WHO and Africa CDC Allocate 70,000 Ebola Vaccine Doses to DRC Amid Bundibugyo Virus Outbreak
The International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision has released 70,000 doses of Ervebo vaccine to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including 20,000 for a Phase 3 clinical trial testing the vaccine's efficacy against the Bundibugyo virus — a species of ebolavirus for which no licensed vaccine yet exists.
2026 Kavli Prize Laureates: Twistronics, Milky Way Archaeology, and Local Protein Synthesis in Neurons
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced ten laureates across astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience, honouring the discovery that the Milky Way was built through hierarchical galactic mergers, the founding of the field of twistronics, and the revelation that neurons manufacture proteins locally to enable brain plasticity.
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79th World Health Assembly Adopts 13 Resolutions on Health Architecture Reform, Pharmacovigilance, and Precision Medicine
Meeting in Geneva from 18 to 23 May 2026 under the theme 'Reshaping global health: a shared responsibility,' WHO Member States adopted landmark resolutions on global health architecture reform, the first revision of the health workforce recruitment code in 16 years, AI-enabled pharmacovigilance, and equitable access to precision medicine.
2026 Breakthrough Prize Honours Gene Therapy Pioneers, CRISPR Sickle Cell Discoverers, and Muon g-2 Precision Measurement
Six $3 million prizes were awarded at the 2026 Breakthrough Prize ceremony in Los Angeles, recognising the first FDA-approved gene therapy for inherited blindness, the discovery enabling the first CRISPR-based medicine, the identification of the leading genetic cause of ALS, and the most precise measurement of the muon's magnetic moment.
Gerd Faltings Awarded 2026 Abel Prize for Resolving the Mordell and Lang Conjectures in Arithmetic Geometry
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the 2026 Abel Prize to Gerd Faltings of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, recognising his introduction of powerful tools in arithmetic geometry and his resolution of diophantine conjectures that had stood unresolved for over six decades.
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China's EAST Tokamak Shatters Decades-Old Plasma Density Limit in Fusion Breakthrough
Researchers at China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak have sustained stable plasma at densities 1.3 to 1.65 times the Greenwald limit, overturning a 40-year empirical ceiling and opening a pathway to higher-output fusion reactors. Results were published in Science Advances on 1 January 2026.
Science Magazine Names Renewable Energy's Unstoppable Growth as 2025 Breakthrough of the Year
For the first time, solar and wind power generated more electricity globally than coal, and all growth in global electricity demand was met entirely by new renewable capacity. Science magazine selected this historic tipping point as the most significant scientific advance of 2025.
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WHO Launches Unified Strategic Plan for Coronavirus Threat Management Through 2030
The World Health Organization released a five-year strategic plan on December 2, 2025, transitioning from emergency COVID-19 response to integrated, long-term management of all coronavirus threats including MERS and future novel pathogens.
WHO Faces Largest Workforce Reduction in Its History as Funding Crisis Deepens
The World Health Organization is cutting over 2,000 positions — nearly a quarter of its workforce — by mid-2026 as it confronts a 21% budget reduction driven by the withdrawal of United States funding and broader donor retrenchment. Director-General Tedros has framed the cuts as a strategic prioritization exercise.
WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2025 Records First Decline in Cases and Deaths Since Pandemic
The WHO's annual tuberculosis report, released on 12 November 2025, confirms that global TB incidence and mortality fell in 2024 for the first time since COVID-19 disrupted health systems, with 10.7 million new cases and 1.23 million deaths representing declines of 2% and 3% respectively.
Vera C. Rubin Observatory Transitions from Construction to Operations Ahead of Decade-Long Sky Survey
On 25 October 2025, the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile marked its formal handover from construction to operations, concluding a multi-decade development effort and clearing the path for the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) scheduled to begin in early 2026.
2025 Nobel Prizes Recognise Quantum Circuits, Metal-Organic Frameworks, and Immune Tolerance Discoveries
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honoured discoveries spanning macroscopic quantum mechanics, porous molecular architecture, and the regulatory T cells that prevent autoimmune disease — work with implications for quantum computing, carbon capture, and immunotherapy.
