At 72, she's starting her medical residency

Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft will begin her medical residency at a Michigan hospital in July. She is 72. She got there by spending her retirement savings on medical school in the Caribbean, a decision she made in her late 60s after her husband had a medical emergency and she decided she was done waiting. Zuidgeest-Craft had wanted to be a doctor for most of her life. She became a neonatal nurse practitioner instead, raised four children, and applied to medical school once, at 35, after her divorce. She was rejected. Her youngest child was born when she was 49. Her daughter, ABC meteorologist Ginger Zee, told Entertainment Tonight that 45 years of hospital work is the kind of preparation no textbook offers. Her mother put it more plainly to the Washington Post. "I want to do this because I really enjoy this."

Three teens stopped to fix a flat. They saved his life.

Three teenagers from Cooper City High School stopped to help a stranded driver change a flat tire in Cooper City, Florida, on April 19, and ended up calling the ambulance that saved his life. Diego Fernandez-Delgado, 65, had been on the side of South Flamingo Road with a dead phone battery when he began experiencing chest pain and trouble breathing. Logan Royer and Cody Magrone, both 16, and 17-year-old Brody Murray spotted him on their way to a McDonald's after a fishing trip. "We saw him on the side of the road and we were like, 'Let's go help him,'" Magrone said. They got the tire sorted, realized he was much sicker than he looked, and dialed 911. One of them told the dispatcher the man "does not feel good at all," which is the kind of plain language that gets paramedics moving. Fernandez-Delgado was taken to Memorial Hospital West, underwent several procedures, and is now recovering at home. This week, Cooper City honored the three boys with a proclamation and a standing ovation. Fernandez-Delgado was there to thank them in person.

One pill stretched 6.7 months of survival into 13.2

An experimental once-daily pill called daraxonrasib helped patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer live a median of 13.2 months in a late-stage trial, compared with 6.7 months on standard chemotherapy, according to Reuters. The drug, developed by Revolution Medicines, targets RAS, a protein family mutated in more than 90% of pancreatic cancers, per the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. Unlike earlier RAS drugs, it was built to act across a broader range of mutations, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reports. The early human study enrolled 168 patients. Most had side effects including rash, nausea and mouth inflammation, and 30% had severe treatment-related events, Reuters reported. The FDA has opened an expanded access program, though physicians must initiate requests on a patient's behalf. Demand at U.S. cancer centers is already heavy. Doctors are careful to say daraxonrasib is not a cure. For a disease that has resisted progress for decades, that careful caveat is itself a kind of news.

A salesman knocked. He left praying. He came back free.

A door-to-door sales call in Keller, Texas turned into a free home repair job last week after a Texas Home Improvement specialist met a customer who reminded him of his grandmother. Caleb Killough knocked on Melinda Potosky's door expecting a standard appointment. Instead, they talked about her health, including the possibility she may eventually need a transplant. Killough's own father had a double lung transplant six years ago. "I thought I was going to lose my father, so it was very emotional," he said. Before he left, he asked if he could pray with her in the living room. She said yes. The following Monday, Killough came back with news that his company had agreed to complete the repairs on her home at no cost. Potosky, for her part, is considering a new arrangement. "I think I'm going to have to invite him to be my grandson," she said.

America picked up 18 billion pieces of litter since 2020

Litter along America's roadways and waterways has dropped 34% since 2020, according to a new report from Keep America Beautiful. The average American's share fell from 152 pieces to 96, with waterway litter down 45% and roadway litter down 22%.

The update to the 2020 National Litter Study credits a mix of education, local enforcement, better waste infrastructure and public engagement. Nearly 90% of Americans polled said they feel personal responsibility to reduce litter.

The data also tracks how Americans actually live now. Cardboard litter is up 50% as online shopping reshapes daily habits. PPE litter, the masks and gloves that defined 2020 sidewalks, is down 76%. E-cigarette debris is climbing.

"Litter is solvable when people, systems and partners work together," said Jennifer Lawson, president and CEO of Keep America Beautiful. About 35 billion pieces remain on the ground. That is a lot, and it is also 18 billion fewer than five years ago.

They cook together, garden together, and grow old together.

A group of older women in north London have spent the past several years living in New Ground Cohousing, a 25-flat community built from a former convent, where residents share meals, gardens, and the practical business of growing old near other people. The project is believed to be the first senior cohousing development in the UK led by women. Residents own or rent their own flats but cook together regularly, tend the garden as a group, and look in on one another without making a production of it. The model took nearly two decades to get off the ground, slowed by the usual planning hurdles and the less usual challenge of convincing lenders that older women knew what they wanted. They did. The waiting list is long.

Greece just gave the monk seals their own island

Greece has signed into national law a new marine protected area around Gyaros, an uninhabited island in the Cyclades that hosts the world's largest colony of Mediterranean monk seals, one of the most endangered marine mammals on Earth. The seals have bred on Gyaros for decades, undeterred by the fact that the post-independence Greek navy used the island as a target range. Previous protections were provincial and lightly enforced. Under the new law, oversight passes to the coast guard and the Ministry for Environment and Climate Change. The island is also a refuge for threatened shearwaters and rich pelagic life in the Aegean. Gyaros has a long history as a place of exile, mentioned in Juvenal's Satires and used as a political prison into the 20th century. WWF Greece, which began ecological work on the island in 2013, called the designation a "decisive milestone" for the Northern Cyclades.

Students built the elephants a wall. One cracked the latch.

Four elephants at Zoo Atlanta have a new wall to investigate, and so far the reviews are good. The structure, designed and built by college students, is an enrichment wall studded with treat puzzles and embedded with speakers that emit low-frequency sounds tuned to the range elephants actually hear. Elephants communicate in rumbles below the threshold of human hearing, which makes designing audio for them a niche engineering problem. The students took it seriously. The wall encourages the herd to forage, manipulate objects, and use their trunks in ways closer to wild behavior. Zoo Atlanta houses four African elephants, all of whom have been spotted working the puzzles. One of them figured out a latch faster than the designers expected. Enrichment of this kind is now standard practice at accredited zoos, but custom-built installations remain rare. The students get a final grade. The elephants get snacks.