Anyone

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/41530810

Migrants in Europe stand by the basic values of democracy, according to a new study by the University of Mannheim in Germany.

“Our results show: immigrants support the core democratic principles to a similarly high degree as people without a migratory background,” says Professor Marc Helbling, sociologist at the University of Mannheim focusing on Migration and Integration and Executive Board member of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES).

You find the download link for the study here: Liberal democratic values among immigrants in Europe: Socialisation and adaptation processes

Helbling and his team analyzed data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the SVR’s [Expert Council on Integration and Migration's] German Integration Barometer.

High support for democratic basic values all over Europe

The results of the study show that both migrants from democratic countries of origin and those from authoritarian countries are highly supportive of core democratic norms, such as free elections, equal rights, minority protection, and independent courts. On the ESS scale from 0 to 10, the mean level of support for these values throughout Europe is at 8.56 for migrants. For non-migrants, the level of support is at 8.48. For Germany in particular, the Integration Barometer data with a scale from 0 to 3 show very similar values, more specifically 2.67 and 2.66. “These, in all cases, very high mean values hardly differ between the individual groups of people,” Helbling explains.

Experience with democracy in country of origin has a positive effect

The research team found a small but statistically significant difference between immigrants from highly authoritarian countries, such as Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, or Iran, on the one hand and migrants from more democratic countries, such as India, Turkey, or Romania, on the other. “People who have lived in a very authoritarian system for many years tend to develop slightly weaker democratic attitudes. Conversely, people who have lived in more democratic countries for a long time show a bit more support for democracy. However, the difference is really small,” Helbling explains. “In principle, democratic basic beliefs are shared across cultural and national borders and, as a rule, solidified with increasing democratic life experience,” the social scientist sums up.

Problematic minorities within all groups

Despite the overall high level of support for democracy, there is a small minority among immigrants who reject it. According to the researchers, the share of this group accounts for a medium single-digit percentage. This value is almost exactly the same as the one for people without a migratory background, Helbling emphasizes: “Our analyses show that anti-democratic attitudes are not specifically a migration-related phenomenon. There are critical minorities within all population groups.”

...

Migrants in Europe stand by the basic values of democracy, according to a new study by the University of Mannheim in Germany.

“Our results show: immigrants support the core democratic principles to a similarly high degree as people without a migratory background,” says Professor Marc Helbling, sociologist at the University of Mannheim focusing on Migration and Integration and Executive Board member of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES).

You find the download link for the study here: Liberal democratic values among immigrants in Europe: Socialisation and adaptation processes

Helbling and his team analyzed data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the SVR’s [Expert Council on Integration and Migration's] German Integration Barometer.

High support for democratic basic values all over Europe

The results of the study show that both migrants from democratic countries of origin and those from authoritarian countries are highly supportive of core democratic norms, such as free elections, equal rights, minority protection, and independent courts. On the ESS scale from 0 to 10, the mean level of support for these values throughout Europe is at 8.56 for migrants. For non-migrants, the level of support is at 8.48. For Germany in particular, the Integration Barometer data with a scale from 0 to 3 show very similar values, more specifically 2.67 and 2.66. “These, in all cases, very high mean values hardly differ between the individual groups of people,” Helbling explains.

Experience with democracy in country of origin has a positive effect

The research team found a small but statistically significant difference between immigrants from highly authoritarian countries, such as Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, or Iran, on the one hand and migrants from more democratic countries, such as India, Turkey, or Romania, on the other. “People who have lived in a very authoritarian system for many years tend to develop slightly weaker democratic attitudes. Conversely, people who have lived in more democratic countries for a long time show a bit more support for democracy. However, the difference is really small,” Helbling explains. “In principle, democratic basic beliefs are shared across cultural and national borders and, as a rule, solidified with increasing democratic life experience,” the social scientist sums up.

