Africa added 10 years to its life expectancy since 2000. Wars, famines, and epidemics included

Happy Wednesday. I want to start with a number today.

Ten. That's how many years Africa added to its average life expectancy between 2000 and 2019. Not despite the wars in Sudan, Somalia, DRC, Libya, and Angola. Not despite the 2011 East African famine, the Ebola outbreaks, the economic collapses, the militant insurgencies. Including all of it. The continent gained ten years of life. Our lead story is about how.

We also have the underground fungal network that covers 62 quadrillion miles and connects almost every plant on earth, a Canadian fisherman who turned his own bad habits into a one-man cleanup operation, and a 6-year-old in Norway who found something extraordinary on a school field trip.

Here's your good news.

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—Stephanie S

The WHO's 2026 annual report included findings from a study of African mortality statistics between 2000 and 2019. On average, the continent gained 10 years of additional life expectancy and 9 years of healthy life expectancy in two decades. In 2000, the average African could expect a healthy life until 46. By 2019 that had risen to 55, with total life expectancy reaching 64.

This happened alongside wars in Sudan, Somalia, DRC, Libya, and Angola. The 2011 East African famine. The Zimbabwe economic collapse. Multiple Ebola outbreaks. Militant insurgencies across the Sahel. The gains were not made in stable conditions. They were made in spite of everything.

The lion's share of the improvement came from dramatically increased control of TB, malaria, and HIV, particularly through expanded access to antiretroviral medication. Improvements in reproductive and maternity health meant more children surviving past age 5, and each prevented childhood death lifted the life expectancy average significantly.

What that means in human terms: children across the continent now have far better odds of growing up with both parents alive. Parents are surviving to become grandparents. That is the compound interest of a generation of quiet public health work. Read the full story and explore the country-by-country data.

Scientists at SPUN, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, set out to measure the total length of fungal filaments beneath the soil. Their research, published in Science, found that just within the top 15 centimeters of earth, the mycorrhizal networks stretch approximately 62 quadrillion miles. Spun into a single yarn, that filament would reach from the Earth to the Sun and back one billion times.

These networks are the fabled wood wide web, the underground infrastructure through which plants and fungi exchange nutrients, water, and chemical warning signals. The fungi can't produce sugar from sunlight, so they trade water and soil nutrients for the sugars that plants generate through photosynthesis. The greatest density isn't in forests as commonly assumed, but in grasslands and wetlands, including the Anatolian steppe, the Tibetan plateau, the North American Prairie, and the Everglades, where plant roots stay shallow and lean more heavily on fungal reach.

The team also translated their research into an interactive map of the globe where anyone can explore the density of these networks in real time. Their findings revealed something urgent: fewer than 10% of the densest fungal network clusters currently sit inside protected areas. Of the more than 8,000 species known to participate in the wood wide web, virtually none have been assessed for endangered status by the IUCN. SPUN is arguing that fungal populations should be included when governments designate conservation areas. Explore the interactive map and read the full story.

Sean Bath spent years as a commercial diver and fisherman in Newfoundland, seeking sea urchins in the deep harbors of Canada's Atlantic coast. He also threw his trash overboard, the way most people in his industry did. Then he started noticing the tires. Loose from ship bows and harbor wharfs, they sat on the seabed alongside abandoned fishing gear, the ghost nets and lines that kill millions of sea creatures every year. He couldn't stop seeing them.

In 2018, Bath founded the Clean Harbors Initiative and pulled 15,000 pounds of trash from the bottom of Bay Roberts harbor in a single operation. The goal was partly practical and partly a public statement: he wanted people with money to donate to see exactly what was down there. A documentary crew followed him for a year, producing Hell or Clean Water, which premiered at Toronto's Hot Docs festival in 2021. Personal donations increased dramatically afterward, and Bath was able to hire a second boat and diver.

Now he's expanding beyond diving. At Long Harbor, when poor visibility made diving unsafe, Bath's team switched to cleaning the beaches at St. Croix instead. "Each day we were out there, we were able to collect about three boatloads full of plastics," he told CBC News. "It's a sustainable way to do cleanups because it doesn't require any fuel." A reformed litterer, cleaning up after everyone else. Watch the documentary clip and read the full story.

Henrik's class was visiting Gran in the Hadeland region of Norway, an area whose name translates roughly as "warrior land" and where significant archaeological discoveries have been made before. If his teachers had been nearby when he spotted what he described as a rusty piece of metal sticking out of the ground, they might have told him not to touch it. They weren't. He pulled it out.

The weapon turned out to be a scramseax, a single-sided iron sword common in early medieval Scandinavia, sharpened on one edge to concentrate the weight behind its cutting blow. Given the location and the date, it almost certainly belonged to someone familiar with battle. It may predate the Viking Age itself, falling instead in the Merovingian Period, which would place it around 700 CE and possibly forged in France rather than Scandinavia.

