5 Birds Left, Now 350 in New Zealand: 10 Good Things That Didn’t Make the News This Year

A UN report released on July 21, 2026, estimates that about 645 million people, 7.8% of humanity, faced hunger in 2025. That is nearly 14 million fewer than in 2024 and 43 million fewer than in 2022, the third yearly drop in a row.

Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean made the steadiest gains. Africa is still the hardest hit, with about 309 million people going hungry.

Donated platelets help blood clot. Today they are kept at room temperature and last only about seven days, so many expire before anyone can use them. In a trial of 1,000 heart-surgery patients at 27 hospitals in the US and Australia, published in JAMA in August 2026, platelets chilled for up to 21 days controlled bleeding as well as the usual ones.

The researchers say chilling could triple their shelf life, from 7 to 21 days, so fewer donations would go to waste.

Since July 31, 2026, new EU rules let people ask manufacturers to repair household and electronic products such as washing machines, vacuum cleaners, phones and tablets, for free or at a reasonable price and within a reasonable time.

If a buyer chooses a repair instead of a replacement while the product is still under legal guarantee, the guarantee grows by at least 12 months. Makers must also sell spare parts at a reasonable price, and an EU-wide online repair finder will open in 2027.

By the 1970s, only five black robins were left in the world, on New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, and just one breeding pair, known as Old Blue and Old Yellow. A breeding program had other bird species raise the robins’ eggs, and the population has grown to about 350 adults.

In September, the black robin won New Zealand’s Bird of the Year after a record 105,000 votes. The tiny all-black bird is still classed as threatened and lives on two pest-free nature reserves about 500 miles east of the mainland.

On Sept. 8, 2026, Papua New Guinea began vaccinating girls aged 9 to 14 against HPV, the virus behind more than 95% of cervical cancer. One dose is enough, and it is free.

The first phase aims to reach about 60,000 girls in the capital and Central Province, and then other provinces. Cervical illness is the most serious health threat to women in the country, and roughly 650 women are lost to it each year.

China’s National Energy Administration said on July 30, 2026, that coal made 49.7% of the country’s electricity from January to June, the first time its share has fallen below half. Renewables supplied 41.2%.

By the end of June, China had 1.95 billion kilowatts of wind and solar power installed, 16.8% more than a year earlier. Coal plants still run, but a growing share of the power now comes from wind, sun and water.

On Sept. 23, 2026, the HALO Trust announced that it had finished its humanitarian landmine clearance in Kosovo, 27 years after its teams arrived in 1999. From 1999 to 2024, mines injured 585 people, three-quarters of them in the first two years.

The cleared land now holds a rebuilt airport that serves almost five million passengers a year, a new motorway, irrigated farms and hiking trails in the mountains above the city of Peja.

A new California law, the CARS Act, took effect on Oct. 1, 2026. People who buy a used car priced at $50,000 or less now get three days to return it for a refund, and the dealer may charge a fee for taking it back.

Dealers must also show the full price up front and can no longer sell add-ons that give the buyer nothing of value. The idea is to give people time to catch problems a short test drive can miss.

From Sept. 1, Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands between England and France, expanded its marine protected areas from 6.5% to 21.7% of its territorial waters. Trawling and dredging are not allowed inside them.

The new zones protect sensitive, biodiverse shallow reefs, and the island’s government says they will also help keep fish stocks healthy for local fishers. It drew up the plan together with Jersey and French fishing groups and environmental organizations.

In late July 2026, UNESCO added Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp to its World Heritage List. It is the first natural site in the US to make the list in more than 30 years, and the first World Heritage site in Georgia.

The swamp covers more than 400,000 acres and is the world’s largest lowland freshwater peatland in the subtropics. More than 1,270 species of plants and animals live there, including alligators and threatened species such as the red-cockaded woodpecker.