Doomslayer: Progress Roundup

Aug 16, 2026

Economics & Development

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.