Good news on children's health, scientific innovations, e-waste reduction

09/11/2025, part 2
Note to readers
Typepad is down right now, and I sent today's news roundup to subscribers earlier via a MailChimp workaround. Below is the remainder of today's post, again via the MailChimp workaround.

As I mentioned last week, I’m going to take Fridays off to work on moving this blog to a new host. Typepad is shutting down on Sept. 30. 



Good news on children’s health, scientific innovations, e-waste reduction

This edition of Fix the News begins, "Hi everyone, Gus here. The WHO and UNICEF just released a report I’ve been waiting on for over two years, and it’s even better than I was hoping. It’s an astonishing story of human progress, about how the lives of billions of people have been transformed, and I honestly don’t understand why all the world’s news organizations can’t take a break from injecting reporting on Trump for at least a day to celebrate it. Go figure."

There’s a lot more good news in the free section of Fix the News, of course. 

Among the items requiring a subscription:

— "School meals are one of the best things happening in the world right now," says Fix the News, citing this UN report.  

"At the end of July, governments, UN leaders, and partners gathered in Ethiopia to take stock of the state of school meal efforts around the world," says Fix the News. "Over 170 countries now run programs, 16 countries have explicitly enshrined the right to adequate food in their constitutions, domestic investment is at $48 billion a year and rising, and in the last two years an additional 20 million children have started receiving school meals across Africa."

— "Counting lives saved is difficult, but it can show us the great difference some people have made," says Our World in Data, listing scientists whose innovations have saved millions of lives.

— "The world produces tens of millions of tons of e-waste each year, but only around a fifth of it is recycled," says Fix the News, citing an Economist article. Robots now can recognize a device, get instructions and unscrew parts for reuse or cleaner smelting. Current recycling robots specialize in specific devices — Apple’s Daisy, for example, targets iPhones — but Germany’s Fraunhofer Research Institute is forecasting a flexible recycler for mixed e-waste in about five years.