NewsFix

NewsFix Edition 341 Transcript

Anthony Badolato:

Welcome back to NewsFix – your weekly dose of good news. Here's what's making headlines at Fix The News this week.

• A breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment
• The world reaches record levels of personal freedom
• Some major conservation news for green sea turtles
• Climate-resilient rice
• And the growing movement giving legal rights to nature

Let's start with a sound you don't hear very often at a medical conference.

(APPLAUSE)

That's more than 40,000 cancer specialists and researchers on their feet in Chicago after hearing the results of a new treatment for pancreatic cancer.

Daraxonrasib is a daily pill that's nearly doubled survival time for 500 patients whose cancer had already spread.

And that's a very big deal. (PAUSE)

Despite all the progress we've made against many common cancers, pancreatic cancer has remained the exception. Survival is still measured in months rather than years …

But Daraxonrasib could be the breakthrough that starts to change that story.

And it's not just helping people live longer. Patients reported less pain, a better quality of life, and stayed on the treatment far longer than they typically would with traditional chemotherapy.

Speaking of improving lives, here's a statistic that caught my attention this week.

According to Gallup, a record 82% of adults across 138 countries say they are satisfied with their freedom to choose what they do with their lives. That's up from 71% two decades ago.

Now freedom can be a tricky thing to measure - but here are two stories from Africa that show how the systems around us can help make it more possible.

Take Benin.

Less than a decade ago, around one in five people in the country didn't exist on paper. No birth certificate. No national ID. No easy way to open a bank account, register a business or sit school exams.

Today nearly 99% of Benin's population is officially registered which means they have access to the basic services that help build a life.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, a landmark court ruling is making it easier for transgender people to update the gender markers on official documents.

That matters because official documents help shape access to work, education and travel – because proving who you are can play a major role in determining what you're able to do.

(PAUSE)

Now to one of the most remarkable wildlife recovery stories of recent years.

For more than four decades, green sea turtles were listed as Endangered, meaning extinction was a real possibility.

But in October 2025, the species was reclassified from Endangered down to Least Concern.

And here's the extraordinary part.

Conservation status normally improves one category at a time. A species might move from Endangered to Vulnerable... then years later to Near Threatened.

The green sea turtle skipped both. (PAUSE)

It went straight to Least Concern.

And that’s not the only big environmental story in the newsletter this week.

In Australia, the Karajarri people have established the country's first Indigenous marine Protected Area along the coast of the Kimberley region.

In Argentina, conservationists are celebrating the first wild-born jaguar cubs in a landscape where the species had almost disappeared.

And in India, scientists have solved two completely opposite problems facing rice farmers.

Floods and droughts.

Over the last decade, the country has quietly released nearly 3,000 climate-resilient crop varieties. Two of the most remarkable are new rice strains: one can survive underwater for weeks, while the other grows fast enough to beat the dry season.

And finally, a story that asks us to look at nature a little differently.

For years, Britain's River Wye has suffered serious pollution and environmental decline.

And now campaigners are trying a new approach: giving the river legal rights of its own.

This hasn't come out of nowhere. It's part of a growing global movement called Rights of Nature, which argues that rivers, forests and ecosystems shouldn't just be treated as property, but as living entities with rights worth protecting.

Versions of the idea have already been adopted in New Zealand, Colombia and Ecuador and it’s a way for communities to make sure nature has a seat at the table when big decisions are being made.

It's also a good reminder that sometimes the first step in solving a problem is changing the way we think about it.

That's it from me this week.

As always, I’ve only scratched the surface. We didn't get to Mexico's plan to wipe out debts for farmers, Australia's battery boom, the surprisingly long list of good news stories from the US, or why a herd of guanacos just completed what might be the world's longest wildlife road trip.

You'll find those stories, and many more, in this week's edition of Fix The News.

One quick note before I go: there won't be a NewsFix next week. But don't worry, we've got something special to keep you company.

Over on the Fix The News podcast, Amy and Gus sit down with former Colombian President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos to unpack one of the most remarkable peace stories of the 21st century.

President Santos:

"In the end, every peace process boils down to one thing.

Where do you draw the line between peace and justice?

How much justice is a society, a country willing to sacrifice in order to have peace?

And no matter where you draw the line, you will always have more people claiming more justice and more people claiming more peace."

Anthony Badolato:

I'll be back with more good news in a fortnight. Until then, take care... and remember, it's not all bad.