Good News Headlines 4/14/2025

City In India Ranks The Cleanest 8 Years In A Row: ‘It Feels As Though You Aren’t In India’

by Andy Corbley, Good News Network

For 8 years in a row, the lesser-known Indian city of Indore has been voted the country’s cleanest city, an honor accorded to it off the back of a massive civic drive to improve and maintain hygiene standards. Recounted to the Guardian by Amrit Dhillon, Indore’s success follows an all-hands-on-deck approach after the city, like so many in India, became overly synonymous with garbage and littering. “When you come out of the airport, it feels as though you aren’t in India, it’s so clean,” said Nitisha Agarwal, a corporate executive who travels to Indore frequently for work. Agarwal is just one person of many Dhillon spoke to in the city, and his remark that “you aren’t in India” cannot be understated.

Alien Life? Mammoth New Telescope Could Find It In Hours

by Paul Scott Anderson, EarthSky

Is there other life out in the universe? We still don’t know for sure, but we are getting ever closer to finding it, if it exists. The upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Chile will represent a big leap toward answering the age-old question of “Are we alone?” And it could do so a lot faster than previously possible, researchers at the University of Washington and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said in a new preprint paper on March 11, 2025. The upcoming extremely large telescopes will provide the first opportunity to search for signs of habitability and life on non-transiting terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast, high-resolution instrumentation.

Neighbors Celebrate 101st Birthday On The Same Day–Living Next Door To Each Other For 4 Decades

by Good News Network

Two longtime English neighbors are celebrating their joint 101st birthday, born on the same day in 1924. Josie Church and Anne Wallace-Hadrill have lived side-by-side in Oxford since the 1980s, and the great-grans have celebrated their birthdays together for years. “I think life has gone quite quickly,” said Josie. “I don’t think we’ve thought much about the time passing. It’s just passed.” Both women threw themselves into volunteering and creative activities after their husbands died—and the women have been fast friends ever since. “Anne was very busy when she was younger—so was I—always very productive and creative.

World’s Largest Wildlife Crossing Gets First Layers Of Soil Across California Freeway

by Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing — the largest wildlife crossing of its kind in the world — has reached a new milestone, as workers laid the first layers of soil on the historic California overpass on Monday. The crossing stretches over California’s 101 freeway and is designed to help bobcats, mountain lions, deer and other creatures safely traverse the busy, 10-lane road. “I imagine a future for all the wildlife in our area where it’s possible to survive and thrive and the placement of this first soil on the bridge means another step closer to reality,” Annenberg, philanthropist and president of nonprofit the Annenberg Foundation, said in a statement, as the Los Angeles Times reported.

Major Deal Wipes Out $30 Billion In Medical Debt. Even Backers Say It’s Not Enough

by Noam Levey, NPR

Underscoring the massive scale of America’s medical debt problem, a nonprofit has struck a deal to pay off old medical bills for an estimated 20 million people. New York-based Undue Medical Debt, which buys patient debt, is paying off $30 billion worth of unpaid bills in a single transaction with Pendrick Capital Partners, a Virginia-based debt trading company. The average patient debt being retired is $1,100, according to Undue Medical Debt, with some reaching the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The deal will prevent the debt being sold and protect millions of people nationwide from being targeted by collectors, though this will overwhelmingly benefit residents of Texas and Florida, who account for about half of the debts being retired.