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Austria and Italy Finish Digging World’s Longest Rail Tunnel–Ready to Reshape Travel Maps

By
Andy Corbley
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A diagram of the Brenner Base Tunnel - credit BBT SE CC 4.0. BY SA
A diagram of the Brenner Base Tunnel – credit BBT SE CC 4.0. BY SA

In mid-September, a boring machine defeated the last meter of rock 4,500 feet under the Brenner Pass in the Alps to connect the world’s longest tunnel dug for railroad track.

Envisioned as an important connecting vein that will one day see trains running from Helsinki, Finland, to Palermo, Sicily, it will slash commuter times across Europe.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker were present when the tunnel was completed, which is hoped to shift large amounts of freight onto rails and off the roads in Italy’s crowded north.

The Brenner Pass Tunnel is one of a series of EU railroad projects that the bloc hopes will reshape travel and freight maps by seriously incentivizing rail travel between Italy and the surrounding countries.

The Benner Tunnel will run from Austria’s town of Tulfes through Innsbruck to the region of Trentino Alto Adige, and will reduce rail commutes between Munich and Verona by two-and-a-half hours.

The second consists of tunnels and high speed rail that will connect Genoa, one of Italy’s largest port cities, with Milano via the city of Tortona, while another running through Valle d’Aosta will reduce the transit time between fashion capitals Milan and Paris by 30%, with stops in Lyon and Susa.

ITALIAN NEWS: Soccer Team from George Clooney’s Holiday Town Donates Tournament Winnings to Flood Relief

“In the end, there is no project that is too big to be tackled, there is no project too big for us to bet on,” Meloni said at the ceremony.

A diagram of the Brenner Base Tunnel – credit BBT SE CC 4.0. BY SA

Lagging somewhat compared to peer nations, Italy’s railroads haven’t seen a major upgrade since the Roma-Milano high speed line in 2008, and these works should allow goods and passengers to flow much more freely in and around the country.

MORE BIG INFRASTRUCTURE: Sicily Will be Reachable Via World’s Longest Suspension Bridge That Italians Have Wanted for Centuries

In particular, AP reports, the Brenner Pass sees more than $800 billion in goods cross the alps on board trucks every year. The tunnel will be the world’s longest rail tunnel, and will take thousands of the more than 2 million trucks that cross the pass every year off the roads.

It currently takes 7 hours to get from Milano to Paris, and the Lyon-Turin High Speed Line is estimated to reduce that down to four-and-a-half. All are expected to be finished in the early 2030s, with the Genoa-Tortona line already almost completed.

GET some quick facts in this company highlights video… 

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Determined Scientists Created Only Puffin Colony in the US, and Continue to Protect it Decades Later

By
Andy Corbley
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Eastern Egg Rock Island - credit CC0 Lisapaulinet
Eastern Egg Rock Island – credit CC0 Lisapaulinet

For 50 years, the state of Maine has drawn worldwide attention for its efforts to restore a puffin colony, an effort that has brought controversy, hope, and a cottage industry you have to see to believe.

Featured recently on the PBS News Hour, it’s a story that begins back in 1973 when a young ornithologist named Stephen Kress thought he could try to restore the puffin populations of the US Mid-Atlantic after overhunting eliminated them locally in the 1800s.

Stephen Kress holding a puffin chick – credit, VOA, public domain

“People caused them to leave,” the career puffin-ologist said. “Maybe people can help bring them back. That was the notion. I had no idea that that notion was going to be my life’s work.”

Indeed the young scientist suffered the slings and arrows for his trouble, but his years of work were a success.

Back then, Kress believed that if he could hand-hear puffin chicks on Eastern Egg Rock Island, the last place they were found in the US, they might return to nest there after fledging. Importing some chicks from Canada to the criticism of the general ornithological community, he worked with the Audubon Seabird Institute to start Project Puffin.

The Audubon team led by Kress built nests for the puffin chicks out of a natural material called sod, and stayed on the island for hours at a time bringing fish for them to eat. Kress and the others at Audubon also needed to find a way to bring other puffins to the colony, or at least to entice those they had reared to return.

Yet again facing criticism, they began putting out mirrors, puffin decoys, and playing the recorded sounds of puffin calls. The birds are highly social and dependent on colonial structures.

The chicks gradually grew to fledge, and in 1981, 4 years after he began Project Puffin, adult puffins were seen returning to Eastern Egg Island with fish in their mouths: a sure sign that there were chicks on the island.

Today, hundreds of puffins inhabit the colony at Eastern Egg, though not without a little help from their longtime friend. Kress has been involved in protecting the puffins every step of the way, which has included tackling new threats. It turns out convincing them to lay eggs there was just the first challenge.

With the return of the puffins came laughing gulls—something of a nemesis—which steal the food they bring to their chicks.

