• An analysis from The Economist finds that in the vast majority of wealthy countries, millennials have higher inflation-adjusted incomes than previous generations did at the same age. There were just three exceptions in the 32-country sample: Greece, Italy, and Japan. The Economist also notes that while in some countries, such as Australia, France, and the United Kingdom, intergenerational income growth has slowed, it has accelerated in faster-growing economies like the United States and Poland.

• Undernourishment has become rare enough in the Dominican Republic that the country has officially left the Food and Agriculture Organization’s “Hunger Map,” which tracks the prevalence of undernourishment around the world. According to government figures, the share of the population that is undernourished fell from 21.3 percent in 2006 to less than 2.5 percent in 2025.

Energy & Environment

• A reactor in Bangladesh’s first nuclear power plant has reached criticality, achieving a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction for the first time. The reactor is now operating at low power while engineers conduct further tests, and is expected to start providing electricity to the grid as early as next month. Once fully operational, the plant’s two reactors will have a combined generating capacity of 2,400 megawatts, enough to meet roughly 11 percent of Bangladesh’s electricity demand.

• ALERTCalifornia, a public safety program based at the University of California San Diego, operates a network of more than 1,200 cameras that monitor wildfires and other natural disasters. Since 2023, when the program introduced an automated fire detection system, that network has increasingly been monitored by artificial intelligence. According to the program’s director, 51 percent of California wildfires are now first detected by AI, allowing firefighters to respond more quickly and potentially stop small fires from growing into major disasters.

• A recently published analysis of satellite images finds that the Antarctic ice sheet may be more stable than previously assumed. Scientists have worried that when exceptionally tall ice cliffs collapse, they expose still taller cliffs behind them, triggering a chain reaction of collapses that rapidly erodes the ice sheet. This new research found that glaciers tend to self-stabilize following a cliff collapse, indicating that this particular mechanism of ice loss may be less severe than previously thought.

Health & Demographics

• Human rabies deaths have fallen 47 percent in Guinea over the past three years, according to Khaité Sall, the country’s Minister of Health and Sanitation. Sall credits a massive vaccination campaign that has immunized more than 290,000 dogs against the deadly virus since 2023.

• Great Ormond Street Hospital in London has implemented same-day metagenomic testing for critically ill children. Unlike conventional targeted diagnostic tests, which look for a limited, predetermined set of pathogens, metagenomic testing sequences genetic material in a sample, allowing doctors to identify a much broader range of infections. According to research on the testing system published in The Lancet Microbe, the metagenomic tests detected organisms missed by routine diagnostics in 24 percent of samples. In one case, highlighted by the hospital’s press release, the test identified the pneumonia-causing bacterium infecting a 10-year-old girl and revealed that it was resistant to the antibiotic she had been prescribed. Doctors were able to change her treatment, and she recovered from the infection.

• University of Maryland researchers have developed an experimental antivenom that’s roughly 10 times more potent by weight than an existing commercial treatment. The researchers combined proteins naturally found in rattlesnake blood that protect the snakes against their own venom. The antivenom has not yet been tested in humans, but in experiments with mice, it completely neutralized the lethal effects of western diamondback rattlesnake venom and provided protection against several other viper species.

• Mauritius, a country with one of the world’s highest diabetes rates, has made substantial progress against the disease. Among adults aged 25 to 74, the age- and sex-adjusted prevalence of type 2 diabetes fell from 23.3 percent in 2009 to 19.9 percent in 2021, according to a recent analysis published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. Although the causes remain uncertain, the improvement coincided with declining obesity, increasing physical activity, and government-imposed “sin” taxes on the sugar content of sweetened drinks.

Science & Technology

• University of Washington researchers have created artificial enzymes capable of cutting proteins at precisely chosen locations. Unlike conventional drugs that bind to proteins to block their activity, these enzymes can cut a protein, release it, and repeat the process thousands of times. That means much smaller doses could potentially destroy large quantities of harmful proteins, such as viral proteins, bacterial toxins, or abnormal proteins that accumulate in the brain. In lab tests, the enzymes cut proteins implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and ALS, and some enzymes worked in living human cells.

• Recent research has found that OpenAI’s flagship AI model, GPT-6 Astra, is capable of driving a car, albeit badly. Researchers equipped a Toyota Corolla with a driving computer and software that allowed AI models to control its steering, accelerator, and brakes using camera images. Four models were tested on a short course in an empty parking lot. Only Astra managed to finish, taking about five minutes to complete the course, which the researchers say a human could navigate in less than one. That is a remarkable result for a general-purpose model that was not trained to drive.

• The UK government has identified and addressed more than 1,000 potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a recent announcement. The government plans to extend the program across the public sector.

• A group of physicists recently tested five leading AI agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, and Z.ai on a set of 50 unpublished, research-level theoretical physics problems. OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra correctly solved 49 of them. Remarkably, researchers initially marked Astra wrong on several problems, only to discover that their reference solutions contained errors and Astra was correct.

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• The World Trade Organization has more than doubled its forecast for this year’s growth in global merchandise trade volume, from 1.9 percent in March to 3.9 percent, despite disruptions to energy supplies and shipping routes caused by the US-Israeli war against Iran. The revision was driven largely by a surge in trade in AI-enabling goods, such as semiconductors and servers.

• The latest Distribution of Household Income report from the Congressional Budget Office finds that average inflation-adjusted household income in the US grew for every fifth of the income distribution between 1979 and 2023, both before and after means-tested transfers and federal taxes. The richest fifth of households saw their incomes grow the fastest, but households in the bottom and middle fifths also enjoyed substantial gains. Among households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, average real annual income rose by 50 percent before means-tested transfers and federal taxes and 108 percent after.

• Argentina’s economy is on track to grow for three consecutive years (2025 to 2027) for the first time in nearly two decades, according to a new World Bank forecast. The country’s real (inflation-adjusted) GDP grew 4.5 percent in 2025 and is projected to grow 2.1 percent in 2026 and 3 percent in 2027. The World Bank attributes the growth to “fiscal consolidation, tax reforms and a more open economy.”

Energy & Environment

• The population of giant tortoises on Seychelles’ Aldabra Atoll is now estimated at 183,000, the highest figure on record for the atoll, according to a recently published survey. The population fell below 1,000 in the 19th century because of overhunting but had recovered to an estimated 100,000 by the late 1990s.

• Australia’s endangered bogong moths are returning in greater numbers after a devastating population crash in 2017 and 2018 that reduced their population by an estimated 99.5 percent. Researchers have confirmed more than 1,600 moth sightings since the beginning of September 2026, compared with 1,089 during all of 2024.

• New Zealand’s wētāpunga, believed to be the world’s heaviest insect, is recovering from near-extinction thanks to a captive-breeding program that began in 2008. Once common in northern New Zealand, the species was reduced by the 1990s to a single population on Little Barrier Island near Auckland because of habitat loss and predation by invasive rats. Since 2010, conservationists have released more than 11,000 of the insects into protected habitats, resulting in self-sustaining populations on at least two islands.

Health & Demographics

• The five-year relative survival rate for US cancer patients rose from 49 percent for patients diagnosed in 1975–1979 to 71 percent for those diagnosed in 2016–2022, according to a recent report from the American Association for Cancer Research. Relative survival adjusts for deaths from causes other than cancer by comparing patients with the general population.

  

• In 2023, for the first time in history, communicable diseases were responsible for fewer than half of all deaths in low-income countries, according to the World Health Organization. Communicable diseases are infectious illnesses that can spread between people, directly or indirectly, such as tuberculosis, malaria, and cholera.1 The milestone reflects long-term progress: thanks to better medical care and rising prosperity, more people are surviving infectious diseases and living long enough to die of noncommunicable diseases like cancer and heart disease.

• The US Department of Health and Human Services has launched a new research program aimed at dramatically reducing the cost of clinical trials. The initiative, called SURPASS, aims to develop new trial methods that require fewer patients than conventional trials, combine traditional trial phases, reduce administrative overhead, and make greater use of artificial intelligence. To develop those methods, the agency is seeking trial design proposals from research teams to evaluate drug candidates using their proposed methods.

Science & Technology

• An experimental cellular anti-aging therapy tested on patients with glaucoma has shown encouraging early results in its first human trial. Developed by Life Biosciences, a biotech company focused on treating age-related diseases, the treatment uses gene therapy intended to restore more youthful function to damaged cells. In an initial trial involving three patients with glaucoma, two showed improvements in their vision after eight weeks, and Life Biosciences reported no serious treatment-related side effects.

• A California startup called Parallel Systems is developing autonomous, battery-powered freight trains capable of carrying several tons of cargo up to 500 miles per charge. The hope is to make short-distance rail freight competitive with short-haul trucking, which could reduce shipping costs, traffic congestion, and transport emissions.

• OpenAI has published a collection of more than 700 AI-generated mathematical research papers containing proposed solutions to over 300 open problems. While the papers have not yet been fully verified—in fact, at the time of writing, three have been withdrawn—hundreds of the results have been reviewed using computer proof software, and mathematicians say several could represent major breakthroughs. Some of the apparent advances concern three of the Millennium Prize Problems, a set of notoriously difficult, longstanding problems at the frontier of mathematics.

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• Despite the war with Iran and its associated oil-supply shock, consensus forecasts compiled by the World Bank predict that the global economy will grow by around 2.6 percent in 2026, roughly equal to forecasts at the start of the year.

• Idaho has cut its state administrative code nearly in half since 2018. Under a “zero-based regulation” program, rules that agencies did not identify as necessary were allowed to expire, while the remaining rules were reviewed chapter by chapter for their necessity, legal authority, costs, benefits, and whether less burdensome alternatives were available. By July 1, 2026, the state had eliminated 4,201 pages of regulations compared with 2018, reducing the length of its regulatory code by 49.1 percent.

• The United States and China have agreed to lower tariffs on goods worth about $60 billion in annual trade between the two countries. Each side's list covers roughly $30 billion of imports from the other, based on 2024 trade figures. China plans to cut tariffs on US agricultural products, seafood, wood products, cosmetics, and medical devices, while the United States plans to cut tariffs on Chinese consumer goods such as small appliances, toys, holiday decorations, and children's car seats.

