A 3-year-old survived 6 days under rubble. Jordanian rescuers pulled him out alive

Happy Friday and happy almost-Fourth. Today's lead story comes from Caracas, where international rescue teams have been working around the clock since two magnitude 7 earthquakes struck the city last week.

A 3-year-old named Klieber Moran was found face-down under a collapsed building after six days. Jordanian rescue teams located him using snake cameras and pulled him out alive.

We also have the solar desalination tech that now makes clean drinking water cheaper than bottled water, Southeast Asia on the verge of eliminating malaria, and two meteor showers arriving later this month just in time for summer nights.

Have a wonderful Fourth of July weekend

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—Stephanie S

A week ago, two magnitude 7 earthquakes struck Caracas in rapid succession, collapsing buildings across the capital. The international response was immediate. Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Spain, Jordan, Vietnam, and more than a dozen other nations dispatched search and rescue teams within hours, flooding a country long isolated by political crisis with unconditional help.

Jordanian specialists equipped with snake cameras, long flexible probes that thread through collapsed concrete to find survivors, located 3-year-old Klieber Moran face-down and covered in dust beneath a building that had fallen on him six days earlier. The footage of his extraction, released by the office of the acting president, is remarkable.

Also rescued was Aaron Levi Cantillo, trapped for more than four days under a separate collapsed building. It took teams 43 hours of continuous work to reach him. He survived. In moments of acute human need, the world keeps showing up. Watch the rescue footage and read the full story.

Researchers at the Beijing Institute of Process Engineering and Shenzhen University have developed a new solar desalination material that absorbs 90.2% of incoming sunlight and converts it directly into the heat needed to evaporate and purify seawater. The inspiration came from an unexpected place: shirt buttons. The team threaded nanoparticle spheres onto polymer yarn using the same mechanism that holds a button to fabric, creating a structure that traps and concentrates solar energy with remarkable efficiency.

The material uses 47.5% less energy than conventional reverse osmosis desalination, produces 5.3 gallons of drinking water per day, and has been used successfully to irrigate bok choy, beans, and corn for a full growing season. After two years of operation at scale, the cost of producing water drops below the cost of manufacturing bottled water, making it potentially viable for coastal communities worldwide that currently have no reliable access to clean drinking water.

The researchers see applications in remote coastal areas, disaster relief, and water-scarce island communities. "We hope this can provide a sustainable and low-cost solution for the global freshwater crisis," said lead researcher Jian Zeng. Read the full story.

In 2010, Southeast Asia recorded more than 2 million malaria cases annually. By 2025, that number had fallen by two-thirds. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos now measure their remaining cases in the low hundreds, a number that would have seemed unimaginable a generation ago. The Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance held its annual summit in Vientiane, Laos in June, where Lao Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone committed to eliminating malaria from his country by 2030.

The progress has been driven by sustained investment in community health workers, rapid diagnostic testing, insecticide-treated nets, and increasingly sophisticated surveillance systems that can track outbreaks in real time before they spread. Drug-resistant strains of malaria remain a serious concern, particularly along the Thai-Cambodian border, but containment efforts have so far prevented them from spreading more widely.

The last country in the world to be certified malaria-free was Egypt in 2024. Several Southeast Asian nations now believe they could join that list within this decade. Read the full story.

Two meteor showers peak simultaneously in late July, making the last week of the month one of the best for stargazing all year. The Southern Delta Aquariids peak on the night of July 30th into July 31st, producing up to 20 shooting stars per hour under ideal conditions. Overlapping with them are the Alpha Capricornids, a slower shower peaking at around 5 meteors per hour but known for producing unusually bright fireballs that can light up the sky.

Earlier in the month, there are two bonus celestial events worth setting an alarm for. On July 11th, a crescent moon forms a striking triangle with the Pleiades star cluster and Mars, visible about two hours before sunrise. On July 17th, a crescent moon appears just below Venus, visible about two hours after sundown.

For the meteor showers, the best viewing is after midnight when the radiant point is higher in the sky. Experts recommend looking about 40 degrees away from the radiant rather than directly at it, letting meteors streak across a wider arc of sky. No equipment needed. Just a dark spot, a clear night, and a little patience. Read the full story and mark your calendar.