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Project Puffin, long since concluded, has now morphed into a new effort to battle the gulls with the help of terns—a ferociously territorial bird.

“I was hoping that the terns alone would be enough to protect the puffins,” Kress admitted. “Now we know that the terns alone aren’t enough to protect the puffins. The terns and the puffins need our help.”

MORE SEABIRD SAVIORS: 

Their solution was more decoys: hundreds of them, of varied species such as those the gulls don’t want to mess with. This response prompted the Audubon team to create a robust decoy-production facility, where hundreds of birds of 48 different species are made every year, causing an international demand that has seen them used in over 800 seabird conservation efforts.

The production is overseen by Susan Schubel, the Seabird Institute’s outreach educator, who said that by using decoys they can send clues and signals to different species about where it’s safe to nest.

WATCH the story below from PBS News Hour… 

SHARE These Puffin People And Their Dedicated Work To Save The Species… 

“It is the dawning moon of the mind that dispels the torment of disturbing thinking.” – Shantideva, Buddhist philosopher poet 

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Good News Network
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Pramod Tiwari for Unsplash+

Quote of the Day: “It is the dawning moon of the mind that dispels the torment of disturbing thinking.” – Shantideva, Buddhist philosopher and poet

Photo by: Pramod Tiwari for Unsplash+

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Pramod Tiwari for Unsplash+

Good News in History September 30

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Good News Network
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A page from the libretto, 1886, of The Pearl Fishermen from La Scala in Milan - pub domain

162 years ago, George Bizet’s famous opera Les Pêcheurs de Perles, The Pearl Fishermen, debuted at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. Set in ancient times on the Island of Sri Lanka, it tells the story of how two men’s vow of eternal friendship is threatened by their love for the same woman, whose own dilemma is the conflict between secular love and her sacred oath as a priestess. The friendship duet “Au fond du temple saint,” generally known as “The Pearl Fishers Duet”, is one of the best-known in Western opera. READ a bit more and listen to the duet… (1863)

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James Webb Space Telescope’s First Look at an Atmosphere on Habitable Zone Exoplanet

By
Andy Corbley
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An illustration of a habitable zone planet orbiting the star called TRAPPIST - credit NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)
An illustration of a habitable zone planet orbiting the star called TRAPPIST – credit NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)

One of the major things that the mightily impressive James Webb Space Telescope was supposed to reveal has now potentially been revealed.

Groundbreaking new research from the University of St. Andrews has identified signs of a possible atmosphere surrounding an Earth-sized exoplanet located 40 light years away, raising excitement that habitable conditions beyond our solar system might be detected for the first time.

In two separate papers published in early September in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers have shed new light on an exoplanet, TRAPPIST-1e, where liquid water, in the form of a global ocean or icy expanse, might exist on its surface.

Located in the red dwarf star system TRAPPIST-1, the planet orbits firmly within the star’s habitable zone. Planet 1e is of particular interest because the presence of liquid water is theoretically viable, but only if the planet has an atmosphere.

The initial results indicate several potential scenarios, including the possibility of an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1e. These findings are a significant moment in the search for habitable conditions beyond Earth, as they would present the readings typical of a planet with an atmosphere, and then could be applied when searching others.

We currently search for life not by looking for it, but looking for what it does: compounds linked with metabolism, for instance. In that sense, an atmosphere is a vital signal to hone in on when looking for evidence for metabolism.

“TRAPPIST-1e has long been considered one of the best habitable zone planets to search for an atmosphere,” explains Dr. Ryan MacDonald, Lecturer in Extrasolar Planets in the School of Physics and Astronomy at St. Andrews. “But when our observations came down in 2023, we quickly realized that the system’s red dwarf star was contaminating our data in ways that made the search for an atmosphere extremely challenging.”

The researchers aimed the JWST’s powerful NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument at the system as planet 1e passed in front of its star. Starlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere, if there is one, will be partially absorbed and the corresponding changes in the light spectrum that reaches the JWST tell astronomers what chemicals are found there.

The team spent over a year carefully correcting the data for the star’s contamination before they could zero in on the planet’s atmosphere.

ALSO CHECK OUT: ‘Groundbreaking’ NASA Discovery Is ‘Closest We Have Ever Come’ to Finding Life on Mars

Dr. MacDonald, who contributed to the analysis of TRAPPIST-1e’s spectrum, added that the research conjures “two possible explanations.”

“The most exciting possibility is that TRAPPIST-1e could have a so-called secondary atmosphere containing heavy gases like nitrogen. But our initial observations cannot yet rule out a bare rock with no atmosphere.”

