British Army veteran becomes first above-the-knee double amputee to climb Seven Summits, raising disability awareness through remarkable mountaineering achievement.
By Aaron Parnas•January 11, 2026•8 min read
Good morning, everyone—and happy Sunday. Welcome to your Sunday morning good news update. As always, I invite you to share one piece of good news from your own week in the comments, and to pass this along so others can do the same. There is no shortage of heavy headlines right now, but moments of progress, kindness, and resilience still matter—and they deserve to be seen.
I’ll have another update for you later today, around 1–2 PM, as I head to Washington, D.C. to cover one of the ICE protests. While many outlets focus elsewhere, I’ll be reporting directly from the ground.
On a personal note, one piece of good news I’m deeply grateful for: we’re approaching the one-year anniversary of my decision to pursue journalism full-time. At the time, it was terrifying—financially, professionally, emotionally. Today, it’s the most meaningful and rewarding decision I’ve ever made.
At a moment when TikTok is censoring my work and much of the media landscape is drifting closer to power, I’m proud to remain fully independent. No advertisers dictate my coverage. No political office shapes my reporting. I answer only to you.
A British Army veteran who lost both legs in an Afghanistan IED blast became the first above-the-knee double amputee to climb the highest mountain on every continent, completing the Seven Summits over six years—including Everest and a final, brutal ascent of Antarctica’s Mount Vinson—while overcoming extreme conditions, developing custom prosthetics, and using his achievement to raise disability awareness and inspire others that adaptation and support can make even the biggest dreams possible.
A Los Angeles mother and her baby beat “far less than 1-in-a-million” odds when a near-full-term fetus developed outside the womb, hidden for months behind a massive ovarian cyst, and both survived an extraordinary high-risk surgery that safely delivered the baby and removed the cyst despite the extreme dangers of ectopic pregnancy.
A photographer in England had a heartwarming encounter when a friendly, cold robin snuggled onto her camera, hand, and hair for warmth while she was waiting to photograph wildlife, staying calmly with her before eventually flying off and singing.
At the Hershey Bears’ annual Teddy Bear Toss in Pennsylvania, fans threw nearly 82,000 stuffed animals onto the ice after the first goal—continuing a 25-year charity tradition that has donated about 650,000 plush toys to children in need—while a local teen’s nonprofit helped boost donations and spread kindness to schools, hospitals, and military families across the region.
A new scientific study found that a rare group of “gifted word learner” dogs can learn the names of objects simply by overhearing their owners’ conversations—performing as well as when directly taught—suggesting that the social and cognitive skills behind learning words from indirect speech are not uniquely human.
Firefighters in Maine rescued a mischievous golden retriever that fell through the ice on a frozen pond by sliding across the ice in wetsuits and pulling the dog to safety, with both the pup and rescuers escaping unharmed despite the life-threatening cold.
A Montana nonprofit using restorative justice—bringing youth offenders face-to-face with their victims and community instead of relying on suspensions or detention—has sharply reduced juvenile recidivism to around 10%, cut school suspensions, and saved taxpayers money by helping teens take accountability, repair harm, and stay connected to school and society.
Scientists discovered 700,000-year-old hominin jawbones and teeth in a Moroccan cave that may represent a crucial missing link in human evolution, offering new evidence that the common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans likely originated in Africa before branching into separate lineages across Africa and Eurasia.
Iowa’s “Great Iowa Treasure Hunt” program acts as a financial lost-and-found, helping residents reclaim forgotten or misplaced assets—returning a record $33.6 million to more than 53,000 people last year alone—and has reunited Iowans with over $408 million since it began, with hundreds of millions still waiting to be claimed.
An 18-year-old engineering student in Ontario designed a modular, insulated tiny-home system made from precision-molded fiberglass to help address homelessness in his city, even planning to live in the prototype for a year to refine it and prove it can be mass-produced as part of a long-term housing solution.
