Our daily journey around the world

🇵🇱🎨 A priceless 16th-century painting stolen by Nazi Germany in WWII has been returned to Poland. The “Madonna with Child,” attributed to Italian artist Alessandro Turchi, was handed back to Poland in a ceremony yesterday, after the Japanese individual who owned the painting decided to give it back for free. It represents the latest of ~600 artistic pieces that Poland has successfully repatriated as part of a decades-long effort following WWII – though an estimated 66,000 other pieces of art are still unaccounted for.

🌏 Earth’s health is failing in seven out of eight key areas, per a new study published in Nature. The report, created by scientists at the international Earth Commission group, examined the planet’s 1) climate, 2) air pollution, 3) contamination of water due to fertilizer, 4) groundwater supplies, 5) fresh surface water, 6) unbuilt natural environment, 7) overall natural environment, and 8) human-built environment. Of the eight categories, only air pollution was deemed as currently outside the “danger zone” for the well-being of humans. Though the scientists said the Earth can still recover if people change their use of coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as change the way they treat the land and water.

🇮🇳 India is eliminating all public school lessons on evolution and the periodic table, among other cuts. The new science curriculum, first reported yesterday by Nature, will cover an estimated 134 million students between the ages of 11 and 18 starting next year. In explaining the changes, Indian education officials said they considered whether content overlapped with similar content covered elsewhere, the difficulty of the content, and whether the content was irrelevant.