Hope Is A Verb - NewsFix - Aha! Mongolia. Crime Decline.

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Hold onto your hats - it's a big week of news including: the science behind Aha moments; top marks for global primary school education; cancer breakthroughs; more good news for the Amazon; Mongolia's ambitious conservation plan; crime declines in London and new hope for Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Check out our full coverage in this week's newsletter here. NewsFix is brought to you by ⁠Fix TheNews⁠. Hosted by Anthony Badolato, ⁠Hear That! ⁠ If you want to get in touch with the team, email [e-mail]

Welcome to NewsFix, your round-up of what's going right in the world in under five minutes. I'm Anthony Badolato and here's a glimpse of what's making news this week. The world reaches almost full attendance for primary school, the breakthrough that's spawning new hope for Australia's Great Barrier Reef, crime on the decline in London. Good news in the fight against cancer and scientists' big aha moment about, well, aha moments. All right, let's break it down.

A new report has given the world top marks for expanding access to education. A century ago, most kids never saw a classroom, but today, nine out of ten are enrolled in primary school and the gender gap has almost disappeared. Enrollment for boys at 91% and girls at 89%. For the first time in human history, almost every child on earth is starting life inside a classroom. This means that the future will be educated, and that could change everything.

And did you know that every year, the Great Barrier Reef transforms into an underwater snow globe as tens of millions of coral larvae drift through the water during a massive spawning event? Well, it's a spectacular sight, but unfortunately, most of them end up floating off into the big blue. However, researchers have found a way to give those lost larvae a second chance by loading them into floating seed boxes and deploying them over parts of the reef hit hardest by bleaching. It's still early days, but the technique is shaping up to be one of the most scalable restoration tools ever tested. And there's more good news for the Amazon this week, with Columbia declaring its entire Amazon biome, that's 42% of its territory, as a reserve. The protections will block oil and mining requests, essentially halting any new large-scale extraction. The lungs of the earth can now breathe a little easier.

Meanwhile, Mongolia has launched one of the world's most ambitious land protection plans. The 15-year, $200 million conservation deal will expand protected areas to 30% of the country. But the best bit is that this plan is not just about fencing off land. it's working with the country's nomadic herding communities to reverse overgrazing and protect some of the world's most carbon-rich grasslands and peatlands. That's what I call a win for people and planet. And as fossil fuels continue to fall in China and India, South Korea, one of the world's largest coal users, has pledged to stop building new coal plants and to retire 40 of its 60 existing

units by 2040. Looks like coal is officially running out of road. The clock might also be ticking for terminal cancer. In the United Kingdom, scientists are conducting the first trials of cancer-stopping vaccines, and also blood tests that spot tumours way before scans do. And across the Atlantic, researchers in the US are trialling immunotherapies, CAR-T, targeted radiation and engineered viruses that are offering new hope for once-lived. cancer. If you zoom out to the big picture, what's happening in these labs could transform cancer from a death sentence to a treatable condition. And the next time you see a headline

about escalating crime, just remember that London has recorded its lowest homicide rate in over 20 years, with a 60% drop since 2003. And speaking of declines, the number of people without official proof of identity has also dropped by 200 million worldwide since 2017. Having a proof of ID opens up more than just access to nightclubs. It's one of the fastest ways to expand opportunity and reduce economic exclusion. And finally, you know that nice feeling when your brain suddenly comes up with an answer? Ding! Well, scientists have pinpointed how those elusive aha moments happen by scanning volunteers as they deciphered tricky hidden images.

Turns out, the moment they cracked the picture, three brain regions fired in perfect sink, the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. It's basically a neural fireworks show. That's it from me this week. If you want to dive into more good news, check out this week's newsletter at fixthenews.com. The story about impossible caves and lost worlds in Vietnam has to be seen to be believed. the photo is amazing. And tune in to Hope is a verb next week

for the final episode of season four. It's a good one.