MORE EXOPLANT SCIENCE: James Webb Telescope Debuts New Trick: Blocking Out Stars and Photographing Their Planets

The researchers are now obtaining further JWST observations of TRAPPIST-1e to enable a deeper search for an atmosphere. With each additional transit, that is, every additional viewing as it passes in front of the TRAPPIST star, the atmospheric contents become clearer.

“In the coming years we will go from four JWST observations of TRAPPIST-1e to nearly twenty, we finally have the telescope and tools to search for habitable conditions in other star systems, which makes today one of the most exciting times for astronomy,” said MacDonald.

SHARE This Important Discovery In The Search For Life With Your Friends…

Oncologists Treat Patient’s Rare Cancer with Isolated Chemotherapy Delivery, Preventing Side-Effects

By
Andy Corbley
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Bozena and Dr. Chandra in the Northwestern clinic - credit, Northwestern Medicine
Bozena and Dr. Chandra in the Northwestern clinic – credit, Northwestern Medicine

A woman in Illinois has become the first to undergo a unique cancer treatment that allows chemotherapy drugs to be delivered directly to the liver, reducing side-effects.

Chemotherapy drugs can shrink cancer tumors, but if administered generally can affect many other organs and tissues in the body. Via a Hepzato Kit, however, oncologists were able to isolate the supply of blood to her liver, and infuse the drugs directly to the tumor site.

Detailed in a news release by Northwestern University, the woman, 66-year-old Bozena Wojtach, was diagnosed with uveal melanoma last year after her optometrist identified a mass behind her right eye that was causing light flashes in her vision.

Uveal melanoma is a rare kind of eye cancer which typically metastasizes in the liver via tumors which can’t be removed surgically. Between 1975 and 2020, just 5,563 cases of the cancer were reported in the US.

On April 3rd, the Polish immigrant, pilot, retired nurse, and mother of two sons, is now the first to undergo Hepzato Kit treatment at Northwestern Medicine.

“This type of therapy has been shown to prolong survival for patients while also offering a very tolerable side effect profile, which are two things we want to prioritize,” Dr. Sunandana Chandra, medical director for melanoma and cutaneous oncology with the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at the university hospital, said in a news release.

– credit, Northwestern Medicine

“It’s especially meaningful to have a therapy that helps us maintain a good quality of life for patients as we navigate a cancer that can be quite challenging to treat.”

Through a series of tubes, the blood supply to the liver is isolated from the rest of the body while chemotherapy drugs are administered for half-an-hour, after which the blood supply is filtered. This means that 80% of the drugs can be removed, preventing them from wrecking havoc on neighboring tissues.

CANCER TREATMENTS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT: Fighting Cancer Without Fighting: Scientists Switch Tumor Cells Back to Healthy Ones at ‘Critical’ Moment

Wojtach, who during her career as a nurse in Chicago, cared for the infirm that included oncology patients, had her tumors reduced in size by 50% after just two courses. Her oncology team, which included another Polish-American Dr. Robert Lewandowski (not to be confused with the famous striker of Bayern Munich and Barcelona) has recommended another 4 courses.

But the benefits are already tangible.

CONQUERING CHEMO: New Delivery System for Chemo Treatment Eliminates Bladder Cancer in 82% of Patients

“I have energy. I have no pain. I don’t have any nausea or vomiting like other patient has,” said Wojtach. “I feel like I’m healthy—like I have no cancer at all.”

She is looking forward to returning to her garden and traveling more, as well as spending time with her two sons.

SHARE This Woman’s Successful And Groundbreaking Cancer Treatment… 

The 2025 ‘Tree of the Year’ Is a Scottish Ash Growing in the Middle of Glasgow

By
Andy Corbley
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The Argyle Street Ash - credit, Woodland Trust
The Argyle Street Ash – credit, Woodland Trust

England’s coveted Tree of the Year award, on which GNN reports yearly, was won this year by a Scottish ash tree 75 feet-tall.

Towering above sandstone row houses, the tree on Argyle Street, in Glasgow has survived a recent ash tree plague, as well as the Clydeside blitz, and recent urban development.

It was described, the Guardian reports, as “quite the most graceful ash” by a local historian and writer, words which sit bracketed above the bar in the pub across the street from the tree.

Legend has it that it grew from an ash seed hidden within the roots of primrose brought back by a family on holiday.

The UK’s Tree of the Year competition is organized by the Woodland Trust, one of the country’s most active and influential woodland conservation group. Each year’s winner is then nominated to the European Tree of the Year contest the following year.

“Trees really matter to people, and this is clear from the response we’ve seen to the Argyle Street ash,” Adam Cormack, the head of campaigning at the Woodland Trust, said in a statement.

“Trees inspire us to write stories and create art, whilst connecting us to cultural legacies and a sense of place. We encourage people to notice and enjoy the trees around them, and learn more about how they benefit us—from boosting biodiversity and wellbeing, to mitigating the effects of climate change.”

