A new report from the University of East Anglia has raised concerns about the state of democracy around the world during 2024’s ‘Super Cycle’ of elections.

Described by Time Magazine as the ‘Year of Elections’, 2024 saw 1.6 billion people head to the polls across 74 national elections in 62 countries - an unprecedented concentration of democratic activity in a single year.

But a global report from the Electoral Integrity Project, released today, paints a mixed and often troubling picture of how those elections were conducted.

The credibility of carbon offsets is frequently challenged by the scientific community, which has shown methodological shortcomings when evaluating baseline scenarios. An international research team coordinated by INRAE and involving the Toulouse School of Economics, Université Paris Dauphine-PSL and the Institut Agro has suggested carrying out a systematic and rigorous evaluation of the impacts of these credits. The study was published in Nature Sustainability.

A new study published in JAMA Network Open found that parents/caregivers who received the CTC were less likely to experience anxiety, food insecurity, and unstable housing, as those who were previously behind on rent were more likely to be able to resume payments. Previous studies have demonstrated a connection among the expanded CTC, food security, and housing stability during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this longitudinal study of more than 5,800 parent-child dyads assessed families’ health and economic circumstances over time—before and during the pandemic—focusing on caregivers with very young children. The majority of children of caregivers in the study group were under two years old before the pandemic, and the rest of the children were under four years old, compared to the under-18 age group assessed in similar research. 

Northern peatlands could seriously complicate efforts to cool the planet, especially after a temporary overshoot of the 1.5°C global warming limit, according to new IIASA-led research.