Energy & Environment

• Sea turtles have nested on the US West Coast for the first time in recorded history, with two olive ridley turtles laying eggs on beaches in Orange County, California last month. It’s not yet known whether the nests were isolated events or signs of a northward shift in nesting patterns.

• In Utah, Fervo Energy’s Cape Station enhanced geothermal power plant has started selling electricity to the grid, with its first 33-megawatt block built and commissioned in just 23 months. Fervo plans to expand the plant to 100 megawatts by early next year. Unlike conventional geothermal plants, which depend on naturally occurring reservoirs of hot water, enhanced geothermal power plants create fractures in hot rock and circulate water through them, making it possible to generate geothermal power in many more places.

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a construction permit for a commercial small modular nuclear reactor, authorizing the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a 300-megawatt reactor near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Small modular reactors are designed to be simpler, more standardized, and easier to build than conventional nuclear plants, potentially reducing the cost of expanding nuclear power. The permit is the second issued for a US commercial reactor this year, following TerraPower’s Natrium reactor in Wyoming in March.

Health & Demographics

• Life expectancy in the Americas has reached a record high. According to the Pan American Health Organization’s Health in the Americas 2026 report, life expectancy at birth rose from 73.2 years in 2000 to 77.1 years in 2023, surpassing the pre-pandemic peak of 76.7 years reached in 2019.

• Researchers have developed an epigenetic-editing therapy that could eventually offer a functional cure for chronic hepatitis B, meaning long-term control of the virus without ongoing treatment. Using a CRISPR-based tool that chemically tags the virus’s DNA to switch it off without cutting it, the treatment left 90 percent of mice on the highest dose with no detectable signs of hepatitis B in their blood. A human trial of the therapy is now underway.

• By combining its weight-loss drug tirzepatide with eloralintide, a new drug that mimics a hormone involved in signaling fullness, Eli Lilly helped people with type 2 diabetes lose an average of 23.3 percent of their body weight over 48 weeks on the highest dose, compared with 14.8 percent for patients taking tirzepatide alone.

Science & Technology

• Nvidia has launched a new system designed to keep AI agents from taking unauthorized actions. The system combines software that limits what an agent can access with an independent monitor that watches the agent and can block or quarantine it if it crosses those boundaries. The monitor runs on a separate processor from the one hosting the agent, putting it beyond the agent’s direct control.

• Google DeepMind has developed a way to watermark AI-designed proteins while preserving their biological function. According to DeepMind, the watermark could confirm that the genetic sequence for an unfamiliar protein came from a known AI system, letting trusted designs pass through biosecurity screening more quickly so that screeners can focus on genuinely suspicious ones.

• An AI model has surpassed the best human players at the game of Stratego. The strategy game, which includes a “fog of war” mechanic that conceals crucial information about the opponent’s pieces, has long posed a difficult challenge for artificial intelligence because players must make decisions with incomplete information. In 2022, a previous model called DeepNash was able to reach the level of top human players but did not demonstrate clear superiority over the very best. This new model, Ataraxos, won 38 out of 40 games against top players during demonstrations at the Stratego World Championship and won 15 out of 20 games against Pim Niemeijer, the strongest human player.

• In its latest test flight on September 28, SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink satellites. The satellites are designed to add a combined 26 terabits per second of capacity to the Starlink network, roughly 10 times the capacity added by a typical launch of Falcon 9, SpaceX’s longstanding workhorse rocket.

Violence & Coercion

• According to data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau, vehicle thefts in the US fell 21 percent in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period last year. The bureau previously reported that vehicle thefts fell more than 20 percent between 2024 and 2025, reaching their lowest level in decades.

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• India is rapidly increasing its number of trade agreements. Since February 2021, India has signed seven free trade agreements covering 10 countries, bringing its total number of signed free trade agreements to 17. India has also concluded negotiations on a trade deal with the European Union, though it has not yet been signed, and is currently negotiating a trade agreement with the United States.

• After years of negotiations, the European Union is closing a series of trade deals with Southeast Asian countries. The EU has reached substantial agreement on a free trade deal with the Philippines, Indonesia plans to sign a trade deal with the EU in October, and negotiations with Thailand and Malaysia are expected to wrap up early next year. If those timelines hold, the EU could have negotiated trade deals with six of the 11 Southeast Asian states by mid-2027. The EU already has free trade agreements in place with Singapore and Vietnam.

Energy & Environment

• The black robin, a threatened songbird recently named New Zealand’s Bird of the Year, has rebounded from a population of just five birds in 1980 to around 350 in 2025. Conservationists rescued the species by moving the remaining birds to a predator-free island and using another species, the Chatham Island tomtit, to foster their eggs, allowing the robins to lay multiple clutches each breeding season.

• China’s crested ibis has recovered from the brink of extinction. In 1981, just seven known crested ibises remained in the wild. Today, after more than four decades of captive breeding, habitat protection, and reintroduction, the estimated crested ibis global population—including wild and captive birds—exceeds 10,000.

Health & Demographics

• The European Union’s age-standardized suicide rate fell to 10.4 suicides per 100,000 people in 2023, down from 12.2 in 2013, a decline of almost 15 percent.

• The share of American drinkers who say they sometimes overindulge has fallen to a record low. In a July 2026 Gallup survey, 13 percent of US adults who drink alcohol said they sometimes drink more than they think they should, down from a high of 35 percent in 1989. The share of US adults who drink at all remains at a record low of 54 percent.

• Reported leprosy cases continue to decline worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 167,356 new cases were reported globally in 2025, down 3.1 percent from 2024 and 23.3 percent from 2016.

Science & Technology

• The cost of AI performance is falling at an exceptional rate, according to a new report from Epoch AI, a research nonprofit. Epoch tracked how much it costs for AI models to achieve given scores on five tests, covering mathematics, hard sciences, and games of skill such as chess puzzles. Across all five tests, Epoch estimates that the minimum cost of reaching a given score has fallen about 47 percent per quarter since 2023, a roughly 13-fold decline each year. According to Epoch’s analysis, that’s about four times faster than the fall in DNA sequencing costs, one of the fastest price declines in history.

• An autonomous aircraft has completed a multi-leg flight across the United States. Using Joby Aviation’s autonomous flight technology, the converted Cessna traveled 3,199 miles from California to North Carolina, handling taxiing, takeoff, navigation, and landing without control inputs from its onboard safety pilot.

• A recent Gallup survey found widespread international optimism about artificial intelligence. In 32 of the 37 countries surveyed, AI-aware adults who expected the technology to improve their daily lives outnumbered those who expected it to make their lives worse. And in 34 countries, more AI-aware adults reported feeling at least one positive emotion about AI—curiosity, happiness, or excitement—than reported a negative emotion—worry, sadness, or anger.

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• According to new data from the Census Bureau, US inflation-adjusted median household income reached a record high of $87,460 in 2025, surpassing the previous record of $85,320, set in 2019.

• You may see some negative reporting about US poverty. According to the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), the poverty rate was 13.1 percent in 2025. That was statistically unchanged from 2024 and above the pre-pandemic level of 11.7 percent. However, that figure requires context, as the SPM is not a fixed yardstick. Unlike a fixed absolute poverty measure that adjusts for inflation, the SPM’s poverty thresholds are based on what middle-income households spend on food, clothing, shelter, and utilities, so they can rise when living standards rise, not just when prices do. Because the threshold can rise in real terms, a family can become materially better off while its position relative to the poverty line stays the same or even worsens. Indeed, a Census Bureau working paper finds that, if poverty thresholds had been adjusted only for changes in prices, the SPM poverty rate would have declined in 2025 rather than remaining stable.

• So far, the AI boom appears to be adding far more American jobs than it is eliminating. An analysis by The Economist finds that industries and occupations closely tied to AI and data centers have added about 1 million more US jobs than broader employment trends would predict. Around 320,000 of those above-trend jobs are in data-center-related construction and manufacturing, and 730,000 are in the occupations closest to AI development, such as engineering, software development, mathematics, and data science. By comparison, The Economist counted roughly 200,000 layoffs attributed to AI since mid-2023.

• China has opened the Pinglu Canal, a new waterway that shortens the shipping route from parts of southwestern China to the sea by over 560 kilometers.

Energy & Environment

Conservation & biodiversity

• Nepal’s critically endangered white-rumped vultures are making a rapid comeback. A new analysis of roadside vulture surveys estimates that the population has grown by an average of 12.7 percent per year since hitting a low in 2012. The recovery follows Nepal’s efforts to eliminate veterinary use of diclofenac, a livestock painkiller that poisons vultures when they feed on the carcasses of treated animals.

• When the Joro spider, an orb-weaver from East Asia, was first recorded in the United States around 2014, many feared it would threaten native spiders. However, a new study suggests that Joro spiders are not strongly competing with native spiders for food. After analyzing the stomach contents of more than 200 Joro spiders and 140 native orb-weavers across Georgia and South Carolina, the researchers found that the two groups' diets differed significantly, with Joros eating a different set of prey than the native orb-weavers. They also found no detectable difference in native spiders’ diets between sites with and without Joros.

• The Northern cod stock off Newfoundland and Labrador has officially recovered. After collapsing in the early 1990s, the stock has now returned to what Canada’s fisheries department classifies as a “healthy zone.” The commercial fishery reopened in 2024 after a 32-year moratorium, and this year officials raised the allowable catch by 55 percent, from 38,000 to 59,000 tonnes.

• Conservationists are reestablishing bison herds in northern Mexico. According to reporting in Yucatán Magazine, the effort began in 2009, when 23 bison were brought from South Dakota to establish a conservation herd in Chihuahua. That population has since grown large enough to seed additional herds, including two in the state of Coahuila and one in Sonora.

Energy production

• A recent report from the World Nuclear Association found that nuclear reactors generated a record 2,702 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, up from 2,667 terawatt-hours in 2024, the previous record. The vast majority of that growth occurred in Asia. China is engaged in a particularly large nuclear buildout: the country has connected five gigawatt-scale nuclear reactors to the grid during the past year and is home to 38 of the 80 nuclear reactors currently under construction worldwide.