TREE OF THE YEAR REPORTING: Tree of the Year Contest Features Oak that Stood Up to Bombing and Elm that Survived Catastrophic Plague

Other locals, including government officials and musicians, co-nominated the tree, which wins for Scotland for the second year in a row following last year’s triumph of the Skipinnish oak.

The Skipinnish Oak – credit, Woodland Trust

Other nominations this year which were perceived as strong favorites were the Beatles’ Ceder at Chiswick House, London, a tree which they climbed in a music video, and the “King of Limbs”—a particularly wide-armed oak tree in Wiltshire that inspired the name and iconography of the eponymous Radiohead album.

GNN is a sucker for big old trees, and often reports on the winners of the European Tree of the Year as well, which for several years running has been won by Poland, thanks in no small part to the country’s aggressive campaigning for its trees.

Incredibly, not only has Poland won back to back titles, but with the same tree: a color phase beech tree.

It would be fascinating to see how a contest like this could be organized in the US.

SHARE This Beautiful Ash And Its Rightful Honoring In This Year’s Contest…

New Breakthrough Could Bring Holograms to Your Smart Phone and into Daily Tasks

By
Andy Corbley
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An example of the HM and OLEDs at work together - credit, University of St. Andrews
An example of the HM and OLEDs at work together – credit, University of St. Andrews

Until now, holograms have been created using lasers, but now researchers have used a new ensemble of components that could unleash this technology on the market.

With their ubiquity in science fiction, and carrying the potential to transform smart devices, communication, gaming, and entertainment, holograms would be a major technological advancement, if we could find an easier way of projecting them.

A team at the University of St. Andrews have found that ‘Holographic Metasurfaces’ (HMs) and Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) give a simpler and more compact approach that is potentially cheaper and easier to apply, overcoming the main barriers to hologram technology being used more widely.

Organic light-emitting diodes are thin film devices widely used to make the colored pixels in mobile phone displays and some TVs. As a flat and surface-emitting light source, OLEDs are also used in emerging applications such as optical wireless communications, biophotonics, and sensing, where the ability to integrate with other technologies makes them good candidates to realize miniaturized light-based platforms.

A holographic metasurface is a thin, flat array of tiny structures called meta-atoms—the size of roughly a thousand of the width of a strand of hair. They are designed to manipulate light’s properties, and can make holograms and their uses span diverse fields, such as data storage, anti-counterfeiting, optical displays, high numerical aperture lenses, optical microscopy, and sensing.

This, however, is the first time both have been used together to produce the basic building block of a holographic display.

Researchers found that when each meta-atom is carefully shaped to control the properties of the beam of light that goes through it, it behaves as a pixel of the HM. When light goes through the HM, at each pixel, the properties of the light are slightly modified.

Thanks to these modifications, it is possible to create a pre-designed image on the other side, exploiting the principle of light interference, whereby light waves create complicated patterns when they interact with each other.

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This technical explanation from the university perhaps doesn’t capture the gravity of the development. Professor Graham Turnbull, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at St. Andrews, offered his version in a release from the university press.

“OLED displays normally need thousands of pixels to create a simple picture. This new approach allows a complete image to be projected from a single OLED pixel!”

MORE TECHNOLOGIES LIKE THIS: This Bracelet from Meta Translates Hand Movements into Computer Actions

Until now, researchers could only make very simple shapes with OLEDs, which limited their usability in some applications. However, this breakthrough provides a path toward a miniaturized and highly integrated metasurface display.

“Holographic metasurfaces are one of the most versatile material platforms to control light,” said Andrea Di Falco, professor in nano-photonics at the School of Physics and Astronomy. “This breakthrough will enable a step change in the architecture of holographic displays for emerging applications, for example, in virtual and augmented reality.”

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“Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.” – Kurt Vonnegut

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Good News Network
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By Faraz Ahanin

Quote of the Day: “Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.” – Kurt Vonnegut (Cat’s Cradle, attributed to the religion of Bokononism)

Photo by: Faraz Ahanin

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

By Faraz Ahanin

Good News in History September 29

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Good News Network
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Photo: Igor Karimov

29 years ago today, the Nintendo 64 video game console was released in North America. Critically acclaimed as “quite simply, the fastest, most graceful game machine on the market”, the N64 was one of the first gaming consoles to have four controller ports and could handle a 4-player split screen without significant slowdown. Named after its 64-bit microprocessor, which had power comparable to Pentium processors in desktop computers, its advanced 3D graphics allowed textures to render smoothly, rather than pixelated. READ more about this childhood icon… (1996)

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Living With Purpose May Protect Your Brain From Dementia, Shows Huge New Study

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Good News Network
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By Fellipe Ditadi / Unsplash+
By Fellipe Ditadi / Unsplash+

By Lisa Howard

Previous studies into regions of the world where people tend to live longer has shown that having a sense of purpose in life may help people live longer.