Problematic minorities within all groups

Despite the overall high level of support for democracy, there is a small minority among immigrants who reject it. According to the researchers, the share of this group accounts for a medium single-digit percentage. This value is almost exactly the same as the one for people without a migratory background, Helbling emphasizes: “Our analyses show that anti-democratic attitudes are not specifically a migration-related phenomenon. There are critical minorities within all population groups.”

...

Archived version

...

40% [of the investigated publications] were found to contain images with something wrong with them, as they describe in the latest edition of biology journal PLoS Biology. The erroneous images even appeared in top journals like Stroke.

...

Some of the problematic cases they discovered involved malicious intent, [the researchers] believe. The scale of the problems is too great for any other explanation, they also write in their article. [One researcher]: ‘Some authors had dozens of publications to their name with erroneous images.’ Wever adds: ‘Images that appeared multiple times were sometimes rotated, mirrored or otherwise edited.’ In other words, there is no way that happened by accident. Meanwhile, these issues being brought to light only led to a warning label (an expression of concern) or withdrawal of the article in one tenth of cases.

...

The findings of the Radboudumc researchers are not unique. The number of scientific articles that turn out to be partially or entirely fabricated is growing. This is partly because companies in countries such as Iran and China use this as a commercial model, the so-called paper mills. They write articles to order or sell authorships, for example via Telegram.

It is unclear whether the 243 problematic studies from the Nijmegen analysis are also products of paper mills. However, it is striking that five sixths of them came from China. Aquarius and Wever did not come across any problematic Dutch publications. One possible explanation put forward by the Nijmegen researchers in their PLoS article is that in China, researchers are under pressure to increase their research output to move up in international university rankings. And in a survey among hospital researchers in south-west China last year half indicated that they sometimes falsified research data.

'The first question you should ask about a publication is whether the study actually took place,' the researchers say.

...

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/40780164

Here is the study: HOW CHINA COLLATERALIZES (pdf)

The How China Collateralizes (HCC) report ... is the first comprehensive analysis of the secured lending practices of Chinese creditors in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). The investigation draws upon in-depth case studies and a new dataset of collateralized public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) loans from Chinese state-owned institutions to EMDEs. In total, the dataset captures 620 collateralized PPG debt transactions worth $418 billion in constant 2021 USD over a 22-year period. The report and the dataset are available for download.

Today, in conjunction with the release of How China Collateralizes, AidData has published a large cache of debt contracts—including loan, escrow account, mortgage, and debt restructuring agreements—between Chinese creditors and their overseas borrowers. In total, it has published 371 contracts between 19 Chinese creditors and 155 borrowers from 60 countries in an online repository. Digitized copies of the contracts can be accessed and searched by lender, borrower, sector, and contract clause at http://china-contracts.aiddata.org/.

...

It took the team of researchers nearly four years to make sense of the opaque and complex borrowing arrangements that are documented in the report. The obstacles that they faced were formidable. Despite recent advances in debt data sharing, few bilateral or commercial creditors publish their secured lending terms. Many seek confidentiality commitments from their borrowers, impeding disclosure. Chinese creditors are no exception. They do not publish detailed or comprehensive data about their collateralized PPG loan agreements with EMDE borrowers. Their security and escrow account agreements are even harder to obtain. Quasi-collateral structures present an additional challenge: revenue routing and restricted accounts are substantially easier to shield from public scrutiny than liens over physical assets. The same structures can also undermine fiscal autonomy, debt and revenue accountability, and macroeconomic surveillance.

...

The authors of the report made a number of unexpected findings.

“We were surprised to find that almost half of China’s PPG lending portfolio, or nearly $420 billion across 57 countries, is effectively collateralized—mostly with deposits in bank accounts abroad,” said Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “As security, Chinese lenders strongly prefer liquid assets—in particular, cash deposits in bank accounts located in China. They also want visibility and control over revenue streams.”

...

