India

Vultures may not be the most popular of nature’s creatures (scavengers rarely are anyone’s favorite animal), but when it comes to eating other dead animals, they perform a useful function in the food chain. Now, scientists in India have put a value on exactly how useful this trash-disposal service is to humans: 1.5 million rupees ($22,000) per day. Considering that each day across the country vultures eat an amount of meat about equal to the capacity of a medium-sized carcass-rendering plant, this represents decent savings for the government — and, say the researchers from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (who conducted the study), it strengthens the case for starting vulture breeding programs.

Nigeria

Schoolgirls in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, are building robots for extracting and safely disposing of the toxic chemicals in non-biodegradable waste and turning the rest of it into fuel. (The bots are solar-powered and built out of Legos.) The students, from the Government Girls Secondary School in Dutse and the Junior Secondary School in Area 11, designed and built the machines under the guidance of the Odyssey Educational Foundation, which aims to encourage young women into STEM careers by giving them experience with robotics, engineering, and computing.

Brazil

The country is facing a crisis of “literary decay.” Thankfully, Brazilians wishing to read more classic literature but who find themselves unable to do so — either due to poor literacy levels or lack of time — can now subscribe to “Leitura de Bolso.” (Translation: “Pocket Reading.”) Each week, the campaign delivers a five-minute chunk of text from a different book by a different author to every subscriber via WhatsApp. Ten percent of WhatsApp’s total user base lives in Brazil.

Pakistan

The national parliament building in Islamabad has become the first in the world to be powered entirely by solar energy. Speaker Ayaz Sadiq announced recently that the building is now a net generator of electricity — it only requires 62 megawatts to function, thereby feeding a spare 18 megawatts into the national grid. The new system was built with assistance from the Chinese government, following a state visit by Xi Jinping last year.

South Africa

New research from Pew finds that despite the stereotype of millennials (those aged 34 and under) as web natives addicted to their smartphones, there are multiple, major developing nations where older generations are actually better connected. In South Africa, fewer than six in 10 millennials have web access, and the culprit seems to be high-income inequality between generations. Other nations such as Lebanon, Peru, and Brazil see an impact on generational connectivity for the same reasons.

Japan

A costume shop in Kasugai, Aichi, has designed a kimono for people in wheelchairs that can be put on while seated. Normally, donning the traditional garment can mean standing for up to half an hour while the kimono’s different layers are wrapped around the body. The new wheelchair version comes in two pieces, connected with a zipper, making it easier to put on while sitting so that no one is excluded from wearing formal dress on special occasions.