The sword has since been transferred to the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo for preservation and study. The cultural heritage agency of Innlandet County confirmed the discovery and shared photos of Henrik, six years old, standing next to something that has been in the ground since before any living European nation existed. See the photos and read the full story.

🚗 China: A study of 150 Chinese cities found that EV and hybrid adoption has already prevented an estimated 262,000 premature deaths from air pollution, reducing fine particulate matter by 23.8% and carbon monoxide by 30% compared to a counterfactual where all vehicles remained fossil fuel powered.

🫔 USA: Colorado has passed the Tamales Act, restoring the legal right of home cooks to sell food made in their own kitchens without a commercial license, joining a growing number of states that recognize cottage food laws as both a cultural and economic right for communities.

🧠 Australia: Researchers at Monash University have found that a copper-based drug dramatically reduces toxic Alzheimer's proteins and restores memory in laboratory models, cutting amyloid-beta buildup by 42% and improving spatial learning by 44%, with the compound already having passed human safety testing for other conditions.

📚 UK: For the first time since 2021, the proportion of UK children who say they enjoy reading for pleasure has risen, according to the National Literacy Trust's survey of 125,375 children, with gains seen across all age groups and income levels.

🌊 Global: NASA satellites have detected a vast pulse of warm water moving toward South America's coast, a classic El Niño precursor, giving scientists and governments months of advance warning to prepare for potential effects on global weather, agriculture, and water supply.

Tapestry was recorded in just a few weeks at A&M Studios in Los Angeles, almost entirely live, with Carole King playing piano and James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and other friends singing backup. It contained It's Too Late, I Feel the Earth Move, You've Got a Friend, and Will You Love Me Tomorrow, all written or co-written by King herself. On June 17, 1971, it hit number one on the Billboard album chart and stayed there for 15 weeks. It went on to sell 25 million copies worldwide and won four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year, making King the first woman to win that award as a solo artist.

The album cover photograph, taken at her home in Laurel Canyon, shows King sitting in a sunlit window, bare feet dangling, her cat Telemachus at her side, holding a tapestry she had hand-stitched herself. It became one of the most iconic images in music history, a portrait of a woman entirely at ease in her own life, and it sold the record as much as the music did.

Other notable June 17 events:

1885: The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor packed in 241 wooden crates, a gift from France assembled on Bedloe's Island over the following year. The idea originated with French anti-slavery law professor Édouard de Laboulaye, who wanted to honor American democracy and inspire his own country to do the same. This week the Patrouille de France is flying over it.

1928: Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air as a passenger on a transatlantic flight, a journey she later called unsatisfying because she wanted to fly the plane herself. She returned four years later and did exactly that.

1958: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was published in the United Kingdom, the first work in Heinemann's African Writers Series and now the best-selling African novel ever written, with over 20 million copies sold in more than 50 languages.

1925: The first National Spelling Bee took place in Washington DC, created by The Louisville Courier-Journal. Eleven-year-old Frank Neuhauser won by correctly spelling "gladiolus," a flower he had grown himself, and took home $500 in gold pieces. It turns 101 today.

— Mary Anne Radmacher

Every day brings amazing advances and uplifting moments that remind us just how wonderful the world can be. Here are five reasons why today is the best time ever to be alive:

🌊 Predicting the Weather a Year Out: Scientists can now forecast El Niño and La Niña events up to 18 months in advance using satellite ocean data and AI modeling, giving farmers, water managers, and disaster planners time to prepare for droughts, floods, and temperature extremes before they arrive.

🔬 Destroying Tumors Without Surgery: High-intensity focused ultrasound can now destroy cancer tumors deep inside the body without any incision, targeting malignant tissue with precisely calibrated sound waves while leaving surrounding organs untouched. Already FDA-approved for prostate and uterine cancers, it's now in trials for liver and pancreatic tumors.

🐠 Fish Adapting Faster Than We Thought: Research on the Great Barrier Reef and in the Caribbean has found that certain reef fish species are adapting to warmer and more acidic ocean conditions faster than previously considered possible, with some populations showing measurable genetic changes across just a few generations.

🧠 Understanding Consciousness: Scientists have identified the specific brain networks that must be active for conscious experience to occur, with precision that was impossible a decade ago, opening new paths to treating disorders of consciousness including vegetative states, coma, and locked-in syndrome.

🌿 Seagrass Is Coming Back: Targeted restoration and pollution reduction have allowed seagrass meadows in the UK, Australia, and the US to begin recovering after decades of decline, with these underwater grasslands now recognized as among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on earth and critical nurseries for hundreds of fish species.

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