In the headlines...

🌪️ Tornadoes tore through Kentucky, Missouri, and Virginia over the weekend, heartbreakingly taking the lives of 28 people. We’ll be on the lookout for ways to help the people and communities impacted, and will share them as we find them.

🇺🇸 Former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which prompted an outpouring of support and well wishes.

🇺🇦 During their first direct talks in three years, Ukraine and Russia agreed to a prisoner swap, with 1,000 people exchanged on each side. They also agreed to resume talks after each side lays out its vision for a future ceasefire.

Science & Medicine

In a medical first, US doctors rewrote the DNA of an infant with a severe genetic disorder

Doctors in the U.S. just became the first to treat a baby with a customized gene-editing therapy after the infant was diagnosed with a sever genetic disorder.

The infant was born with CPS1 deficiency, a condition that impacts one in 1.3 million people, and means they lack a liver enzyme that converts ammonia, causing a buildup that can damage the liver and other organs. It kills about half of those affected in early infancy.

While previously, patients could receive liver transplants, babies with severe disease can suffer too much damage by the time they are big enough to operate on. The breakthrough was possible thanks to “years and years of progress” in gene editing research.

Why is this good news? The international medical community says this medical milestone has the potential to treat many other genetic diseases by rewriting faulty DNA after an affected child is born.

→ Read more

More Good News

​Japan’s Ayami Sato made history as the first woman to play for a Canadian professional men’s baseball league. Sato has also led Japan’s women’s national team to six World Cup medals, is the only woman to win three consecutive MVP awards in 2014, 2016, and 2018, and was selected as an All-Star twice at the Women’s Baseball World Cup.

​Helping the shipping industry eliminate its emissions, the world’s first commercial-scale e-methanol plant opened in Denmark. Up until now, zero-emission shipping fuels, such as green ammonia and e-methanol, which are produced using renewable energy, have tended to be more expensive than conventional fuel, largely because they are not produced at scale.

​A “lost” gecko species thought to be extinct — or not exist at all — was rediscovered after 30 years. Two Endangered Wildlife Trust researchers found specimens of the Blyde Rondavel flat gecko, which was first identified in the same canyon in Mpumalanga Province in northeastern South Africa in 1991, never to be seen again.

​A museum opened in the Czech Republic where German businessman Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 Jews during World War II. The site, a former textile factory, was stolen by the Nazis from its Jewish owners in 1938 and turned into a concentration camp, and is now the Museum of Survivors dedicated to the Holocaust and the history of Jews in this part of Europe.

Environment

Scientists invent ‘smelling gel’ that seduces coral to dying reefs in restoration efforts

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Bad news / Good news

There’s a lot of bad news right now, and we can’t look away from it.

Instead, we follow the wisdom of Mister Rogers who said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

So...

I’m going to pick one of your responses and spend the week looking for people helping. As always, I’ll share what I find in Friday’s Goodnewsletter.

Just reply right to this email — and I’ll be back with good news soon.

Megan

good progress

For the first time, clean energy has caused China’s carbon dioxide emissions to drop despite an increase in demand

A new analysis found that carbon dioxide emissions in China were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025, and by 1% in the past 12 months.

Typically, emissions declines have been because of less demand — but for the first time, it happened while demand was surging and was because the electricity supply came from new wind, solar, and nuclear energy sources.

The analysis found that growth in clean power generation has overtaken the current and long-term average growth in demand, further pushing out fossil fuels. And this trend is expected to continue all year.

→ Read more

More Good bits

🚏 More affordable transportation choices > more traffic.

🍲 Its neighbors are gone, but a beloved Altadena restaurant reopened anyway.​

💉 Mexico is doing its part to stop measles from spreading.

❤️ All children deserve a safe childhood free from violence and terror. (TikTok)

🌏 The single best thing an individual can do about climate change.

What’s good?

Check out the pink question box above for today’s question!

— Megan