Three pieces of good news this morning: the Amazon just posted its quietest year for deforestation since 2013; an advanced nuclear startup in Texas split its first atoms in a reactor built in under a year; and in eastern Congo, the first prisoners have come home under the Doha peace process.
Forests - The Amazon just had its quietest year for deforestation since 2013
Brazil’s space agency INPE recorded about 2,874 square kilometers of deforestation alerts in the Amazon between August 2025 and July 2026 — roughly 36% less than the year before, and more than half below the ten-year average. It is the lowest annual tally since 2012-13.
Officials credit stepped-up enforcement, sustained field operations, and stronger protection of Indigenous territories. Researchers are careful to note that forest degradation from fire and selective logging remains a serious problem, but the headline number is moving firmly in the right direction — and has been for three years running.
Forests · Mongabay
Energy - A nuclear startup split its first atoms in a Texas reactor built in under a year
Oklo sustained a nuclear chain reaction for the first time at its Groves Isotope Test Reactor in Caldwell County, Texas — a facility the company built on private land in less than a year. The test unit will make medical isotopes rather than electricity, but it proves out Oklo’s liquid-sodium-cooled design and its path toward 75 MW power reactors.
The wider story is the pace: Oklo is the fifth of ten companies in the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program to reach criticality in the past two months. After decades in which advanced nuclear timelines only ever slipped, they are suddenly shortening.
Energy · Canary Media
Waging Peace - In eastern Congo, the first prisoners come home under the Doha peace process
The Congolese government handed 15 prisoners over to the M23 movement in Rutshuru Territory — the first documented detainee release under the Qatar-mediated peace framework for eastern DRC. The International Committee of the Red Cross facilitated the transfer, bringing families a step closer to reunion after long separations.
Mediators in Doha described the release as a confidence-building measure and said they expect further steps between the two sides. In a conflict where trust has been the scarcest resource, an exchange like this is how peace processes become real: not with signatures, but with people walking home.
Waging Peace · Al Jazeera
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