Amended International Health Regulations Enter Into Force, Introducing New Pandemic Emergency Alert Level
On 19 September 2025, the amended International Health Regulations (IHR) entered into force, introducing a new 'pandemic emergency' alert tier, mandating National IHR Authorities, and strengthening provisions for equitable access to medical products — the most significant revision to the global health rules since 2005.
2025 Lasker Awards Honour Cystic Fibrosis Therapy Pioneers, Cellular Transport Discoveries, and Bacterial Cell Biology Leadership
The Lasker Foundation announced its 2025 awards on 11 September 2025, recognising six scientists across three categories: basic research on low-complexity protein domains, clinical development of triple-drug therapy for cystic fibrosis, and a lifetime of achievement in bacterial cell biology and national science leadership.
WHO Lifts Mpox Global Emergency Declaration After Sustained Decline in Cases Across Africa
On 5 September 2025, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accepted the Emergency Committee's advice that the mpox upsurge no longer constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, citing sustained declines in cases and deaths in the DRC and other affected countries.
NASA-Funded ATLAS Telescope Discovers 3I/ATLAS, the Third Confirmed Interstellar Object to Visit Our Solar System
On 1 July 2025, the NASA-funded ATLAS survey telescope in Chile detected a comet on a hyperbolic trajectory from interstellar space — only the third such visitor ever confirmed. Designated 3I/ATLAS, the object offered astronomers an unprecedented extended observation window of material from another planetary system.
Vera C. Rubin Observatory Reveals First Light Images, Opening a New Era in Sky Survey Astronomy
The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory unveiled its first images on June 23, 2025, capturing millions of stars and galaxies in just over 10 hours of observation with its 3.2-gigapixel LSST Camera, heralding a decade of discovery ahead of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
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Africa CDC and WHO Issue Third Reaffirmation of Mpox Emergency as Cases Surge Across 19 African Nations
In June 2025, Africa CDC and WHO jointly extended the mpox public health emergency for a third time, citing over 148,000 suspected cases across the continent, the emergence of Sierra Leone as a new epicentre, and confirmed cases in 2025 already surpassing the entire 2024 total.
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World Health Assembly Adopts Historic Pandemic Agreement After Three Years of Negotiation
Member States of the World Health Organization formally adopted by consensus the world's first Pandemic Agreement on 20 May 2025, culminating more than three years of intensive negotiations aimed at addressing the gaps and inequities exposed by COVID-19.
World Health Day 2025: WHO Launches Year-Long Campaign on Maternal and Newborn Health
With 260,000 women dying from pregnancy or childbirth each year and over 2 million babies dying in their first month of life, WHO's 'Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures' campaign calls for urgent global action to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths.
Breakthrough Prize 2025 Honours GLP-1 Pioneers, Gene-Editing Innovators, and CERN's Large Hadron Collider Collaborations
The 'Oscars of Science' awarded six $3 million prizes at its annual Los Angeles ceremony, recognising the scientists behind GLP-1 diabetes and obesity drugs, base and prime gene-editing technologies, multiple sclerosis breakthroughs, and 13,508 researchers at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
ACM Turing Award Honours Reinforcement Learning Pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton
The Association for Computing Machinery named Andrew G. Barto and Richard S. Sutton as recipients of the 2024 A.M. Turing Award for developing the conceptual and algorithmic foundations of reinforcement learning — a core technology underpinning modern AI systems from ChatGPT to autonomous vehicles.
WHO Launches US$1.5 Billion Health Emergency Appeal as 305 Million Face Unprecedented Global Health Crises
The World Health Organization called for US$1.5 billion to address 42 ongoing health emergencies across the globe, including 17 Grade 3 crises, as conflict, climate change, epidemics, and displacement converge to create the largest humanitarian health challenge in modern memory.
El Capitan: World's Fastest Supercomputer Dedicated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory formally dedicated El Capitan, the first exascale supercomputer built for the National Nuclear Security Administration, achieving 1.742 exaflops and marking a new era in high-performance computing for national security and scientific research.
