What went right this week: the good news that matters

Communities in England will be given extra powers to take over pubs and other assets threatened with closure under proposed new legislation. 

Under the English devolution and community empowerment bill, residents will get first refusal on local businesses when they go up for sale, plus an extended 12-month period to raise funding to buy them. People in Scotland have similar powers already.  

Plunkett UK (formerly the Plunkett Foundation), a charity that has long advocated for such legislation, welcomed the bill’s arrival in parliament, saying that it could throw a lifeline to pubs, which are closing at a rate of six per week in Britain.

“This has the potential to save many businesses in rural areas which would otherwise be closed or turned into accommodation. Pubs, for example, are facing an economic crisis, and it is the community-ownership model which can save many of them,” said James Alcock, the charity’s chief executive. 

“We believe this is a promising first step for community empowerment. We will look closely at the detail and the processes that will be proposed as the legislation develops.” 

Related: The colourful rise of community-owned pubs

Image: The Old Forge, a community run pub in Inverie, Scotland. Credit: Mark Harris

More than 300,000 lives have been saved in the developing world since 2000 thanks to emergency vaccination programmes targeting measles, cholera, meningococcal meningitis, yellow fever and Ebola. 

That’s according to a new report – published in the British Medical Journal – which estimates that deaths from the five diseases was reduced by around 60% between 2000 and 2023 following immunisation. 

The study’s authors put the economic savings at around $32bn (£23.9bn), adding that the cost benefits came primarily from averting deaths and avoiding years of caring for people with disabilities related to the diseases.

“For the first time, we are able to comprehensively quantify the benefit, in human and economic terms, of deploying vaccines against outbreaks of some of the deadliest infectious diseases,” said Dr Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the vaccine alliance, which funded the research. 

“This study demonstrates clearly the power of vaccines as a cost-effective countermeasure to the increasing risk the world faces from outbreaks.” 

Image: CDC

People in Denmark could get copyright control over their facial features and voices under proposed legislation aimed at combatting AI-generated deepfakes. 

A new bill introduced to the Danish parliament would make it illegal to share deepfake images, videos and audio recordings based on a real person.

The bill, if enacted, would issue “severe fines” for online platforms that do not abide by the new law. The Danish government said that parodies and satire would not be affected by the proposed amendment. 

“In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI,” Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, told The Guardian.  

The Danish proposals come amid growing concern about the rise of deepfakes and their potential to further pollute the information sphere. Images of the late Pope Francis cuddling Madonna, posted by the pop star herself, were seen by millions last year, prompting the pontiff to warn about the misuse of AI.

Image: Michael Dam

For the first time, babies have been born free from a deadly hereditary disease thanks to a groundbreaking IVF procedure that used the DNA of three people. 

The method, pioneered by UK scientists, combines the egg and sperm from a mother and a father with a second egg from a donor woman. The technique was shown to prevent mothers from passing on mitochondrial disease to their children after eight babies were conceived and born this way. Mitochondrial disease is incurable and can cause severe disability and death in babies. 

The families who took part in the trial wish to remain anonymous, but issued statements via the Newcastle Fertility Centre where the procedure took place.

“After years of uncertainty this treatment gave us hope – and then it gave us our baby,” said the mother of a baby girl. “We look at them now, full of life and possibility, and we’re overwhelmed with gratitude.”

Prof Doug Turnbull, senior author of the published research, said: “Today’s news offers fresh hope to many more women at risk of passing on this condition who now have the chance to have children growing up without this terrible disease.” 

Image: Christian Bowen

Senegal and Brunei have become the latest nations to defeat trachoma, the world’s leading cause of infectious blindness, as a public health problem. 

The nations’ success in defeating the disease – spread via contaminated fingers or flies that have come into contact with the eyes of an infected person – follows improvements in water sanitation, a series of public health campaigns and the mass rollout of antibiotics.  

The World Health Organization (WHO) described the elimination of trachoma in both countries as “a major public health achievement”. According to the WHO, the number of people requiring treatment for trachoma across Africa fell from 189m in 2014 to 93m in 2024 – a 51% reduction.

Image: Pixabay

For the first time, sunlight has generated more electricity in Europe than any other source.

