time in 75 years after an extraordinary breeding season produced 90 chicks.
There are now 325 of the giant flightless parrots. When the modern recovery program began in 1995, only 51 remained.
Australia
Today is Indigenous Literacy Day across Australia. This year’s national film follows Niningka and Chris, two children from Central Australia, as they teach viewers about Country, seasons, language and culture.
The program is being streamed free to schools, libraries and homes around Australia.
Australia
Today is also Australia’s Early Childhood Educators’ Day. More than 8,800 early-learning services have registered to participate, recognizing the people who work with the country’s youngest children.
Middle East
Jordan
Jordan’s Fuheis Festival concluded its 33rd edition this week after six days of concerts, cultural discussions, heritage events and children’s programs.
The final children’s event featured a traditional Dabke dance performed by young dancers from the Zaha Cultural Center.
UAE
Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Library begins September with an Epistolary Literature Forum devoted to the increasingly rare art of letter writing.
Writers and critics will explore real and literary correspondence through readings and performances in Arabic, Russian, French and English. A Korean book festival follows later this week.
Europe
Austria
Ursula Magnes became the first woman ever to lead Vienna’s historic Hofmusikkapelle on September 1.
There is another change: the Vienna Girls Choir will now regularly perform alongside the Vienna Boys Choir at the Hofburg Chapel. The musical institution dates back almost 530 years. (That’s about damn time…signed a former choir girl from Austria).
United Kingdom
A lone walker fell on rocky terrain on Dartmoor, apparently breaking her arm, and then lost her phone signal.
An aircrew searched through heavy rain and poor visibility, eventually locating her in the remote moorland and airlifting her to safety. The National Police Air Service reported the rescue yesterday.
Ireland
A small army of Irish volunteers is celebrating 20 years of cleaning the Wicklow and Dublin uplands.
The Pure project has removed more than 4.3 million kilograms of illegally dumped waste from over 17,000 sites since 2006. Manager Ian Davis has led the initiative from the beginning.
Italy
At the ancient Su Crucifissu Mannu necropolis in Sardinia, visitors yesterday received an archaeological tour followed by a contemporary dance performance created specifically for the site.
Six dancers from Boston’s Liquid Spine company performed among a landscape shaped by thousands of years of human history.
Greece
Greek painter Manos Anastasiadis opened a new exhibition in medieval Rhodes yesterday examining the two places that shaped his artistic life: the South Aegean and Paris.
Anastasiadis first visited Paris in 1996. Thirty years later, his paintings explore how those encounters changed the way he sees his own Aegean home.
Scandinavia
Sweden, Norway, Denmark & Finland
Construction workers across Nordic workplaces are pausing operations today for a coordinated safety exercise.
Employees, subcontractors and suppliers at sites across Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland are taking part in discussions aimed at identifying dangerous habits before they cause accidents.
Finland — One hundred years of voices
Finnish public broadcaster Yle turns 100 this month, with its centenary celebrations centered on shared experiences among ordinary Finns.
A major public celebration takes place in Helsinki on September 5, followed later this month by an open-house event inviting people behind the scenes.
North America
Canada / Nepal
International rescue teams are assisting Nepal after last week’s catastrophic floods, with specialized personnel joining Nepalese responders trying to reach isolated communities and missing people.
The wider rescue operation has already brought thousands of people to safety, including hundreds of foreign nationals.
South America
Brazilian Amazon
A newly announced Amazon partnership is expanding a community conservation model centered on pirarucu, the world’s largest freshwater scaled fish.
Local communities sustainably manage fishing while earning income from the recovered fish populations. The program plans to expand into açaí and oilseeds and aims ultimately to support about 13,000 people and eight million hectares of forests, rivers and wetlands.
Colombia — Fourteen students head for one of Antioquia’s last wild rivers
Fourteen university students from different academic fields are preparing to spend two weeks studying Colombia’s Samaná River, the last major free-flowing river in Antioquia.
They will conduct field research alongside local communities while studying biodiversity and the long-term protection of the river.
People Who Make a Difference
England to Nepal
British aid worker Alastair Chambers became the subject of an unusual mix-up yesterday when Nepalese authorities listed him among flood survivors who had been rescued.
Chambers hadn’t been rescued at all. He had traveled into the disaster zone to deliver sleeping bags, food and water to isolated communities and was simply returning to Kathmandu by helicopter.
Ireland
First-aid trainer Nathan Clements teaches CPR and emergency-care skills through Ireland’s Gaelic sports community.
This month he’s giving something back to the volunteer lifeboat crews whose casualty-care materials he uses in his teaching: he has rented his local hall and is holding a community fundraiser for the RNLI.
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