• According to a new report from the Solar Energy Industries Association, the United States added 11.4 gigawatts of solar capacity in the second quarter of 2026, up 45 percent from a year earlier. The report estimates that installed US solar capacity can generate as much electricity annually as more than one-third of American households consume.

• The Energy Information Administration predicts that US crude oil production will average a record 13.8 million barrels per day in 2026, with high crude oil prices and new offshore projects contributing to the increase.

Food & Hunger

• A fully automated lettuce farm in Norway is delivering lettuce to supermarket shelves. Phys.org quotes a researcher at SINTEF, a Norwegian research nonprofit, who says that no one touches the lettuce from the moment it is sown until the customer opens it at home.

• Recent research from Colorado State University quantified the land-sparing impact of US irrigation systems. The researchers estimate that irrigation raises US crop production by 3 to 39 percent, depending on the crop, and that without those productivity gains, around 32 million hectares of forest and 7 million hectares of other natural vegetation worldwide would need to be converted to cropland or pasture. Combined, that’s an area slightly larger than the state of Montana.

Health & Demographics

• The FDA has approved the first treatment for Sanfilippo syndrome type A, a rare but brutal neurodegenerative disease most aptly described by its nickname: “childhood Alzheimer’s.” The one-time gene therapy delivers a working copy of the SGSH gene, which is faulty in people with the disease.

• Papua New Guinea is starting to vaccinate girls against HPV. The first phase of the program will offer a single dose free of charge to around 60,000 girls aged 9–14, before gradually expanding across the country.

• Definium Therapeutics reports that its LSD-based drug has now succeeded in three phase 3 trials: two for anxiety and one for major depressive disorder. In the latest anxiety trial, 32 percent of treated patients saw their anxiety scores fall by at least half, compared with 14 percent of placebo recipients.

• Kindred Companion Sciences, a biotech company, reports that it has created two hypoallergenic beagles. Researchers at the company used CRISPR to disable the gene that produces Can f 1, a major allergen produced by dogs, and subsequent tests found no detectable Can f 1 in their saliva or dander.

Violence & Coercion

• The NYPD reports that New York City enjoyed the safest summer in recorded history this year, with the number of shootings, shooting victims, and murders all reaching record lows between June 1 and August 31.

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• Higher education is growing rapidly in India. According to the country’s Ministry of Education, India’s higher-education gross enrollment ratio—the total number of enrolled students divided by the college-aged population—rose from 23.7 percent in 2014–15 to 30 percent in 2023–24. The female gross enrollment ratio increased even faster, from 22.9 percent to 31.2 percent.

• Boeing projects that Africa’s commercial airline fleet may more than double over the next two decades, from 755 aircraft to over 1,600, to serve an estimated 6 percent annual growth rate in passenger traffic.

• Average incomes have more than doubled in nine African countries since 1990. Our World in Data highlights this progress in Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda, using GDP per person adjusted for inflation and differences in the cost of living. All nine countries also saw declines in the share of people living in extreme poverty.

• China has nearly reached high-income country status. Every year, the World Bank classifies countries into income groups based on their gross national income per person. Last year, China’s GNI per person reached $14,230, just $145 below the World Bank’s high-income threshold.

Environment

• Two Amur leopards have been born at Helsinki Zoo. The cubs matter for conservation because their paternal grandfather was rescued from the wild, making their genetic lineage rare among zoo populations. After falling to a historic low of 30–35 in 2000, the number of Amur leopards living in the wild has risen to over 100 today.

• Eight orangutans have been born at US zoos since the beginning of 2025 through the Orangutan Species Survival Plan, a long-standing coordination effort among zoos that aims to maintain a healthy and genetically diverse captive population of the critically endangered apes.

Health & Demographics

• The global health workforce nearly tripled between 1990 and 2023, according to a new study in The Lancet Public Health, rising from 40.9 million health workers to 122.1 million.

• The World Health Organization recently validated that Bhutan has eliminated dog-transmitted human rabies as a public health problem.

• In Thailand, the World Health Organization has also announced that rubella, a virus that can cause severe birth defects if contracted by a pregnant woman, is no longer a public health problem.

• Global childhood vaccination coverage rose slightly in 2025. Estimates from WHO and UNICEF indicate that 90 percent of infants worldwide received at least one dose of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine in 2025, while 85 percent completed the full three-dose series. Both rates were one percentage point higher than in 2024, although they remain slightly below their 2019 levels.

• In a recently published trial, daraxonrasib—a drug that just received FDA approval for treating metastatic pancreatic cancer—shrank tumors in more than 30 percent of participants with a common form of lung cancer.

Science & Technology

• A new $1 million prize will reward academics conducting rigorous but controversial research. The Carob Trust Prize for Academic Courage, launched by Harvard economist Roland Fryer and investor Bill Ackman, will award up to five prizes each year to scholars who “pursue bold ideas that challenge prevailing orthodoxies—whether political, intellectual, or methodological—and hold the potential to reshape knowledge, policy, or society.”

• An experimental AI system from OpenAI may have solved the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem, a 90-year-old open frontier math problem with a $1 million bounty. According to OpenAI, a swarm of roughly 10,000 AI agents spent about 88 hours working on the problem using a powerful unreleased model.

• Isar Aerospace, a German startup, has completed the first successful commercial orbital launch from continental Europe.

Violence

• The average number of daily homicides in Mexico has fallen by more than half over the past six years, from 96.5 in August 2020 to 40.8 in August 2026, according to national crime data.

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Conservation & biodiversity

• A Przewalski’s horse has been born in the wild on the Central Kazakhstan steppe for the first time in 200 years. The male foal, born on August 22, is the offspring of two horses reintroduced to Kazakhstan in 2024. Przewalski’s horses disappeared from the wild globally in the late 1960s before captive-breeding programs enabled their return to parts of their historic range.

• In October, Louisiana will open a new recreational alligator hunting season, thanks in part to a dramatic recovery of the state’s wild alligator population. Since the early 1960s, the estimated number of wild alligators in Louisiana has grown from fewer than 100,000 to more than 3 million.

• Following a very fruitful breeding season, the number of critically endangered kākāpō parrots in New Zealand has grown to 325, up from just 51 in 1995.

Energy production

• Google has agreed to buy 396 megawatts of power from Fervo Energy’s Cape Station geothermal project in Utah, the largest enhanced geothermal power purchase agreement to date. For scale, that is roughly enough electricity to power a city of 300,000.

• Nuclear power is proving resilient to heat waves and droughts. Nuclear plants cooled by river water sometimes cut output when the river runs too warm or low, to limit water usage or avoid returning hotter water than regulations allow. However, a recent study in Energy Policy finds that between 2003 and 2022, reactors affected by heat- and drought-related disruptions had to cut their overall generation by just 0.6 percent. At France's river-cooled plants, output lost to these cuts fell from 5.5 terawatt-hours in 2003 to 0.5 terawatt-hours in 2022, following cooling-tower retrofits and better outage scheduling.

• Africa is expected to install 17 gigawatts of new solar capacity in 2026, up from 12 gigawatts in 2025, according to an analysis by Ember, an energy think tank. That works out to roughly 100,000 solar panels installed across the continent every day in 2026. Most of this new capacity appears to come from small-scale, distributed systems installed by households and businesses.

Pollution

• Turkmenistan has begun to repair some of the large methane leaks coming from its oil and gas infrastructure. Over the last two years, the country has plugged eight major leaks after receiving alerts from a United Nations methane emissions monitoring system. Patching methane leaks is one of the cheapest ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Health & Demographics

• The World Health Organization recently validated that Timor-Leste has eliminated trachoma as a public health problem. Trachoma is an eye infection that can cause blindness after years of repeated infections. Timor-Leste was the last country in WHO's South-East Asia Region where the disease was still suspected to be endemic, so trachoma has now been eliminated as a public health problem across the entire region.

• Surgeons at University College London Hospitals have completed a highly successful AI-assisted brain surgery. As the surgeons removed a brain tumor that threatened a man’s sight, an AI system analyzed the surgical video feed in real time and highlighted critical structures at the base of the brain for the surgeons to avoid cutting into. The tumor was successfully removed, and the patient reported dramatically improved vision after surgery.

• eGenesis, a biotechnology company developing animal organs engineered to work in humans, reports that of the five patients who received its pig kidney transplants, three maintained enough kidney function to remain off dialysis for more than eight months. The company plans to begin a clinical trial in early 2027, which will test the pig kidneys in 33 patients awaiting human donor kidneys.

Science & Technology

• Robotaxi services are advancing around the world:

  • Waymo is now giving paid rides in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa, and is preparing to bring its service to Munich.

  • Uber and Wayve, a British autonomous driving company, have started a small robotaxi pilot in London. The cars drive themselves, but because UK regulators have not yet approved driverless operation, human safety drivers will be riding along for now.

  • Tesla has begun deploying its Cybercab—a purpose-built autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals—in its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. Tesla hopes to sell the Cybercab for less than $30,000, a price that would be far below the estimated cost of competing US robotaxis.

• Autonomous planes are beginning to fill a commercial niche in agriculture. In Brazil, about a dozen electric autonomous aircraft made by a California startup called Pyka are being used to spray crops with agricultural chemicals. The planes can fly lower than human-piloted crop dusters, which the company says reduces chemical drift. Pyka’s aircraft has also been approved for commercial agricultural use in the United States, although operations there require a ground operator and visual observer.

Violence & Coercion

• According to a recent United Nations report, the global homicide rate fell by 14 percent between 2015 and 2024, from 5.9 victims per 100,000 people to 5.1.

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• The national poverty rate in the Philippines has fallen below 10 percent for the first time, dropping from 15.5 percent in 2023 to 9.7 percent in 2025. The Philippines sets its poverty line at a household income of about $237 per month, the estimated amount a family of five needs to afford their food, shelter, healthcare, education, clothing, utilities, and transportation.

Energy & Environment

Conservation & biodiversity

• Whales are moving into East Greenland’s newly ice-free waters. According to a recent survey, thousands of humpback, fin, and minke whales now spend parts of their summers feeding in coastal waters off East Greenland that were once largely inaccessible due to extensive summer sea ice.

