She turned 117 last week. Her secret? Never arguing, and rarely compromising

Happy Monday. Ethel Caterham turned 117 last Friday. She's the world's oldest person, she met King Charles this past year, and she attributes her longevity to a nonconfrontational approach to life: never arguing, while rarely compromising. I've been thinking about that combination all weekend.

We also have new research showing that specific deep sleep brain waves appear to protect against Alzheimer's, three elderly dogs doing their final shift at London's Waterloo station before retirement, and a mobile dental unit heading to UK homeless shelters in October.

Here's your good news.

—Stephanie S

Ethel Caterham was born in the United Kingdom on August 21, 1909, when the great-great grandfather of the current king was sitting on the throne. She was the seventh of eight children, worked as a nanny for a British family in India, met her husband Norman, a major in the British Army, while exploring the subcontinent, and outlived him by fifty years. She has outlived two of her daughters as well. She is now surrounded by three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

She became the world's oldest person after a Brazilian nun, Inah Canabarro Lucas, passed away at 116. Guinness World Records confirmed the title. In September 2025, she met King Charles III. This August, she stroked a llama. In an emailed statement to ABC News, she wrote: "Even at 117, I've had many firsts this year, from stroking a llama to holding hands with the King! I've had a lovely day celebrating with my family and friends, and I look forward to seeing what next year brings!"

She attributes her longevity to a nonconfrontational approach to life: never arguing, while rarely compromising. That combination, not fighting but also not giving in, is its own kind of philosophy. It suggests that most arguments aren't worth having, and that the ones that are, you can usually find a way around without surrendering what matters.

"Thank you for all of the kind birthday wishes," she said. She is the oldest confirmed living person on Earth, and she is looking forward to next year. Read the full story.

Researchers have known for years that poor sleep is linked to cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease. A new study from Concordia University goes further, identifying a specific mechanism: elevated levels of orexin, a brain chemical that regulates wakefulness, are associated with faster cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer's. But here's the hopeful part.

People who produced stronger sleep spindles and slow oscillations during deep NREM sleep showed significantly less cognitive decline over time, even when their orexin levels were elevated. The brain waves appeared to provide a kind of neural resilience against orexin's harmful effects. The study followed 60 adults with mild to moderate Alzheimer's over three years, measuring brain activity overnight and cerebrospinal fluid samples the following morning.

"This study shows that there are new ways to potentially act on sleep to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease," said co-author Thanh Dang-vu of Concordia University. Orexin-blocking drugs are already approved for insomnia and narcolepsy, and are now being explored as Alzheimer's therapies. Monitoring sleep spindles and orexin levels could help identify which patients might benefit most. Read the full story.

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Riley is nine. Buster is ten. Flo is eleven. The two cocker spaniels and one Labrador have been deployed to London's Waterloo station as part of a three-month trial making it the first major train hub in Britain to put dogs on regular patrol. They provide what South Western Railway calls "additional reassurance" to passengers, acting as a visual deterrent and a source of comfort in one of the busiest stations in the country.

The deployment is not linked to any increased threat. It is simply, as station manager Dan Harrison put it, part of providing more visual deterrence and offering customers something that feels a little more human. Riley, Buster, and Flo are working alongside South Western Railway and NR Wessex, in partnership with Alpha Canine Specialists.

When the three-month trial ends, all three dogs will retire. This is their final deployment. They are spending the last chapter of their working lives walking the platforms of Waterloo, being patted by commuters, and doing what they have always done. Read the full story.

Dental care is one of the most commonly neglected health needs among homeless and vulnerable people in Britain, not because they don't want it, but because the system doesn't come to them. The mydentist Foundation and Dentaid The Dental Charity are changing that with a £1 million fund and an eco-conscious mobile dental unit that launches in October.

The unit will travel to homeless shelters, women's shelters, hostels, community centers, family hubs, and soup kitchens, staffed by volunteer dentists and dental nurses providing fillings, extractions, scaling and polishing, fluoride varnish, X-rays, and oral cancer screenings. In its first year alone, the program aims to reach more than 850 of the hardest-to-reach people in communities across the country.