Foreign currency revenues deposited in bank accounts controlled by Chinese lenders secure approximately 80% of the collateralized lending volume in the new dataset. A typical security package supporting a Chinese PPG loan includes one or more restricted (escrow) accounts at banks located in China, funded by revenues from the borrowing country, bolstered by contract and property rights in the cash flows. In many cases, the deposit account is at the creditor bank, which gives them a high level of control over some of the borrower’s core revenue streams, as well as set-off rights under Chinese law.

...

The research team also found that collateral is often unrelated to the stated purpose of the loan. “We see Chinese lenders expanding and adapting standard market tools to make exceptionally risky loans safer,” said Anna Gelpern, a Georgetown Law Professor and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Instead of relying on infrastructure project assets and future revenues, which may never materialize, they seek access to established export proceeds. Exporters commit to route these proceeds through offshore bank accounts over the life of the loan, which gives creditors leverage in the relationship as well as a source of repayment.” The report notes that the World Bank and the IMF have recently raised concerns about “collateralization involving unrelated assets or revenues” and warned that it is “likely to create problems.”

...

According to the authors, commodity revenue sources vary by borrowing country, but typically draw on that country’s leading commodity export: oil in Angola, Iraq, Russia, Sudan, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of the Congo, Brazil, and Venezuela; gas in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Turkmenistan; gold in Kazakhstan; copper and cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; bauxite in Guinea; platinum and tobacco in Zimbabwe; cocoa in Ghana; and sesame in Ethiopia. Oil proceeds dominate, accounting for 79% of the commodity-backed lending volume in the dataset.

“Our research reveals a previously undocumented pattern of revenue ring-fencing, where a significant share of commodity export receipts never reaches the exporting countries,” said Brad Parks, Executive Director of William & Mary’s AidData research lab. “When the revenues from a country’s principal source of foreign currency secure its debts to a single creditor, unsecured creditors are effectively subordinated and the risk of a destructive collateral ‘arms race’ increases.”

...

The new study also reveals previously unknown details about collateralization mechanisms in China’s PPG lending portfolio in the developing world. Chinese creditors are far more likely to obtain de facto control over revenue streams and cash holdings (“quasi-collateral”) than formal security interests (liens, pledges, charges, or assignments) in the assets. Quasi-collateral can have the same economic effect as a formal security interest, but it comes with few or no public notice requirements for debtors or creditors.

Over time, the sums that accumulate in offshore accounts to secure public infrastructure debts can be very large, up to billions of US dollars. Political oversight institutions in borrowing countries—such as supreme audit institutions and public accounts committees within parliamentary bodies—have found it difficult to monitor encumbered revenue streams and cash holdings in China.

The implications for EMDEs are far-reaching. “These transactions put those tasked with fiscal governance and debt crisis management in borrower countries in difficult situations,” said Paulina Kintzinger of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “Secrecy makes it more difficult to untangle creditor claims in times of distress and default, and can undermine both fiscal autonomy and macroeconomic surveillance.”

...

Chinese lenders also use cash collateral pools that simultaneously secure multiple debts, creating a web of interconnected transactions and risk transmission pathways. A default on any one of these debts can trigger creditor enforcement against the shared collateral, irrespective of the payment status of other obligations, and reverberate across the government’s debt stock and beyond.

For nearly half of China’s collateralized PPG loans in EMDEs, the same asset or pool of assets secures more than one loan. The transaction structure fuses elements of pre-export finance, traditionally used to support commodity exporters, with public infrastructure finance. In the combined structure a pool of established export revenues serves as collateral to de-risk multiple unrelated domestic projects in developing countries.

According to Omar Haddad of Oxford University, “China Eximbank developed a replicable and scalable cross-collateralization structure in Angola. That model was subsequently refined and adapted by a diverse group of Chinese creditors in a wide array of PPG lending operations in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Central Asia.”

...