The Nak’adzli Whut’en First Nation in northern British Columbia has developed a prefabricated housing system using locally sourced, low-quality timber to create mass-timber panels that can be assembled into full homes in about 10 days, aiming to address housing shortages while creating sustainable economic opportunities through partnerships with University of Northern British Columbia and Deadwood Innovations.
In the Swiss resort town of Crans-Montana, an Italian-Swiss father, Paolo Campolo, rushed to the Le Constellation nightclub after a fire broke out on New Year’s Eve and forced his way inside, rescuing 10 young people after a frantic call from his daughter, whose delayed arrival likely saved her life.
Researchers at Stanford Medicine found that a drug blocking the aging-related protein 15-PGDH regenerated knee cartilage in older mice, prevented arthritis after injuries, and triggered new cartilage growth in human joint tissue—raising hopes that treatments developed by scientists including Helen Blau and Nidhi Bhutani could one day eliminate the need for knee and hip replacements.
France has enacted a sweeping ban on so-called “forever chemicals,” known as PFAS, prohibiting their use in cosmetics, clothing, ski wax, and related consumer products due to links with cancer, birth defects, and widespread environmental contamination. The law was passed overwhelmingly by the National Assembly, signed into effect by Emmanuel Macron, and includes routine testing of public water supplies, though it exempts non-stick cookware and certain essential emergency equipment, positioning France among Europe’s leaders as the European Union considers broader PFAS restrictions following earlier limits set under the Stockholm Convention.
Germany’s households have surpassed €10 trillion in savings, reflecting a decade-long trend of Europe’s highest household savings rates, averaging 20–21% between 2014 and 2024, according to estimates by DZ Bank. The bank said savings and liquid assets rose another 6% (about €600 billion) in 2025, a rise driven more by disciplined saving than stock market gains, with economist Michael Stappel predicting the upward trend will continue into 2026.
Chile plans to create a 150,000-hectare Cape Froward National Park at the southern tip of the Americas—protecting subantarctic forests, peatlands, and coastline, safeguarding endangered species like pumas, huemul deer, and whales, and completing a 2,800km wildlife corridor after conservation group Rewilding Chile donated most of the land.
The number of people at risk of trachoma, the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness, has dropped below 100 million for the first time—a 94% decline since 2002—thanks to global efforts improving sanitation, treatment, and antibiotics, with several countries eliminating the disease in 2025, though continued funding is still needed to reach full eradication by 2030.
Scientists in London will study decades-old bowel cancer tumor samples alongside modern cases to uncover how changes in diet, lifestyle, and environmental exposures may be driving the sharp rise in bowel cancer among people under 50, with the goal of improving prevention and treatment strategies.
Researchers discovered that 37 of 45 species of birds-of-paradise emit biofluorescence, with feathers that glow yellow-green under UV light, likely enhancing their elaborate courtship displays. The finding, made while examining specimens at the American Museum of Natural History, suggests the glow may play a role in mating and social signaling among these famously colorful birds.
New York City recorded a historic low of 688 shooting incidents in 2025, the fewest ever, with December marking the lowest monthly total on record, as police credited expanded street deployments and targeted gang enforcement, alongside broader declines in theft, burglary and armed robbery despite persistent narratives of rising crime.
An 18-year-old engineering student in Ontario has designed a modular, fiberglass tiny-home system to help address homelessness in his city, with plans to live in his prototype for a year to test and refine the weather-resistant shelters for potential mass production.
The nonprofit American Prairie has removed more than 100 miles of derelict barbed-wire fencing across its Montana lands, freeing wildlife movement across over 600,000 acres of restored prairie while replacing barriers with wildlife-friendly fencing as part of its long-term effort to rewild up to 2.3 million acres of the Great Plains.
ZooTampa released a record 26 rehabilitated manatees back into Florida waters in 2025, highlighting the growing impact of its $2 million-a-year rescue program as the state continues to see high manatee deaths from boat strikes and habitat loss.
