On August 31, 2025, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan, causing extensive destruction and claiming over 3,500 lives. The United Nations University (UNU) attributes the high death toll to Afghanistan's international isolation and gender-based restrictions. The earthquake revealed the urgent need for sustained investment in safer construction, disaster risk reduction, and the inclusion of women in education and healthcare to prevent future catastrophes.

Social media use has long been part of the everyday lives of most children and adolescents. Many of them exhibit risky, and in some cases even addictive, behaviour. While social media use can certainly have positive effects for young people, intensive use can negatively impact mental, emotional, and social well-being, leading to symptoms such as depression and anxiety, impaired attention, and sleep problems. In a discussion paper published by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the researchers involved therefore recommend applying the precautionary principle. In the paper “Social Media and the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents”, they give policy recommendations to protect children and adolescents from the negative effects of social media, for example by setting a minimum age for access or by restricting certain functions. The paper was published on 13 August 2025 and an English translation is now available.

SUMMARY: ChatGPT appeared to “think” for itself and behave like a student – improvising ideas, making mistakes, and even resisting guidance – in a University of Cambridge study that revived a 2,400-year-old maths puzzle first recorded by Plato. The researchers asked the chatbot to tackle the classic “doubling the square” problem, which lays claim to being the oldest documented maths education challenge in history. Despite knowing about Plato’s work from its training data, ChatGPT improvised its own solution to the problem, sometimes making mistakes along the way. The study suggests that while this highlights that Generative AI has limits as a maths education resource, it may also have something resembling a  “zone of proximal development”: the potential to ‘learn’ and solve new – perhaps even unsolved – problems, with careful prompting and guidance.

Indian adolescents are mostly starting their periods at an earlier age than 25 years ago - likely because of demographic factors such as improved education, and possibly even climate change.

A new pilot study by University of Cincinnati researchers finds that foster caregivers across the U.S. need more accessible, ongoing and community-driven training.