Economics & Development
There’s a common misconception that the substantial long-term decline in global poverty shows up only when poverty is measured against a very low income cutoff, such as the World Bank’s $3-a-day extreme poverty threshold. Our World in Data recently produced a beautiful visualization correcting that mistaken view: between 2000 and 2024, the share of humanity living in poverty fell at every threshold.
Energy & Environment
Energy production
A recent report from the World Bank and GOGLA, the global off-grid solar industry association, conservatively estimates that 149 million people were using off-grid solar power in 2025, up from about 101 million in 2021.1 Of those 149 million, most of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa, 98 million had systems capable of powering at least basic lighting and phone charging, including 15 million with enough power to run appliances such as televisions and fans.
After years of delays, the British government has allowed production to begin at the Jackdaw natural gas field in the North Sea. The field is expected to operate for up to 11 years and, at peak output, the field would raise UK gas production by about 6 percent.
Finland has granted an operating license for the world’s first permanent disposal site for spent nuclear fuel. The facility will bury the fuel deep underground in corrosion-resistant canisters, allowing its radioactivity to diminish undisturbed for tens of thousands of years. Posiva Oy, the company in charge of the site, expects to begin operations soon, following final tests and regulatory approvals.
Conservation & biodiversity
Low-lying atoll islands, the small sandy islands that form on ring-shaped coral reefs, are widely considered among the places most vulnerable to rising sea levels. In reality, atoll islands will not inevitably erode into the sea. A 2019 review of 709 atoll islands found that nearly 9 in 10 had remained stable or grown over recent decades despite rising seas, thanks in part to sediment accretion: the buildup of sand and coral rubble carried ashore by waves. A new study in Science Advances suggests that protecting seabird populations can help speed up that process. Seabird guano fertilizes both native plants, whose roots stabilize island sediment, and the surrounding reefs, boosting coral growth and the production of sediment that waves carry ashore. Because rats eat seabird eggs and chicks, rat-free islands tend to have more seabirds. The study, which combined ecological data from 28 islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, estimated that reefs around rat-free islands produce between two and three times as much sediment as reefs around rat-infested islands.
Health & Demographics
The FDA has approved a new treatment for chronic hepatitis B that can allow some patients to stop long-term antiviral medication. After a 24-week course of the new drug alongside existing antivirals, followed by another 24 weeks on antivirals alone, 19 percent of recipients across two trials still had no detectable virus six months after stopping all treatment. Chronic hepatitis B typically requires years of antiviral treatment, sometimes for life, to keep the virus under control.
An experimental immunotherapy has shown lasting benefits in a small trial involving people with stiff person syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease that causes debilitating muscle stiffness and spasms. One year after a single treatment, 8 of the 12 patients who initially needed walking aids could complete a 25-foot walking test unaided, and 24 of the 26 participants remained off other immunotherapies used to manage the disease.
Peptides, which are short chains of amino acids, perform many functions in the body and are widely used in medicine. Examples include insulin, GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, and oxytocin. A growing number of people also take unapproved peptides in the hope of building muscle, increasing stamina, recovering faster from injuries, or sleeping better. The US Department of Health and Human Services has now proposed allowing small compounding pharmacies, which prepare customized medicines to fill individual prescriptions, to make six of these unapproved peptides. The reform could make it easier and safer to try experimental peptides by letting licensed pharmacies, which would have to meet ingredient-testing and safety-reporting requirements, compete with existing gray-market suppliers.
Science & Technology
OpenAI has announced another set of AI-generated proofs addressing longstanding problems in mathematics, computer science, and theoretical physics. Independent researchers are now verifying the proofs.
According to Waymo’s latest safety data, the robotaxi company has sustained its impressive safety record over 271 million driverless miles, with Waymo vehicles involved in 82 percent fewer injury-causing crashes per mile than human drivers in the areas where the company operates.
Tesla has announced that it has begun manufacturing humanoid robots at its factory in Fremont, California.
Violence & Coercion
Serious violent crime in the US fell sharply in 2025, according to preliminary results from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), run by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The combined rate of rape or sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault fell 25 percent compared with 2024, from 9.9 to 7.4 per 1,000 people aged 12 or older. Simple assaults, which involve neither a weapon nor serious injury, held roughly steady. The NCVS is based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of US households, so it captures crimes that were never reported to police. That makes these results a useful complement to recent FBI crime statistics, which found a 9.7 percent drop in the violent crime rate over the same period based solely on reports from law enforcement.
These figures count only people using products sold by companies that report sales data to GOGLA, so the true totals are likely higher.