Innovation 31 August 2025 - 6 September 2025

WHO Lifts Global Emergency Status for Mpox: The World Health Organization declared that the multi-country mpox outbreak is no longer a global emergency, just over a year after it was designated as one. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the decision on 5 September, citing a sustained drop in cases and deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other affected African nations Statnews. “This decision is based on sustained declines in cases and deaths… in the DRC and other affected countries,” Tedros noted, while emphasizing continued caution Statnews. He warned that “lifting the emergency declaration does not mean the threat is over, nor that our response will stop”, urging countries to maintain surveillance and vaccination efforts Statnews. The move ends the Public Health Emergency of International Concern for mpox, reflecting an improved situation, though experts stress that mpox remains a regional public health concern that requires ongoing vigilance Statnews.

Huawei’s Mate XTs is an engineering marvel: a smartphone that folds twice via two hinges, transforming from a regular phone into a mini-tablet. Fully unfolded, its 10.2-inch flexible OLED screen provides a spacious 3,184×2,232 canvas – significantly larger than any single-hinge foldable. Fold it once, and you get a roughly 7.9-inch tablet mode; fold again, and it collapses to a 6.4-inch phone-like display for one-handed use. The design uses one inward-folding and one outward-folding hinge, leaving one panel on the outside to serve as the phone’s screen when closed. This outer display means you don’t need a separate cover screen – but it also stays exposed, raising long-term durabilityquestions.

Aircraft Design: The Agras T100 is a heavy-lift octocopter built for endurance and power. It features a coaxial dual-rotor design for redundancy and lift, with 62‑inch carbon-fiber propellers providing high thrust thedronevortex.com thedronevortex.com. The drone’s frame is engineered from composite materials for durability while keeping the empty weight around 75–77 kg in spray configuration ag.dji.com droneroboticstec.com. In its largest form the T100 measures about 3.22 m across but folds down to roughly 1.1 × 1.3 m for transport ag.dji.com. An IPX6K/IP67 rugged build and operating range of 0 °C to 40 °C allow it to withstand harsh farm conditions ag.dji.com thedronevortex.com.

IFA Berlin has been running since 1924, and in 2025 it’s back at full scale after recent lean years stuff.tv. The show spans 26 enormous halls at Messe Berlin, hosting everything from smartphones and smart fridges to hi-fi and home theater gear stuff.tv. With hundreds of thousands of attendees and exhibitors from over 40 countries, IFA is a bellwether for consumer tech trends stuff.tv. This year’s expo is the 101st edition hiddenwires.co.uk, and its agenda makes clear that AI and sustainability are the defining pillars.

Baby Planet Caught in the Act: A landmark discovery in astronomy came from an international team that directly imaged a newborn exoplanet still in the process of formation. The planet, dubbed WISPIT 2b, is a gas giant roughly 5 million years old located around a young Sun-like star scitechdaily.com. Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile revealed WISPIT 2b as a faint dot within a multi-ringed protoplanetary disk of dust and gas ts2.tech scitechdaily.com. This makes WISPIT 2b the first unambiguous photo of a planet forming inside a ringed disk – essentially a baby planet still glowing from its birth heat. Researchers estimate it is about five times Jupiter’s mass scitechdaily.com. Dr. Christian Ginski of University of Galway, a co-leader of the study, noted the impact of the find: “Capturing an image of these forming planets has proven extremely challenging… it gives us a real chance to understand why the many thousands of older exoplanet systems out there look so diverse” ts2.tech ts2.tech. Because WISPIT 2b’s disk has prominent concentric rings potentially sculpted by the planet’s gravity, follow-up studies will probe how a nascent planet interacts with its “cradle” and shapes the arrangement of material around it ts2.tech ts2.tech.