Here is the study: HOW CHINA COLLATERALIZES (pdf)

The How China Collateralizes (HCC) report ... is the first comprehensive analysis of the secured lending practices of Chinese creditors in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). The investigation draws upon in-depth case studies and a new dataset of collateralized public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) loans from Chinese state-owned institutions to EMDEs. In total, the dataset captures 620 collateralized PPG debt transactions worth $418 billion in constant 2021 USD over a 22-year period. The report and the dataset are available for download.

Today, in conjunction with the release of How China Collateralizes, AidData has published a large cache of debt contracts—including loan, escrow account, mortgage, and debt restructuring agreements—between Chinese creditors and their overseas borrowers. In total, it has published 371 contracts between 19 Chinese creditors and 155 borrowers from 60 countries in an online repository. Digitized copies of the contracts can be accessed and searched by lender, borrower, sector, and contract clause at http://china-contracts.aiddata.org/.

...

It took the team of researchers nearly four years to make sense of the opaque and complex borrowing arrangements that are documented in the report. The obstacles that they faced were formidable. Despite recent advances in debt data sharing, few bilateral or commercial creditors publish their secured lending terms. Many seek confidentiality commitments from their borrowers, impeding disclosure. Chinese creditors are no exception. They do not publish detailed or comprehensive data about their collateralized PPG loan agreements with EMDE borrowers. Their security and escrow account agreements are even harder to obtain. Quasi-collateral structures present an additional challenge: revenue routing and restricted accounts are substantially easier to shield from public scrutiny than liens over physical assets. The same structures can also undermine fiscal autonomy, debt and revenue accountability, and macroeconomic surveillance.

...

The authors of the report made a number of unexpected findings.

“We were surprised to find that almost half of China’s PPG lending portfolio, or nearly $420 billion across 57 countries, is effectively collateralized—mostly with deposits in bank accounts abroad,” said Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “As security, Chinese lenders strongly prefer liquid assets—in particular, cash deposits in bank accounts located in China. They also want visibility and control over revenue streams.”

...

Foreign currency revenues deposited in bank accounts controlled by Chinese lenders secure approximately 80% of the collateralized lending volume in the new dataset. A typical security package supporting a Chinese PPG loan includes one or more restricted (escrow) accounts at banks located in China, funded by revenues from the borrowing country, bolstered by contract and property rights in the cash flows. In many cases, the deposit account is at the creditor bank, which gives them a high level of control over some of the borrower’s core revenue streams, as well as set-off rights under Chinese law.

...

The research team also found that collateral is often unrelated to the stated purpose of the loan. “We see Chinese lenders expanding and adapting standard market tools to make exceptionally risky loans safer,” said Anna Gelpern, a Georgetown Law Professor and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Instead of relying on infrastructure project assets and future revenues, which may never materialize, they seek access to established export proceeds. Exporters commit to route these proceeds through offshore bank accounts over the life of the loan, which gives creditors leverage in the relationship as well as a source of repayment.” The report notes that the World Bank and the IMF have recently raised concerns about “collateralization involving unrelated assets or revenues” and warned that it is “likely to create problems.”

...

According to the authors, commodity revenue sources vary by borrowing country, but typically draw on that country’s leading commodity export: oil in Angola, Iraq, Russia, Sudan, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of the Congo, Brazil, and Venezuela; gas in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Turkmenistan; gold in Kazakhstan; copper and cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; bauxite in Guinea; platinum and tobacco in Zimbabwe; cocoa in Ghana; and sesame in Ethiopia. Oil proceeds dominate, accounting for 79% of the commodity-backed lending volume in the dataset.

“Our research reveals a previously undocumented pattern of revenue ring-fencing, where a significant share of commodity export receipts never reaches the exporting countries,” said Brad Parks, Executive Director of William & Mary’s AidData research lab. “When the revenues from a country’s principal source of foreign currency secure its debts to a single creditor, unsecured creditors are effectively subordinated and the risk of a destructive collateral ‘arms race’ increases.”

...

