On the heels of the hottest summer on record and a United Nations report warning that global temperatures are likely to push climate risks to “increasingly dangerous heights,” the Trump administration overturned most of a Biden-era rule limiting climate pollution from power plants, the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a final plan Monday that guts the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, which the agency said exceeds its authority under the Clean Air Act by requiring control technologies “that are not adequately demonstrated.” The agency also proposed revoking “all remaining GHG emissions requirements for power plants,” arguing their emissions “have no material impact on climate change.”

The plan to revoke the Carbon Pollution Standards was initially revealed last spring.

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On the heels of the hottest summer on record and a United Nations report warning that global temperatures are likely to push climate risks to “increasingly dangerous heights,” the Trump administration overturned most of a Biden-era rule limiting climate pollution from power plants, the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a final plan Monday that guts the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, which the agency said exceeds its authority under the Clean Air Act by requiring control technologies “that are not adequately demonstrated.” The agency also proposed revoking “all remaining GHG emissions requirements for power plants,” arguing their emissions “have no material impact on climate change.”

The plan to revoke the Carbon Pollution Standards was initially revealed last spring.

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In the badlands of Chakwal, in north-central Pakistan, Bestway Cement is transforming plots of dry earth and olive and peach groves into a forest of solar panels.

Its efforts will add 6.34 megawatts of generation capacity by the end of the year, the company says, in addition to the 26 MW of photovoltaic cells currently in place. Already, solar generates over a quarter of the electricity powering its cement plant.

“It’s the only way we can compete,” says Abdul Waheed, the general manager at Chakwal, which produces over 3 million tonnes of cement per year. “Our rivals have already gone in this direction.”

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There is something wrong with the tractor. The water-in-fuel sensor, a small device embedded in the John Deere machine that monitors the integrity of its diesel engine, is disconnected. And I’ve got to fix it.

I’m not a mechanic or a farmer. I’m poking at a laptop at John Deere’s corporate office in Santa Clara, California. There’s a cable connecting the computer to a 5130ML tractor sitting on the grass nearby. A bright red notification sits on the screen, telling me something is wrong. I type in a question and the software pulls up instructions and a few images from the user manual that matches the serial number of the machine.

Credit: Boone Ashworth

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On a sunny morning in June, I walked to work with a quadruped robot beside me. I’ve never gotten more attention from strangers.

A bunch of people snapped pictures of my robot dog. Several people asked me questions. Was it mine? (Yes.) Did I build it? (No.) Was it being used for surveillance? (No.)

Biological dogs kept a safe distance from my mechanical companion. Some growled or barked at it.

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In July, the Trump administration relegated endangered leatherback turtles, sea lions, and whales to mere collateral damage in its race to profit from the oceans. Now, fisheries science is in the government’s crosshairs.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced new agency priorities last week that they say are a commitment to “cutting bureaucracy, modernizing our science, and putting our fishing communities first.” But experts say the agency’s actions will erode fish stocks, threaten endangered species, and surrender marine habitats to destructive trawlers.

The agency-level reforms serve as a self-proclaimed “operational roadmap” to fulfilling President Donald Trump’s “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness” executive order, signed in April 2025.

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In July, the Trump administration relegated endangered leatherback turtles, sea lions, and whales to mere collateral damage in its race to profit from the oceans. Now, fisheries science is in the government’s crosshairs.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced new agency priorities last week that they say are a commitment to “cutting bureaucracy, modernizing our science, and putting our fishing communities first.” But experts say the agency’s actions will erode fish stocks, threaten endangered species, and surrender marine habitats to destructive trawlers.

The agency-level reforms serve as a self-proclaimed “operational roadmap” to fulfilling President Donald Trump’s “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness” executive order, signed in April 2025.

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Electric vehicle batteries are lasting longer than previously feared by drivers, with most used EVs able to retain about 90 percent of their original usable battery capacity after 150,000 kilometers, a new study has shown.

