While many American cities are painted as bastions of murder, a new report has revealed that this is not the case. The U.S. logged a more than 20% drop in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025, marking the largest single-year fall on record.

What did the commentators say?
The study, published by the independent Council on Criminal Justice, analyzed crime data from 40 of the largest American cities. The “rate of reported homicides was 21% lower in 2025 than in 2024 in the 35 study cities providing data for that crime, representing 922 fewer homicides,” said the study. When the data is finalized, there’s a “strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4.0 per 100,000 residents,” which would be the “lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900.”

This marks a significant shift from the Covid-era spikes in crime, and “elected officials at all levels, both Democrats and Republicans, have been claiming credit,” said The Associated Press. But even with this data, experts say it’s “too early to tell what’s prompting the change.” 

President Donald Trump has claimed that his deployment of the National Guard in several cities and Washington, D.C., has drastically reduced crime. But homicide rates began falling during former President Joe Biden’s administration, and there’s “little to justify any claim that Trump is responsible for last year’s drop in crime,” said The New York Times. More cities where the National Guard was not deployed had reduced crime.

Rather than politics, countries with a “stronger market orientation may experience lower rates of homicide,” said a separate study from the University of Georgia. This concept references how a “nation’s economy functions within a framework of legal rights and freedoms.” Researchers found that a “stronger market orientation could decrease murder rates, with even a one-point shift on a market freedom scale leading to a 22% drop in homicides.”

What next?
The drop in homicides could just reflect an up-and-down pattern, as murders had been “steadily dropping since the late 2000s” before the Covid-19 spike, Ernesto López, the study’s lead author, said to CBS News. It’s “possible that these rates reflect a longer-term downward trend punctuated by periods of elevated homicides.”

All eyes were on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell (pictured above) at a news conference today following the bank’s quarterly board meeting, his first public in-person encounter with reporters since the Justice Department started a criminal investigation into him. As President Donald Trump tries to influence the central bank’s policies and force interest rate cuts, the independence of the Fed remains under threat. And central banks beyond the U.S. are also facing challenges as global instability, swelling deficits and high inflation trigger doubts about the long-accepted notion that an independent body is the best vehicle for delivering economic results. 

Why is independence viewed as important? 
The modern idea of central-bank independence emerged after World War II. The belief was that politicians are likely to be “tempted by self-defeating monetary policies” in pursuit of short-term electoral goals, said The Economist. So monetary policies that “make everyone better off” in the long run are more attainable and more sustainable if they are “delegated to a conservative central banker.” And since then, central banks have been lauded as a “triumph of applied economics.” As “independence rose, inflation fell,” and “recessions became rarer.” 

Why is that changing? 
Recent surges in inflation have damaged public trust in central banks and sparked vocal criticism from politicians. The global financial crisis, a prolonged period of quantitative easing, and the “pressures of climate risk, geopolitical shocks and fiscal activism” are further highlighting the “fundamental” question of whether the “orthodox consensus” has “reached its limits,” said Chatham House. 

What could go wrong? 
Trump’s interference with U.S. monetary policy could “lead to financial panic and economic disaster” with consequences worldwide, said Bloomberg. A policy dictated by “short-term political calculations” might lead to lower interest rates but would then spark higher inflation and, ultimately, “increase the cost of credit, discourage private investment” and make it harder to service national debt. 

But Trump’s “damaging attacks on the Fed shouldn’t obscure its failures,” said Investors’ Chronicle. Independence is one thing, but “technocratic policymakers with limited democratic accountability shouldn’t be beyond censure.”

A model walks a Paris runway dotted with giant mushrooms and pink trees. Anna Wintour, Nicole Kidman and Dua Lipa were in the audience in the Grand Palais to see Matthieu Blazy’s haute couture debut collection for Chanel.
Alexis Jumeau / Abaca Press/ Alamy Live News

Animated family films have been a staple of entertainment culture for nearly a century and offer a rich catalog of adventures, fables, fairy tales and dramas. The very best, including these beloved features, continue to enrich, move and challenge their audiences, both children and adults.

‘Fantasia’ (1940)
One of the most justifiably beloved animated films ever made, “Fantasia” (pictured above) still mesmerizes audiences today. A movie that represented Walt Disney’s “desire that animation be taken as seriously as any other art form,” it remains a kind of “demo reel for some of the most inventive animation in the history of the medium,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Endings. (Disney+)

‘Spirited Away’ (2001)
Hayao Miyazaki’s film follows a 10-year-old girl, Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi), who’s plunged into an “Alice in Wonderland”-like underworld when she and her parents take a shortcut on their way to their new home. The movie features “baroque visuals and freewheeling dream-logic narrative,” creating a “dreamlike fairytale that appears both exotic and yet strangely familiar and whose surface eccentricities can’t conceal its very human soul,” said Jasper Sharp at the British Film Institute. (HBO Max)

‘WALL-E’ (2008)
This movie is both hilarious and moving without sacrificing its sharp and often bleak critique of contemporary consumerist society and its pathologies. A “resounding work of commercial art,” this dystopian fantasy “contains a raw emotional center atop of several strains of social commentary, each an exacting reflector designed to rouse its audience out of their cultural apathy,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (Disney+)