Good news on global health, renewable energy, research
As always, I’m grateful for the opportunity our friends at Australia’s Fix the News give us to end the week scrolling through dozens of instances of good news.
This week, the free section of Fix the News leads with a Lancet analysis of 204 countries showing that humanity is entering a new era of global health.
Among the items in the section requiring a subscription:
— More than 900 million girls in Pakistan have been vaccinated against HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer, in just 15 days. Ghana is similarly working to protect 2.4 million girls. And in Bangladesh, a campaign is underway to give 50 million children a single-dose typhoid vaccine in one month.
— Global renewable power capacity grew by 15 percent in 2024, its fastest pace in history, and is likely to grow by even more this year, placing the world about two-thirds of the way toward tripling capacity by 2030, according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency.
— The search engine MetaGraph is a “Google for DNA” that can analyze raw biological data — including DNA, RNA and protein sequences — from databases that can contain millions of billions of DNA letters, the journal Nature reports.
Also in the news
EU leaders endorse a plan to ensure that Europe can defend itself from outside attack by 2030
Trump to meet with Chinese President Xi in South Korea as part of Asia trip
Senate rejects dueling bills to pay federal workers during government shutdown
Trump approves disaster declarations for Alaska and other states but denies Illinois and Maryland
Trump calls off planned surge of federal agents into San Francisco after talking with the mayor, others
Trump’s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, high-profile cryptocurrency figure
White House East Wing has been demolished, new images appear to show
Trump allies, undeterred by setbacks in courts and Congress, pursue another way to impose citizenship proof to vote
Virginia becomes second state where Democrats plan to redraw congressional maps in redistricting battle
African American enrollment is waning at many elite colleges after affirmative action ban, AP analysis finds
New York City Mayor Eric Adams endorses former rival Andrew Cuomo in city’s mayoral race
Heather Cox Richardson on ICE recruits, Trump pardons, ballroom donors, Argentina
KFF: GOP talking point holds that ACA marketplace is haunted by ‘phantom’ enrollees, but the devil’s in the data
ProPublica: ‘Is your medication made in a contaminated factory? The FDA won’t tell you.’