• Atlantic bluefin tuna have returned to the waters off Yorkshire, England, after more than six decades. Bluefin tuna largely disappeared from the North Sea in the 1960s after severe overfishing and the collapse of herring stocks. Researchers attribute the recovery to international fishing restrictions, a greater abundance of prey, and warming seas that have widened the bluefin's range.

• The Great Barrier Reef appears to be recovering. According to a recent report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, hard coral cover in 2026 was well above the average level recorded since 1986 in the northern and central sections of the reef. Coral cover in the southern section was slightly below its long-term average.

Energy & natural resources

• Natural gas is helping power America’s AI boom. US gas-fired generating capacity currently under construction reached 52 gigawatts by mid-2026, up 76 percent in just six months, according to Global Energy Monitor, a nonprofit that tracks global energy infrastructure. At least 16.9 gigawatts of that capacity is being built to directly power data centers, which are increasingly building their own power plants to avoid lengthy waits for connections to the electrical grid.

• Gulf oil producers are attempting to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. According to reporting in Le Monde, the United Arab Emirates is expanding a pipeline to the Gulf of Oman that, by 2027, is expected to carry 3.6 million barrels per day—nearly the UAE’s entire current oil production. Saudi Arabia is considering expanding its pipeline to the Red Sea, and Iraq has signed an agreement with Syria to revive a pipeline to the Mediterranean. A study from Goldman Sachs estimates that 60 percent of the Gulf’s pre-Iran War oil exports could be protected from disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz by the end of 2028.

Health & Demographics

• The FDA has approved daraxonrasib, a groundbreaking drug for metastatic pancreatic cancer. In a phase 3 trial, patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer who received daraxonrasib lived for a median of 13.2 months after treatment began, compared to 6.7 months for patients receiving standard chemotherapy. Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers, with a five-year survival rate of just 13.7 percent.

• Japan has begun replacing nearly two million acres of forests to help reduce seasonal allergies. After World War II, Japan’s government encouraged widespread planting of fast-growing sugi cedar and hinoki cypress trees to supply the country with timber. Unfortunately, the pollen from those trees has since contributed to a national epidemic of hay fever afflicting over 40 percent of the population. The Japanese government is now accelerating the removal of those forests and replacing them with a variety of local trees, including sugi varieties selectively bred to produce less pollen. The long-term goal is to halve cedar pollen emissions within three decades.

Science & Technology

• The AI company Anthropic is developing software that makes it much easier for AI agents to operate laboratory and manufacturing equipment. The system, called the Model Hardware Standard, allows AI models to control and coordinate devices from different manufacturers through a standardized interface. Anthropic claims the system can reduce the time it takes a typical lab or factory to integrate its equipment with AI from weeks to just a few hours, making it much easier to set up autonomous experiments. A select group of research labs and manufacturers are currently testing the system, but it is ultimately intended to be open source.

• AI appears to be accelerating the discovery of software vulnerabilities. A recent analysis from METR, a nonprofit that evaluates the capabilities and risks of AI systems, found a sharp increase in publicly reported security flaws across several major software programs and vulnerability databases in 2026. The report also notes that the number of newly exploited vulnerabilities has increased more slowly than the number of discovered vulnerabilities, suggesting that AI may be strengthening the defensive side of the cybersecurity arms race.

• The cost of launching cargo into space is falling rapidly. Recent research from Cambridge University found that, since 1960, the cost of sending a kilogram into orbit fell by an average of 21 percent for every cumulative doubling of the amount of cargo launched to space. By that measure, launch costs are falling even faster than the cost of solar photovoltaic panels. The researchers project that, if total payload to orbit continues to grow 13.3 percent per year—the rate observed between 2010 and 2025—the average launch cost could fall to less than $300 per kilogram by 2040 in 2024 dollars.

• SpaceX has announced a plan to build the world’s largest spaceport in Louisiana, designed to support thousands of launches per year.

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• A Chinese shipping company has launched the first regular container service between Asia and Europe through the Arctic. The journey from Ningbo, China, to Felixstowe, England, is expected to take around 20 days, roughly half the time it takes to complete the typical route through the Suez Canal.

• Europeans are using more air conditioning. The amount of energy used for household cooling in the EU has doubled since 2018, though from a low base. In 2020, American households used around 914,000 terajoules to power air conditioning, compared to just 45,000 in Europe. Chinese air-conditioner exports to the EU reached a record $3.76 billion in the first half of 2026, up 43 percent from a year earlier.

  

  While rising temperatures in Europe have aggravated the need for air conditioning, the region has long suffered from unusually high heat-related mortality.

Past Imperfect

Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

A brutal heat wave in Europe has caused a surge in deaths across the continent as temperatures topped 100 degrees in recent weeks. In France, authorities reported at least 2,000 additional deaths in a single week. Germany has reported more than 5,000 excess deaths this year…

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2 months ago · 30 likes · 6 comments · Chelsea Olivia Follett

Health & Demographics

• Americans say they are gambling less than they were a decade ago. According to a recent Gallup poll, 45 percent of US adults reported gambling in the past 12 months in 2026, down from 64 percent in 2016.

• The government of Zanzibar is using drones as part of its efforts to fully eliminate malaria from the archipelago. Conventional anti-malaria strategies like bed-net distribution, rapid treatment, and insecticide spraying helped bring malaria prevalence in Zanzibar below 1 percent by 2008. Since then, however, progress toward elimination has largely stalled, with malaria transmission fluctuating at low levels. To help finish the job, Zanzibar health officials are using drones to locate stagnant water where mosquitoes lay their eggs, allowing workers to target the sites with larvicide.

• According to a recent report from the WHO and UNICEF, the share of health facilities worldwide with basic water services rose to 85 percent in 2025, up from 76 percent in 2015.1

• A personalized mRNA cancer vaccine for people with high-risk melanoma has succeeded in a large Phase 3 trial. The treatment, developed by Moderna and Merck, is individually designed from mutations found in each patient’s tumor and trains the immune system to recognize and attack their cancer. The companies have not yet released the full results from the Phase 3 trial. But in earlier Phase 2 results, the vaccine—combined with the immunotherapy drug Keytruda—reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 49 percent over five years versus Keytruda alone.

• The FDA has authorized a robot that can draw blood. The machine, called Aletta, uses near-infrared light and ultrasound to locate a vein before autonomously applying a tourniquet, disinfecting the skin, inserting the needle, changing collection tubes, and applying a bandage. The authorization will allow Aletta to be used on adults in clinics and other medical settings where patients do not stay overnight.

Science & Technology

• Amazon plans to bring its drone delivery service to nearly 500 cities and towns across the US by the end of 2026. The company says its drones are able to deliver products weighing up to five pounds to customers in as little as 30 minutes.

• California regulators have approved a major expansion of Waymo’s driverless taxi service. The company is now authorized to offer paid robotaxi rides across parts of 18 counties, including new areas around Sacramento, San Diego, Orange County, Napa, and the East Bay of San Francisco.

• LandSpace, a private Chinese company, has landed a reusable orbital-class rocket booster, becoming the third private company to do so.

• Powered exoskeletons are evolving from medical devices to consumer products. Newer systems are far lighter and less cumbersome than their clinical ancestors, allowing them to enhance ordinary movement as well as help restore lost function. One experimental system weighing less than 3 kilograms cut the energy required for younger adults to walk uphill by 18 percent.

Violence & Coercion

• The FBI's newly released 2025 data show that the US murder rate fell to a 70-year low in 2025. The overall violent crime rate in 2025 was 9.7 percent lower than in 2024—the biggest one-year drop since at least 1936, when the FBI’s national crime rate estimates began.

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• Americans are traveling more as they get richer. According to recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal, US residents took 24 million trips to Europe in 2025, up from 13.4 million in 2000, while the share of consumer spending devoted to foreign travel has reached a record high.

• New York City is cutting red tape for small businesses, with more than 50 regulatory reforms aimed at eliminating unnecessary permits, fees, and delays. Reforms include eliminating a redundant frozen dessert permit, streamlining outdoor dining approvals and barbershop licensing, expediting restaurant inspections, and temporarily waiving certain equipment registration fees.

• A growing payment network in Africa is letting participating banks settle cross-border transactions directly in local currencies, with payments processed in seconds rather than days. Such transactions have long been settled in dollars or euros, adding significant delays and fees even when both the sender and recipient were in Africa. The Bank of Central African States recently joined the initiative, bringing the network to 28 African countries.

Energy & Environment

• Deforestation alerts in the Brazilian Amazon have fallen to their lowest level since 2013. Brazil’s satellite deforestation tracking system recorded alerts covering 2,874 square kilometers between August 2025 and July 2026, 36 percent less than the previous year and 56 percent below the previous decade's average.

• Argentina is transforming from an energy importer into a growing energy exporter. Oil production from the Vaca Muerta shale formation is up 28 percent from a year ago, and crude oil became the country’s largest export product during the first half of 2026.

Food & Hunger

• The global food system has become incredibly resilient. Despite fertilizer and fuel shortages and dry El Niño weather, global production of major staple crops remains at or near all-time highs, thanks in part to the development of drought- and heat-resistant crop varieties. And while El Niño is expected to intensify as the year goes on, new major exporters have broadened the global grain supply, and grain stockpiles are near record levels, giving humanity a substantial buffer against poor harvests.

  

Health & Demographics

• Reported rat sightings have fallen by nearly a quarter in New York City, declining 22 percent in the first seven months of 2026 compared with the same period last year. The city’s sanitation department attributes the improvement to its campaign to move trash off the streets and into sealed containers, depriving rats of an easy food source.

• According to NHS England, hepatitis C-related deaths in the country have fallen by 36 percent over the last 10 years, and health officials say they are making progress toward eventually eliminating the disease.

• Stablepharma, a UK-based biotech company, has completed a successful phase 1 trial of a tetanus-diphtheria vaccine that does not need refrigeration. The vaccine—which can remain stable for up to two years at room temperature—could reach places without reliable cold-chain infrastructure.