Now, new research from the University of California in Davis shows that having a sense of purpose in life may have another benefit as people age: reducing the risk of dementia.

The new study, published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, followed over 13,000 adults aged 45 and older for up to 15 years.

Researchers found that people who reported a higher sense of purpose in life were about 28% less likely to develop cognitive impairment—including mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

The protective effect of having a purpose was seen across racial and ethnic groups. It also remained significant even after accounting for education, depression, and the APOE4 gene, which is a known risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.

“Our findings show that having a sense of purpose helps the brain stay resilient with age,” said Aliza Wingo, senior author and professor in the UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “Even for people with a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease, sense of purpose was linked to a later onset and lower likelihood of developing dementia.”

Participants were not specifically asked about the activities that gave their life purpose. However, previous studies on aging have found a wide rang of activities give older adults a sense of life purpose (sometimes referred to as “ikigai”).

A Sense of Purpose Can Include:

• Relationships: Caring for family, spending time with grandchildren or supporting a spouse or friend.
• Work or volunteering: Continuing professional work, mentoring or contributing to community causes.
• Spirituality or faith: Religious beliefs, spiritual practices or involvement in faith-based communities.
• Personal goals: Pursuing hobbies, learning new skills or setting and achieving personal milestones.
• Helping others: Acts of kindness, philanthropy, caregiving or advocacy work.
Purpose delays onset of cognitive decline

Researchers also found that people with higher purpose tended to experience cognitive decline later than those with lower purpose. On average, the delay in onset was very modest — about 1.4 months over an eight-year period, after considering the effects of age, education, depressive symptoms, and genetic risk. However, it is meaningful when compared to current treatments.

“While medications like lecanemab and donanemab can modestly delay symptoms of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease, they come with risks and costs,” said Nicholas C. Howard, first author and public health researcher at UC Davis.

“Purpose in life is free, safe and accessible. It’s something people can build through relationships, goals and meaningful activities.”

Participants in the study were part of the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative survey funded by the National Institute on Aging. All had normal cognitive health at the beginning of the study.

Researchers used a seven-item survey from the Ryff Measures of Psychological Well-being. Participants had six possible responses (from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”) for statements such as: “I am an active person in carrying out the plans I set for myself” and “I have a sense of direction and purpose in my life.”

Their answers were scored and averaged to obtain a well-being number between 1 and 6, with higher values indicating a strong sense of purpose in life. Their cognitive health was also tracked using a telephone-based test every two years.

The findings support the idea that psychological well-being plays a key role in healthy aging, said Thomas Wingo, a co-author of the study and a professor and neurologist at UC Davis Health. Wingo hopes future studies will explore whether purpose-building interventions can help prevent dementia.

“What’s exciting about this study is that people may be able to ‘think’ themselves into better health. Purpose in life is something we can nurture,” he said. “It’s never too early — or too late — to start thinking about what gives your life meaning.”

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2-in-1 Inhaler Reduces Asthma Attacks in Children by 45% Shows New Study

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Good News Network
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By George Dagerotip For Unsplash+
By George Dagerotip For Unsplash+

New findings could reshape the treatment for an estimated 113 million children worldwide who have asthma, following this side-by-side comparison of two types of asthma inhalers.

In the first randomized controlled trial to investigate the use of a combination inhaler as the sole reliever for children aged 5 to 15, an international team found the 2-in-1 treatment to be more effective than salbutamol—the current standard for asthma symptom relief in children.

The results show that using an inhaler that combines 2 treatments—the inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) budesonide and the fast-acting bronchodilator formoterol—reduced children’s asthma attacks by an average of 45%, compared to the widely-used salbutamol inhaler.

Asthma attacks in children may be life-threatening and reducing their frequency and severity should be a public health priority.

The 2-in-1 budesonide-formoterol inhaler is widely recommended as the preferred reliever treatment for adults, but children are still usually prescribed salbutamol.

Researchers say the findings, published today in The Lancet, provide the evidence needed to bring children’s global asthma guidelines into line with adults’.

The CARE study (Children’s Anti-inflammatory REliever) was designed and led by the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, in collaboration with Imperial College London, University of Otago Wellington, and the University of Auckland. It recruited 360 children across New Zealand who were then randomly assigned to use either budesonide-formoterol or salbutamol for on-demand symptom relief.

The trial lasted a year and the budesonide/formoterol reliever resulted in a lower rate of asthma attacks than just salbutamol, with rates of 0.23 versus 0.41 per participant per year.

