Great News Day: October 23, 2026

Friday, October 23, 2026 · A few minutes of good news to start your day.

Good morning, friends.

Today's issue starts with a 25 year old in Rhode Island who spent weeks planning a Halloween party for people he had not yet met, and ends with a tiny Indonesian primate that showed up in gardens after science had already written it off. In between: a vaccine with real teeth, an island that rewrote its own ending, and a homecoming king who gave the crown away.

Settle in. There is a lot to be glad about.

🌱 TODAY'S MINDSET

Hand deliver the invitation

Here is a small thing most people do not do. They do not invite anyone to the thing they love.

They set the Halloween display up alone. They cook the dinner for one. They train for the race, finish it, and tell no one. There is a kind of safety in that. If no one came, no one knew to come. If no one knew, no one can decline.

You already know where this is going. Safety is not what we are here for.

Think about the last thing that genuinely delighted you. A recipe that worked. A poem you memorized walking. A pumpkin on the porch you were quietly proud of. Now ask the harder question: who in your life would be glad to know about it?

The trick is that your delight is not a private luxury. It is a doorway. When you point at the thing you love and say, come look, two people get to stand in that doorway now. Then four. Then a neighborhood you did not know you had.

You do not have to throw a party. You can text the recipe. You can send the poem. You can walk the paper invitation to the mailbox three doors down, the way our lead story did, and find out who you have been living next to all along.

Today, pick one small thing you love. Then let one person see it. Hand deliver the invitation.

⭐ TODAY'S BRIGHT LEAD

Illustration by Great News Day.

He hand delivered 100 invitations. The whole neighborhood came.

Hope, Rhode Island

Mike Castelli is 25, works as a bagger at a Coventry Stop and Shop, and lives for Halloween decorations. Not candy. Not costumes. The yard. The blow-up pumpkins, the lighted ghosts, the whole thing. He has been planning this year's display since summer, laying every piece out on paper first in the order he wants to stage it, and his dad comes out to help tie down the cords.

This year, Mike decided to try something new. He made invitations by hand, walked them to every mailbox on his street, and asked the whole neighborhood over for what he called the Great Halloween Pumpkin Spectacular. Snacks. Drinks. The lights on. No RSVP.

His mom Theresa told NBC 10 she was not sure anyone would come. Mike has cognitive and motor challenges and the family has lived there 28 years, but neighbors have come and gone and there were plenty of households they had never met.

Nearly everyone showed up. For three hours they stood on the lawn and ate and talked and watched the inflatables glow. One neighbor, Donna Couture, said it was the first time in ten years she had seen her street come together as a community. Mike also quietly used the party to collect donations for his Special Olympics team.

By the time the last neighbor left, Mike was already planning something smaller for Christmas.

Read the full story at NBC 10 WJAR →

🌍 MORE GOOD TODAY

The homecoming king gave his crown away

Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania

Keny Cedanio Ramirez had just been named Mahanoy Area's homecoming king at a school pep rally when he glanced over and saw his classmate Axton Kuhl, who has Down syndrome, starting to tear up. Keny walked over, lifted the sash from his own shoulders, and placed the crown on Axton. Axton was the new homecoming king, and the whole gym saw it happen. Keny told 6abc his younger brother is autistic, and he would hope someone would do the same for him. He also wanted to thank his mom.

Watch the moment →

The island that is coming back

Nu'utele Island, Samoa

One year after Samoa's Ministry of Natural Resources, Pacific Regional Invasive Species Management Support Service, Island Conservation, and local community members finished removing invasive rats and feral pigs from Nu'utele Island, the forest is quietly exploding back to life. Native seedlings are carpeting the floor knee high. Taro crops that used to fail are being harvested again. Researchers have already found active nests of the shy ground dove, breeding activity among endemic flycatchers and whistlers, and a land crab species that had never been recorded on the island.

Read how they did it →

The primate science forgot kept showing up in people's yards

Bangka Island, Indonesia

The Bangka slow loris, a big eyed, slow moving, venomous little primate, had not been documented in scientific literature since the 1930s. Scientists had quietly moved it into the critically endangered, possibly extinct column. But the people of Bangka Island, Indonesia, knew it was still around. For over a decade, when residents found one in a backyard, on a power line, or crossing a road, they called the Alobi Wildlife Rescue Center. A new study in Spixiana now confirms it: Alobi has rescued more than 90 of them since 2015 and released 86 back into protected forest. The species is back on the scientific map. The next job is making sure it stays.

See the rescued loris →

🔬 SCIENCE OF JOY

A custom mRNA vaccine just cut melanoma's chances of coming back by 42 percent

United States

Moderna and Merck released results on Thursday from the most advanced study yet of a brand new idea in cancer treatment: a personalized vaccine, custom brewed from each patient's own tumor, trained to teach the immune system what to hunt. In melanoma patients who had already had their tumors surgically removed, adding the vaccine to standard treatment reduced the risk of the cancer coming back within two years by 42 percent.

That is a very large number for a disease that has historically been very hard to keep away. The vaccine, called intismeran autogene, now moves toward broader approval conversations. The same mRNA technology is being tested in several other hard to treat cancers.

What is remarkable is not just the number. It is that the vaccine is different for every single patient. Each one is a one of a kind medicine, built around a single person's biology.

Read the AP report →

💛 BRIGHT FIND

A note from the editor. This slot is where we introduce you to things we think you will love. Today it is open, which also means it is yours.

We built Great News Day to find real good news for a tribe of people who still believe the world has more of it than the headlines show. If you make, sell, or run something that fits that spirit, a book, a candle, a nonprofit, a tea company, a small town hotel, we would love to put you in front of our readers. Reply to this email and tell us about it. We read every one.

And if you are just here for the news: thank you for being here. That already matters more than you know.

✨ ONE MORE SMILE

About Mike, the man throwing the pumpkin party. His mom told reporters that the morning after Halloween, he will be out in the yard at 7 a.m. taking the ghosts down and putting the turkeys up. By mid November, the inflatable Santas. By the time Christmas is cleared, he is already planning next October.

Somewhere in Rhode Island, every single day of the year, it is a holiday. On purpose.

See you tomorrow, friends.

With gratitude,
The Great News Day editors

P.S. If today's issue made you smile, forward it to one person. That is how a tribe of positive people grows: one hand delivered invitation at a time.