Mind & body, in brief

1 in 4 adolescents worldwide reported no active day in the previous week, the WHO says. [1] The WHO is the UN's health agency. [1]

That is about 240 million people aged 11 to 17. [1]

An active day means at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity. [2] It can be at school, on the way there or in free time. [2]

On average they were active 2.7 days a week. [1] Only 14% were active on all 7. [1]

The average was 2.7 days in 2010 and 2.7 in 2025. [2]

Inactivity is a major risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. [1] Regular activity in these years brings benefits lasting into adulthood. [2]

Public health calls this the built environment: WHO says transport, safe spaces and schools shape how teens move. [1]

Where safe routes and spaces are few, a teenager has fewer chances to move. [1] So the WHO says persuading teens is not enough. [1]

A child told to read more will read little in a house with no books.

All this is what teenagers reported, not what a device recorded. [1] The surveys reach 59% of the world's adolescents, not all of them. [2]

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: 'The answer is not to tell adolescents to try harder.' [1]

The WHO wants 15% fewer teens missing the daily target by 2030. [2] No country or region is on track, the report found. [2]

The WHO found 240 million adolescents with no active day in the previous week by asking them, and it reached 1.6 million lives saved by modelling. [1][4]

Why adolescents' activity has not moved in 15 years.

The WHO says there is no single explanation, and it lists transport, safe spaces, school, money, social norms and screens. [1]

In some countries just 4% of adolescents reported no active day in the previous week.

Finland, Canada and Serbia average 4.5 to 4.8 active days a week among their adolescents.

The WHO says 6 climate and health steps could prevent 1.6 million deaths a year. [4] That is about 1 death in every 40. [4]

The steps include warnings of dangerous heat, safe drinking water, toilets and handwashing. [4] Others are cleaner cooking fuel and better-set fuel prices. [4]

Fuel pricing means ending wasteful subsidies and taxing fuels properly. [4] It accounts for 1.2 million of the 1.6 million. [4]

Heat warnings are among the best value: about $835 back for every $1 spent, the WHO estimates. [4]

An estimated 3.6 billion people live where climate change can harm them most. [5]

The WHO released the report ahead of COP31, the next round of UN climate talks. [4]

The WHO says gains would be largest in low- and middle-income countries, narrowing gaps in health and money. [4]

Health economists call this cost-benefit analysis: the WHO turned deaths, emissions and output into money, then set them against costs. [4]

It compared 2024 to 2075 with the steps and without them. [4] The WHO's yearly figures come from the gap between those two futures. [4]

Before buying a bus pass, you add up the fares it saves and compare them with its price.

The WHO lists its own limits: hopeful rollout plans, thin evidence in places and uncertain long-range forecasts. [4]

Why 'could save millions of lives' is a sum, not a count

A study measures how much a risk or a change affects people

Researchers estimate how many people face that risk

They assume how many people would make the change

They multiply it out, country by country

The answer is printed as lives saved

A number like 1.6 million lives saved has no list of names behind it. It is a sum, and it changes when its assumptions change.

The WHO's estimate of 1.6 million deaths prevented. Look at how much of the total rests on one step.

The 1.6 million comes from comparing a future with the steps against one without, and the WHO itself calls its rollout plans aspirational.

The 1 in 25 comes from multiplying US drinking surveys by published disease risks, so it describes a population and no single drinker.

The rise to 65% of teenage girls comes from assuming typical levels of added iodine in the swapped products, and nobody was measured after switching.

The national 2 billion dark trips comes from assuming pupils leave at about 8am, and the authors say that may make it too low.

A modelled number can point the right way and still be wrong on size, because the people it assumes will change often do not.

A government reads one round number and decides. A teenager, a drinker or a parent is somewhere inside that sum and will never know whether it was about them.

The WHO puts their money gain at US$5.4 trillion a year in fiscal benefits. [4]

How many governments will act on the 6 climate steps.

