Around the world
Follow positive news across Europe, including the United Kingdom, from community services and health to science and environmental progress.
33stories
Showing 19–33 of 33 · Newest first
Edinburgh Giants Inclusive Sports Club received over £26,000 in National Lottery Awards for All funding in June 2026 to train 12 coaches and run a 9-month wheelchair rugby league programme for around 100 disabled children and young people. The club became the first Scottish team to reach the top-flight wheelchair rugby league Super League in June 2025.
Edinburgh's Voi e-bike hire scheme has recorded almost 550,000 trips by around 53,500 users since launching in September 2025, The Scotsman reported. At 8.4 trips per vehicle per day, it is now the most successful e-bike scheme in Europe by that measure, prompting the City of Edinburgh Council to expand the fleet for a third time in five months.
New 2026 analysis from LV=, drawing on Child Poverty Action Group data, puts the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 at £250,000 for a couple and £290,000 for a lone parent.
The UK government announced a £340 million investment on 29 May 2026 to expand NHS Pharmacy First, after pharmacies delivered 3.3 million consultations between March 2025 and February 2026, a 43% increase year on year. GOV.UK reported five new conditions will be added from autumn 2026.
Tonbridge School's annual Novi Sleepout, in which First Year pupils sleep outside to raise money and awareness, has pushed fourteen years of fundraising for Porchlight, Kent's largest homelessness charity, past £200,000. Tonbridge School reported the milestone on 21 May 2026, alongside quotes from Porchlight staff on the impact of the funds.
HM Revenue & Customs confirmed 86,270 people filed their 2025-26 self-assessment tax return on 6 April 2026, the first day of the new tax year, contributing to a record 737,891 filings that month. GOV.UK reported the figures alongside new Making Tax Digital rules.
Lorraine Bullar, a trained RNLI rescuer, swam 15 metres into freezing Stanley Park Lake in Blackpool on April 18, 2026, to free a seagull trapped in fishing line for more than five hours. Good News Network verified the rescue with Brambles Wildlife Rescue, which is now caring for the bird, named Patience.
The Orkney Native Wildlife Project has removed more than 8,500 invasive stoats from the islands using humane traps, and 2025 monitoring found Orkney vole activity at its highest level since regular surveys began. Hen harriers bred in 74 locations in 2025, the highest number since 2012, with results linked directly to falling stoat numbers.
Residents of Curry Mallet and Beercrocombe in Somerset have raised around £111,000 toward a £260,000 target to buy and reopen The Bell Inn, a 200-year-old pub that closed in March 2025. The Morning Advertiser reported the community, through the Curry Mallet and Beercrocombe Community Pub Ltd society, has around 107 shareholders and is running a Crowdfunder campaign for the remaining amount.
A Denmark-based cohort study of 817,128 screened women found that stage IV breast cancers caught through screening had a 74.7% five-year survival rate, compared with 32.4% for cancers diagnosed after symptoms appeared in unscreened women. Researchers from King's College London, Queen Mary University of London, and the University of Southern Denmark published the findings in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in February 2026, drawing on Danish national screening and mortality registries covering 32,827 breast cancer cases from 2010 to 2022.
Leith Time Bank, run by the Pilmeny Development Project in Edinburgh, lets members exchange practical help — gardening, sewing, simple repairs, running errands — on a one-hour-for-one-hour basis regardless of what is offered. Timebanking UK lists it as one of five active time banks in Scotland, with a particular focus on older people and carers.
Manchester Royal Infirmary delivered the UK's first NHS treatment with obe-cel, a next-generation CAR-T immunotherapy, to a 28-year-old patient from Bury with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia on 2 January 2026. Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust reported that the global FELIX trial, in which the Manchester unit treated more patients than any other single centre, saw 77% of patients achieve remission after at least one infusion.
A Lancet Digital Health study published on 2 December 2025 found that NHS hospitals using the Brainomix 360 Stroke AI tool cut transfer times to specialist treatment by 64 minutes and doubled clot-removal treatment rates, from 2.3% to 4.6% of patients. NHS England reported the study analysed 452,952 stroke admissions across all 107 NHS hospitals in England between 2019 and 2023, with the AI tool now deployed in more than 70 hospitals nationwide.
RSPB NI and more than 100 farmers recorded the Antrim Hills' best breeding season in years for wading birds, with 45 curlew pairs, 32 lapwing pairs (the highest since 2017), and 243 snipe pairs, up just over 20% on 2024. RSPB NI published the results, gathered across Glenwherry in County Antrim, on 18 November 2025, crediting predator-proof fencing, lapwing fallow plots, and wetland habitat work carried out with local farmers.
Swansea University chemist Dr Sumati Bhatia and international collaborators built a synthetic sugar-coated nanoparticle that blocked SARS-CoV-2 infection of human lung cells by up to 98.6% in laboratory tests. The findings were peer-reviewed and published in the journal Small on 16 July 2025, with Swansea University announcing them on 11 August 2025.