"Through our new foundation and partnership with Dentaid, we're committed to helping vulnerable and underserved communities access the treatment they need and deserve," said Nilesh Pandya, CEO of mydentist, the UK's largest dental operator. "By supporting outreach services, we hope to help tackle oral health inequalities." Read the full story.

🐸 Global: Scientists have discovered that bullfrogs produce a protein that can neutralize saxitoxin, one of the most lethal toxins found in shellfish, with researchers now testing it as a potential antidote for paralytic shellfish poisoning in humans. GNN Science.

🍦 UAE: A young entrepreneur in Abu Dhabi has launched an ice cream brand using dates as a natural sweetener, producing soft serve that is lower in sugar and calories than conventional ice cream, now stocked in venues across the UAE. GNN Business.

💻 Global: IBM and University of Chicago researchers completed a quantum computation in 15 minutes that leading classical methods could not practically reproduce, using 70 error-corrected logical qubits, marking what IBM is calling the dawn of verified quantum advantage.

💉 Global: The first clinical trial of CAR T-cell therapy for severe rheumatoid arthritis found that disease activity dropped markedly in all six patients who had failed up to eight prior treatments, with three achieving sustained medication-free remission. Charité Berlin, published in Nature Medicine.

🌿 Global: Researchers have developed a form of Spirulina that contains biologically active vitamin B12 at levels comparable to beef by carefully controlling the wavelengths of light used to grow the algae, the first time active B12 has been reported in Spirulina, potentially solving one of the biggest nutritional gaps in plant-based diets. Published in Discover Food.

On August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson stood before a large audience and presented his transcendentalist philosophy for the first time. He told them to break free from the past, pay attention to the present, and create their own unique ideas rather than borrowing the thinking of others. It was the first time these ideas had been articulated so directly to so many people, and it landed like a declaration.

Scholars have called it an intellectual Declaration of Independence for American thought. Its influence on how Americans understand the relationship between the individual and society has never entirely faded.

Other notable August 31 events:

1946: Foghorn Leghorn made his debut 80 years ago today in the short film Walky Talky Hawky, voiced by Mel Blanc, introducing audiences to the bombastic Southern rooster who called everyone "boy" and signed off with "That's a joke, son!"

2006: Edvard Munch's The Scream was recovered by Norwegian police, 20 years ago today, two years after it was stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo.

1963: Walter Cronkite began anchoring the CBS Evening News, 63 years ago today, launching the career that would make him the most trusted man in America.

1997: The Good News Network went live on the internet for the first time, 29 years ago today, when founder Geri Weis-Corbley clicked a button and began delivering positive news to anyone in the world.

— Dalai Lama

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:

🧬 Editing the Switches, Not the Code: Scientists can now edit the chemical tags on top of DNA that control which genes are switched on or off, silencing or activating specific genes with precision without changing the underlying genetic sequence at all, opening new paths to treating conditions that conventional gene editing cannot safely reach.

📡 A Quantum Internet Is Being Built: Physicists have demonstrated quantum entanglement between particles separated by hundreds of kilometers using satellites, laying the groundwork for a global quantum internet whose communications would be theoretically impossible to intercept, because any eavesdropping would instantly disrupt the signal.

🌊 Mapping the Ocean Floor for Clean Energy: Autonomous underwater vehicles are now systematically surveying the deep ocean for the cobalt, nickel, and manganese deposits needed for clean energy batteries, potentially opening access to mineral resources that could reduce the human and environmental costs of land-based mining.

🔭 Seeing the Universe's First Light: The James Webb Space Telescope is detecting light from galaxies that formed within the first 300 million years after the Big Bang, revealing that stars formed earlier and far more abundantly than most models had predicted, rewriting our understanding of how the universe began.

🌱 Healing the Soil From the Seed Up: Agricultural scientists are developing microbial seed coatings and soil inoculants that restore the beneficial microorganisms industrial farming has depleted, dramatically improving crop yields and drought resistance without chemical fertilizers, by working with the biology that was already there.

Spread a little good news, and good things come back your way.

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