Your Good News round-up: swear words can make you more resistant to pain, and more…

This is the Good News round-up, and these are this week’s positive developments:

1. The EU has agreed to ban imports of products that drive deforestation

In total, an area larger than the EU was lost to global deforestation between 1990 and 2020. And levels of European consumption are partly to blame, causing around 10 per cent of the loss worldwide.

The good news is that EU lawmakers and governments have reached an agreement to pass a new law ensuring that products sold in the region are more environmentally friendly.

Companies will need to show that the goods they import have not led to any deforestation or forest degradation since 2021, anywhere in the world, and that they comply with rules on human rights and the protection of indigenous people in the country of origin.

The European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment called the agreement a “world first,” saying this concerns "the coffee we drink in the morning, the chocolate we eat, the charcoal we use in our barbecues, the paper in our books.”

The new rules will impose a duty of care on companies that wish to place their derivatives on the European market, including palm oil, livestock, soy, cocoa, timber and rubber, said Adalbert Jahnz, Spokesperson for the European Commission, adding that the agreement “will be part of the European contribution to the World Conference on Biodiversity, the COP15, which is starting in Montreal."

2. Robots helping doctors detect early rheumatoid arthritis

The arrival of robots in the workplace has been a source of anxiety for decades.

But now that humanoid robots are actually emerging, the picture is changing, with some seeing robots as promising teammates rather than competitors.

In Denmark, a new clinical robot promises to cut long