The new study also reveals previously unknown details about collateralization mechanisms in China’s PPG lending portfolio in the developing world. Chinese creditors are far more likely to obtain de facto control over revenue streams and cash holdings (“quasi-collateral”) than formal security interests (liens, pledges, charges, or assignments) in the assets. Quasi-collateral can have the same economic effect as a formal security interest, but it comes with few or no public notice requirements for debtors or creditors.

Over time, the sums that accumulate in offshore accounts to secure public infrastructure debts can be very large, up to billions of US dollars. Political oversight institutions in borrowing countries—such as supreme audit institutions and public accounts committees within parliamentary bodies—have found it difficult to monitor encumbered revenue streams and cash holdings in China.

The implications for EMDEs are far-reaching. “These transactions put those tasked with fiscal governance and debt crisis management in borrower countries in difficult situations,” said Paulina Kintzinger of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “Secrecy makes it more difficult to untangle creditor claims in times of distress and default, and can undermine both fiscal autonomy and macroeconomic surveillance.”

...

Chinese lenders also use cash collateral pools that simultaneously secure multiple debts, creating a web of interconnected transactions and risk transmission pathways. A default on any one of these debts can trigger creditor enforcement against the shared collateral, irrespective of the payment status of other obligations, and reverberate across the government’s debt stock and beyond.

For nearly half of China’s collateralized PPG loans in EMDEs, the same asset or pool of assets secures more than one loan. The transaction structure fuses elements of pre-export finance, traditionally used to support commodity exporters, with public infrastructure finance. In the combined structure a pool of established export revenues serves as collateral to de-risk multiple unrelated domestic projects in developing countries.

According to Omar Haddad of Oxford University, “China Eximbank developed a replicable and scalable cross-collateralization structure in Angola. That model was subsequently refined and adapted by a diverse group of Chinese creditors in a wide array of PPG lending operations in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Central Asia.”

...

In Serbia, there is a word for a form of stubbornness that sees someone act out of spite or defiance rather than yield to the will of others: “inat.”

It’s something Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is showing remarkable levels of right now.

For almost a year, anti-government protests have roiled the Balkan nation. They intensified over summer 2025, culminating in angry clashes between students and police in August and September.

...

The immediate trigger for the ongoing unrest came in November 2024 with the deadly collapse of a train station canopy in Novi Sad, a city in northern Serbia.

Renovated with funding from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the canopy was one of many projects touted by Vučić’s government as evidence of its success in attracting foreign investment. The accident’s 16 deaths, however, served to sharpen questions about corruption, failures of oversight and government accountability.

Student protests gathered momentum through winter and into spring. One demonstration, on March 15, saw more than 300,000 people turn out in Belgrade. Activists have also employed civil disobedience tactics, like staging pop-up roadblocks in Serbian cities, to maintain pressure on the government.

...

In all this, Vučiċ has drawn on Kremlin talking points and an authoritarian playbook to distract attention away from his government’s practices. He and his allies cast the current protests not as a movement built on grassroots mobilization, but as the result of meddling by foreign agents.

In taking this authoritarian turn, Vučić invites critics to see parallels with Milošević, under whom the current president served in the 1990s as minister of information. Milošević, who died while on trial for war crimes, did much to inflame Serbian nationalism in the early 1990s and presided over the bloody wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. After Milošević’s ouster in the Bulldozer Revolution of 2000, Vučić spent a decade in opposition before returning to government in 2012.

...

Like Milošević in the late 1990s, Vučić seems to have underestimated the force of “inat” of the Serbian people. The Bulldozer Revolution that ousted Milošević was comprised of Serbs from a wide range of backgrounds, all determined to bring down an unpopular autocrat who put his own political survival above the needs of citizens.

They did so through grassroots mobilization and shared recognition that the true obstacle to prosperity was not foreign conspiracy, but Milošević himself. For all his individual stubbornness and spite, Milošević could not match the resilience and determination of Serbia’s citizens.

