The World News—Without Money or War

No markets. No tariff reckoning. No politics (or not much). A different angle through the looking glass. Perhaps stories on pages 2, 3 and up are more interesting than front-page news?

Australia & Pacific

Melbourne

Australian cities are experimenting with “woody meadows.” Researchers and councils are replacing conventional ornamental beds with densely planted native shrubs that are periodically cut almost to ground level. Greater Dandenong has been using the method in public spaces; research indicates the plantings can increase urban biodiversity while requiring less intensive maintenance than traditional garden beds.

Perth

Perth’s e-scooter ban has produced a measurable hospital result. Royal Perth Hospital researchers compared emergency admissions before and after rental e-scooters were suspended. In the 12 weeks before the ban, 105 people arrived with e-scooter injuries, including eight major-trauma cases; researchers recorded a significant decline afterward. Western Australia is now reviewing broader e-rideable regulation.

Western Australia

Cities are discovering that planning laws were not written for giant data centres. Perth-area councils are debating where large data centres belong because Western Australian planning codes do not specifically define them. Gosnells has developed rules addressing water use and noise, while other councils are asking the state for a common planning framework.

Wheatbelt & Midwest

A mouse plague produced an unexpected barn-owl baby boom. Farmers and wildlife carers in Western Australia are finding unusually large numbers of barn owls nesting and fledging, including birds using cockatoo boxes and even a grain silo. Wildlife specialists link the increase to abundant mice and reduced use of rodenticides that can also kill owls.

Adelaide

A motorcycle race has turned into a city-design argument. Adelaide will host Australia’s MotoGP from 2027, but the proposed street circuit would affect Victoria Park and require removal of at least 45 significant trees. The city’s lord mayor says the parkland consequences need scrutiny before construction begins in December.

Asia

Japan

Japan’s company museums are becoming tourist attractions in their own right. Corporate museums devoted to manufacturing, technology, food and design are drawing visitors who want to understand how familiar Japanese products were developed rather than simply buy them. The Japan Times reports that companies increasingly see these museums as both educational spaces and destinations.

Japan is also reconsidering transportation in places where there are no longer enough drivers. A national law approved this year supports shared vehicles and other alternatives in communities losing conventional bus and taxi services. Japan was already short about 21,000 bus drivers in 2024, making rural mobility increasingly a demographic rather than merely a transportation problem.

China

China continues to attract scientists trained overseas. Recent South China Morning Post reporting tracks researchers and specialists leaving positions in the United States and Britain for institutions in China. The movement involves fields ranging from advanced computing to scientific research and is becoming part of the wider competition for research talent.

Hong Kong

Students produced unusually strong examination results this summer. Twenty-four students from 15 Hong Kong schools received perfect marks in the city’s diploma examinations, one of several education stories receiving substantial local attention but little international coverage.

India

A quieter trend worth watching is the expansion of international university and research ties rather than simply the growth of India’s technology industry. Indian institutions are increasingly being used as partners for joint research, student mobility and applied technology projects throughout Asia—a development that rarely receives the attention given to India’s larger economic statistics.

Pakistan

Pakistan’s education debate is shifting from “put computers in schools” toward what children actually learn. Educators are increasingly questioning whether AI and education technology can compensate for basic deficiencies such as unreliable electricity, missing furniture, weak laboratories and limited internet access. National data cited by Dawn show that only about 14% of Sindh schools had internet access in the underlying education survey.

Middle East

Saudi Arabia

Archaeologists are continuing to redraw the environmental history of Arabia. Research involving King Abdullah University of Science and Technology found that today’s Rub Al-Khali—one of the world’s largest deserts—once contained a lake covering roughly 1,100 square kilometres and a river system extending through the landscape. The evidence helps explain how prehistoric humans and animals moved through what is now an extreme desert.

The research adds to a much broader archaeological effort in northwestern Saudi Arabia, where scientists are mapping enormous prehistoric hunting structures known as “desert kites.” Some examples elsewhere in the region date to about 7000 BC.

Africa

Kenya & Southern Africa

Lion conservation is moving outside the national parks. Conservationists say an increasing share of the work now involves farmers and livestock owners who live alongside predators. Projects are testing better livestock protection, education, compensation and conservation-linked employment so that the survival of lions does not depend solely on fenced reserves.

Zambia

Bees are being used as a forest-conservation tool. Projects promoting reusable wooden box hives give rural households income from honey without repeatedly cutting trees for traditional bark hives or charcoal production. The approach links an ordinary livelihood—beekeeping—to reducing forest loss.

