(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . From the GNR Newsroom: Its the Monday Good News Roundup [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-27 Hey everyone, I’m BAAACK! Welcome back to the Monday Good News Roundup, where the GNR Newsroom: Myself, Bhu and Killer300, bring you good news to star your week off right. I had to cancel last week because I was recovering from a stomach bug, but I am feeling much better this week. I have more stories than I know what to do with due to my lost week, so I’m gonna have a special lightning round at the end of the normal stories this week in order to cover those I missed last week. But for now, lets get on to this weeks good news. n the fall of 2022, the prospects for renters in Los Angeles were not looking very bright. The Los Angeles City Council had voted to wind down the emergency eviction protections enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of tenants were behind on rent and faced losing their homes. The council itself had an uncertain future; in the upcoming election, it would either break for progressives or for a slate of incumbents, many of whom had ties to developers. Billionaire developer and former Republican Rick Caruso was spending millions of dollars of his own money in his campaign for mayor. Against the odds , and the deep pockets, pro-tenant candidates came out on top in several races. Longtime liberal Rep. Karen Bass defeated Caruso. Progressives beat incumbents for several council seats and the office of City Controller. And most significantly for tenants, voters approved Measure ULA, a new tax on real estate sales of $5 million or more, with the funds going to affordable housing and rent relief, plus legal counsel for tenants. Good news for apartment renters in LA, I hope they can keep this up. For the first time in the 75-year history of the U.K.’s National Health Service, nurses and ambulance workers held strikes on Feb. 7 — and members of the Royal College of Nursing, the nation’s largest nursing union, went on its first ever walk-out. Tens of thousands of nurses went on strike and picketed in favor of an increase in wages, which are 10 percent less today in real terms than in 2011. Every ambulance service in the U.K. has also had an active strike mandate as of Feb. 8, according to the general trade union GMB. “We’re trying to keep maximum pressure on the government, but also have to pace ourselves a little bit so it’s not too much pressure on the members in terms of the amount of money they’re losing, and also pressure on the service,” said Jamie Brown, regional manager and head of health for London Ambulance Service branch of Unison, the U.K.’s largest ambulance workers’ union. I hope they get what they are striking for. Nurses deserve all the respect in the world. Another person has been cured of HIV, according to findings published Feb. 20 in Nature. The 53-year-old man in Germany stopped receiving treatment for the virus four years ago and is now cured, researchers said. He is the fifth person to be cured of the virus after a stem cell transplant, ABC News reported. HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, weakens the body by attacking white blood cells. It has infected nearly 40 million people worldwide and can lead to AIDS, which has killed millions, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. In the 2010s, the man was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and began chemotherapy. Because of his cancer, he underwent a stem cell transplant — a high-risk procedure for cancer patients who do not have many alternatives and possibly the reason his HIV infection disappeared. The researchers said the procedure is neither low-risk or "easily scalable" but has "relevance to cure strategies." Because the findings are based on one person, the study authors added that this case offers "important insights but is anecdotal by nature and lacks the power of controlled prospective studies." This is great news, I wonder how far off we are from curing HIV in everyone. Seattle has made history in the U.S. by banning discrimination based on the ancient Hindu caste system, which activists argue encourages inequality, segregation and exclusion among South Asians. On Tuesday evening, Seattle became the first American city—and the first in the world outside South Asia—to add caste-based discrimination as a form of outlawed prejudice, joining a list that includes gender, age, race and sexual orientation. Indians are now the third largest group of immigrants in the U.S. with an estimated population of about 2.8 million, and according to U.S. census data, 4.6 million Asian-Americans identify as Indian-origin. Huh. You figure that would something that would already be banned. Ah well, good to hear its being addressed. Ukraine’s transmission system operator Ukrenergo informed that for the third day in a row, there is no deficit in the energy system of Ukraine. That means there is enough electricity for all Ukrainians, and they receive it not by schedule but during all 24 hours. This situation occurred for the first time since October 2022, when Russia started regularly targeting Ukraine’s power grid and power plants to deprive Ukrainians of electricity. However, the plan has failed. Recent Russian missile attacks had little impact since Ukraine’s air defense downed nearly 85% of Russian missiles. Its capabilities have