This means that for every 100 children with mild asthma who are switched from salbutamol to a 2-in-1 budesonide-formoterol inhaler, there would be 18 fewer asthma attacks per year. Importantly, the study also confirmed the safety of the combined-inhaler approach, with no significant differences in children’s growth, lung function, or asthma control between the two groups.

YOU MAY LIKE: First New Treatment in 50 Years for Asthma Attacks and COPD ‘Could be a Game-Changer’

“For the first time, we have demonstrated that the budesonide-formoterol 2-in-1 inhaler, used as needed for symptom relief, can significantly reduce asthma attacks in children with mild asthma,” said Dr Lee Hatter, lead author of the study and Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the the Institute.

“Implementing these findings could be transformative for asthma management on a global scale,” said senior author Prof. Richard Beasley in the media release.

The latest study builds on previous studies in adults led by MRINZ researchers which contributed to the recommended use of the 2-in-1 ‘ICS–formoterol reliever’ inhaler as the preferred reliever treatment for adults.

“Having an asthma attack can be very scary for children and their parents,” commented Prof. Andrew Bush, from Imperial College London, a respiratory pediatrician and co-author of the CARE study.

ON THE OTHER HAND: Healthy Gut Bacteria Can Reduce Risk of Asthma and Food Allergies in Children, Experts Discover

“I’m so pleased that we’ve been able to prove that an inhaler that significantly reduces attacks—already a game-changer for adults—is safe for children with mild asthma as young as five.”

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Lost iPhone Survives 2 Months Submerged in River – And Still Works When it’s Returned to Owner

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Faizan Choudhry and Maddy Wells - via SWNS
Faizan Choudhry and Maddy Wells – via SWNS

A lost iPhone survived for an incredible two-and-a-half months submerged in a river, and it still works.

Faizan Choudhry lost his iPhone 14 Pro Max on July 4th while tubing on the Delaware River along the New Jersey–Pennsylvania border.

What seemed like a lost cause took an unbelievable turn when, on September 19, the Edison, New Jersey native received a phone call from a woman, who told him she had found his phone.

He met her the following day and was amazed to see it powering on for the first time after being submerged in water for months.

The 24-year-old has been using it now, with only a slight flaw in the camera operation.

“Believe it or not, it works perfectly fine,” Choudhry said.

“I do have a little bit of a problem with the camera—it’s a little bit blurry when it gets light, and it’s not able to catch the light properly.”

His photo collection survived intact; the whole outcome being stroke of luck.

Early this month, Maddy Wells, a retiree from Bluffton, South Carolina, who was visiting the river with friends for a canoeing trip, spotted the Apple device.

“We circled back and picked it up, brought it home dripping wet, and tried plugging it in,” Ms. Wells told SWNS news service.

“We got it to power up, and my friend showed me how to get the emergency contact information. “When it finally lit up, it actually said July 4th.

“I was shocked. That means the phone was in the water for two and a half months.”

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Faizan Choudhry / SWNS

The phone displayed a “lost phone” message with Choudhry’s contact number, which allowed Wells to call him on September 19 and arrange for the device’s return.

Because he had switched to a new phone but kept the same number, Wells was able to contact Choudhry directly, and leave a voicemail.

“Hi, good evening, my name is Maddy, and I have managed to find an Apple phone on the Delaware River,” Wells said, “and it actually still works.”

She gave Choudhry her number, adding she “would love to get this phone back to you somehow”.

After receiving Wells’ voicemail, the young man was initially skeptical about the legitimacy of the call.

“I was sketchy about it a little at first, thinking that I might be getting scammed or something,” he said. But he changed his mind when Wells sent him a text with a picture of his phone.

THE FIND OF A LIFETIME: Woman Hires Private Detective and Finds 2 Long-Lost Sisters After 44 Years and the Death of Adoptive Parents

Choudhry made the hour-long drive to meet Wells at the Holcombe-Jimison Farmstead Museum in Lambertville, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I was just mind-blown.

“I mean, you wouldn’t expect something like that after two-and-a-half months being in the water.”

Calling the iPhone “the star of the show,” Wells says the story felt like “a happy ending”.

“Our whole lives are in these phones now. It didn’t even occur to me not to try to get it back to him.

WONDEROUS FIND: Woman Stunned to See Grandparent’s Wartime Locket Online After Stranger Buys it in Thrift Shop to Find Owner

“There were lots of smiles when we met.”

She later received a Visa gift card for her kindness, which she described as “so very generous”.

GIVE YOUR FRIENDS HOPE in Case of iPHONE Accident–Share This on Social Media…

Tourists Surprise Driver with His First-Ever Safari –Buying a Ticket So He Could Go Instead of Waiting in Car (Watch)

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Good News Network
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Gina Haerle surprises taxi driver with safari – SWNS
Gina Haerle surprises taxi driver with safari – SWNS

German tourists captured the wholesome moment when they surprised their driver with his first-ever safari experience.

