Major Sunday Updates!! So Much Good News!!
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Good morning, everyone. As promised, our Sunday tradition continues: another weekly good news update. Share one piece of good news from your week in the comments, and pass this along so someone else can join in too.
I’ve got two pieces of good news this week. On the personal side, my daughter started crawling, and honestly, nothing in the news cycle this week came close to how exciting that was to watch. On the professional side, we’ve now been the number one news Substack in the world for more than eighteen consecutive months, and our growth is actually accelerating this year as we reach more households every week. We are also working on another big investigation, so stay tuned.
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Here’s the good news:
Sandy Hook Promise Says Its Prevention Programs Have Helped Stop 20 Planned School Shootings Since 2018. Sandy Hook Promise announced that its Say Something Anonymous Reporting System and “Know the Signs” prevention programs have now contributed to 20 verified averted school shootings, with the most recent intervention taking place in Arkansas after an anonymous tip helped law enforcement act before a potential tragedy. The milestone coincides with new Marist Poll data showing 96% of parents believe training students, teachers, and staff to recognize and report warning signs is effective, even as 69% worry warning signs could still be missed and another 69% worry about the mental health toll gun violence could have on their kids. Co-founder and CEO Nicole Hockley said the number represents real families whose children came home safely and had an ordinary day, made possible when people notice something is wrong and have the courage to speak up. Co-founder Mark Barden added that the milestone proves prevention works, but said the organization’s job isn’t finished until every school and community has access to these programs and prevention becomes a standard part of how school safety is approached. Sandy Hook Promise, founded by family members who lost loved ones in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, continues to push the “Know the Signs” curriculum alongside broader school safety and youth mental health policy work at the state and federal level.
Baltimore’s “Radical Street Librarian” Brings Free Books to Kids Through a Converted Trolley. A Baltimore woman known as Ms. Maze, or Storybook Maze on social media, has gone viral for using a green and gold trolley to deliver free books to hundreds of children in the city’s book deserts. The idea grew out of a moment in 2024 when she was reading to her nieces on her stoop and realized neighborhood kids gathering around had no books of their own at home, which pushed her to leave her full-time librarian job and start giving away books from her car and hosting stoop story time. After noticing that children coming into libraries weren’t the same kids she met on the street, she decided a trolley could reach multiple communities at once and reframe reading as something fun rather than something that felt like schoolwork. The trolley had its full rollout this summer, making stops at football practices, parks, and festivals where anywhere from 50 to 130 kids board in a single day, and Ms. Maze also runs it like an ice cream truck through neighborhoods, ringing a bell and reading to kids on their stoops. She relies on a wish list and GoFundMe to keep her mostly children’s book collection stocked, is expanding into genres like graphic novels and horror to reach teens and adults too, and is now working on adding book vending machines and eventually more trolleys to the rotation.
Mississippi Wildlife Center Runs “Raccoon Boot Camp” to Teach Orphaned Kits Survival Skills Their Mothers Never Got to Pass On. Woodside Wildlife Rescue in Pass Christian, Mississippi, has raised 76 raccoon kits so far this year, most of whom were separated from their mothers by storms, traffic accidents, or other trauma, and staff work to teach them survival skills like digging for food, fishing, swimming, and evading predators before releasing them back into the wild. Founder Paula Woodside, a former merchant mariner who started the rescue in 2019 after rehabilitating a raccoon found aboard her ship, and director Raquel Priest use hands-on methods like hiding worms in the dirt, breaking open acorns, and mimicking the raccoons’ own danger calls to send kits scurrying up trees for safety. The kits practice fishing in shallow pools, learn to swim in the rescue’s pond ahead of hurricane season, and take trips into the woods to learn escape routes from birds of prey and ground predators, all on the rescue’s 20-acre property of meadows, forest, and ponds. In a final lesson, a volunteer traps the raccoons in cages to scare them into avoiding humans and traps going forward, helping wean them off their human caretakers as they near release. About six months after arriving, graduating kits are honored with a ceremony featuring Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance Marches,” a roll call of names, and a blessing before being released into a different part of the property, with a similar ceremony held to scatter the ashes of any kits that didn’t survive.
San Francisco Couple Delivers Baby on the Side of the Road Near Golden Gate Park After Getting Stuck in Traffic. Karollyn and Nate welcomed their daughter, Cielle Ray, inside their vehicle on Saturday after heavy traffic near the Golden Gate Bridge kept them from reaching the hospital in time. A doula who happened to be stuck in the same traffic jam stepped in to help deliver the baby before emergency crews could arrive, and San Francisco Fire Department paramedics ended up parking two blocks away and running to the scene since they were stuck in traffic too. Karollyn and the newborn were both transported to the hospital afterward and are reported healthy and in good condition. The couple said they’d always joked about giving birth in the car but never expected it to actually happen, noting the one day Karollyn’s usual work commute hit terrible traffic turned out to be the day she needed it most. The fire department congratulated the family on social media, calling the birth “a true testament to dedication, compassion and teamwork.”
