293: Canticle to the Sun

Hi everyone, Gus here. We know we promised you a new charity partner in this edition, but we need a few more days to do our due diligence, so we're delaying the announcement to next week.

We do have other exciting news though: we've got a title for our malaria vaccine podcast! A Shot at History will be released in May 2025 across three episodes, and will feature interviews with a diverse range of players, from top officials and experts at the big global health agencies, to healthcare workers in Sierra Leone, a nurse in Kenya and a young mother in Malawi. A big thanks to Postcode Lottery and our paid subscribers for making it possible to make this thing. We can't wait to share it with all of you.

Here's a short clip from the podcast, from Zacharia Kafuko of 1Day Sooner, a non-profit organisation that is working towards global vaccine equity.

This week's top stories

The opening of St Francis of Assisi's Canticle to the Sun, the inspiration for Pope Francis's seminal 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si:

All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun,
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendour!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

The just-released 2025 Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer reveals cancer mortality in the United States declined by 1.5% per year between 2018 and 2022, painting an encouraging picture of progress against America's second-leading cause of death.
- Lung cancer showed the steepest decline with death rates dropping 4.5% annually among men and 3.4% among women.
- Childhood cancer mortality continues to decline at 1.5% annually.
- Overall cancer death rates have decreased by over 33% since 1991 (and no.. it's not just because people have stopped smoking).

While there are some concerning trends—including increases in uterine cancer mortality, prostate cancer incidence, and young-onset colorectal cancer—the overall picture is remarkably positive. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic when cancer diagnoses temporarily dropped by 8%, the decline in death rates continued unabated.

WHO member states have finally reached a legally binding agreement on how to tackle future pandemics. Notably, countries will aim to ensure that pandemic-related drugs and vaccines are globally accessible - the first time such a provision has appeared in an international health agreement. The deal is not binding for the United States given the current administration's intention to withdraw from the WHO. Reuters

Nonetheless, "This is a historic moment and shows that, with or without the United States, countries are committed to working together and to the power of multilateralism."

A new analysis claims that poverty has declined for all Indians since 2012, from 30.4% to 3.9% in rural areas, and from 26.4% to 3.9% in urban areas. Using nationally representative household surveys, the authors find that these staggering declines track across religious and social divides as well. They conclude that India’s economic growth and government welfare programmes have been widely inclusive and impactful. The Indian Express

Plus, Mumbai has just declared its famous flamingo nesting ground, the Delhi Public School wetland, as a Conservation Reserve. "With the partial restoration of the water flow, the pink beauties have once again begun to flock to their favourite destination." Deccan Herald

Turkana is Kenya’s second-largest-county, and one of the most drought-prone. Between 2019 and 2022, a collaborative project between Kenya, South Korea and UNICEF enabled over 232,000 people to gain improved water access through solar-powered boreholes. Planning for phase 2 is underway, with nearly 550,000 people expected to benefit directly or indirectly. UNICEF

In more clean water news, 572,200 people in Guinea will gain access to clean drinking water for the first time between 2025 and 2031 (that's more than the population of Greenland and Iceland combined) while in Kyrgyzstan, a World-Bank funded program will provide access to clean water for one million Kyrgyz in the next ten years. Piped water is a miracle…

Remember when the headlines were full of stories about crime in San Francisco? Sure enough, the New York Times isn't reporting that in 2024, violent crime in San Francisco fell by 14%. The drop in property crime was even more stark - 28%, compared to 9% in other mid-size cities. This unusually speedy drop suggests that local policies and law enforcement strategies are at play, on top of larger societal changes which are bringing down crime rates across California more broadly.

Scientists at Beijing Normal University have identified the thalamus—not just the cerebral cortex—as a key regulator of conscious perception. Using electrodes already implanted in patients' brains for headache therapy, researchers recorded neural activity during visual attention tasks. Their findings reveal how the brain transitions from automatic processing to deliberate awareness, significantly advancing our understanding of human consciousness. Wired

Courts in North America are seeing environmental victories: British Columbia's Supreme Court has upheld Haida authority over sustainable forestry, protecting ancient ecosystems governed by 16,000-year-old Indigenous principles; conservation groups have won protection for endangered Selkirk grizzlies and old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, and a federal judge has temporarily blocked Trump's EPA from terminating $14 billion in climate grants.

Meanwhile, a landmark ruling against a rancher who destroyed 175 penguin nests has catalysed unprecedented wildlife protections in Argentina. The nation’s first “environmental crime trial” has prompted the government to establish a specialised environmental prosecutor's office, and consider adding wildlife crimes to the national penal code...

...as well as expanding the Punta Tombo protected area (the protected area with the penguin nests) from 500 to nearly 4,000 acres. National Geographic

Over 200 polio type 2 cases have recently been reported in the Lake Chad basin, bordering five African countries: Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and the Central African Republic. What’s an international community to do? Well, the governments of all five countries just launched a coordinated polio vaccination campaign to protect 83 million children, supported by 1.1 million frontline workers. The five-day regional campaign will target high-risk and mobile populations in border areas. WHO AFRO

Almost all schools in England have banned mobile phone use by pupils, according to the first national survey conducted on this issue. The survey of more than 15,000 schools found that 99.8% of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools now have some form of ban in place. The Guardian

Cycling in the City of London has surged by 57% since 2022, with cycles now making up 39% of daytime traffic—nearly twice the number of cars. Motor vehicles have declined to just one-third of their 1999 levels, while cycling has increased six-fold. People walking, cycling, and wheeling now account for three-quarters of all observed travel activity. City of London

Very bad news for internal combustion engine enthusiasts... CATL, the world's largest battery maker, just unveiled its next-generation Shenxing battery that offers 520 km (323 miles) of range from a five-minute charge. The company also announced sodium-ion batteries that maintain performance at extreme temperatures and dual-power batteries achieving 1,500 km ranges. Car News China

China's renewable surge displaces coal power in first three months of 2025. Renewable energy generation jumped 26.7% in the first quarter of 2025, while coal power generation dropped 4.1% year-over-year despite overall electricity demand growing. The growth in renewables helped lift clean energy's share of the generation mix to a record 39%, up from 34% during the same months last year. Climate Energy Finance

Scientists have successfully transmitted quantum-encrypted data across a 250km commercial German telecommunications network without specialized cooling equipment—a world first. Researchers used standard optical fiber, demonstrating that advanced quantum security can work on existing infrastructure. This breakthrough makes large-scale, energy-efficient quantum communications networks significantly more viable and cost-effective. FT

After five decades of restoration work, the native trout population of Lake Champlain, one of the largest lakes in the United States, is now self-sustaining. This success offers a model for restoring top predator species in large freshwater ecosystems. Adirondack Explorer

Painted Lady butterflies complete an extraordinary multi-generational journey of over 15,000 km annually between sub-Saharan Africa and the Arctic Circle. Scientists recently documented them crossing the Atlantic Ocean—the first confirmed trans-ocean journey by an insect. The remarkable migration requires up to 10 generations to complete a full cycle. NYT 🎁

Did you know that domestic cats are probably originally from Tunisia? Or that the ancestor of the rose was probably yellow?

And finally, in one of the great conservation stories of this century, saiga antelope numbers increased from just 30,000 in 2006 to nearly 4 million today across the Golden Steppe ecosystem—an area three times larger than the UK. Mongabay