• Paramedics in Hyde County, North Carolina, have begun using an electric vertical-takeoff aircraft to respond to 911 calls. The county is large, sparsely populated, and swampy, making it unusually hard to traverse by road. On one recent call, a paramedic flying a BlackFly eVTOL reached a patient 20 minutes before the ambulance arrived.

Science & Technology

• Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 AI model has helped disprove the Jacobian conjecture, an 87-year-old open problem in algebraic geometry.

• Google DeepMind researchers have developed an AI system that can forecast tropical cyclones farther in advance than today’s leading models. When tested on storms from 2023 to 2025, the system could predict cyclone paths and intensity about a day farther into the future than leading operational models while maintaining comparable accuracy.

• According to estimates from Smart Analytics Global, a market research firm, global shipments of humanoid robots grew to 19,100 units in the first half of 2026, nearly four times the number shipped during the same period last year. The same report predicts that total shipments will reach 60,000 by the end of the year.

Violence & Coercion

• Turkey has taken a major step toward ending its four-decade conflict with Kurdish separatists, a struggle that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984. On August 10th, the country’s parliament passed a law that creates a legal framework for the full disarmament of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, with legal protections for many of its members.

• Lebanon’s parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty and replace all existing death sentences with life imprisonment.

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• Thanks to sustained economic growth, Laos’s national poverty rate fell from 24.6 percent in 2012 to 15 percent in 2024, according to a recent World Bank poverty profile. The report also notes that Laotian inequality has fallen in recent years, as living standards among rural and poorer households rose faster than average.

Energy & Environment

Conservation & biodiversity

• Conservationists have established a new wild population of Sumatran orangutans in Indonesia. After nearly 200 orangutans were released into the Jantho Pine Forest Nature Reserve, the population is now reproducing naturally, with at least 10 births recorded in the reserve.

• According to the latest national report, the number of wild tigers in Nepal has reached 429, up from an estimated 121 in 2009.

• As large predator populations recover in North America, they may be making roads safer for people as well as helping restore ecosystems. A recent study on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula found that deer were 15 percent less likely to linger near roads in areas frequented by mountain lions, reducing the chances of deer-vehicle collisions by an estimated 67 percent.

Energy & natural resources

• 3 Proton Lithium, a Nevada mining company, says it has identified what may be the largest known tungsten deposit in the United States, containing an estimated 1.78 million metric tons of the metal. If commercially recoverable, the contained tungsten would be equivalent to centuries of current US consumption.

• The world’s installed solar capacity surpassed three terawatts this year, according to BloombergNEF, less than two years after reaching two terawatts and four years after reaching one. China still accounts for most of the growth in global solar capacity, but a rising share now comes from cheap Chinese panels installed in developing countries.

• Casey Handmer, the founder of Terraform Industries, says the startup has demonstrated an electrolyzer that can produce more than 99.9 percent pure hydrogen from water, while running directly on solar power, for under $2 per kilogram—roughly the cost level the US Department of Energy targeted for 2026. Terraform’s goal is to eventually combine hydrogen with carbon dioxide captured from the air to produce synthetic fuels.

Health & Demographics

• Tampa General Hospital is preparing to launch what it says will be the first drone system in the United States that delivers blood directly to the scene of traumatic injuries, allowing transfusions to begin on the spot. Average delivery times are expected to be under three minutes across the initial 70-square-mile service area.

• A weekly HIV pill has succeeded in two Phase 3 trials. The pill was found to be as effective as standard daily treatments at keeping the virus suppressed, offering patients a simpler alternative to daily medication.

• The FDA has approved an mRNA flu vaccine. Unlike conventional flu vaccines, which take about six months to manufacture, mRNA vaccines can be produced in two to three months, potentially allowing each shot to better match that year’s flu strains. In a trial of more than 40,000 adults, mFlusiva reduced the risk of contracting the flu by 26.6 percent compared with a standard vaccine.

• A large observational study of close to 53,000 people with type 2 diabetes and heart disease found that those taking the weight-loss and diabetes drug tirzepatide had a 33 percent lower risk of heart attack compared with those taking the non-GLP-1 diabetes drug sitagliptin.

• The FDA has approved the first drug for narcolepsy that targets the disorder’s underlying cause rather than its symptoms. The newly approved drug, Orzeyful, mimics a brain chemical that people with narcolepsy type 1 lack, helping restore control over their sleep.

Science & Technology

• Software developers in Africa are increasingly taking advantage of cheap, open-weight AI models from China to build tools for agriculture, education, legal services, and business. Unlike flagship American models, these Chinese models can often be downloaded, modified, and run independently, enabling greater customization and avoiding subscription fees.

• A recent paper from OpenAI reports that an internal AI model has resolved or made substantial progress on 10 longstanding open problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science.

• Starlink’s satellite internet service is expanding rapidly, reaching 12 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2026, double the number a year earlier.

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• An analysis by The Economist finds that, for the first time in its 25-year dataset, over half of global billionaire wealth is now held by self-made billionaires who made their fortunes through “competitive activities,” meaning by providing goods and services in competitive markets, as opposed to inheriting their wealth or accumulating it in politically connected industries.

Energy & Environment

• For the first time, China generated less than half of its electricity from coal during the first six months of 2026. Coal, while often crucial during the early stages of economic development, is among the most polluting sources of energy.

• Observations from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service show that, despite large wildfires in Europe and North America, global carbon emissions from biomass burning fell to a record low in the first six months of this year. That is largely thanks to reduced burning in Asia and Africa, where more permanent forms of agriculture are supplanting traditional seasonal burning and expanding farms and settlements are limiting the spread of wildfires.

• A recently published study using aerial lidar and satellite imagery found that prescribed burns saved thousands of giant sequoias during California’s Castle and KNP Complex wildfires in 2020 and 2021. After analyzing images of around 26,400 trees, the researchers found that sequoias treated with prescribed burns during the preceding decade were nearly four times as likely to survive the wildfires. They estimate that the burns saved around 1,900 giant sequoias and that treating the area around each tree beforehand could have saved another 3,900.

• Across Africa’s Sahel region, groundwater reserves are recovering after decades of drought. Aquifer reserves across Niger have risen by an estimated 15 percent, while Lake Chad reached more than 9,000 square miles in 2024, around 10 times its size in the mid-1980s. One major reason is that rising temperatures in the North Atlantic have pulled the West African monsoon farther north, bringing more rainfall to the Sahel.

Food & Hunger

• Avocado breeders currently have to wait five to ten years for a young tree to flower before they can determine its flowering pattern, an important trait for designing orchards with efficient pollination. Scientists have now identified the gene that controls the pattern, allowing breeders to classify avocado seedlings using their DNA and avoid wasting time, money, and orchard space.

• The New York Times recently profiled Driscoll’s, the international berry giant that helped turn berries into year-round global staples. Thanks in large part to Driscoll’s breeding and distribution systems, global berry production has tripled since 2000.

Health & Demographics

• AIDS-related deaths and HIV infections fell to their lowest levels in more than 30 years in 2025, according to a recent report from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. The report also notes that the number of new HIV infections among children fell 69 percent between 2010 and 2025, from 300,000 to 93,000.

• According to Uganda’s Health Ministry, the country has contained an Ebola outbreak imported from Congo after all identified contacts completed quarantine without further transmission.

• A breast cancer patient in California recently received a robotic nipple-sparing mastectomy, one of the first such procedures performed in the United States outside of a clinical trial.

Science & Technology

• Waste Management, North America’s largest recycling firm, reports that its new, more automated facilities have a 30 percent lower labor cost per ton of material processed than its older plants.

• SpaceX’s Starship completed a largely successful test flight last week. The spacecraft deployed satellites for the first time, reignited an engine in space, survived atmospheric reentry, and completed its first intact ocean splashdown.

• Nine schools in Florida, Georgia, and Colorado are installing attack drones designed to confront active shooters. Teachers can summon the drones—which are remotely piloted from a central command center—with an app or panic button. According to their manufacturer, Mithril Defense, the drones can reach a suspect within 15 seconds and attack or disorient them using pepper gel, strobe lights, sirens, or simply by ramming them at up to 60 miles per hour.

• The National Highway Traffic Safety ‌Administration has approved a Robotaxi design without human controls such as a steering wheel or pedals. The newly approved vehicle, developed by Zoox, Amazon’s robotaxi subsidiary, uses the space normally occupied by a driver to create a roomy carriage-like cabin for passengers.

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Conservation & biodiversity

• There are now close to 400 wild Asian elephants living in China, up from around 150 in the 1980s.

• The Hawaiian stilt and the razorback sucker are no longer considered endangered in the United States following substantial recoveries.

• A system of canopy bridges has apparently eliminated roadkill deaths for tree-dwelling animals along a road near Alta Floresta, a small town in the Brazilian Amazon. Brazil’s federal transport agency has made the design its recommended standard for highways.

Energy production

• Fervo Energy, a geothermal energy company, has drilled its deepest and most complex well yet, reaching a measured depth of nearly 19,500 feet in just 21 days. The new well, Sawtooth 7, will contribute to a 400-megawatt geothermal power project in Utah scheduled to begin delivering electricity in 2028.

• Cypress Creek Energy and Google have begun construction on an energy project in Arkansas that is set to become the largest solar project in the United States. When completed, the facility will provide 2.5 gigawatts of solar capacity and 2.9 gigawatt-hours of battery storage, enough to power 315,000 homes.

Natural disasters

• The area burned in the Brazilian Amazon fell to 3.1 million hectares in 2025, the smallest area since at least 1985, when satellite records began.

• A British climate technology company is testing a simple method for preserving Arctic sea ice: pumping seawater onto its surface during winter to create thicker ice. At the start of the 2026 melt season, treated ice near Cambridge Bay, Canada, was 20 inches thicker and more reflective than untreated ice, helping it melt more slowly. The pumps themselves use surprisingly little power. According to reporting in The Guardian: “The small pumps require less power than a toaster as they are only lifting the water from just under the ice to just on top.”