The WHO released its sums before COP31, and governments have not yet shared their commitments there. [4]

Cocaine was linked to 1,233 deaths registered in England and Wales in 2025. [6] Heroin or morphine was linked to 1,210. [6]

It is the first time cocaine has passed heroin, and cocaine deaths have nearly quadrupled in a decade. [6] Both counts fell from the year before. [6]

All drug poisoning deaths came to 5,519, the Office for National Statistics says. [6] Opiate and opioid drugs combined were still linked to more deaths than cocaine. [6]

Ketamine was linked to a record 115 deaths. [6] A decade earlier the number was 7. [6]

James Morgan, an addiction researcher in London, puts that down to lower prices and the drug becoming normal. [6]

Nitazenes are man-made opioids that can be many times stronger than heroin. [6] They have been linked to hundreds of UK deaths. [6]

The death rate in North East England is more than twice London's. [6] Morgan calls this growing polarisation between regions. [6]

Toxicology, the study of poisons, starts from the dose, and charities say cocaine's growing purity brings much higher risk. [6]

Purer cocaine means a user's usual amount holds more of the drug. [6] Mike Trace, who runs an addiction charity, also blames stronger opioids like nitazenes. [6]

The same cup of very strong coffee keeps you awake far longer than a weak one.

These figures count deaths when registered, which lags behind when they happened. [6] James Morgan warns against over-reading the small fall in cocaine deaths. [6]

The overall death rate fell from 93.9 per million, the first yearly fall since 2012. [6]

The steepest rises in drug deaths came where poverty and unemployment date back to the 1980s. [6]

How many of the 1,233 cocaine deaths were caused by cocaine alone.

Mentions on a death record include people who also took opioids, and families say slow blood tests can leave a cause unknown. [6]

A midwife in Kano, Nigeria, saved a 26-year-old mother with a thin plastic sheet and pouch. [41] The New York Times reported it. [41]

It is called a maternal drape. [41] Blood runs into the pouch, and a mark shows the danger level of 300 millilitres. [41]

Husaina Balarabe's bleeding passed that mark, so her midwife acted in time. [41]

Bleeding after birth kills nearly 43,000 women a year and affects 27 million, a series in The Lancet estimates. [42]

It is the leading cause of maternal death around the world. [41]

Obstetrics now uses a calibrated drape to measure blood loss. [42] The series says judging by eye misses half of cases. [42]

A pouch with a line makes the loss plain. [41] Staff then start 5 treatments together, which can cut dangerous bleeding by up to 60%. [42]

A measuring jug beats pouring by eye, and you find out how much you poured before it overflows.

The same series lists 6 delays, from diagnosis to treatment and blood supply, that often decide whether a woman survives. [42]

A midwife in Kano, Nigeria, saw a mother's blood pass a line on a plastic pouch and acted in time. Husaina Balarabe, 26, lived to cuddle her newborn son, Aabid.

About 6 in 10 US voters were very concerned about health costs, an election poll for KFF found. [7] KFF is a US health information group. [8]

55% said Trump's policies had made their own health costs worse. [7] 58% said they had made Americans' health worse. [7]

In 2024 Trump led among voters most worried by health costs, 54% to 44%. [7] This time, about two-thirds of them in close states backed Democrats. [7]

Standard Affordable Care Act plans are due to cost an average 13% more in 2027, KFF researchers say. [8]

The Affordable Care Act is the US law behind subsidised private health plans. [8] Its extra help with premiums ended last year. [8]

In Georgia, new governor Keisha Lance Bottoms promised full Medicaid, US health cover for people on low incomes. [9]

Sign-up for 2027 cover ends in most states on 15 January, soon after the new US Congress is sworn in. [8]

Democrats want the extra help back, but any law still needs Trump's signature. [8]

Political scientists call this retrospective voting: among voters blaming Trump for their costs, 83% backed Democrats for the US House. [7]

That blame crossed party lines. [7] Of voters who held it, 72% of independents and 22% of Republicans also voted Democrat. [7]

Fans judge a coach on last season's results, not on his plans for the next one.

A poll shows what voters link, not what moved them. [7] Fuel and groceries worried them about as much as health costs. [7]

Half of midterm voters said Democrats handle health care better, a 20-point lead over Republicans. [7]

How much US health policy can actually change.