Six-Year-Old Chinese Girl Sets New Women’s World Record for Solving a Rubik’s Cube in Just Over Four Seconds. Lian Yunzhi, nicknamed “Zhizhi” and known as a “speedcuber,” broke the women’s 3x3 average world record twice this month at World Cube Association certified competitions in Wuhan and Guangzhou, posting averages of 4.52 and 4.27 seconds across five solves, according to state broadcaster CCTV. The six-year-old from Chengdu is now reportedly the first female speedcuber to average under 4.5 seconds. She was introduced to cubing through an extracurricular class alongside activities like dance and music, and her mother, Lin Yangxi, said she gradually shifted focus toward it after recognizing it as an excellent way to build a child’s overall abilities. Zhizhi has since mastered more than 1,300 solving algorithms and practices two to three hours a day, with her trophies now displayed on a shelf at home. Her mother said the practice builds focus, memory, logical thinking, and spatial awareness, while also teaching a healthy relationship with winning and losing.
New York City has collected $131.5 million from DoorDash in the largest worker settlement in city history after finding the company systematically underpaid more than 260,000 delivery workers. The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection found DoorDash failed to pay thousands of workers at all and paid thousands more late, and affected workers will receive roughly 200% of what they were owed, meaning someone shorted $1,000 will get $3,000. Mayor Mamdani noted the enforcement action comes even as DoorDash pulled in $13.7 billion in revenue last year, a 28% jump from 2024. Workers don’t need to file any claim since the city already identified everyone owed money through its own analysis, and payments will go out this fall via personalized notices. The settlement also creates a new monitoring system, developed with a Princeton University partner, that will let drivers share their trip and earnings data directly with the city to track DoorDash’s compliance going forward.
Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny have donated $1 billion to the University of Oregon, reportedly the largest single gift ever made to an American public university. The donation will let the school move forward with plans for an entirely new college of engineering, addressing what the university says is a shortage of engineers in the state. Knight, who co-founded Nike with his former track coach at Oregon, has already given the university $1 billion in combined gifts over the decades, enough that it’s sometimes nicknamed the University of Nike. University leaders called the gift a “screaming endorsement” of higher education’s value at a moment when the school is also planning $65 million in budget cuts due to an expected drop in out-of-state enrollment. Knight said the gift reflects his belief that public and private universities remain essential to turning “audacious dreams” into reality.
ABC News’ Danny New sits down with a couple of professional musicians whose dog, Billy, has his own way of asking them to play him a song.
A California nonprofit called Rise Up Industries is training formerly incarcerated men as machinists in a paid apprenticeship program that combines technical skills with therapy and case management. The program reports that only 3% of its graduates reoffend, compared to a national three-year recidivism rate around 66%, and it fills real contracts for aerospace, medical device, and automotive parts. Participants like Komisi Savaiinaea, who served more than two decades in prison, and Anthony Walkens, who served 47 years, described being intimidated at first but finding confidence once they saw others without machining backgrounds succeed in the program. The organization’s executive director said technical training alone often isn’t enough to prevent someone from returning to the isolation and instability that contributed to their incarceration in the first place. Komisi has since become a shop supervisor, mentoring new participants and describing the experience as central to rebuilding a stable, responsible life after prison.
A new AI model trained on millions of patients can detect signs of heart disease from a standard electrocardiogram, a test that couldn’t previously reveal that information. Presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual congress in Munich, the tool identifies early markers of heart failure and heart valve disease, two conditions normally only detectable via echocardiogram, which often requires a months-long wait for an appointment. In a trial of 67,000 US patients, the AI correctly detected 81% of heart failure cases and 90% of heart valve disease cases from ECG readings alone. Researchers say the goal isn’t to diagnose a heart attack outright but to flag high-risk patients so they can be fast-tracked for the ultrasound scan that would confirm it. Because roughly a billion ECGs are performed worldwide every year, often for unrelated reasons, the tool could catch potential heart disease in patients who weren’t previously considered at risk.