Food & Hunger

• According to estimates from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the share of the world’s population that was undernourished1 fell to 7.8 percent in 2025, down from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022. The decline marks the third consecutive year that global hunger has fallen, a welcome recovery after progress against hunger stalled during the 2010s amid conflict and economic stagnation, particularly in Africa, and then partially reversed during the COVID-19 pandemic as incomes fell and food prices rose. In Asia and Latin America, the rate of undernourishment has now fallen to historic lows.

Health & Demographics

• The World Health Organization reports that the global rate of road traffic deaths fell by 21 percent between 2011 and 2025. The rate dropped or remained the same in every region except Africa.

• A new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease study finds that the age-adjusted US death rate from ischemic heart disease, which is caused by blocked coronary arteries, fell 59 percent between 1990 and 2023. The model also found especially large declines in the mortality burden attributed to smoking and particulate air pollution.

• According to recent estimates from the World Health Organization, the number of people living in areas requiring mass trachoma interventions has roughly halved over the past decade, falling from 190.2 million in 2016 to 92.0 million in 2026, while the estimated number suffering from the disease’s advanced, potentially blinding stage has fallen 58 percent, from 2.8 million to 1.2 million.

• India has approved its first dengue vaccine, a two-dose vaccine from Takeda Pharmaceutical that, in a late-stage trial, was 80 percent effective against confirmed dengue during the year following the second shot.

• With assistance from the Gates Medical Research Institute, India’s Serum Institute is preparing for large-scale production of what could become the first new tuberculosis vaccine in over a century.

• Belgian medical researchers have restored sperm production in a man left infertile after childhood chemotherapy using testicular tissue that had been frozen for 16 years. A year after transplantation, the tissue showed active sperm production and yielded a mature sperm cell.

Science & Technology

• Another Waymo safety study, this time conducted independently by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, finds that Waymo vehicles were involved in 68 percent fewer police-reportable crashes per mile than human drivers. The research also found that Waymo vehicles were involved in 81 percent fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers and 91 percent fewer rear-end crashes in which they struck another vehicle.

• European regulators have approved Science Corporation’s PRIMA retinal implant, which combines a tiny chip inserted beneath the retina with camera-equipped glasses to restore functional vision.

• AI adoption continues to rise. A recent Gallup poll finds that 47 percent of US employees said their organization was using AI in the second quarter of 2026, up from 38 percent at the end of 2025. Recent research from Google estimates that 21 percent of tasks at the typical job are now completed with AI assistance.

• Skyroot Aerospace, an Indian startup, launched the country’s first privately developed orbital rocket last weekend.

• A new species of monkey has been described in the Congo rainforest.

Violence & Coercion

• Today, throughout much of the chicken egg industry, newly hatched male chicks—economically useless because they neither lay eggs nor grow efficiently for meat—are gassed or thrown into industrial grinders. That horror may come to an end thanks to in-ovo sexing, a relatively new technique that allows hatcheries to cheaply identify and destroy male chicken embryos before they are capable of feeling pain. According to a recent report from Innovate Animal Ag, an animal agriculture think tank, 40 percent of Europe’s commercial laying flock had been sexed in ovo as of June 2026, up from 34 percent in 2025. The report also notes that the technology has been adopted by certain hatcheries in the United States, Brazil, and Australia.

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• According to the World Bank, the number of economies with high levels of inequality, defined as having a Gini coefficient greater than 40, fell by 40 percent between 1995 and 2024. The Gini coefficient measures how unevenly incomes are distributed across a population, with zero representing perfect equality and 100 representing a situation in which one person receives everything.

Past Imperfect

A Reality Check on the Inequality Panic

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for far higher taxation in a recent blog entry, arguing that current wealth concentration is higher than that of the Gilded Age and is about to get worse globally. The chart-topping singer Billie Eilish implored billionaires to…

Read more

6 months ago · 36 likes · 8 comments · Chelsea Olivia Follett

• The latest Energy Progress Report, jointly produced by five international agencies, contains some impressive figures:

  • 92 percent of the world’s population had access to electricity in 2024, up from 84 percent in 2010. About 86 percent of those still without electricity lived in Sub-Saharan Africa.

  • 75 percent of the global population had access to clean cooking fuels in 2024, up from 57 percent in 2010.

  • Global primary energy intensity—the amount of energy used per unit of economic output—fell from approximately 4.75 megajoules per 2021 purchasing power parity-adjusted dollar of GDP in 2010 to 3.76 megajoules in 2023, a decline of about 21 percent.

Energy & Environment

• The co-founder of The Humpback Whale Project, a Brazilian research and conservation nonprofit, estimates that the western South Atlantic humpback population has grown from around 2,000 whales four decades ago to roughly 35,000 today, approaching or possibly matching its estimated pre-commercial whaling abundance.

• The New York Times recently reported on a research center in South Carolina that burns houses to better understand how wildfires spread through neighborhoods. Funded by the insurance industry, the research identifies the physical mechanisms that allow flames and embers to ignite buildings and is helping inform building standards and wildfire-mitigation programs across the country.

Food & Hunger

• The European Union is substantially loosening its restrictions on certain gene-edited crops. Last month, the European Parliament passed a law that will allow plants with genetic modifications that could occur naturally or through conventional breeding to bypass the EU’s onerous approval process for genetically modified organisms. The new regulatory process is expected to take effect in around two years.

Health & Demographics

• Fewer teenagers are dying in motor-vehicle crashes in the United States. According to data from the US Department of Transportation, 2,899 teenagers died in crashes in 2024, 67 percent fewer than in 1975, though motor-vehicle crashes remained the leading cause of death for US teens.

• Hospital-acquired infections have become less common in the US. A CDC survey of 13,653 patients at 218 hospitals found that 2.6 percent had at least one infection acquired during care in 2023, down from 3.2 percent in 2015. Over the same period, the estimated annual number of infections fell from 687,000 to 518,000.

• The FDA has approved a pill that blocks PCSK9, a protein that limits the liver’s ability to remove LDL cholesterol from the blood. In trials, the drug lowered LDL cholesterol by roughly 60 percent. Injectable drugs that treat high cholesterol the same way are already approved but carry list prices of around $500 per month. The new pill will be listed at $315 per month.

• El Salvador has become the first country in Central America to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem. Trachoma is an eye infection that can cause blindness after several untreated infections.

Science & Technology

• The Federal Communications Commission has approved a test flight of a satellite designed to reflect sunlight to the dark side of the Earth, potentially useful for harvesting solar energy at night or simply illuminating an area without the need for electric lighting. The prototype satellite, Eärendil-1, is equipped with a 60-foot mirror that can light up a three-mile-wide circle on the Earth’s surface.

• Drones are now assisting with a variety of public services:

  • In Australia, land managers used drones to clear an island of mice, and authorities are employing drone pilots to help warn beachgoers about great white sharks.

  • In India, a pilot program is using drones to rapidly transport phlegm samples from rural areas to laboratories for tuberculosis testing, helping patients avoid costly trips to distant testing centers.

  • During recent floods in China, rescue operators used drones to deliver emergency supplies and hoist stranded people to safety.

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• Five countries—Vietnam, the Philippines, Micronesia, Sri Lanka, and Jordan—advanced from lower-middle income status to upper-middle income this year, according to the World Bank. In addition, Togo moved from low to lower-middle income, but mostly thanks to a large reduction to its population estimate. No countries moved down.

• Interjurisdictional competition is paying off in North America. In Vancouver, the Squamish Nation is using a parcel of its land that is not subject to the city’s zoning authority to build large residential towers that would be illegal under Vancouver’s extremely restrictive zoning rules. And in the United States, data center developers are courting Indian reservations, attracted by the possibility of securing faster approvals from sovereign tribal governments.

• Norway is currently building a 26.7-kilometer-long subsea road tunnel, which will be the longest and deepest in the world once completed.

• North Carolina has passed a law that will abolish mandatory parking minimums in most of the state, following similar, though less extensive, reforms in California, Colorado, Montana, Washington, and Maine.

Energy & Environment

Conservation & biodiversity

• Two decades after rats were eliminated from Lundy Island in the UK’s Bristol Channel, its seabird populations are soaring. The island’s total seabird population has risen from 7,351 in 2000 to more than 40,000 today, including 1,335 puffins and more than 150 breeding pairs of storm petrels, which had previously vanished from the island.

• Researchers at Australia’s Macquarie University have developed an AI system designed to detect trafficked marine wildlife in packages and luggage. In simulated tests on bags that incorporated classic smuggling tricks, the system detected concealed shark fins and seahorses 95 to 96 percent of the time and sea cucumbers 86 percent of the time.

Energy & natural resources

• Since 1976, the solar panel industry has maintained a long-run learning rate of 26 percent, meaning that module prices have fallen by an average of 26 percent each time cumulative global production doubled, according to a recent industry report. The report also notes that manufacturers shipped roughly the same volume of modules in 2025 as in 2024 while using about 20 percent less silver.

• Several major automakers are adapting to high copper prices by replacing some of their copper wiring with aluminum. Ferrari claims that switching to aluminum is not only cheaper but can reduce total wiring weight by up to 20 percent.

• Four nuclear startups participating in Department of Energy reactor-testing programs have brought experimental reactors to criticality, meaning they can sustain controlled nuclear chain reactions. The department had aimed to reach that milestone with at least three designs by July 4; the companies delivered four. Analysts at the Breakthrough Institute argue that the programs are restoring a crucial stage in the nuclear innovation cycle by allowing companies to build, test, and improve reactor designs before attempting to build costly commercial-scale plants.

The Ecomodernist

From Paper to Real-Life Reactors: The Holistic View of the Reactor Pilot Program

The July 4 deadline for the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program (RPP) is just days away, and the program has met its central early test: three advanced test reactors have reached criticality on an extraordinarily compressed timeline…

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4 months ago · 47 likes · Adam Stein and Spencer Toohill

Pollution

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed a practical disposal pathway for “Greater-Than-Class-C” nuclear waste, the most radioactive category of low-level nuclear waste, which currently has no functioning disposal route and is instead being held at various power plants, hospitals, and other facilities across the country. The proposed rule would tailor disposal requirements to the radioactivity of the material, potentially allowing nearly 80 percent of GTCC waste to be buried near the surface rather than in a deep geological repository, which does not currently exist in the United States for this kind of waste.

