Economics & Development
76 percent of humanity used the internet this year, up from 44 percent in 2016, according to the latest figures from the International Telecommunication Union. Over the same period, the share of internet users nearly tripled in low-income countries, growing from 11.5 percent to 32.3 percent.
About one-third of US states passed deregulatory housing reforms in 2026, according to a new analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The measures vary by state but include loosening zoning restrictions, eliminating parking requirements, streamlining permitting processes, relaxing staircase and elevator requirements, and legalizing accessory dwelling units, all of which could reduce construction costs and help expand the housing supply.
Energy & Environment
The breeding population of Peruvian diving petrels on Chile’s Choros Island has grown 7.5-fold since 2013, when invasive rabbits were eradicated from the island. Free from the rabbits, which had stripped the island’s vegetation and damaged the petrels’ burrows, the colony reached an estimated 90,000 breeding pairs in 2024, up from around 12,000 in 2013 and 300 in 1980.
The Bangka slow loris, a venomous primate listed as “possibly extinct” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has been confirmed to survive on Indonesia’s Bangka Island. Scientists had not formally recorded the species since the 1930s, but a new study shows that the lorises never disappeared but simply went undocumented. Coauthored by staff at the island’s Alobi Wildlife Rescue Center, the study reports that the center took in more than 90 Bangka slow lorises between 2015 and 2025 and released 86 of them back into the wild.
British conservationists and forestry researchers have completed Britain’s largest-ever woodland bat survey with the help of artificial intelligence. Using recording devices placed across hundreds of English woodlands, researchers collected roughly 90,000 hours of audio, which was then reviewed by AI for the presence of bat calls. The researchers estimate that analyzing the recordings manually would have taken over 30 years.
Health & Demographics
Barbados has eliminated mother-to-child HIV transmission, according to a recent announcement from the World Health Organization. Between 2022 and 2024, there were no reported cases of mother-to-child HIV transmission, 98 percent of pregnant women were tested for HIV, and 98 percent of pregnant women with HIV received antiretroviral treatment.
The US Food and Drug Administration has tentatively approved the first generic version of lenacapavir, a groundbreaking HIV drug that prevents infection with just two yearly injections. Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, an Indian pharmaceutical company, developed the generic formulation and has pledged to sell it for $40 per person annually. The “tentative” approval means that the drug meets FDA standards but cannot be sold in the United States because of existing patent protections. However, because many foreign regulators rely on the FDA’s assessments of new drugs, the approval should accelerate the drug’s distribution abroad. Under a 2024 licensing agreement with Gilead Sciences, lenacapavir’s original developer, generic versions can be sold in 120 low- and middle-income countries.
In an early-stage trial involving three patients with drug-resistant epilepsy, an experimental gene therapy cut monthly seizures by about 90 percent. The treatment used viruses to deliver a gene to neurons in the part of each patient’s brain responsible for their seizures. The gene made those neurons sensitive to the drug clozapine, which was then administered at low doses to suppress the neurons' activity.
Early studies from England and Argentina, which began vaccinating pregnant women against RSV in 2024, are showing substantial reductions in RSV-related hospitalizations. A recent meta-analysis found that infants under six months old whose mothers received an RSV vaccine while pregnant had a 74 percent lower risk of being hospitalized for an RSV-related lung infection. Separate research found that RSV-related infant hospitalizations were 63 percent lower than expected in England and 34 percent lower in Buenos Aires, Argentina, following the introduction of maternal RSV vaccination.
Science & Technology
The sites of Germany’s nuclear power plants, which were unwisely shut down during a phaseout completed in 2023, may get a second life hosting AI data centers. The German energy company PreussenElektra has announced that it is working with Nvidia to assess whether former nuclear plant sites could be repurposed for computing, taking advantage of their existing grid connections, land, and industrial infrastructure.
The autonomous drone delivery company Zipline is rapidly expanding its US operations. The company, which pioneered medical drone deliveries in Africa, has raised $1.5 billion to grow its US business and signed an agreement with Walmart to establish 300 new drone delivery sites, in addition to the 21 sites the companies currently operate together.
Pangram, a leading provider of AI-detection software, has released new tools for identifying AI-generated images and videos. According to the company’s own tests, its new image detector achieved 99.96 percent accuracy on a dataset containing images from 12 leading AI image generators, while its video detector decisively outperformed competing tools on an AI video-detection benchmark.
Artificial intelligence continues to spot security vulnerabilities in widely used software. In a recent announcement, Anthropic reported that an unreleased, internal research model discovered serious security flaws in Chrome, Safari, Android, Windows, and Linux. Separately, OpenAI has announced that its new cybersecurity model, GPT-6 Cyber, identified hundreds of security vulnerabilities in the Linux operating system and 81 flaws in the Firefox web browser. Both companies have been sharing their findings with the relevant software developers, and OpenAI’s model helped prepare some of the necessary patches. Anthropic has also released a plugin for Claude Code, its AI coding assistant, that automatically checks the code it writes for security flaws.
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