NBC and Universal’s annual “Clear the Shelters” campaign helped 135,000 shelter pets find homes this summer while raising $480,000 for more than 1,000 participating animal shelters. Running from July to September and now in its 12th year, the campaign has helped 1.5 million pets find homes overall and funneled more than $6 million to shelters since it began. Over 100 NBC and Telemundo stations across 47 states, plus DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico, took part by highlighting local adoption events. NBC credited partners including Hill’s Pet Nutrition for helping make the initiative possible. Organizers said the campaign shows what communities can accomplish when they come together to help animals in need.
A Wisconsin prison program is having inmates raise and release monarch butterflies, giving them a hands-on way to support a species in decline across the state. Now in its second year at Redgranite Correctional Institute, the program grew from 20 participants tending 60 caterpillars last year to caring for 100 caterpillars this year, with duties including feeding, tagging, and collecting data that feeds into broader conservation efforts. Organizer Carrie Jahnke also provides participants with educational materials on monarchs, pollinator plants, and horticulture. One inmate, Nathan Lecker, said the work lets him reconnect with a childhood hobby while giving back to the community from inside the prison. The Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin, which helped build the enclosure, praised the facility for getting involved in monarch conservation.
The Dave & Cheryl Duffield Foundation has committed $250 million over five years to expand access to veterinary care for American pet owners who can’t otherwise afford it. Software billionaire Dave Duffield and his wife Cheryl, who also founded Maddie’s Fund and have already given more than $300 million to animal welfare causes, say the initiative addresses a care gap affecting an estimated 50 million dogs and cats nationwide. The program’s first two components launching now include $2.5 million in small grants for community veterinary providers and a $10 million pool for larger, multi-year grants to help established nonprofit clinics expand capacity. The Foundation said financial barriers are leaving millions of pets without routine, preventive, or lifesaving care. Officials called it an investment in a future where every family can afford care for the animals they love.
A South Korean-funded drone training program helped Mozambique achieve zero fatalities during its worst flooding in decades, in a district north of the capital where the Incomáti River overflowed after weeks of rain. The African Development Bank’s Drone-Based Disaster Management Project had begun training 30 local public sector workers in drone piloting and LiDAR mapping months before the January floods hit, and the emergency became an unplanned real-world test of their skills. Trainees used live drone imagery and water-depth data to locate stranded families, map washed-out roads, and guide rescue vehicles through flooded streets in real time. All 30 pilots have since graduated, with 10 now qualified to train future operators themselves. A local councilwoman said the program represents a lasting leap in the region’s ability to respond to disasters faster and save more lives going forward.
Australian scientists have set up a solar-powered livestream of a remote desert waterhole in Watarrka National Park, letting people worldwide watch the wildlife that visits it. The camera has captured dingoes, wallabies, frogs, a feral cat, and even a wedge-tailed eagle stopping by to drink, all in a location roughly 800 miles from Darwin that few people, even Australians, will ever visit in person. Freshwater ecologist Jennifer Davis said advances in solar power, satellite internet, and compact computing finally made a permanent livestream feasible after years of relying on motion-activated cameras. The waterhole is temporary and can vanish during dry spells, only to refill and attract frogs again once rain returns. Davis said the project doubles as a long-term research tool, since climate change is expected to be the main factor affecting how much water the site holds going forward.
A group of California teens broke a Guinness World Record by recycling 22,000 tennis and pickleball balls, weighing 2,675 pounds, in a single day. The event, organized by youth group Another Bounce under the nonprofit Habits of Waste, aimed to draw attention to the roughly 500 million racquet sport balls sold and discarded in the US every year, of which experts estimate only 1 to 5% avoid the landfill. Families who donated a bag of balls received free ice cream, and organizers partnered with recycling company Ridwell to turn the collected material into pellets used in products like plant pots and carpeting. Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park attended to support the effort, and Malibu’s mayor invited the group to help draft an actual city ordinance aimed at diverting sports balls from landfills. Organizers said the event marks the start of a broader push for sustainability infrastructure across youth sports.
Amazon has committed $20 million toward conserving water in the drought-stressed Colorado River Basin, joining a new corporate coalition aimed at funding conservation projects across the watershed. The river supplies nearly 40 million people and more than 5 million acres of farmland, but 25 years of drought have cut its flow by 20%, leaving its two largest reservoirs below 30% capacity. Amazon’s initial funding includes a $2.2 million, three-year commitment to expand leak detection and repair for Orange County’s water district, along with support for an agricultural technology company using AWS-powered sensors to help tribal farmers irrigate more efficiently. The broader coalition has already secured more than $33 million in corporate commitments toward an eventual $100 million goal. The effort comes as federal officials have mandated significant cuts to Colorado River water deliveries for Nevada, California, and Arizona over the next two years.