Gina Haerle was on holiday in South Africa with her friend Marina, staying at a private game reserve, about two hours from Cape Town.

Their driver had mentioned that he had never been on a safari and the tourists decided they didn’t want him to be left out.

So, they bought him a ticket to join them—and revealed the surprise as they pulled into the parking lot at the reserve.

“We didn’t want him waiting outside,” said Gina, from Stuttgart.

“He told us before going that he had never been on a safari in his life and we just wanted to make him happy,” the 23-year-old told SWNS news.

“The best part of the day for him, I think, was when he saw the lions and took pictures of them.”

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“It was wonderful just seeing him enjoy the trip and witnessing how grateful he was.”

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“No is a complete sentence.” – Jane Fonda

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Good News Network
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by Valeria Nikitina / Unsplash+

Quote of the Day: “No is a complete sentence.” – Jane Fonda

Photo by: Valeria Nikitina / Unsplash+

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

by Valeria Nikitina / Unsplash+

Good News in History September 28

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Good News Network
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38 years ago today, Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted on syndicated TV. Spanning 178 episodes over seven seasons, it starred English actor Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise. It received many accolades, including 19 Emmy Awards, two Hugo Awards, five Saturn Awards, and a Peabody Award. READ more about how the show got started… (1987)

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Zero-Emissions Ferryboat to Glide Commuters Up and Down Historic River in European Capital

By
Andy Corbley
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The Vilnius ferryboat - credit, Govilnius.lt
The Vilnius ferryboat – credit, Govilnius.lt

Lithuania’s capital Vilnius recently debuted a new electric ferryboat for transit up and down the River Neris.

Called the Lašiša, it joins a trend of electric ferryboats on the famous rivers and bays of Europe such as the Elbe or the Copenhagen harbor.

Tickets can be bought online and through an app for just €3, or €4 on board. It transits between the business and residential districts, while stopping at major cultural and historic landmarks.

Vilnius was named the European Green Capital of 2025, and it scrambled to a tight deadline to get the zero-emissions boat online by July 25th.

“So we are very thankful for the boat company that built the boats. And it obviously was a big responsibility for the city and for the citizens to say that we would have made a boat in six or seven months,” Loreta Levulytė-Staškevičienė said, who holds the position of CEO of JUDU, the public transport and mobility services company for Vilnius.

The compact ferry holds 32 people, and cuts through the water as opposed to aquaplaning atop it, which saves energy. 80% of the boat is covered in solar panels, and it offers free Wi-Fi to passengers.

Euro News reports that for some residents it’s a welcome new way to getting around the city.

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“If you live in the center, in this area, and you work here, I guess, yes (electric boats would be a good thing). Especially, maybe a woman would like it, like a romantic way to go to work, or to clear your mind after work. I think it will be very cool,” said Polina Ruginiene, a Vilnius resident.

According to a press release, the boat’s absolute top speed is 7.5 km per hour, but may also travel around 5 km per hour in certain areas to reduce wake. This isn’t much faster than a human power walking and was a point of contention between JUDU and the outgoing transportation minister who felt JUDU wasn’t being honest about the slowness.

READ ALSO: Electric Ferry Boat Makes Historic First Crossing from Europe to Africa Cutting Energy Use by 80%

“The speed of the boat is higher than that of similar types of water vehicles in other European cities,” Vilnius’s transport department wrote in a statement.

The city plans to purchase two more boats currently being built in their northern neighbor of Latvia.

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Innovative New ‘Sponge’ Park Helped Save Historic Atlanta Neighborhood from Flooding

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Andy Corbley
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Rodney Cook Sr. Park in Vine City - credit, HDR inc.
Rodney Cook Sr. Park in Vine City – credit, HDR inc.

$40 million may seem like a lot of money to the average person, but it’s just a fraction of what municipalities were spending to cleanup and shore-up their cities and towns following Hurricane Helene.

For Vine City, Atlanta, $40 million was the cost of a solution to flooding problems that long predate Helene. It bought the historic neighborhood a big, beautiful new park that works like a sponge.

GNN has reported on the “sponge city” concept before, whereby parks and urban developers use greenery and water features to help absorb rain and floodwater to slow its entry into the drainage system.

It’s been picked up by the Netherlands and China, and now too, in Atlanta with Rodney Cook Sr. Park.

Atlanta City Council member Byron Amos, who was born and raised in Vine City, remembers several flooding events that left residents’ basements submerged and cars soaked through.

Amos worked with the Trust for Public Land to adopt the sponge city concept for Vine City.

“When water is rerouted through the neighborhood to this site, the pond fills up, and the rain gardens, other green infrastructure throughout the park houses water to be collected and basically take the load off the city’s stormwater system,” said Jay Wozniak with the trust.

