Global Data Center Energy Use, US Strike on Iran School, Russia’s Security Service Leaks, Portugal’s Ancient Trees

Share of total electricity demand used by data centers, 2025. Image: Screenshot, Our World in Data Global Data Center Energy Use, US Strike on Iran School, Russia’s Security Service Leaks, Portugal’s Ancient Trees An investigation by the Sky News data and forensics team suggests that the US likely used outdated intelligence to strike an Iranian school with Tomahawk missiles in February, killing 156 people, most of them children, despite years of internal warnings about out-of-date targeting information. Our Top 10 in Data Journalism round-up, looking at stories from July 8 to 22, also includes an IStories investigation into the surveillance priorities of a section of Russia’s “second service” police force, a cross-border investigation led by Lighthouse Reports on how big food companies used lawsuits and legal threats to block public health efforts, and the South China Morning Post’s deep dive into Hong Kong’s aging population. Investigating the Minab School Strike An investigation by the data and forensics team at Sky News found “a catalogue of failures” ahead of a strike on a school in Minab, Iran, in February, which killed 156 people, including 120 children. Seven independent experts told reporters that all the evidence points towards US responsibility, though Washington has still not publicly acknowledged any role in the strike, with senior officials maintaining that the official investigation is ongoing. The strike occurred despite years of internal warnings to the Pentagon about out-of-date targeting data and recent cuts to the military’s civilian protection team. Reporters drew on 3D models built by Forensic Architecture, confirming the missile struck the boys’ assembly hall and left a five-meter-wide crater, while three independent munitions experts verified the weapon used as a Tomahawk. Using satellite imagery dating back to 2015, the team tracked the building’s transformation from a walled military compound linked to the Iranian regime to a school, documenting the removal of watchtowers, the addition of public entrances, and the appearance of children in the playground, “all things that could have been spotted by intelligence analysts vetting the building as a target.” Cross-referencing ACLED conflict data and location information from the USS Abraham Lincoln, reporters placed the school within Tomahawk range. Mapping the Interests of Russia’s Security Service The Second Service of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), officially the “Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight Against Terrorism,” is responsible for protecting the Kremlin from internal political threats, extremism, and anything seen as a danger to the regime, which includes dissent or opposition to the war. (Calls for peace, proposals to withdraw troops from Ukraine, and stories about Russian war crimes are considered terrorism and extremism.) Two years ago, it commissioned Russian technology firm Mikord to build a news-monitoring chatbot, which, from the Russian acronym, roughly translates as “SPIDER.” An anonymous hacker group breached Mikord’s infrastructure in December 2025 and gave the leaked documents to a human rights organization, which shared them with IStories, which restored the SPIDER clickable prototype so that users can see the same picture on screen that an FSB officer would. Reporters analyzed nearly 5,000 news items compiled by the Second Service between January 2024 and June 2025, sorting them into thematic clusters revealing the unit’s surveillance priorities. The largest category of articles was related to sabotage and terrorism in Russia, and the arrests of Ukrainian and Western “spies.” The second-largest category related to terror attacks, international wars, and domestic protests, with environmental protests emerging as a major concern. An interactive network diagram lets readers navigate the topic map and click through individual nodes to explore the underlying news items behind each cluster. Food Industry Regulation Lawsuits A cross-border investigation led by Lighthouse Reports found that while global food and beverage giants publicly backed laws for ingredient transparency and junk food advertisement limits, they were quietly using the courts to try and force governments to water down those same policies. Reporters built a dataset tracking legal challenges to nutrition laws across Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the US, UK, and India from 2010 to 2025, uncovering 239 lawsuits targeting measures like front-of-pack labelling, soda taxes, and advertisement restrictions on junk food aimed at children. Cases were counted when a public health regulation itself was being challenged, except for India. Using pictograms and illustrated graphics by Revisual Labs, the investigation found that big food companies lost 183 (82%) of the cases and won just seven, and racked up roughly 595 years of combined litigation. More than one in three cases with an identifiable plaintiff came from just nine companies. Their tactics, the investigation found, have “cost countries billions of dollars in both legal and healthcare costs.” Heatwaves Killed More People in Europe Than Guns in America Heatwaves now kill more people in Europe each summer than gun violence does in the US. Swiss French-language daily Le Temps followed up on a comparison made popular by Our World in Data’s Hannah Ritchie to find an estimated 56,000 annual heat deaths across the EU and Switzerland between 2022 – 2024, versus roughly 47,000 US gun deaths. Turning to Switzerland – which saw 326 deaths attributed to heat in 2024 – the team used maps and bar charts to find Geneva has Switzerland’s highest cooling demand, driven by its low-lying, heat-trapping geography, with daily average temperatures above 20°C (68°F) now the norm from mid-June to late August. While air conditioning prevented nearly 200,000 premature deaths worldwide in 2019, according to Lancet Countdown, the piece emphasized a regulatory point of contention where efficient fixed AC units require permits in most Swiss cantons, while inefficient mobile ones are freely sold. Without further adaptation, the analysis warned, Europe’s heat toll will keep rising as warming and an aging population compound the risk. How the UK’s Ruling Labour Party Lost Core Supporters The UK has a new prime minister — Andy Burnham — who replaces Keir Starmer after several of his former allies turned against him. Both are from the Labour Party, traditionally a left-of-center political group whose candidates won a