Health & Demographics

• According to a recent Gallup poll, 11 percent of US adults now take GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, up from 3 percent in 2024.

• The recent drop in US traffic deaths has continued into early 2026. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, traffic deaths were 4.3 percent lower in the first three months of 2026 than during the same period of 2025. If the trend continues, 2026 will mark the fifth consecutive year of falling traffic deaths.

• Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes are now being released in the DC area in an effort to control mosquito populations. The released mosquitoes are all male, meaning they don’t bite, and the bacteria they carry cause any eggs produced when they mate with wild females to fail to hatch.

• Likang Life Sciences, a Chinese biotech company, has begun building a production line for AI-assisted personalized cancer vaccines. The facility, expected to open in October, will start by producing LK101, an experimental mRNA vaccine tailored to the mutations in each patient’s tumor.

Science & Technology

• China has landed the booster stage of an orbital rocket, replicating a version of the feat pioneered by SpaceX in 2015.

• An index from the Center for AI Safety finds that frontier AI models are getting much better at completing economically valuable work. The researchers gave AI agents realistic projects in fields such as graphic design, video production, software development, and data analysis, then compared their work with examples produced by human professionals. They found that Fable 5, the best-performing system, completed roughly 16 percent of the projects to an acceptable standard. In late 2025, when the index launched, the best model completed just 2.5 percent of projects acceptably.

• In its first 18 months surveying the sky, the European Space Agency’s Euclid Space Telescope discovered 31 quasars, extremely bright galactic cores powered by supermassive black holes. Twelve date to the universe’s first 770 million years, more than doubling the number previously known from that period. The expanded sample could help astronomers explain how such enormous black holes formed so soon after the Big Bang.

Violence & Coercion

• Four men have been brought to trial in Sierra Leone over the alleged forced marriage of a 17-year-old girl. Activists say the trial—the first of its kind in the country—shows that the national ban on child marriage is starting to be enforced.

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• The Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a new rule that would allow civilian aircraft to fly faster than Mach 1 over the United States if their sonic booms stay below a strict noise threshold at ground level. If finalized, the rule, along with another planned rule that would set landing and takeoff noise standards for supersonic aircraft, would end the 1970s ban on overland civilian supersonic flight.

• Finland has retired its analog copper-wire phone network, material-intensive infrastructure made obsolete by fiber optic cables.

A single fiber optic cable made from less than 150 pounds of silica can carry the same volume of information as multiple 1‑ton copper cables.

“Markets and Dematerialization,” Jonathan H. Adler.

• Artificial intelligence seems to be enabling a surge of solo entrepreneurs and tiny startups.

Energy & Environment

• Ontario Power Generation has begun construction on what may become the Western world’s first grid-scale small modular reactor.

• Air pollution in Europe continues to decline, according to the latest report from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

• Since 2020, and for the first time since the Middle Ages, forests have occupied a greater land area in Italy than farmland, with the former extending over more than a third of the national territory.

• US Atlantic mackerel stocks, which were deemed overfished in 2017, now appear to be recovering, with surveys turning up abundant quantities of mackerel and their eggs in 2024.

• Red kites, once nearly wiped out in Britain, are now numerous enough that English conservationists are sending them back to Spain. In the 1990s, Britain imported red kites from Spain and Sweden to rebuild the domestic population; since then, the UK population has risen from roughly 160 breeding pairs in 1995 to at least 4,600. In recent years, after surveys found only a handful of breeding pairs left in Extremadura, conservationists have released 126 English-born red kites to the Spanish region.

• For decades, a coral community has been developing in the Port of Miami, home to endangered staghorn and elkhorn corals, large brain corals, fish, manatees, turtles, and other marine life. Intriguingly, scientists have discovered that the Miami corals are unusually resilient. They have survived pollution, disease, freshwater runoff, and extreme temperature swings that devastated other staghorn and elkhorn coral populations in the region.

• The US Fish and Wildlife Service and Colossal Biosciences recently announced a plan to create a cryogenic “BioVault” for the tissues and genetic material of around 2,300 species protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Health & Demographics

• In 2025, the age-adjusted death rate in the United States fell to a record low of 689 deaths per 100,000 people, thanks partly to falling overdose deaths.

• The FDA has expanded approval of Casgevy, a CRISPR-based gene therapy for sickle cell disease, to children as young as two.

Science & Technology

• A recent working paper finds that advice from large language models may make people’s decisions less extreme, despite the tendency of chatbots to behave sycophantically toward their users. In a large experiment, the researchers found that people who chatted with AI tended to move away from their initial judgments on a range of tasks, narrowing the gap between participants who started on opposite sides. The researchers propose that the mechanism is new information: even when the AI agreed with or flattered its users, it also offered new facts and counterarguments that sometimes changed their minds. Making the AI more sycophantic weakened that depolarizing effect, but did not reverse it.

• Google’s earthquake warning system, which uses accelerometers in Android phones as seismic sensors, sent alerts to 11.4 million people in Venezuela last week, giving them precious seconds to prepare for the tremors. It’s not yet known how many lives the warnings may have saved.

• Conception, a biotechnology company trying to make human eggs in the lab, says it is making progress toward that goal. This week, the company reported that it has produced early human egg cells, or primary oocytes, inside miniature ovaries grown from stem cells. The oocytes are not mature eggs, but Conception says they showed signs of entering meiosis, the special cell division required to make eggs, and forming into follicles, the ovarian structures that nurture developing eggs.

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• Mission 300, a collaborative effort by the World Bank, the African Development Bank, The Rockefeller Foundation, and other public and private partners, has connected over 50 million people in Africa to electricity since launching in 2024. The initiative intends to connect 300 million by 2030.

Energy & Environment

• According to data compiled by the US Energy Information Administration, China’s nuclear energy generation capacity nearly doubled between 2016 and 2026, growing from 31.4 gigawatts to 58.7. The EIA also reports that 36 reactors, totaling another 38.9 GW of capacity, are currently being built in China, making up 49 percent of all global nuclear energy construction. All that development has led to learning; nuclear power plants in China are completed in an average of six years, three years faster than the global average.

• Loggerhead sea turtles are nesting in record numbers on the beaches of Boa Vista, a large island in the Cabo Verde archipelago. According to a recent study, nesting activity increased 80-fold between 1998 and 2024. The research also found that during peak years, some Boa Vista beaches contained over 22,000 nests per kilometer of shoreline—an incredible density compared with other major nesting sites.

• In the early 2000s, a population of flamingos began making the Venetian Lagoon their winter home. Since then, the annual population peak has risen to nearly 24,000 birds. The Associated Press quotes an ornithologist who claims the lagoon is now “one of the most important wintering spots in its entire habitat range.”

Food & Hunger

• Solar-powered cold storage systems are helping farmers save more of their produce in Africa, where many rural areas lack reliable electricity. SoKo Fresh, a Kenyan firm that leases space in solar cold rooms, claims its customers have cut spoilage from as high as 50 percent to under 2 percent.

Health & Demographics

• Doctors in Ontario recently used an experimental treatment to help treat a burn victim’s face. Instead of skin grafts, which can cause disfiguring scars, the doctors obtained a compassionate-use authorization to treat her face with exosomes, microscopic particles released by cells that carry repair signals to damaged tissues. After two treatments, her facial burns healed without grafting.

• An AI tool may have saved a man’s life in New York City. In a recent case report, a patient came to an emergency room with shortness of breath and was discharged with a presumed asthma flare-up. In reality, his heart was failing. Luckily, an AI model being trialed at the hospital analyzed his electrocardiogram, a routine test of the heart’s electrical activity, and flagged a high risk of structural heart disease. The patient was then called back and ultimately received a heart transplant. Pathway Labs, the company commercializing the AI software, plans to make it available for free to any physician who uses OpenEvidence, its free medical AI platform.

• CAR-T immunotherapy, which has so far been used mostly against blood cancers, is beginning to move into solid tumors. This week, a CAR-T immunotherapy called satri-cel became the first approved CAR-T therapy for solid tumors after receiving a green light from Chinese regulators.

• In England, zero women aged 20 to 24 died of cervical cancer between 2020 and 2024, the first recorded five-year period during which that has happened. Recent research associates the achievement with widespread HPV vaccination.

• Like the US, Canada is also seeing a large decline in overdose deaths. According to federal data, opioid-related deaths in Canada fell 23 percent between 2024 and 2025, while stimulant-related deaths fell 31 percent.

• The share of adults in India who use tobacco halved between 2000 and 2022, dropping from 50 percent to 24 percent.

Science & Technology

• Researchers involved in the Vesuvius Challenge have used detailed X-ray scans and machine learning to digitally “unroll” and read the surviving text of an entire carbonized Herculaneum scroll. The researchers had already used similar methods to read parts of other carbonized scrolls, but this recent work marked the first time the preserved text of a rolled Herculaneum scroll had been read end to end. Unfortunately, because earlier attempts to physically unroll the scroll damaged its outer layers, only fragments of the original text are legible.

• “SpaceX has now launched more satellites than the rest of humanity, combined.”

• PepsiCo is operating a fleet of 35 driverless trucks in Arizona in what The Wall Street Journal describes as “the first major U.S. consumer-goods company to disclose the real-life, large-scale use of autonomous trucks on public roads.”

• A recent analysis of taxonomic history finds that the rate of species discovery has accelerated, with the annual number of new species descriptions rising above 16,000 between 2015 and 2020 and surpassing the previous peak in the early 1900s. The researchers also estimate that about 15 percent of all known species have been formally described in the past 20 years alone.

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• A new study finds that economic liberalization is not at odds with protecting the environment. After examining 49 cases of sustained economic liberalization since 1970, economists Justin Callais, Vincent Geloso, and Alicia Plemmons found that, compared with similar countries that did not liberalize, reforming countries saw GDP per capita rise 16 percent within ten years, no effect on total greenhouse gas emissions, and a modest decline in air pollution deaths."

• Kangaroo Island, a large island off the Southern coast of Australia, has been fully cleared of invasive feral pigs, setting the stage for a recovery of native species.

