He called his shot at the start of the year. Then he broke a 27-year-old world record in the mile

Happy Wednesday. Today's lead story is about a Scottish runner who told the world at the start of this year exactly what he was going to do. Last weekend in London, he did it. I love this one.

We also have a 2-year-old in Salt Lake City who became her older sister's bone marrow donor, a coral reef off the coast of Benin that scientists had assumed was dead since the 1960s, and a new monkey species with striking orange lips discovered in the Congo Basin for just the fifth time in 75 years.

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—Stephanie S

At the start of 2026, Scottish runner Josh Kerr told anyone who would listen that he was going to break the mile world record. Not hedge. Not aim for it. Break it. He set up a training camp in Albuquerque, New Mexico, called it Project 222, and started preparing for a specific race at a specific time. The record he was targeting had stood since 1999, set by Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj — 3:43.13 — when Kerr was a toddler.

Last Saturday at the London Diamond League, Kerr lined up with pacemakers to carry him through the first half of the race. At 250 meters to go, the pacemakers peeled off. Kerr was alone. He passed every checkpoint faster than El Guerrouj had 27 years ago. When he crossed the line in 3:42.66, the crowd understood immediately what they had witnessed. Six other runners in the same race set personal bests. Germany's Robert Farken ran a German national record of 3:46.82. Kerr had lifted the whole field.

Kerr is the seventh British athlete to hold the mile world record and the first since Steve Cram in 1985. "If I am to leave my mark on this sport as a British legend, following in the footsteps of the legends behind me," he said, "I have to put in those performances." He had said he would. He did. Read the full story.

Emma Meline was five years old and seemingly healthy when a rash and swelling on her leg led to a diagnosis that changed everything. Four days before Christmas 2025, her family learned she had aplastic anemia, a rare and potentially fatal condition in which bone marrow stops producing blood cells. The only real hope was a bone marrow transplant from a perfectly matched donor. That donor turned out to be her younger sister Lucy, who is two.

When Lucy was told what the procedure would involve, she didn't hesitate. During the blood draw to confirm she was a match, she told everyone around her: "I'm being brave for Emma." On February 17, 2026, doctors destroyed Emma's failing bone marrow with targeted chemotherapy and replaced it with Lucy's. On March 11, mother Amanda brought Emma home.

At 100 days post-transplant, there has been no recurrence. The procedure is considered a complete success. "She's realizing that Lucy saved her life," said Amanda, "and they have that bond. That's so incredible." Read the full story.

In the 1960s, surveys off the coast of Benin in West Africa flagged the presence of what might be a reef system along the Gulf of Guinea. Then nothing. No follow-up, no footage, no confirmation. For decades the scientific consensus was that whatever had been there was almost certainly dead — bleached out, smothered by sediment, gone. Gérard Zinzindohoué at the Institute of Halieutic and Oceanographic Research in Cotonou decided to go and look.

His team used modern sonar to survey 7 miles of seabed, then deployed an underwater drone equipped with the National Geographic Exploration Technology Lab's Deep Sea Camera System. What came back stopped them cold. Eight types of coral. Eight species of fish including golden African snappers, Guinean angelfish, three-banded butterflyfish, and West African goatfish. A mesophotic coral ecosystem — light-limited, deeper than shallow reefs — teeming with life on the Gulf of Guinea continental shelf, the first ever confirmed there.

"It was a mix of excitement and disbelief," said Zinzindohoué. "It feels like we have only just started to read an archive that has been there for a very long time." Historical reports suggest there may be up to 24 miles of reef running parallel to the coast. The paper is published in Frontiers in Marine Science. Read the full story.

In 2008, a researcher in the Congo Basin spotted something unfamiliar through the trees and managed a partial photograph. The animal had black fur, a distinctive face, and striking orange lips. It was filed away as interesting and largely forgotten. Ten years later, in 2018, a much clearer image emerged from Lomami National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Scientists began to take it seriously.

What followed was years of genetic, anatomical, and acoustic analysis confirming what the photographs suggested: this was a species no one had formally described before. Colobus congoensis, known locally as Likweli, diverged from the black colobus monkey four to five million years ago. It weighs about 15 pounds, smaller than its closest relatives, with light-reflecting fur, dramatically long black facial hairs, large folded ears, and those unmistakable orange lips. Between 2018 and 2022, researchers recorded 114 sightings across a range of roughly 900 square miles. Only 8 of the 52 nearby villages had ever seen one.