2024 Nobel Prizes Honour AI Pioneers, MicroRNA Discovery, and Protein Science Breakthroughs
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet recognised foundational work in machine learning, gene regulation by microRNA, and computational protein design and structure prediction, marking a year where artificial intelligence took centre stage across multiple scientific disciplines.
Africa CDC Issues First-Ever Public Health Emergency of Continental Security Over Mpox Outbreak
On 13 August 2024, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared mpox a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security — the agency's first such declaration since its founding in 2017 — as a novel clade Ib strain spread from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to neighbouring countries.
Nobel Prize in Medicine 2023 Honours Karikó and Weissman for mRNA Vaccine Discoveries That Enabled COVID-19 Vaccines
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 — a breakthrough published in 2005, fifteen years before the pandemic.
WHO Declares COVID-19 No Longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern
On 5 May 2023, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that COVID-19 no longer constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, ending the highest level of global alert that had been in place since 30 January 2020 — while warning that the virus remains a global health threat.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022 Awarded to Svante Pääbo for Discoveries on Ancient Hominin Genomes
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet honoured Svante Pääbo for sequencing the Neanderthal genome, discovering the Denisovans, and founding the discipline of paleogenomics — revealing that extinct hominin DNA lives on in modern humans.
WHO Declares Mpox Outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern
Overriding a split Emergency Committee, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the multi-country mpox outbreak a PHEIC on 23 July 2022, triggering coordinated international response as cases exceeded 14,500 across 72 countries.
NASA Reveals James Webb Space Telescope's First Full-Colour Images, Opening a New Era in Astronomy
On 12 July 2022, NASA, ESA, and CSA released the first operational science images from the James Webb Space Telescope, including the deepest infrared view of the cosmos ever captured, stellar nurseries in the Carina Nebula, and water vapour in an exoplanet's atmosphere.
Nobel Prize in Medicine 2021 Honors Discovery of Temperature and Touch Receptors
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of how the nervous system converts physical stimuli — heat, cold, and mechanical pressure — into electrical signals. Their identification of TRPV1, TRPM8, and PIEZO ion channels solved a fundamental mystery in sensory biology.
FDA Authorizes First COVID-19 Vaccine for Emergency Use in the United States
On 11 December 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration granted Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the first COVID-19 vaccine authorized for use in the United States. The decision was based on Phase 3 trial data showing 95% efficacy across approximately 44,000 participants, marking a historic milestone in the pandemic response.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 Awarded to Charpentier and Doudna for CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of the CRISPR-Cas9 genetic scissors, a tool that has revolutionized molecular life sciences and opened new possibilities for treating inherited diseases. The award marked the first time a science Nobel was given to two women alone.
Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 Honors Black Hole Discoveries by Penrose, Genzel, and Ghez
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics to Roger Penrose for proving black holes are a robust prediction of general relativity, and jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for discovering the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Ghez became the fourth woman ever to win the physics prize.
WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic as Cases Spread to 114 Countries
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization officially characterized the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic, citing alarming levels of spread, severity, and inaction. With over 118,000 cases across 114 countries and 4,291 deaths, the declaration marked a turning point in the global response to the coronavirus crisis.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 Awarded to Goodenough, Whittingham, and Yoshino for Lithium-Ion Battery Development
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries — the lightweight, rechargeable power source that laid the foundation for a wireless, fossil fuel-free society.
IPCC Special Report Warns 1.5°C Warming Limit Requires Unprecedented Global Action
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its landmark Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C on 8 October 2018, concluding that limiting warming to 1.5°C is still possible but requires rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes across all aspects of society.
Nobel Prize in Medicine 2018 Honors Allison and Honjo for Cancer Immunotherapy Breakthrough
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded the 2018 Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation, establishing an entirely new principle for cancer treatment.
WHO Releases ICD-11, Officially Classifying Gaming Disorder as a Mental Health Condition
The World Health Organization released the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases in June 2018, formally including gaming disorder as a diagnosable condition — a decision that sparked debate across the global health and gaming communities.