A disease that infected 3.5 million people a year now has 10 cases left

Happy Wednesday. I want to start today with a number: ten. As in ten cases. Of a disease that was infecting three and a half million people a year just four decades ago. That is our lead story today, and it is one worth sitting with for a moment.

We've also got a rescue dog in New Zealand who repaid the favor in the most dramatic way possible, a man in China who posted a video asking for help planting trees and couldn't believe who showed up, and a woman in Delaware who just renewed her driver's license at 108 years old and works out three times a week. She is not taking questions.

Here's your good news.

—Stephanie S

Happy Wednesday. I want to start today with a number: ten. As in ten cases. Of a disease that was infecting three and a half million people a year just four decades ago. That is our lead story today, and it is one worth sitting with for a moment.

We've also got a rescue dog in New Zealand who repaid the favor in the most dramatic way possible, a man in China who posted a video asking for help planting trees and couldn't believe who showed up, and a woman in Delaware who just renewed her driver's license at 108 years old and works out three times a week. She is not taking questions.

Here's your good news.

—Stephanie S

👉 P.S. If you love starting your day with stories like these, you can get Good News Break delivered every single weekday for just $5 a month, including exclusive paid content you won't find in today's issue.

In 1986, Guinea worm disease infected 3.5 million people across 21 countries. The parasite enters the body through contaminated drinking water, grows inside the host for up to a year, and then slowly emerges through the skin in a process that is agonizing and takes weeks. There is no medicine and no vaccine. The only way to stop it was to find every case, filter every water source, and change behavior in some of the most remote communities on earth. Forty years later, there are ten cases left.

The Carter Center announced this week that only ten human cases were reported in 2025, a 33% decline from 2024 and the lowest number ever recorded. The campaign began under President Jimmy Carter in 1986, who spent the final decades of his life traveling to affected villages personally. This announcement comes one year after his passing.

More than 100 million cases have been averted. Guinea worm is now slated to become the first parasitic disease eradicated in history and the first disease eliminated without a medicine or a vaccine, beaten entirely through community education, water filtration, and sustained human effort.

Adam Weiss, director of the Carter Center's eradication program, said every case is a real person they know by name. Zero is the only acceptable number. They are not done yet. Read the full story including what full eradication actually requires.

Hazel had already been surrendered by two previous owners when she arrived at JDC Rescue in Whakatāne, New Zealand. She was nine months old. JDC described her as the most gentle and loving girl you could ever meet, and hoped, as they always do, that the third time would be the charm. It was. A man adopted her, brought her home, and gave her what she had been waiting for.

A week later, his house caught fire while he was sleeping. Hazel bit him until he woke up.

He escaped with smoke inhalation. The house did not survive. Christina Eichler, the property manager, told local outlet Stuff: "His dog actually bit him and woke him up. If his dog wasn't there, he wouldn't be here."

Dora Motateanu from JDC Rescue said the man's decision to adopt Hazel had saved her life, and now she had returned the favor. That is the whole story, really. Read it and share it with someone who needs a dog.

Minqin County sits on the front line of China's battle against desertification in the Gansu Corridor, where sandstorms and encroaching desert threaten the farming areas and water sources that local communities depend on. Zhong Jin grew up there, studied desert control at university, and came home in 2020 with a plan. Then a reality TV show called Become a Farmer put Minqin on the national map, and the county opened a volunteer registration portal inviting real people to experience what they had watched on screen. Between February and May, 30,000 people signed up and traveled there on their own dime.

They came to dig holes, plant trees, and sleep in cramped dormitories, as university students, parents wanting to show their children where food comes from, and fans of the show. The sandstorms and rugged terrain humbled everyone equally. Local entrepreneurs turned the whole thing into something between a conservation project and a cultural festival, with guided routes through planting sites and scenic areas.

The goal is one million trees, planted to protect irrigation channels and agricultural land from the advancing desert. They are well on their way. Read the full story and see the photos from the Minqin frontier.

Susan Young Browne turned 108 years old last week at the Modern Maturity Center in Dover, Delaware, surrounded by 130 people including the state's governor. The party had barely ended when she shared the news: Delaware had just reissued her driver's license, valid until 2033. She will be 115.

Her secret, if you can call it that, is movement. Three times a week she attends group exercise classes at the same center where she celebrated her birthday. She also has a morning routine she has followed for 20 years. "When I get up in the morning, I have an exercise routine," she said. "When I retired and walked around that classroom for 30 years, I am not going to sit down."