That same energy appears to be in the streets of Belgrade now, sustained by a new generation of citizens standing firm against the tactic of a different autocratic leader.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/38752499

Archived

A recent global survey by UNEP FI and Global Credit Data found that only 18 per cent of banks integrate climate risk into their internal ratings-based models [IRBs], which drive regulatory capital requirements. The study cites data gaps and methodological hurdles but does not explain the deeper problem: credit risk and climate risk models are built on fundamentally different logics.

[...]

Unless supervisors adapt, the IRB models of today will remain blind to one of the most significant credit risk drivers of this century.

Credit risk models are precision tools honed on the past. Under the IRB approach, they calculate probabilities of default, losses given default, and exposure at default using deep pools of historical data.

Defaults, losses and macroeconomic patterns from years gone by are fed into these systems, with the underlying belief that yesterday’s relationships will largely hold tomorrow. This backward-looking design is reinforced by strict regulatory requirements: every risk driver must be de facto statistically significant, rigorously validated, and continuously monitored.

The result is a disciplined, data-heavy framework built to forecast the next 12 months of creditworthiness — and nothing beyond.

Climate risk models speak a different language. They are not grounded in borrower default histories but in climate science and policy pathways. Instead of asking “what happened last year, and will it repeat?”, they ask “what could happen in the decades ahead and how prepared are we if it does?” — on the premise that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

"“A factory in a flood zone may operate for years without incident, then suffer catastrophic losses from a single storm wiping it out overnight.”"

[...]

Archived

A recent global survey by UNEP FI and Global Credit Data found that only 18 per cent of banks integrate climate risk into their internal ratings-based models [IRBs], which drive regulatory capital requirements. The study cites data gaps and methodological hurdles but does not explain the deeper problem: credit risk and climate risk models are built on fundamentally different logics.

[...]

Unless supervisors adapt, the IRB models of today will remain blind to one of the most significant credit risk drivers of this century.

Credit risk models are precision tools honed on the past. Under the IRB approach, they calculate probabilities of default, losses given default, and exposure at default using deep pools of historical data.

Defaults, losses and macroeconomic patterns from years gone by are fed into these systems, with the underlying belief that yesterday’s relationships will largely hold tomorrow. This backward-looking design is reinforced by strict regulatory requirements: every risk driver must be de facto statistically significant, rigorously validated, and continuously monitored.

The result is a disciplined, data-heavy framework built to forecast the next 12 months of creditworthiness — and nothing beyond.

Climate risk models speak a different language. They are not grounded in borrower default histories but in climate science and policy pathways. Instead of asking “what happened last year, and will it repeat?”, they ask “what could happen in the decades ahead and how prepared are we if it does?” — on the premise that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

"“A factory in a flood zone may operate for years without incident, then suffer catastrophic losses from a single storm wiping it out overnight.”"

[...]

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/38626464

The annual assessment by the Net Zero Tracker (NZT)—which reviews both the quantity and quality of global climate commitments—finds that 77% of global GDP is still covered by national net zero commitments.

Net Zero Stocktake 2025 assesses progress in setting and strengthening whole-economy net zero targets, and evaluates more than 4,000 entities on integrity criteria — essentially, whether plans and strategies contain the key components for deep decarbonisation.

The fifth annual report also examines how companies are integrating nature into their climate commitments.

Download Net Zero Stocktake 2025 (pdf - 2.7 MB)

Key findings:

• Of the 198 countries, 712 regions, 1,186 cities, and 1,987 publicly listed companies tracked, at least 1,935 now have net zero targets:

• 137 countries (up from 124 in 2020)

• 216 states and regions (up from 73)

• 337 cities (up from 115)

• 1,245 companies (up from 417).

• More than 50 countries, most of them lower-income, still have not expressed a public intention to achieve net zero, alongside nearly half of the 3,885 subnational governments and companies

• Among companies, more than 400 of the world’s largest publicly listed companies remain without any mitigation targets — concentrated in the US (30%) and China (42%). More than half of the 100 private companies tracked by the initiative still do not have a net zero target.