"This discovery is both exciting and deeply personal," said Junior Amboko, Congolese scientist and co-corresponding author. The study is published in PLOS ONE. Scientists are recommending an Endangered listing given the animal's small range and limited sightings. It is only the fifth new monkey species identified in Africa in 75 years. Read the full story.

🧬 Global: Oxford University researchers found that daily spermidine supplements helped older adults build significantly stronger vaccine protection in a double-blind randomized trial, reducing signs of immune cell aging and improving antibody response in adults over 65. Spermidine occurs naturally in wheat germ, mushrooms, and aged cheese.

🔬 Sweden: Scientists at Umeå University have developed a fully human antibody that halted both the growth and spread of aggressive prostate cancer in preclinical models through a novel mechanism that may also reduce side effects compared to existing treatments.

🦠 Global: Scientists investigating how flu viruses replicate inside cells accidentally discovered that H3N2 and H1N1 use completely different strategies to enter human cells, finding that blocking one key protein stops H3N2 entirely and opening a new class of antiviral drug targets.

🌿 Global: A Tulane University analysis of 40 years of satellite data has found that mangrove forests are no longer in net global decline, with gains outpacing losses for 16 years, driven by natural recolonization of abandoned shrimp farms and a cumulative net loss of just 1% since the 1980s.

🔬 Global: Scientists at Harvard's Wyss Institute have recreated inflammatory bowel disease on a lab chip using patient-derived cells and discovered that fibroblasts, not immune cells, are the primary drivers of inflammation and gut barrier damage, a finding that could finally unlock new treatments for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis

On July 22, 1996, Comedy Central debuted a new late-night program called The Daily Show. Co-created by Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg, it was initially hosted by Craig Kilborn before Jon Stewart took over in 1999 and transformed it into one of the most influential television programs of its era. At its peak, The Daily Show reached more young viewers than any traditional news broadcast, won two Peabody Awards and more than 20 Emmy Awards, and launched the careers of Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Ed Helms, Rob Corddry, John Oliver, and Lewis Black, among others.

What Stewart and his writers built was something genuinely new: political and media criticism delivered through comedy, willing to call out both parties and both sides of the media establishment equally. Critics dismissed it as fake news. Audiences understood that the fakeness was the point. When Stewart testified before Congress in 2010 on behalf of 9/11 first responders, the program's reach beyond comedy became undeniable. Thirty years on, its alumni run late-night television on both sides of the Atlantic.

Other notable July 22 events:

1793: Alexander Mackenzie became the first person on record to cross North America overland, 233 years ago today, completing a journey from Fort Chipewyan in present-day Alberta to the Pacific Ocean through what is now British Columbia — the first transcontinental crossing north of Mexico.

1933: Wiley Post completed the first solo flight around the world, 93 years ago today, landing the Winnie Mae back in New York having covered 15,596 miles in just under 8 days, 16 hours, and 49 minutes.

1796: General Moses Cleveland founded the settlement that would become Cleveland, Ohio, 230 years ago today, on the southern shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, naming it after himself before promptly leaving and never returning.

1997: The second span of the Bluewater Bridge linking Sarnia, Ontario with Port Huron, Michigan opened, 29 years ago today, completing the twin-span crossing of the St. Clair River designed by Polish-American engineer Ralph Modjeski and making it the second busiest crossing on the US-Canada border.

— Theodore Roosevelt

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:

🧬 Reading Your Genome at Birth: Several countries are trialling programs that sequence a newborn's entire genome at birth, identifying genetic risk factors for hundreds of conditions early enough to intervene before symptoms ever appear.

🔬 Cancer Treatments That Only Hit Their Target: Targeted alpha therapy uses alpha-particle emitting isotopes attached to molecules that seek out cancer cells specifically, destroying tumors with extraordinary precision while leaving surrounding tissue largely unaffected, with several treatments now in late-stage clinical trials.

🌍 Restoring Land From Space: Satellite monitoring combined with drone-assisted seeding is enabling land restoration at scales impossible with manual planting, with programs in Kenya, Brazil, and Pakistan now restoring millions of hectares of degraded land every year.

🧠 Light That Lifts Depression: Transcranial photobiomodulation, shining near-infrared light through the skull to stimulate brain tissue, is showing early clinical promise for treatment-resistant depression with no serious reported side effects, offering a potential new tool for people who haven't responded to medication.

🔭 Planets Survive the Death of Their Stars: Astronomers have confirmed that planets can outlast their own sun, with several intact planetary systems discovered orbiting white dwarfs, suggesting that habitable zones may persist long after a star like ours burns out.

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