💉 UK: England has become the first country in Europe to approve teplizumab, a one-time immunotherapy that delays the onset of symptomatic type 1 diabetes by an average of nearly three years, giving children and adults diagnosed early a crucial window before lifelong insulin management begins.

🐳 Global: More than 40 years after the end of commercial whaling, sightings of blue and fin whales off the coasts of Namibia and South Africa have increased markedly, with 95% of all observations recorded since 2012, offering fresh hope the world's two largest whale species are slowly recovering.

☀️ UK: Government data confirmed that 27,000 solar installations were completed in a single month in the UK for the first time since 2012, pushing the country past two million total installations as households rushed to install rooftop panels amid rising energy costs.

🌊 Netherlands: In a landmark ruling, a Dutch court confirmed that governments have a legal responsibility to regulate bottom trawling in protected ocean areas, the first such ruling in Europe, putting pressure on nations across the continent to end one of the most destructive forms of commercial fishing.

🚛 China: Electric truck sales in China tripled in 2025 and now make up 20% of all new truck registrations, accelerating further into 2026 as spiralling diesel costs from the Middle East conflict push fleets toward clean alternatives faster than any government policy has managed.

On July 3, 1968, Stephen Stills, David Crosby, and Graham Nash gathered at Joni Mitchell's house in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. Stills played a new song. Crosby joined in. Nash, who had never sung with either of them before, improvised a third-part harmony so instinctively perfect that all three stopped and looked at each other. They knew. "It was obvious," Nash later said, "that something magical had occurred." They rehearsed informally through the summer, signed with Atlantic Records, and three months later performed at Woodstock in front of half a million people without ever having played a proper live show together before. Stills reportedly said to the crowd: "We're scared. This is only the second time we've performed in front of people."

Their debut album, released in 1969, reached number 6 on the Billboard charts and won the Grammy for Best New Artist. Neil Young joined the following year, forming CSNY, one of the most influential bands of the era. Their harmonies, built spontaneously in a living room 58 years ago today, shaped the sound of a generation.

Other notable July 3 events:

1863: The Battle of Gettysburg ended after three days, 163 years ago today, with a decisive Union victory that marked a turning point in the Civil War. More than 50,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing in what remains the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil.

1985: Back to the Future premiered, 41 years ago today, starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. It became the highest-grossing film of 1985 and launched one of the most beloved franchises in cinema history.

1928: John Logie Baird demonstrated the world's first color television transmission in London, 98 years ago today, using a mechanical system he called Telechrome, years before electronic color television became commercially viable.

1962: Tom Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York. He turns 64 today. With films including Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, Jerry Maguire, and Born on the Fourth of July, he remains one of the highest-grossing actors in Hollywood history.

— Socrates

Every day brings amazing advances and uplifting moments that remind us just how wonderful the world can be. Here are five reasons why today is the best time ever to be alive:

🔬 Targeting Alzheimer's at the Source: Researchers have identified drug candidates that cross the blood-brain barrier and disrupt the tau protein tangles driving Alzheimer's progression, with the most promising now in Phase 2 trials after showing measurable cognitive benefits in animal models.

🐢 Sea Turtles Are Coming Back: Long-term monitoring at nesting beaches around the world is showing measurable population recoveries in leatherback, loggerhead, and green sea turtles, species that were severely depleted by egg collection, fisheries bycatch, and coastal development just a generation ago.

🌊 Tidal Energy Is Real: Tidal stream turbines anchored to the seabed in fast-moving coastal channels are generating reliable, predictable electricity in commercial quantities, with projects in Scotland, Canada, and South Korea proving the technology at scale and driving costs down rapidly.

🦠 Closing In on Long COVID: Researchers have identified measurable biological differences in the immune systems of people with long COVID, including persistent viral reservoirs and chronic inflammation patterns, providing the first mechanistic targets for treatments that could address root causes rather than just symptoms.

👁️ Restoring Sight With Gene Therapy: Gene therapies are now restoring functional vision in patients with inherited retinal diseases that were previously considered untreatable, with several therapies FDA-approved and dozens more in clinical trials for different genetic variants of blindness and visual impairment.

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