• Globally, more than two thirds (860 out of 1,245) of Forbes Global 2000 companies with net zero targets back their commitments up with plans.

Integrity of targets remains low across all entities: Only 7% of companies, 6.5% of regions, and 4% of cities meet all minimum procedural and substantive integrity requirements (the 'starting line') — though company and city progress has climbed modestly in the past year.

Many companies are turning to nature-based solutions such as such as reforestation or peatland restoration, yet only 4% have set dedicated targets, raising concerns about over-reliance on land-based approach.

...

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/38623559

One of the cruellest and most devastating diseases – Huntington's – has been successfully treated for the first time, say doctors.

The disease runs through families, relentlessly kills brain cells and resembles a combination of dementia, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease.

An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.

It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of "good quality life", Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News.

The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.

The first symptoms of Huntington's disease tend to appear in your 30s or 40s and is normally fatal within two decades – opening the possibility that earlier treatment could prevent symptoms from ever emerging.

Prof Tabrizi, director of the University College London Huntington's Disease Centre, described the results as "spectacular".

"We never in our wildest dreams would have expected a 75% slowing of clinical progression," she said.

None of the patients who have been treated are being identified, but one was medically retired and has returned to work. Others in the trial are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair.

Treatment is likely to be very expensive. However, this is a moment of real hope in a disease that hits people in their prime and devastates families.

...

The annual assessment by the Net Zero Tracker (NZT)—which reviews both the quantity and quality of global climate commitments—finds that 77% of global GDP is still covered by national net zero commitments.

Net Zero Stocktake 2025 assesses progress in setting and strengthening whole-economy net zero targets, and evaluates more than 4,000 entities on integrity criteria — essentially, whether plans and strategies contain the key components for deep decarbonisation.

The fifth annual report also examines how companies are integrating nature into their climate commitments.

Download Net Zero Stocktake 2025 (pdf - 2.7 MB)

Key findings:

• Of the 198 countries, 712 regions, 1,186 cities, and 1,987 publicly listed companies tracked, at least 1,935 now have net zero targets:

• 137 countries (up from 124 in 2020)

• 216 states and regions (up from 73)

• 337 cities (up from 115)

• 1,245 companies (up from 417).

• More than 50 countries, most of them lower-income, still have not expressed a public intention to achieve net zero, alongside nearly half of the 3,885 subnational governments and companies

• Among companies, more than 400 of the world’s largest publicly listed companies remain without any mitigation targets — concentrated in the US (30%) and China (42%). More than half of the 100 private companies tracked by the initiative still do not have a net zero target.

• Globally, more than two thirds (860 out of 1,245) of Forbes Global 2000 companies with net zero targets back their commitments up with plans.

Integrity of targets remains low across all entities: Only 7% of companies, 6.5% of regions, and 4% of cities meet all minimum procedural and substantive integrity requirements (the 'starting line') — though company and city progress has climbed modestly in the past year.

Many companies are turning to nature-based solutions such as such as reforestation or peatland restoration, yet only 4% have set dedicated targets, raising concerns about over-reliance on land-based approach.

...

One of the cruellest and most devastating diseases – Huntington's – has been successfully treated for the first time, say doctors.

The disease runs through families, relentlessly kills brain cells and resembles a combination of dementia, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease.

An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.

It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of "good quality life", Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News.

The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.

The first symptoms of Huntington's disease tend to appear in your 30s or 40s and is normally fatal within two decades – opening the possibility that earlier treatment could prevent symptoms from ever emerging.

Prof Tabrizi, director of the University College London Huntington's Disease Centre, described the results as "spectacular".

"We never in our wildest dreams would have expected a 75% slowing of clinical progression," she said.

None of the patients who have been treated are being identified, but one was medically retired and has returned to work. Others in the trial are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair.

Treatment is likely to be very expensive. However, this is a moment of real hope in a disease that hits people in their prime and devastates families.

...