significantly improved since October, while the Russian missile stockpile ran close to the end. Good news for Ukraine! Keep going guys, we believe in you! Unfortunately for WotC, the human element is D&D. Players quite literally make the game what it is, and many of them were extremely upset at what they saw as WotC’s plan to shortchange independent creators for profit. ​“In this game, even your average dungeon master or player is a creator in their own right. You create your character, you create encounters,” Miller says. ​“There’s a lot of sympathy for creators.” Some creators and influencers, including Macaulay, began working together to turn the raw anger into a cohesive movement. “[The D&D community] fight a lot amongst ourselves,” Da Conceicao says. ​“Stuff like, ​‘The second edition is better than the third edition.’ But the moment that someone tries to shit on us? Forget it.” This one is a bit of personal good news since I’m a DnD player. Basically WOTC and Hasbro tried to be really shitty and change their OGL agreement to try and squeeze money out of people, and they backed down after a massive consumer backlash. Showing that corporate greed can be stemmed in the face of massive public outrage. Russia invaded Ukraine one year ago on February 24, 2022. If you would have predicted then that it would supercharge the green transition in Europe, your sanity would have been questioned. And yet that is exactly what has happened. While the war rolls on in Ukraine, Europe has managed to not only avoid the worst-case scenario of a winter filled with blackouts and deaths from cold, but also potentially, according to The Economist, knock “a full decade off the continent’s decarbonization timeline.” Color me impressed, even though part of the success was the luck of a mild winter, and even though the cost has been heavy—the Greek government, for example, has been covering almost two-thirds of my recent electricity bills here in Athens. Sometimes the oddest things can have unexpected results, like Russia going off the deep end forcing everyone to put on their big boy pants and get serious about green energy. Counting people where they are incarcerated during redistricting, it distorts our system of representative government,” said Wilmington Councilmember Shané Darby, who pushed for the change. Several states, and a growing number of cities and counties across the U.S., have adopted this reform. They’re seeking to end prison gerrymandering — the term advocates use for counting incarcerated people at the facility where they’re locked up, rather than in their home community. The practice typically dilutes the power of urban areas and communities of color, which see higher rates of incarceration, and at their expense boosts white and rural areas where most prisons are located. Stories about ending gerrymandering are always good news. Remember these days the GOP only wins when they cheat, we can further reduce their relevance by reducing their ability to cheat. artway through oral argument before the Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Google, Justice Elena Kagan took a moment to acknowledge the limitations of her institution’s ability to weigh complex technical questions about internet governance. “We’re a court,” she said. “We really don’t know about these things. You know, these are not, like, the nine greatest experts on the internet.” Kagan’s quip got a laugh, but her colleagues on the bench—to their collective credit—appeared to take her point seriously. Over the course of two days of marathon arguments in Gonzalez and its companion case, Twitter v. Taamneh, the justices appeared to genuinely grapple with complex questions about the responsibility of social media platforms for their users’ posts. When the Court first announced that it would hear Gonzalez and Taamneh, scholars of internet law and technology policy were anxious that these grants of certiorari suggested a willingness on the Court’s part to potentially upend the legal structure that has undergirded the internet for more than two decades. After this week’s arguments, though, the potential for a ruling that would throw the online world into chaos seems substantially diminished. Yeah considering how their last decision went I’m not at all surprised they don’t intend to do anything stupid again this year, I don’t think the GOP can take another eff up. Alright that concludes our regularly scheduled good news this, week, now its time for the Missing week lightning round. Now keep in mind some of these stories are a bit older, so they may have already been covered elsewhere. Now is the best time in history to love and be loved Wind turbine giant says it has solution for keeping blades out of landfills Renewables will be worlds top electricity source in three years Reforestation effort grows in Brazil Game workers about to take on biggest boss fight of all EPA moves to restore rule on mercury from power plants An invasive species is helping restore the Amazon Minnesota has ambitious new climate bill: 100% renewables by 2040 And that does it for this week. Its good to be back. Maybe not 100% yet but I’m getting there, and I will be here for next week fingers crossed. Till then, have a good week. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/27/2155169/-From-the-GNR-Newsroom-Its-the-Monday-Good-News-Roundup Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/