Democrats want Medicaid cuts undone, but Larry Levitt of KFF says all of that is impossible with Trump in the White House. [8]

Voters in 4 US states decided abortion measures on Tuesday, a KFF analysis shows. [10]

Nevada and Virginia wrote a right to abortion into their state constitutions. [10]

Missouri voters rejected Amendment 3, which would have repealed the right to abortion they approved in 2024. [10]

Idaho voters rejected a right to abortion, which leaves its near-total ban in place. [10]

Since 2022, 12 states have passed ballot measures, usually to protect abortion rights. [11]

Idaho keeps some of the country's most restrictive laws. [10] Abortion stays a protected right in Missouri, Nevada and Virginia. [10]

Lawyers call this a hierarchy of laws: a constitutional amendment carries stronger authority than an ordinary law. [11]

That is why both sides now take the question to voters. [11] A win in the constitution is harder to undo later. [11]

A headteacher's rule beats a class's own rule, so one teacher cannot quietly change it.

Missouri's measure joined 2 questions, as it would also have banned gender-affirming care for minors, which 62% supported. [10] Voters said abortion mattered more, 45% to 8%. [10]

At least 24 US states have fetal personhood wording in their laws, KFF Health News reports. [12]

Fetal personhood gives embryos legal rights from fertilisation. [12] IVF makes embryos in a lab, then freezes many of them. [12]

In Louisiana, IVF embryos cannot be deliberately destroyed. [12]

Allison Mertzman and her wife stored 9 embryos in Michigan for $3,000 a year. [12]

The US Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion in June 2022. [12] The couple then feared a failed transfer could bring a legal case. [12]

Doctors who provide illegal abortions in Texas or Alabama already face penalties of $100,000 or more, or prison. [12]

Fertility doctors fear felony charges and lawsuits that their malpractice insurance would not cover. [12]

Lawyers call this a chilling effect: unclear law stops people doing legal things, in case they are wrong. [12]

Mertzman was not ready to use her embryos. [12] She had them destroyed because moving them across states might bring a case. [12]

You skip a shortcut across a field when you cannot tell if it is allowed.

Asked about safeguards for IVF doctors, the White House pointed to Trump's efforts to make IVF cheaper. [12]

Whether an IVF doctor will be taken to court under these laws.

Jessica Waters, a legal scholar, calls lawsuits over discarded embryos real possibilities, and the laws have not settled it. [12]

Almost 1,900 children were in US government shelters for migrant children in September, KFF Health News reports. [13]

One 9-year-old from El Salvador had been held for more than 7 months. [13] She told her mother she felt sad and lonely. [13]

Her mother, with an asylum case pending and no criminal record, was arrested while seeking custody. [13]

Before Trump's second term, children typically waited about a month while officials checked relatives. [13]

The Office of Refugee Resettlement runs the shelters, under the US health department. [13]

Attorneys say some children now see only 2 ways out: long-term foster care, or back to what they fled. [13]

Child welfare law sets the standard: children go in the 'least restrictive setting' and leave without needless delay. [13]

Officials now arrest some of the parents who come forward. [13] So the adult a child needs for release may be locked up too. [13]

A child waiting at the school gate cannot leave if the adult collecting them has been stopped on the way.

The US homeland security department says it does not separate families. [13] It lists 16 sponsors arrested for serious crimes. [13]

The NHS in England spends nearly £2bn a year buying services from charities and voluntary groups, the BBC reports. [14]

Cancer charities alone raise more than £1bn a year. [14]

Dementia UK, a charity, funds video clinics that support more than 100 patients and relatives a week. [14]

In 1948 the NHS took most hospitals into public ownership, paid for by tax. [14] A 1980 law then encouraged a more active fundraising culture. [14]

Parkinson's UK says its money has helped pay for around 70% of the specialist nurses in its field. [14]

Charities call this seed funding: a charity pays for a post first, and the NHS should take it on. [14]

WellChild, a children's charity, funds nurses for 3 years. [14] This year, for the first time, the NHS did not keep one post on. [14]

A friend pays your bus fare until your first wage arrives, then you are meant to pay it.

71% of health charities told a poll their contracts do not cover demand, but it dates from 2023. [14] NHS England says contract values rose in cash terms. [14]

They are the main donors to Parkinson's UK, whose chief calls funding nurses an additional tax on them. [14]

Norfolk has 3 maternity units, and the UK midwives' union is worried that 2 could close. [15]

A review names consultant-led units at James Paget Hospital in Gorleston and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn. [15]

Its options run from keeping services as they are to closing either unit, or both. [15]

The hospital group says falling births, too few staff and more complex care make every site hard to sustain. [15]

Women from Lowestoft, north Suffolk, Wisbech and north-east Cambridgeshire also give birth there. [15]

The review goes to NHS England before further research and any public consultation. [15]

The union warns that closure could mean women in labour travelling unacceptable distances. [15]

Hospital planners call these co-dependent services: the union says newborn and children's wards would close with birth units. [15]

Newborn units and children's wards rely on the birth unit beside them, the union says. [15] So one closure could take 3 services. [15]

Close a school's kitchen and its breakfast club stops too.

