La Tomatina : the festival where you throw tomatoes

0:03 Oh my, this sounds like so much fun. Hi, I'm Johnny Mac with five good news stories. The Spanish town of Buñol became a sea of red on August 26. Thousands of people had gathered for La Tomatina. The messy tomato fight. Trucks rolled through the streets delivering overripe tomatoes. Participants wasted little time throwing them at one another. I want to go to this next year. This sounds amazing. Music blasted as white shirts turned pink with many revelers wearing swimming goggles to keep the flying pulp out of their eyes. The tradition dates to a food fight from 1945 and has grown into an international attraction held on the last Wednesday of August. For some visitors, the journey began at the movies. There's a 2011 Bollywood film whose title I can't pronounce follows three friends traveling through Spain, and that film introduced the festival to audiences far beyond Spain.

0:56 Visitors Mazar and Sonia traveled from India after dreaming of attending the tomato fight for more than a decade. Participants were reminded to squash their tomatoes before throwing them to help prevent injuries. A cannon blast signaled the end of the battle, sending the tomato-covered crowds towards communal showers while crews hosed down the streets. The festivities lasted little more than an hour. Diana is an inventor. She recognized a challenge shared by many communities on Earth. How do you build a toilet that works without running water or sewer pipes? Her answer became the iThrone, a waterless toilet designed for places beyond the reach of conventional plumbing. The toilet evaporates approximately 95% of the water contained in human waste, reducing the amount left to collect and dispose of. It requires no flushing or sewer connection. The iThrone has been deployed in Uganda, Panama, and the United States. Her work earned a Global Citizen Wastelets Award, including $ 100, 000 to help her team expand the project and reach more communities. She actually started this working on a space toilet. Good news if you're a young zebra shark. Some shark nannies have helped young zebra sharks return to the wild. 82 young zebra sharks have been released into protected Indonesian waters. The releases are part of ReShark. I love that title. An international effort that brings together aquariums and conservation specialists to raise sharks for life in the wild. In Indonesia, researchers estimated that only about 20 adult zebra sharks remained in 2019. 20, he said. 20. Yikes. Now, captive breeding is helping giving these species a fresh start. There's just too many of

2:26 these stories. We've got to take care of the planet, people. Participating aquariums send fertilized eggs to specialized nurseries where trained animal care experts, nicknamed shark nannies, Look after the hashlings. I feel like there'd be a good cable TV show called Sharknanny. Once the young sharks reach about a meter in length, they're released into a sprawling marine sanctuary. Good start so far. They're finding the released sharks are finding food and remaining within the protected area. But the challenge, zebra sharks take years to mature, and researchers need to see whether the released animals will eventually breed in the wild and establish a self-sustaining population. Good news for Teddy the dog. Teddy is back with his owner after spending nearly three weeks missing on one of England's highest mountains.

3:08 Teddy was on a hike on August 2nd, disappeared, posters went up, volunteers were looking. No Teddy. Then, a couple weeks later, searchers heard barking from Dry Gill, which is a steep ravine on the mountainside. They found Teddy alive, but they couldn't reach him, so they had to call the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team. Seven team members took part in the rescue, which lasted about three and a half hours. They secured Teddy in a rucksack and gave him a little food before carrying him down to the parking lot. There he was reunited with his owner and taken to the vet. He had lost considerable weight, but was doing okay. All right, Johnny Mac, why were you late for work this time? Well, boss, you see, I was there on the westbound 105 around Linwood when suddenly a pickup truck lost a pallet of cheese balls on the highway. About 120 containers spilled onto the westbound lanes of the 105.

3:55 The California Highway Patrol shared video. The video showed Utz cheese balls scattered across the roadway, creating an unusual obstacle for drivers heading through the L.A. area. But the spilled cheese balls weren't the only reason traffic slowed. Highway Patrol officials said some motorists stopped to retrieve undamaged containers of cheese balls. But you know how the show works. Everybody was OK in the end. And those are your five good news stories for today. Have a great day.