Two years ago, Mexico was a war zone of militarized drug cartels that led the world in murdered journalists, killed over 400 police officers annually, and assassinated more than 30 candidates and nominees to office. Its cities were among the most dangerous in the world. It’s different now. The murder rate is down to half…

Median rents in the US have been falling for four years now, and have returned to their longterm trend line from before the pandemic sent them through the … roof. This is according to surveys of asking rents by Apartment List. After inflation, the drops would be even steeper. The cost of housing has been…

For decades, policy wonks have assumed that longer life expectancies have a dark side – longer old ages of poor health, diminished capacity, and high medical bills. Better than the alternative certainly … mostly. But a costly burden on the Medicare system. A new study looks closely and sees a different story. A deep dive…

In a major sign of economic ambition in sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia is building what will be one of the world’s largest airports – a little bigger than Hartsfield in Atlanta. It is aimed at competing with Dubai and Istanbul as inter-continental hubs, as well as facilitating intra-Africa travel. In a related sign of growth, a…

The threats posed by artificial intelligence range from the local – via the spread of power-hungry data centers – to the existential – as industry insiders warn that AI agents could wipe out humanity within a decade. Then there’s the jobs. AI’s very promise of a productivity supercharge across the whole economy raises the specter…

The world’s roads have long been deadly places. For Americans from ages 1 to 44, traffic was for decades the leading cause of death. But since 2011, traffic deaths globally have fallen 21 percent – even as the number of vehicles has doubled. Behind the change are shifts from more seatbelts and motorcycle helmets to…

As of sometime last year, for the first time since 1919, coal was dethroned as the world’s biggest producer of electricity – overtaken by renewable energy sources.  Those clean-energy sources are all growing. For years, wind has dominated the category, and it is still growing solidly. But solar blew past it last year like a…

The official numbers are in: the violent crime rate in America last year – from murders to muggings to carjackings – was the lowest since the FBI began counting in 1936. The drop from the previous year was the biggest single-year decrease in violent crime on record. And this followed major decreases in each of…

It may feel like an anti-immigrant moment in the US as masked ICE agents sweep American streets and workplaces for people who entered illegally or otherwise lack full legal resident status. President Trump’s most popular issue remains his get-tough immigration policy. But immigrants themselves didn’t get the memo. In a recent Gallup World Poll, the…

World hunger is back on a downward trend, after progress began stalling in the 2010s then actually worsened around the pandemic. The number of undernourished people has dropped year by year since 2022, after first stalling upward around the pandemic. The share globally fell to 7.8 percent in 2025, from 8.1 percent in 2024, and…