Good news on global health, ocean protection, philanthropy

I’ll leave the free section of Fix the News to you. Here are highlights from the many items in the section requiring a subscription:

— The World Health Organization has released its 2025 Global Report on Neglected Tropical Diseases. It’s been 20 years since all its programs were unified under one strategy, “and the results have been extraordinary,” says Fix the News. Since 2010, the number of people needing treatment for neglected tropical diseases has dropped by 32 percent, and more than 50 countries now have eliminated at least one of these ancient diseases.

— The ocean’s mesopelagic zone — sometimes called the “twilight zone,” the dimly lit layer 660 to 3,300 feet below the surface — is home to an immense biomass of fish, says Mongabay. Last month at the World Conservation Congress, members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature adopted a motion to protect it.

— Fix the News is celebrating the “good kind” of billionaire: the kind who gives away most of their money. MacKenzie Scott, who already had given away $19 billion since her 2019 divorce from Jeff Bezos, has sold half of her remaining stake in Amazon, freeing up $13 billion more for philanthropy.

Scott says in an essay: “The peace-fostering byproducts of one unexpected act of kindness toward a stranger of different background or beliefs might inspire a beneficial chain reaction that goes on for years. Respect, understanding, insight, empathy, forgiveness, inspiration – all of these are meaningful contributions to others.

“It is these ripple effects that make imagining the power of any of our own acts of kindness impossible. Whose generosity did I think of every time I made every one of the thousands of gifts I’ve been able to give? It was the local dentist who offered me free dental work when he saw me securing a broken tooth with denture glue in college. It was the college roommate who found me crying, and acted on her urge to loan me a thousand dollars to keep me from having to drop out in my sophomore year. And after she saw the difference she made in my life, what was she inspired to do, twenty years later? Start a company that offers loans to low-income students without a co-signer. And how quickly did I jump at the chance to be one of the people who supported her dream of supporting students just as she had once supported me? And to whom will each of the thousands of students thriving on those generosity- and gratitude-powered student loans go on to give? None of us has any idea.”

Note to readers
The Veterans Day holiday is Tuesday, so I’m going to take some time off and will see you next on Thursday, Nov. 13.

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