New Year's Eve Good News

Editor OGN Daily
Dec 31, 2025
4 min read

Ending the year with an eclectic global selection of upbeat news stories.

'Shiprock'

One way or another, we’ve all been witnesses to the stunning beauty of natural landscapes, and one competition is recognizing the photographers who capture incredible vistas from around the world. Now in its 12th year, the International Landscape Photographer of the Year competition recently announced its 2025 winners. The lauded images are a selection of the world’s best contemporary landscape photographs, representing striking mountainscapes, frigid treelines, and fantastic fungi. One of OGN's favourites is moody 'Shiprock' by Polish photographer Karol Nienartowicz, snapped in New Mexico, U.S.

flat-headed cat hunting at night — Credit: Dept. of National Parks

Not Extinct After All

An endangered small wild cat native to Thailand’s wetlands has been sighted for the first time in 30 years, the country’s wildlife authorities have announced. The flat-headed cat has long been feared extinct in the tropical kingdom, where it inhabits peatlands, mangrove forests, and marshes that are difficult to access. The last confirmed sighting was in 1995. Now 30 years later, the flat-headed cat has surfaced following a camera trap survey in Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Thailand. This nocturnal hunter preys on swamp animals, including frogs, fish, and crustaceans.

An 11-year-old kid snowboarding — Mike Yoshida | The Snowboarder's Journal

Cover Shot

An 11-year-old kid with no snowboarding experience ended up on the cover of a major snowboarding magazine. Mickey Watkins was playing outside near his home when he noticed a group of snowboarders and photographers nearby capturing action shots. Curious, he wandered over to watch them ride down a snowy hill and along a railing. Before long, Mickey grabbed a nearby plastic tote bin lid and began sliding down the hill himself. Photographer Mike Yoshida encouraged Mickey to try standing up on the lid - and snapped a photo in between shots of professional riders. The image instantly stood out - so Yoshida shared the photo on Instagram, where it caught the attention of the brand director of The Snowboarder's Journal. He felt the image captured the heart of snowboarding - not competition or perfection, but pure joy. That photo of Mickey riding the plastic lid ultimately became the cover of the magazine.

Superkilonova

Explosions of all varieties are booming throughout the universe. When a massive star dies, for instance, it bursts in a bright supernova, sometimes leaving behind a dead core called a neutron star. And these dense stellar leftovers can collide in an explosion known as a kilonova. Now, astronomers say they may have spotted a rare combination of the two phenomena. In the event dubbed a “superkilonova”, one supernova seems to have left behind two neutron stars, which then merged in a kilonova, according to a study just published Astrophysical Journal Letters. The findings come from signals first detected on 18 August this year, when observatories in the United States and Italy sensed ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, which researchers suspect were caused by the merging of two objects.

Most Reliable

We all love a little Consumer Reports scoop, don’t we? Last year, Subaru surpassed Toyota and Lexus to become the most reliable carmaker. This year, Toyota reclaims its crown. And there’s one damning stat: Four out of the top five most reliable car brands this year are Japanese. Make that five out of the top six and six out of the top seven! Such is the dominance of Japanese players when it comes to reliability alone. Consumer Reports' rankings are based on info gathered from the owners of over 380,000 cars, which includes models from 2000 to 2025.

Michaela “Michi” Benthaus, in a wheelchair, with her 5 crew mates — Michaela (centre) with her crew mates | Blue Origin

"Coolest Experience"

Michaela “Michi” Benthaus, a 33-year-old aerospace engineer from Germany, just made history as the first wheelchair user to travel to space. Benthaus joined a roughly ten-minute commercial flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft that launched from West Texas on December 20. The crew capsule passed the Kármán Line - the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space located around 62 miles above the planet’s surface - and then turned back. “It was the coolest experience ever, honestly,” she said after emerging from the capsule. “I think you should never give up on your dreams.”

“So tonight I’m going to party like it’s 1999.” Prince

On This Day

31 December 1911: Marie Curie receives her second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, for her work with radioactivity. She was a pioneering physicist and chemist who made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of radioactivity, a term she actually coined. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (Physics in 1903), and remains the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields.