International roundups almost always tell us what’s going wrong, and September proved them right: the war between the United States and Iran, Ukraine, the Sahel. Yet in those same weeks more than a thousand people walked free from prison in Venezuela, a blood test detected the deadliest of cancers at an early stage for the first time, and the San Marino Team came home from the Mediterranean Games with four medals. Eleven stories that went against the grain.
Over a thousand political prisoners freed in Venezuela, a breakthrough in Belarus. Between 26 and 27 September, Caracas released another 39 political detainees, including eight women accused of narco-terrorism in 2021; since Maduro’s removal in January, releases have topped a thousand, and on 17 September seventeen previously censored news sites became accessible again. In Belarus, 25 people were freed on 16 September, including four journalists, one of whom had been serving a fourteen-year sentence; on the 24th, Lukashenko pardoned fifteen more. Over eight hundred people remain arbitrarily detained, but this is the widest opening in years.
A blood test detects pancreatic cancer while it can still be operated on. The study, published on 16 September in Nature Medicine and led by City of Hope in California with collaborators in four countries, describes a test combining three blood markers: circulating microRNAs, exosomal microRNAs and the protein CA 19-9. Validated on 1,785 people, it identifies stage I and II tumours in 86.8% of cases, with a 3.2% false-positive rate in low-risk subjects. This is the cancer that today is almost always discovered once it’s inoperable. The authors caution that larger prospective studies are still needed: it is not yet available in hospitals.
The United States and China cut tariffs on thirty billion in goods. Following Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington — his first since 2015 — the two governments published their lists on Monday: 1,619 items of US products bound for China and 77 categories of Chinese goods heading to the United States, over 90% of them restored to most-favoured-nation treatment. The average American tariff on China drops from 22% to 20.5%: still nearly double what it was two years ago, and semiconductors, electric vehicles and batteries remain outside the deal. Still, it is the first concrete step back in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Morocco has its first woman head of government. On 29 September, King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, 50, as prime minister. She was Marrakesh’s first female mayor in 2009 and has served as a minister since 2021. Her party won 97 of 395 seats and will need to build a coalition. She is the second woman to lead a government in the Arab world, after Tunisia’s Najla Bouden.
The world’s tallest wind turbine rises on a former coal mine. In Schipkau, in the German region of Lusatia, the blade tip has reached 365 metres — three shy of Berlin’s TV tower — and will connect to the grid in November. It will generate enough electricity for around 7,500 households, at under five cents per kilowatt-hour, with a yield 220% higher than nearby turbines: above three hundred metres, the wind blows strong and steady even where it is barely perceptible at ground level.
In Scotland, the sea has come back after a ten-year ban. In 2016 the community of Achiltibuie, in the north-west Highlands, secured a ban on scallop dredging across six hundred square kilometres. The scientific report presented this month confirms it worked: beds of maerl — a calcified algae dated at nine thousand years old that serves as a nursery for fish and shellfish — have been saved, cod and haddock have returned along with a herring spawning ground, and sightings of whales, porpoises and dolphins are on the rise.
Five countries in the Americas eliminate five diseases. The Pan American Health Organization has certified the achievements: Chile is the first country in South America validated for eliminating dog-transmitted rabies and the first on the continent to eliminate leprosy as a public health problem; El Salvador is the first Central American country free of trachoma; Brazil is the most populous country in the world to have eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Certifications were also awarded to the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.
In San Marino, meanwhile, September left behind four things worth remembering.
Four medals from the Mediterranean Games. The San Marino Team returned from Taranto with two golds and two bronzes, won by five athletes: Jacopo Frisoni, the delegation’s flag-bearer, won the bocce singles and doubles alongside Enrico Dall’Olmo; Giada and Stella Paoletti took bronze in the women’s doubles, and Alessandra Perilli in trap shooting. The delegation was received at Palazzo Valloni by the Captains Regent. “Two golds in the same edition was perhaps unimaginable,” Frisoni commented.
The Republic joins the Artemis Accords. On 25 September, at BEX in Rimini, San Marino became the 76th signatory state of the framework promoted by NASA and the US State Department for the peaceful exploration of space. Two days earlier, it had presented its own framework law on the space economy, designed to attract high-tech businesses and investment.
The law on family and birth rates has come into force. As of 28 September, parental leave benefits rise to 80% of salary, with a minimum of 1,500 euros a month for the first three months; a 1,000-euro baby bonus is now available for households with per capita income below 25,000 euros; family allowances rise from 100 to 210 euros, and nursery and school meal fees are reduced. Paternity leave doubles to twenty days.
And Smuvi has passed the numbers test. The on-demand transport service closed its first six months with more than 23,600 passengers and a stable average of over a thousand rides a week, with an average timing deviation of about one minute. Rides remain free until 31 March 2027.