• Recent research led by the Wildlife Conservation Society identified 64,000 square miles of coral reef that may be able to survive rising ocean temperatures. After identifying 42 variables that predict how well reefs weather climate change, such as proximity to cold water currents and cyclone exposure, the researchers used a machine learning model to comb through 45,000 coral field surveys and estimate which reefs are likely to retain their coral cover through 2050. The result is a global map of resilient reefs that could help conservationists determine the areas they should prioritize protecting.

Food & Hunger

• India, the world’s largest rice exporter, is entering a potentially poor monsoon season with its granaries full. Following a series of strong harvests, India has accumulated more than five times its target level of national rice reserves, giving the government a large buffer if future harvests disappoint.

• Despite increased demand (particularly from voracious children), berries are becoming more affordable in the United States. The economist Jeremy Horpedahl finds that between 2013 and 2023, median wages in the United States grew much faster than berry prices, reducing the working hours required to afford the fruits.

  

Health & Demographics

• According to provisional CDC data, the US infant mortality rate fell to an all-time low in 2025, reaching fewer than 5.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births.

• A recently published analysis of data from the Global Burden of Disease study found that annual deaths from intestinal infections fell by 66 percent between 1990 and 2023, from 3.69 million to 1.27 million. The researchers credit wider vaccination, improved water and sanitation systems, and broader access to oral rehydration therapy.

• A new mosquito-breeding facility in France is producing 1.5 million sterile mosquitoes per week to help control the population of invasive tiger mosquitoes, which can carry diseases like dengue, Zika, and chikungunya. The owner, a startup called Terratis, plans to scale up production to 40 million mosquitoes per week within two years. For comparison, Brazil’s large Wolbachia-infected mosquito factory can produce 100 million mosquito eggs per week.

• Scientists have developed a maternal blood test that can detect thousands of serious fetal genetic conditions by analyzing DNA fragments in the mother’s bloodstream. In a study of 565 pregnancies, the test found more than 97 percent of the clinically relevant genetic variants detected by more invasive prenatal testing, suggesting doctors may be able to get much of the same information without sticking needles into wombs.

• Midjourney, a firm best known for AI image generation, has announced that it is developing a full-body ultrasound scanner that can map the entire human body in about 60 seconds, potentially turning advanced internal imaging into a routine service.

Science & Technology

• Currently, imaging satellites function as orbital sensors: they collect vast amounts of data and beam it back to Earth for interpretation. Artificial intelligence could turn them into orbital analysts. In a recent demonstration, a satellite with a vision-language model onboard was able to analyze imagery in orbit, hinting at a future where satellites autonomously “watch” the Earth for meaningful changes, such as wildfires, floods, crop failures, or troop movements.

• The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now operating the country’s first dedicated space-weather satellite, which will help forecasters track solar phenomena that can disrupt power grids, communications, aviation, satellites, and space travel. The new satellite, called SOLAR-1, will observe the sun continuously and send images back to Earth within 30 minutes, much faster than the roughly eight hours required by older instruments.

• Most of the molecular machinery inside cells cannot be directly observed by humans. The most advanced cryo-electron microscopes can reveal the structure of about 10 percent of human proteins when they are isolated, and only about 1 percent when looking inside real cells. That may soon change. Researchers at Biohub and UC Berkeley have demonstrated a new method that dramatically boosts the contrast of cryo-electron microscope images, making faint biological structures much easier to see. The researchers estimate that the technology could make more than half of functionally important proteins visible.

Violence & Coercion

• Child marriage and domestic violence continue to decline in India. A recently published national survey found that 20.1 percent of women aged 20-24 were married as children in 2023 and 2024, down from 23.3 percent recorded in the previous survey conducted between 2019 and 2021. The same survey found that the share of married adult women who reported experiencing spousal violence dropped from 29.2 percent in 2019-21 to 22.3 percent in 2023-24.

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• The New York Times recently profiled the growing intra-African tourism industry, made possible by rising incomes, growing flight coverage, and loosening visa requirements.

• A new review process could help alleviate one of the biggest bottlenecks to building new power plants in America. Federal regulators have approved a plan to speed up interconnection reviews—the studies that determine whether new plants can safely connect to the grid—for large projects in PJM, the country’s biggest grid market. The new process will let PJM consider up to 10 major projects per year, with the goal of connecting qualifying plants to the grid within three years. Recently, the median time from filing an interconnection request to reaching commercial operation has stretched to over four years.

• Georgia is opening more licensed jobs to people with criminal records. Under a new law, licensing boards can no longer deny applicants based on vague “moral turpitude” standards; they must show that a conviction is directly related to the job. More than one in five jobs in Georgia requires an occupational license, including many in fields such as health care and childcare.

Energy & Environment

• Global mangrove forests are recovering. A recently published analysis of Landsat satellite imagery found that, although the global area of mangrove forests declined between the 1980s and 2010, it has since expanded massively, resulting in only a small net decline (−0.5% ± 1.4%) over the full forty-year period.

• US drinking water seems to be getting cleaner. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research analysis of 266 million drinking water readings found that the share of readings with levels of regulated pollutants that exceed current health standards fell by half between 2003 and 2019.

• Amazon says that its data centers are using water much more efficiently. According to a company report, Amazon’s data centers used just 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour of compute in 2025, about one-seventh of the industry average and less than half of Amazon’s rate of 0.25 liters in 2021.

• The Northeastern Bulrush is no longer considered endangered in the United States following a more than elevenfold increase in the number of distinct populations.

Health & Demographics

• The FDA has approved a new sunscreen ingredient for the first time in 20 years. The reform is a long time coming—the ingredient, called bemotrizinol, has been available in Europe for decades—and should make sunscreens more effective. Bemotrizinol can effectively block both UVA and UVB rays, both of which can cause skin cancer, while sunscreens available in the US have historically been poorer at blocking UVA rays.

• A hospital in Tampa is using software from Palantir to rapidly detect cases of sepsis. The system aggregates data from health records, lab results, clinician notes, and bedside monitors to quickly flag potential sepsis cases, which the hospital claims are now treated within an hour (when it comes to sepsis, rapid treatment is crucial). Since the system was deployed in August 2022, sepsis deaths in the hospital have fallen 68 percent, saving an estimated 886 lives.

• Saloni Dattani and Niko McCarty have written another great roundup of recent innovations in biology, including more cancer treatment highlights, a potential cure for hepatitis B, and a major advancement in pharmaceutical production.

Science & Technology

• The crew of the US Army helicopter that went down near the Strait of Hormuz was rescued by an autonomous maritime drone, the first reported US military rescue operation using the technology.

• Amazon has developed a warehouse robot that can be assigned tasks using plain conversational English (and haul around carts weighing up to 400 kilograms).

• Life Biosciences, a biotech company focused on treating age-related diseases, has begun the first human trial of a cellular anti-aging therapy. The treatment, which is being tested in patients with optic nerve damage, uses gene therapy to briefly activate a set of genes that, in mouse models, restored more youthful function to aged and injured cells.

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Energy and natural resources:

• Antares Nuclear’s Mark-0 microreactor has become the first reactor to reach criticality in the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program, which aims to accelerate the development of new reactor designs.

• Much of the world’s lithium is extracted from brine, but abundant deposits—such as those in the Appalachians—also exist in hard-rock ore. The problem is that extracting lithium from hard rock is expensive and energy-intensive; it typically requires baking the ore above 1,000 degrees Celsius and prolonged chemical leaching. In an attempt to make hard-rock lithium more economical, a group of researchers has developed a lower-temperature process for extracting lithium from spodumene, the main source of hard-rock lithium. The researchers estimate their process could cut hard-rock lithium extraction costs in half, and they are now working on commercializing the technology.

Pollution:

• Microfibers are one of the most common forms of microplastic pollution, and washing machines send large quantities of textile fibers into wastewater. A number of companies have now developed filters designed to catch microfibers, and The Guardian reports that some appliance manufacturers are beginning to integrate them into their washing machines.

Conservation and biodiversity

• Sixty years ago, the Dartford Warbler, a plump-looking, long-tailed songbird, had nearly vanished from the UK. Today, thanks to extensive habitat restoration, the population has risen to an estimated 4,100 breeding pairs.

• The rough popcornflower, a wetland plant found only in the Umpqua River Basin of Oregon, is no longer considered endangered after its population increased to more than 2 million plants.

• Crested ibis are being reintroduced to the Japanese mainland, where they were extirpated in the 1970s.

Health & Wellbeing

• Self-reported freedom reached a record high in 2025. According to a recently published Gallup poll, 82 percent of people surveyed across 138 countries reported being satisfied with their freedom to choose what to do with their lives, up from 71 percent in 2006, when the survey began. Some of the largest gains came from countries in the former Eastern Bloc. Gallup notes that this result is more closely associated with other metrics of subjective wellbeing than with formal measures of political and personal freedom.

  

• The American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual conference has wrapped up, leaving behind a long list of hopeful cancer headlines. The star of the show was daraxonrasib, which received a standing ovation for its unusually strong results against metastatic pancreatic cancer. Some other promising results include:

  • A radioactive wafer implanted at the site of surgically removed brain tumors that nearly doubled two-year survival rates in a randomized trial.

  • A genomic test that helped many breast cancer patients safely skip chemotherapy.

  • A multiple-myeloma immunotherapy that kept nearly 70 percent of patients progression-free for 18 months, compared with about 27 percent of those on standard treatments.

  • A targeted cancer drug that, when combined with standard immunotherapy, cut the risk of cancer progression or death by nearly two-thirds in patients with the most common form of lung cancer.

Science & Technology

• Merlin Labs, an aerospace and defense tech firm, is developing an autonomous piloting system intended to handle all stages of flight across a wide range of aircraft, from single-engine planes to commercial cargo jets. After completing a series of reviews by the US Special Operations Command, the system will now be tested on C-130J transport aircraft and may eventually make its way to commercial cargo carriers and other civil aircraft.

• In a recent live-streamed demo, humanoid robots developed by Figure AI autonomously handled packages for 200 hours without any serious reported errors.

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