Despite being 300 miles inland, Helene reached out her stormy fingers even as far as Atlanta, and suddenly, Amos and Woziank’s solution would be put to the test.

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“People were calling, ‘The park is flooding! The park is flooding!’ and my response was, ‘It’s doing its job,” Amos told CBS News.

Indeed, Rodney Cook Park filled up with 9 million gallons of water, but nearby residents’ homes stayed dry. Within 72 hours, Wozniak said, no one even knew a storm had taken place.

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In addition to being a piece of the stormwater system, the park is also a beautiful gathering space filled with water features, a multi-sport composite court, plenty of green spaces, and fitness equipment.

Built for the trust by HDR, it collected no less than 10 major architecture, design, and landscape engineering awards.

WATCH the story below from CBS… 


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100,000 New Jobs Will Clean Up the Coastline and Protect Species from Plastic, Overdevelopment

By
Andy Corbley
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A coastal area in Karnataka - credit, Yogesa CC BY-SA 3.0
A coastal area in Karnataka – credit, Yogesa CC BY-SA 3.0

Among all the world’s coastlines, those stretching across central and southern India are among the most vulnerable to erosion.

In the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, a program funded by the World Bank aims to create 100,000 jobs that will help protect these sensitive and biodiverse areas for the posterity of fishermen, urbanites, and animals alike.

It’s estimated that 250 million people depend on coastal areas for their homes and livelihoods in sectors like fisheries, transport, and tourism. The 6,200-miles of lower Indian coastline also provide habitats for 18,000 known species of flora and fauna, from environmentally protective mangroves to charismatic animals like the dugong.

However, marine ecosystems are at risk by the combined effect of coastal erosion, pollution, intensive fishing, degradation of mangrove forests, and urban expansion.

The World Bank’s $212 million Strengthening Coastal Resilience and the Economy (SHORE) Project in India will provide the necessary resources to help states implement their coastal zone management plans in a way that matches demand for economic expansion with the needs of smaller communities and wildlife.

“This Project will help states tap into private sector sources to mitigate the impacts of plastic pollution and to foster eco-tourism in selected areas,” said Paul Procee, the World Bank’s Acting Country Director for India. “For example, private sector intervention can help to strengthen plastic waste value chains and establish environment-friendly beaches while also creating economic opportunities for coastal communities.”

The employment goal of the project is to create training for 70,000 jobs in sectors like tourism, waste management, fishing, and more.

A BETTER INDIA: 

The project will help to conserve 72,000 acres of seascapes in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka through planting of mangroves, restoration of sand dunes in combination with green and grey infrastructure such as breakwaters where necessary. It will help in coral protection and species such as dugongs, turtles, and birds.

“In 2019, Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to ban single-use plastics,” said Dinesh Aryal, Chabungbam Singh, and Avanish Kant, the Task Team Leaders for the Program. “This project will enhance measures in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka through public awareness campaigns on recycling and plastics leakage, as well as bridging the gap between urban local bodies and the private sector for solid waste management in cities. Reducing plastic pollution will benefit 120,000 people.”

In 2025, Karnataka ranked fifth, and Tamil Nadu first, in a comparison of the five largest plastic waste producers among Indian states.

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Police Dog Enjoys Meaty Reward for Finding Missing Massachusetts Man: ‘Can’t hide his smile’

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Andy Corbley
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- credit, Wrentham's Community Resource Dog, Facebook
– credit, Wrentham’s Community Resource Dog, Facebook

A Massachusetts community was delighting in the smile of their neighborhood community resource dog after he got a meaty reward for his good deed.

In the town of Avon, a known dementia patient went missing, and Cruiser the golden retriever cruised right to his location, tracking and locating him in the woods behind a school.

“Cruiser can’t hide his smile today,” Police Chief Bill McGrath said in a Facebook post.

“Got to play my favorite game of find the missing person. I won today when I located a 78 year old man suffering from dementia. No one worry, Sgt Morris got me my hamburger reward,” the post read.

Cruiser has 1,600 followers on Facebook where the department regularly posts pictures of what their golden boy has gotten up to over the week.

Cruiser arrived at the Wrentham Police Department in 2020 from Golden Opportunities for Independence which breeds golden retrievers for lives as service and police dogs. Beginning training as a puppy, they learn all the basic skills of being a service dog such as picking up dropped keys and phones, forming barriers around those suffering from anxiety, or staying close to their handler in an emergency.

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“I’ll get a police chief to call and say, Pauline, you have no idea what this dog has done for our community, for our police department, for our officers,” said founder Pauline Hoegler in an interview with WBZ TV

Missing people are as much a specialty of Cruiser as hamburgers are his favorite meal. He was also pictured chowing down on a burger in March after locating two runaway children in the woods.

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