Her story has layers. She was born in Delaware in 1918, worked on a farm with her family without water or electricity, graduated from Delaware State College for Colored Students in 1945, and taught in a one-room schoolhouse. She has been married twice and has children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She describes her approach to life in four words: "I grow old gracefully." Watch the CBS News story and meet Ms. Browne.

🐧 South Africa: A jogger spotted a critically endangered African penguin lying face-down on the beach near Cape Town, called for help, and waited with the exhausted bird until wildlife rescuers arrived, with the penguin making a full recovery and being released back into the wild.

🐳 USA: Scientists in San Francisco Bay have deployed AI-powered thermal cameras that detect whale heat signatures in real time and alert passing ships to their locations, offering a breakthrough solution to one of the biggest threats to whale survival in busy coastal shipping lanes.

🌊 Australia: After decades of tidal gates blocking salt water from Queensland's coastal wetlands, a major restoration project has removed the gates and allowed the sea back in, with native grasses, fish, and birds already returning to ecosystems that had been degraded for generations.

🫘 Global: A major new analysis of 12 studies covering 300,000 adults found that eating beans, lentils, chickpeas, and soy daily could reduce high blood pressure risk by up to 30%, with researchers calling it one of the simplest and most affordable steps a person can take for their cardiovascular health.

🚀 Global: NASA's Psyche spacecraft completed a precision flyby of Mars on May 15th, using the planet's gravity to gain a 1,000 mph speed boost without burning any onboard fuel, and is now on course to reach its destination, a mysterious metal-rich asteroid, in 2029.

On this day 89 years ago, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to the public for the first time, and for one full day, it belonged entirely to pedestrians. An estimated 200,000 people walked, roller-skated, and danced across its 1.7-mile span before cars were ever allowed on it. When it opened, the Golden Gate was the longest suspension bridge in the world, with towers rising 746 feet above the water, and it had taken four years and the labor of thousands of workers to build, during which 11 men lost their lives. A safety net below the construction walkways saved 19 others who fell, and those men formed a club they called the Halfway to Hell Club.

The bridge had been declared impossible by some engineers. Chief engineer Joseph Strauss had to fight for the project for more than a decade before construction began in 1933. When it finally opened in 1937, it was not just an engineering triumph but a symbol, connecting San Francisco to Marin County across a passage that had previously required a ferry. Today it carries approximately 10 million vehicles a year and remains one of the most photographed structures on earth. In 2007 the American Institute of Architects ranked it ninth on its list of America's Favorite Architecture.

Other notable May 27 events:

1907: Rachel Carson was born in Pennsylvania, the ecologist whose 1962 book Silent Spring exposed the dangers of pesticides and launched the modern environmental movement, leading directly to the banning of DDT and the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

1957: Buddy Holly and the Crickets released their first record, That'll Be The Day, launching one of the most influential careers in the history of rock and roll.

1963: Bob Dylan released The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, his second album, showcasing a quantum leap in songwriting that included Blowin' in the Wind and A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, establishing him as the defining voice of a generation.

1967: Australians voted in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the federal government the power to make laws benefiting Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census, in a vote that passed with over 90% support.

— Nelson Mandela

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:

🏥 Cancer Survival Rates Soaring: Survival rates for many cancers that were once near-certain death sentences, including melanoma, lung cancer, and leukemia, have doubled or tripled in the past 20 years, driven by immunotherapy, targeted treatments, and early detection technology that didn't exist a generation ago.

🐢 Sea Turtles Recovering: After decades of population collapse from fishing nets, plastic pollution, and beach development, sea turtle populations are rebounding across multiple species and oceans, with nesting numbers hitting records in several regions this year alone.

🧬 HIV Is Becoming Manageable: Modern antiretroviral therapy has transformed HIV from a near-certain death sentence into a manageable chronic condition, and a small number of people have now been functionally cured, with researchers increasingly optimistic that a broader cure is achievable within a decade.

🏙️ Cities Getting Greener: Major cities including Singapore, Vienna, and Copenhagen are planting millions of trees, creating wildlife corridors, and mandating rooftop gardens, measurably reducing urban heat islands and improving air quality for hundreds of millions of people.

🪸 Coral Reefs Fighting Back: Scientists have developed coral strains that can survive significantly warmer water temperatures through selective breeding and assisted evolution, and early restoration projects using these heat-resistant corals are showing promising results in the Great Barrier Reef and the Caribbean.

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