landslide in the last general election. A Guardian data analysis traced where Starmer lost support, both among his own MPs and the wider electorate, tracking the collapse across unions, Muslim communities, the parliamentary Labour Party, and left-wing voters. Using a column chart, reporters showed a steady decline in union donations over the past 25 years, which reached its lowest point on record in 2025. The analysis also traced Starmer’s fraught record on Israel-Palestine, a historically divisive issue for Labour, using a scatter plot showing how the Labour vote share in constituencies with larger Muslim populations has fallen. The piece drew attention to Starmer’s hardline approach to party discipline and his net approval rating, which fell from -3 when he took office to -66 by September 2025, the lowest recorded for any prime minister since 1977, according to Ipsos. Hong Kong’s Aging Population Hong Kong has “one of the fastest-aging societies in the world,” the South China Morning Post found. The elderly population — over 65 — is projected to reach one-third of the total by the mid-2040s, up from a quarter today, according to the newspaper. Demographic changes are driving both rising healthcare costs and a “silver economy” boom, with elderly spending projected to hit US$64 billion within a decade. Using illustrations, waffle charts, line graphs, and lollipop plots, reporters mapped the city’s fastest-aging districts, projected the over-65 population through 2046, and compared retirement ages against other countries, alongside poverty rates before and after policy interventions. They also examined loneliness and suicide among the elderly, finding that 4 in 10 suicides were among people aged 60 and above. The team broke down the major health conditions facing older residents and charted healthcare expenditure growth against GDP growth, and alongside healthcare usage and coverage rates. The story rounds out with a look at start-ups emerging in gerontechnology, alongside the government and community initiatives currently in place to support Hong Kong’s aging population. Rising Drug Deaths in Berlin Tagesspiegel found that drug-related deaths in Berlin are rising, with 300 casualties in 2025, according to government health data. Using a series of area, line, and bar charts, and a dumbbell chart, reporters analyzed police statistics dating back to 2018, comparing Berlin to Germany’s other largest cities. While the national average was 2.6 drug deaths per 100,000 residents in 2025, Berlin’s rate was 8.1. The problem spans the entire city, with every Berlin district recording more drug-related deaths over the past two years than before the pandemic. The rise is especially stark among young people — 11 minors died of overdoses in 2025 alone — while deaths among 18-to-25-year-olds also continued climbing. Police data showed drugs were detected in almost half of the deceased and in all cases at least one other substance was found in addition to the drugs. The US-Iran War’s Impact on Fertilizer As the US war with Iran drags into its sixth month, Reuters Graphics dug into the conflict’s impact on the world’s fertilizer supply, and with it, global food production. The war has cut off 17% of the world’s natural gas supply, more than 30% of nitrogen fertilizer exports, and nearly half the world’s exported sulfur, a key ingredient in another major fertilizer type. Using illustrations and parallax scrolling, reporters traced modern agriculture’s dependence on cheap fertilizer — back to the Green Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, which combined modern farming techniques to save an estimated one billion people from starvation. A diagram explains how ammonia is converted into urea, and an accompanying line chart shows urea prices spiking just as planting season began in India, the US, and Australia. Though prices have since eased, reporters found the damage to farmers has already been done, with nitrogen shortages set to depress crop yields this year in places that can least afford it. How Much Energy Do Data Centers Use? From asking a quick question to running complex research tasks, AI tools have become part of daily life for many people, but how much electricity does each query actually use? Hannah Ritchie analyzed figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and found that data centers consumed around 485 terawatt-hours (TWh) globally in 2025, roughly equivalent to Germany’s annual electricity generation, with AI-focused data centers responsible for an estimated third of that total. Drawing on figures from Google, she traced the electricity used behind individual queries, finding a standard Gemini text question consumed about 0.24Wh — roughly what a microwave uses in under a second. While long queries rose to 2.5Wh, and agentic AI requests with reasoning, like those handled by Claude, could reach around 50Wh, according to Epoch AI. Regional breakdowns showed data centers already drew about 5% of US electricity and 2% in Europe, with local hotspots far higher, with more than 20% in Ireland and over a quarter of demand in the US state of Virginia. Portugal’s Oldest Trees Using an illustrated scrolling horizontal timeline, Público traced the life of the Olive Tree of Mouchao — believed to be Portugal’s oldest at roughly 3,350 years old — back to a point in history that predates the first Olympic Games in 776 BC. The story also spotlights the King’s Cork Oak, a 385-year-old tree located in the Tapada Nacional de Mafra, and a Japanese walnut planted 200 years ago in Porto’s Jardim das Virtudes, a UNESCO-listed living fossil that survived both World Wars. Reporters mapped hundreds of trees across Portugal classified as being of public interest by the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF), protected not just for their ecological value but for the centuries of history they carry, and built an interactive map letting readers search by name, species, and age, including a category of trees older than 500 years, dotted across the country. The piece highlights how to determine the age of a tree and breaks down the various criteria, including structural strength, whether it is disease- and pest-free, and overall vitality, that a tree must meet to earn official protection. Hanna Duggal is a data journalist at AJ Labs, the data, visual storytelling, and experiments team of Al Jazeera, and a GIJN contributor. She has reported on issues such as policing, surveillance, and protests using data, and reported for GIJN on data journalism in the Middle East, investigating algorithms on TikTok, and on using data to investigate what tribal lands in the US.