Cape Verde

Sea turtles are returning while the islands face a very different human problem. Cape Verde’s beaches remain important nesting areas, and conservation work has helped protect turtles, but many young Cape Verdeans continue to leave the islands. The result is an unusual combination: recovering wildlife populations alongside communities struggling with youth emigration and changing family structures.

Across Central & Southern Africa

The miombo woodlands are becoming the focus of a huge restoration experiment. Eleven governments are involved in work to restore a forest ecosystem that supports more than 300 million people. Several current projects cover about 675,000 hectares, combining forest restoration with local land use rather than treating the woodland as empty wilderness.

Europe

Finland

This month Finland quietly changed the language of high school. Selected schools in Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Oulu, Pori and Tampere are beginning general upper-secondary education in English. The programme is meant mainly for young people whose Finnish or Swedish is not yet strong enough for conventional secondary schooling; Finland’s first English-language matriculation examinations are planned for 2028.

At the same time, Finland has 10,000 fewer first-graders than it did only six years ago. About 50,000 children are starting primary school this August, compared with roughly 60,000 in 2020. Every Finnish region has experienced declining first-grade numbers, forcing communities to rethink schools and services.

And after four decades, trains are crossing the Finland-Sweden border again. Regular passenger rail service has returned to the northern cross-border route after roughly 40 years, reconnecting communities that had effectively lost their rail link.

Spain

More than 100,000 documents are reconstructing a forgotten migration story. A newly assembled archive follows Spaniards who fled after the Civil War and rebuilt their lives in Mexico, Argentina, Cuba and elsewhere in the Americas. The material includes migration records and family documents that allow descendants to trace lives that largely disappeared from Spain’s public record.

Alicante, Spain

A 2,000-year-old Roman sculpture turned up in remarkably ordinary circumstances. An ancient female head nicknamed the “Venus of Alicante” was recovered from a ditch and initially transported in a supermarket bag, prompting controversy over how archaeological discoveries are handled.

Catalonia, Spain

Historians are tracing Catalonia’s previously under-documented links to slavery. New archival work is identifying merchant families and businesses that profited from the Atlantic slave economy, expanding the story beyond the relatively small number of families traditionally associated with it.

Iceland & France

Iceland and France are expanding cooperation in science and education. A new bilateral declaration covers research, biodiversity, climate, innovation and education alongside the countries’ more conventional diplomatic cooperation. It followed the first official working visit to Iceland by a French foreign minister in more than two decades.

Central America

Costa Rica

A waterfall is financing a town. La Fortuna’s famous waterfall is not operated by an international tourism company or by the national government. It belongs to a nonprofit community development association.

About 350,000 visitors a year come to the site. Revenue has been used for community infrastructure, cultural programmes, social assistance and facilities including a semi-Olympic swimming pool. It is an unusual example of residents retaining ownership of one of their own major tourist attractions.

El Salvador

Artists are turning a neighborhood once associated with violence into an outdoor museum. Dozens of artists in Zacamil, San Salvador, are covering public spaces with murals tied to local history and memory. The project is deliberately using art to reclaim areas that for decades were associated with civil-war violence and later gang control.

Panama

Scientists are slowly returning Panama’s golden frog to the wild. The Smithsonian-led Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project has maintained the species in captivity after fungal disease devastated wild populations. Carefully managed reintroductions have now begun.

South America

Bolivia

A secretive wild cat has been confirmed in a new part of Bolivia. Researchers recorded the recently recognised clouded tiger-cat, Leopardus pardinoides, in Cochabamba for the first time. Because the small cat is nocturnal and solitary, even establishing where it lives has been difficult.

Argentina

A 339-year-old school has appointed its first woman director. Córdoba’s Colegio Nacional de Monserrat, one of Argentina’s historic educational institutions, is being led by a woman for the first time in its history. The same school resisted admitting female students until the late 1990s.

Brazil, Mexico & Peru

Countries that helped test a major HIV-prevention medicine are still waiting to use it. Brazil, Mexico and Peru participated in clinical research involving lenacapavir, a long-acting HIV prevention drug, but access remains limited in much of Latin America. Health advocates are pressing for broader availability and changes to patent arrangements.

A Few Things Worth Knowing

Finland

A baby was born aboard a Finnish train this week—an event sufficiently unusual to become national news alongside the restoration of cross-border rail service.

Western Australia

Barn owls are taking advantage of the mouse population so enthusiastically that farmers are finding nests in places never intended for owls—including grain silos.

Costa Rica

Visitors swimming beneath La Fortuna waterfall may have no idea that their entrance ticket helps pay for services used by the people who live in the town.

Finland

Five Finnish high schools are beginning something that would have been highly unusual only a few years ago: ordinary Finnish upper-secondary education taught in English rather than Finnish or Swedish.

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