Research from energy analysts Ember shows that solar’s share of the electricity mix in June was 22.1%, ahead of nuclear (21.8%), wind (15.8%), gas (14.4%) and coal (6.1%), which recorded its lowest share of electricity generation on record.

Ember found that 13 nations set new records for solar generation last month, including Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Poland. 

“Europe is becoming a solar powerhouse,” said Chris Rosslowe, a senior energy analyst at the company. “The growth of low-cost renewables is gradually getting Europe’s energy system off the rollercoaster of fossil energy prices.

“The big opportunity now comes from adding battery storage and flexibility to extend the use of renewable power into mornings and evenings, where fossil fuels still set high power prices.”

While solar surged in Europe, wind power also set new records for the months of May and June, generating 16.6% and 15.8% of the continent’s electricity respectively. More wind farms have come online since, added Ember.  

Image: iStock

Records are tumbling in the nation already leading the renewables race. According to new analysis, China added enough wind and solar in May to meet Poland’s annual electricity needs. 

Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said that China installed 93GW of solar capacity in May – equivalent to around 100 solar panels per second. 

“We knew China’s rush to install solar and wind was going to be wild but wow,”  Myllyvirta wrote on Bluesky. “These wild installation numbers are made possible by rapid growth of the sector in the past few years and by strong profitability, compounded by a rush to install before a June deadline when the tariffs paid to new renewable power plants change.”

Under new rules, which resemble those in the UK, the price of electricity generated from new solar and wind schemes will be determined by competitive auctions, replacing the fixed rates that solar and wind projects previously received for their power. Experts say this will likely lead to a short-term lull in installations, but may increase the competitiveness of renewables in the long-term.

Image: Jason Hu

It took 10 years and involved 100,000 volunteers, but the world’s largest whole body imaging project is now complete, giving scientists unprecedented insights into the human anatomy.

UK Biobank, which led the project, scanned its 100,000th volunteer this week. Since 2015, it has batch released the de-identified imaging data to scientists around the world to help them develop better diagnostic tests for conditions such as heart disease, dementia and cancer. 

Used alongside existing information on lifestyle, medical history, genetics and blood proteins – collected from the same volunteers – the images, said UK Biobank, “allow researchers to see, in ways that were previously impossible, how all aspects of our lives influence our health”.

So far, more than 1,300 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published off the back of UK Biobank’s data. The results of these studies have helped improve patient care globally; one such study identified a much quicker way to analyse heart scans. 

“The unprecedented scale of this imaging project … makes it possible for scientists to see patterns of disease that just couldn’t otherwise be seen,” said Prof Sir Rory Collins, UK Biobank’s chief executive. “This massive imaging project is making the invisible visible.”

Image: Jacek Dylag

A seven-year project to restore Swedish rivers despoiled by industrialisation reached a milestone this week, with the reintroduction of a ‘lost’ species to the rehabilitated waters. 

The Sikån, Risån and Tallån tributaries, which feed into the River Rickleå, were hotbeds of biodiversity until the forestry industry canalised and dredged them. This was particularly catastrophic for brown trout (pictured), which spawn amid riverbed rocks and boulders.    

A rewilding project, launched in 2018, set about restoring the rivers to their former glory. This week, Rewilding Europe announced that 125,000 baby brown tout had been released into the waterways. 

“Releasing trout into these restored stretches is like laying the final missing piece of a puzzle,” said Henrik Persson of Rewilding Sweden, which led the project. 

The return of brown trout is not only good news for the species itself. Brown trout – which are also known as sea trout when they migrate to the sea – are considered keystone species due to their influential role as both predators and prey.

Image: Eric Engbretson

For the first time in more than 100 years, pine martens have bred in south-west England – a major milestone for a project seeking to bring the species back. 

Last year, 15 pine martens – eight females, seven male – were released at undisclosed locations in Dartmoor national park. Now, camera trap footage has revealed the first glimpses of young kits born to the reintroduced animals.

Pine martens were once a common sight across the UK, but deforestation and hunting pushed them to the brink of extinction in England. Now they’re making a comeback. 

“This is a historic moment for the return of a native animal and for the future of the south west’s woodlands,” said Devon Wildlife Trust’s Tracey Hamston, who led the reintroduction project. “To have breeding pine martens back after a century’s absence signals a positive step in nature’s recovery.”

Image: Caroline Legg
Main image: Sturti/iStock