A 150-year-old Portuguese company, Corticeira Amorim, has turned cork oak bark into an unexpectedly high-tech material used in everything from cruise ship decking to spacecraft heat shields. The company’s cork has been used in a thermal heat shield for a European Space Agency re-entry vehicle, leading to further aerospace work with NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX, alongside more everyday products like a cork-based oil spill absorbent called CorkSorb. Its cork-turf blend for artificial sports fields reportedly causes 40% fewer injuries than shredded rubber alternatives, and is used on Real Madrid’s training fields. The company employs 4,000 people and generates roughly €1 billion in annual revenue from cork harvested from trees that can be tapped every year for up to two centuries. Despite the high-tech applications, the underlying harvesting work in Portugal’s cork oak forests continues much as it always has, carried out by generations of the same rural workforce.
A bargain hunter who paid $30 for an unassuming painting at a Michigan estate sale discovered it was an authentic work by renowned surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, now expected to fetch up to $250,000 at auction. The buyer noticed the signature “Abercrombie ‘51” in the corner, and later spotted an archival photo of his own painting while touring an Abercrombie exhibition in Milwaukee, confirming its significance. After a recognized Abercrombie expert authenticated the piece, Freeman’s Auctions in New York set the opening bid at $75,000. The painting, titled “Alderman Merriam’s Shells,” was originally given by Abercrombie to a doctor in 1952 as payment for a medical operation. Auction house staff called the find remarkable given how recently they had discussed how Abercrombie works still occasionally surface at estate sales.
Cornell University scientists have developed a chemical bath method that can restore up to 95% of an aging EV battery’s original charging capacity without having to shred and reprocess it. The process, called Direct Electrode-to-Electrode Regeneration, removes a buildup called solid electrolyte interphase from battery electrodes using a chemical bath, reversing the main cause of range loss in lithium-ion batteries. Batteries treated this way lasted longer before degrading again and could even be treated a second time, though with diminishing returns. The method only works when capacity loss stems from this buildup rather than structural damage, but it costs significantly less per kilogram than traditional battery recycling. Researchers say the approach could enable a more sustainable, closed-loop system for EV battery manufacturing at scale.
Brazil’s Araticum Initiative, a large-scale ecosystem restoration project in the Cerrado savannah, has been honored by the UN as one of the three most impactful restoration efforts underway in the world. The Cerrado is the most biodiverse savannah on Earth, yet half of it has already been cleared or converted for agriculture, prompting the initiative to work toward restoring 4.4 million acres by 2030. More than 180 organizations, indigenous groups, farmers, researchers, and government institutions are involved, using natural regeneration, direct seeding, and agroforestry with native species. The project has already mapped over 50,000 acres under active restoration and collected seeds from more than 150 native plant species to build a lasting restoration supply chain. Brazil’s environment minister said the recognition strengthens the country’s ability to attract further investment toward its broader national goal of restoring roughly 30 million acres.
A UK study found that a simple, non-invasive urine test can detect bladder cancer with remarkable accuracy, potentially reducing the need for expensive, invasive cystoscopies. The test, called GALEAS Bladder, correctly identified cancer-associated genes in 71 of 77 patients who went on to develop bladder cancer, including all 17 cases of muscle-invasive cancer, while maintaining a negative predictive value above 99%. Bladder cancer is among the ten most common cancers worldwide, and current diagnosis relies heavily on hematuria, a symptom present in over 90% of patients but one that leads to a positive test only 8 to 19% of the time under current screening methods. Because it only requires a urine sample, the test can be run using samples collected for entirely unrelated reasons, potentially catching early warning signs in people not previously considered at risk. Researchers said the test’s reliability could meaningfully cut the number of urgent cystoscopies performed and shorten diagnostic waiting times.
The discovery of a previously unknown bird species in a remote Ecuadorian forest in the late 1990s sparked a conservation movement that has since protected more than 300,000 acres of biodiverse habitat. Scientists led by ornithologist Robert Ridgely encountered the large, ground-dwelling Jocotoco Antpitta and used the discovery to raise funds for the Tapichalaca Reserve, the first in what became a network of 19 private reserves. Those reserves, managed alongside Indigenous and local communities, now protect roughly 123,000 acres directly and another 200,000 acres of community-owned land across some of Ecuador’s most ecologically rich regions. Across the network, more than 1,350 bird species have been recorded, representing over 12% of all bird species on Earth, alongside animals like the Andean condor and Andean bear. BirdLife International called the effort a model conservation success story built on decades of sustained, science-driven stewardship.
See you soon!
— Aaron
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