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KINDNESS • Good News Network
97,000 people opened a letter saying their medical debt is goneA nonprofit called Undue Medical Debt has wiped out roughly $6.5 million in unpaid hospital bills for 97,000 residents of Connecticut. The relief came through a state program that paired leftover COVID-19 funds with donations raised by the organization, the fourth round of its kind. To qualify, residents had to owe medical debt worth 5% or more of their annual income, or earn at or below the federal poverty level. No one applied. No one filled out a form. The group buys overdue debts for pennies on the dollar, then chooses which to erase at random, partly to avoid any hint of favoritism. Recipients simply get a letter in the mail explaining that the bill is gone. "I want to make sure that folks are able to feel comfortable that they can go to the doctor and not have to worry about that medical debt as much as they might have before," said Rep. Kevin Brown of Vernon. The program runs through the end of the year.
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NATURE • Sunny Skyz
Two twin calves, one barrier, a stranger stepped inA man carried a stranded moose calf across Highway 97 near Prince George, British Columbia, last week after the newborn got trapped in the road's concrete median. A mother moose had tried to lead her twin calves across the busy highway. She made it. They did not, stuck behind a barrier too tall for newborn legs. Traffic began to back up as drivers noticed the animals, according to motorist Sandie, who filmed the scene. The mother waited on the far side, watching. One calf eventually scrambled over the barrier on its own. The second stayed put, the way a frightened newborn does when the situation calls for a plan it does not have. Duane Hogberg approached, lifted the small moose over the median, and carried it across to its mother. Video shows the family reunited. Hogberg set the calf down, and the rest was up to the moose.
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DELIGHT • Upworthy
A 5-year-old spotted what pilots flipped right pastWilliam Hines is five years old, lives in Arvada, Colorado, and is fairly certain he is going to be a pilot. The case grew stronger last month, when a commercial pilot named Josh visited the family home in full uniform and spent two hours walking the boy through aeronautical charts. As a parting gift, Josh left a Southwest training manual, the dense technical guide pilots use to learn aircraft systems. William started flipping through it and, within minutes, found something. "I discovered that two terrain monitors did not match. They did not match at all," he said. One diagram was zoomed in, the other zoomed far out. Southwest later confirmed it was not an actual error, just a difference in zoom levels that a five-year-old happened to notice while adults flipped past. The story reached CEO Bob Jordan, who invited the family to the airline's Dallas headquarters, where William sat inside a full-motion flight simulator. He explained his ambition plainly. "I love flying. I don't have to walk 7,000 miles."
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SCIENCE • Good News Network
Three planets line up in the western sky this monthThree planets will line up across the western sky this month, with the Moon joining the arrangement on the 16th. The show stars the two brightest planets we can see from Earth: Venus, hot and close, and Jupiter, far off but vastly larger. Mercury sits low near the horizon to complete the skewer. It begins on the 7th, when Venus and Jupiter appear to sit side by side for anyone looking west-northwest. Over the following nights Venus drifts past Jupiter, until the 16th, when a waxing crescent Moon slips between Jupiter and Mercury about 35 minutes after sunset. The next evening the Moon shifts above and to the left of Venus, tightening the line further. Southern Hemisphere viewers get the same event, only reversed, running northeast to southwest. No telescope required, just a clear horizon and the patience to look west while the crickets do their thing.
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DELIGHT • Upworthy
A stranger hand-delivered a postcard from the Galapagos barrelPeter Clist's doorbell rang at his home in Petersfield, England, in May 2026, and a stranger handed him a postcard. "I've got a postcard for you," the man said, offering only his first name, Hugh, before leaving. The card had come from the Galapagos Islands, written in Spanish, and seemed addressed to "Sheila in Mr. Clist's PM class." Clist teaches Spanish, but no Sheila sits in his afternoon group. The local paper ran the mystery, and within a week most of it was solved. Sheila turned out to be a former student who had mailed her old class while traveling. Hugh was doing what travelers have done for 233 years. The Galapagos has no post office, just a wooden barrel at Post Office Bay on Floreana Island. Visitors leave mail there and carry away whatever is headed near home. No stamps. No timeline. The barrel has outlasted every postal service that might have replaced it.
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Did today's letter lift you? Pass it to someone who'd want the same.
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With love, The Editor
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