Hospital chief Lesley Dwyer says no decision has been made and patient safety comes first. [15]

Closures could mean being moved to work further from home, their union says. [15]

New problems could add almost £10m to Belfast's new maternity hospital, the BBC reports. [16] That takes the project past £100m. [16]

Chemical flushing to clear bacteria from the water pipes damaged the pipework, the BBC understands. [16] More than 2,200 valves now need replacing. [16]

The building was handed over in March 2024. [16] It has stayed closed since, after a dangerous germ was found in its water. [16]

The same health trust's mental health unit has now cost £9.4m in repairs and moving patients. [16]

The trust plans to open part of the building by March 2027. [16] The newborn unit follows by November 2027, if repairs work. [16]

Daniel McCrossan, who chairs Northern Ireland's public spending committee, called it 'such terrible waste'. [16]

Mothers and babies keep using the older hospital until the new one opens. [16]

The builder, Graham Construction, says water samples were clean at handover. [16] The trust puts repairs near £7m, against almost £10m in a report the BBC saw. [16]

Who pays for the Belfast valves.

The Belfast Trust refused to say whether contractors or taxpayers meet the repair costs, citing its work on liability. [16]

A 2026 US study estimates the lifetime chance of dying from alcohol at different weekly amounts, The Conversation reports. [17]

At about 7 US drinks a week, the lifetime risk of dying from alcohol passes 1 in 1,000. [17]

At 8.5 drinks it passes 1 in 100. [17] At 14 it is about 1 in 25. [17]

A US drink holds 13.6g of alcohol and a UK unit 8g. [17] So 8.5 US drinks is about 14.5 UK units. [17]

The UK advises regular drinkers to stay under 14 units a week. [17] So its limit sits near that 1 in 100 line. [17]

The WHO says no safe level of alcohol has been established for cancer risk. [17]

The limit was never a promise of safety, because 2016 experts put it just under 1 in 100. [17]

Epidemiologists call the old error confounding: some 'non-drinkers' in early studies were former drinkers who stopped because they were ill. [17]

That made non-drinkers look sicker. [17] So moderate drinkers looked healthier than they really were, and the idea that wine protects spread. [17]

A bench looks weak if you count injured players as people who chose to sit out.

These are estimates for the US population, not forecasts for one drinker. [17] They rest on earlier research and the model's assumptions. [17]

The 1 in 25 comes from multiplying US drinking surveys by published disease risks, so it describes a population and no single drinker.

Swapping a fifth to a third of dairy for plant products could leave more UK teenage girls short of iodine. [18] Modelling says 65%, up from 54%. [18]

Among women aged 19 to 49 it would rise from 32% to 42%. [18]

Iodine is a trace element the thyroid uses to make hormones for growth and brain development. [18]

Of plant products on the UK market, 61% had added calcium and 46% vitamin B12. [18] Only 12% had added iodine. [18]

The UK does not require vegan milk, cheese or yoghurt to have nutrients added. [18]

Young women are the group that matters most here, says Sarah Bath, a nutrition researcher at the University of Surrey. [18]

Nutrition scientists call this fortification: adding a nutrient to food. [18] Requiring iodine in these products would prevent the average falls. [18]

Dairy gives UK adults about a third of their iodine. [18] Take dairy away, and that iodine goes unless the replacement carries it. [18]

Swap your fruit snack for crisps, and the vitamins go unless something else brings them.

This is modelling, not a measurement of people who switched. [18] A British dietitian says overall diet matters, so not everyone who switches goes short. [18]

The rise to 65% of teenage girls comes from assuming typical levels of added iodine in the swapped products, and nobody was measured after switching.

Both say their main plant drinks already have iodine added, so a call for fortification favours them over rivals without it. [18]

More than half already fall short on iodine, so a swap without added iodine lands first on them. [18]

Keeping summer time all year would add at least 2 billion US school trips before sunrise. [19] That is a University of Washington calculation. [19]

Georgia would see about 71 million more dark trips, and Washington state nearly 35 million. [19]