Despite a surge in global EV sales on the back of rising fuel prices, long-term battery durability continues to be one of the key concerns for drivers when they consider switching from a petrol model to an electric car.

EV battery warranties typically cover eight years or 100,000 miles (160,000 km) with car manufacturers required under the warranty to provide a replacement battery if capacity falls below 70 percent.

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Eat more fatty fish.

That dietary advice has changed the way the world consumes salmon, pushing consumer demand ever upward and production to higher and higher levels. Most of that demand is being met with farmed salmon: Today, nearly 70 percent of the salmon consumed on the planet are raised in pens and cages.

The US Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend eating at least 8 ounces of fish a week and urges people to choose salmon or other species that are similarly high in “heart-healthy” Omega-3 fatty acids. But new research led by USDA scientists finds that levels of these fatty acids in farmed salmon have dropped considerably, potentially making the agency’s own advice, and similar recommendations, including from the American Heart Association, outdated and insufficient.

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This week, the US Army used a high-energy multipurpose laser to shoot down three drones near the US-Mexico border, which official reports claimed were “posing a physical threat to US military personnel and CBP partners,” referring to Customs and Border Patrol.

The operation took place between the night of August 25 and the early morning of August 26 in the vicinity of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and was led by the Joint Task Force Southern Border (JTF-SB), which operates under US Northern Command. Authorities confirmed that, during the operation, agents used technology derived from the Army’s High-Energy Multipurpose Laser (AMP-HEL) system, a military program focused on implementing high-energy lasers for new defense capabilities.

Available information suggests that this initiative began in September 2025, when AeroVironment, a company specializing in defense technology, delivered the first two functional prototypes of these laser-based weapons to the US Armed Forces. Two new, improved systems were delivered as the program was expanded in December of the same year. According to the manufacturer, this particular platform, called the Locust Laser Weapon System, is designed to be mounted on military vehicles, as the Army has done with the versions it has received.

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Meta is testing robots that can plug in cables, reset servers, and handle other tasks inside its data centers, according to several current and former workers familiar with the projects. The ongoing effort, which has not been previously reported, may eventually allow Meta to operate its rapidly expanding data center footprint with fewer humans, keeping labor costs in check as its spending on AI infrastructure soars.

Meta is using robots and related hardware from several different vendors, including Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB, according to the same workers, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media. Kinova and ABB declined to comment. Watney didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In one experiment, Meta is evaluating whether a Kinova Gen3 robotic arm could be used for power cycling or cutting off electricity to servers. The company is also testing a different robot to swap networking cables. One Meta data center worker estimates that if it’s successful, the bot could replace up to 80 percent of some people’s workloads. “We thought those of us performing the physical tasks were safe for a while, but not anymore,” says the worker. “It’s coming for us all, unfortunately.”

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When someone uploads a photo to the people-search tool ClarityCheck, the website has a clear message: “Your reverse image search is private and secure.” New research, though, shows that the website left more than 9 million image files, including photographs of people’s faces, publicly exposed. And a second misconfiguration publicly exposed people’s email addresses and phone numbers.

Overall, according to findings from independent security researcher Jeremiah Fowler, the exposed ClarityCheck database contained roughly 450 GB of images, including what appeared to be profile images, screenshots, and other photographs of adults, teenagers, and children. All of the images were stored in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket, with files in folders named “faces” and “profiles,” which could be accessed by anyone online through a URL included in the company’s publicly available website code.

ClarityCheck is one of a number of so-called people-finder tools that have appeared online in recent years. These websites broadly claim to be able to search the web, public records, and other databases to identify individuals. ClarityCheck’s website says it can run searches on phone numbers, email addresses, vehicle identification numbers, and names. Its photo-search page says it can help “identify anyone in a photo” and find social media profiles “in seconds.”

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Waymo has sharply increased its lobbying spending as it seeks to persuade US regulators to clear a path for fully autonomous taxi services, intensifying its battle with rival Uber over the future of robotaxis.

The Alphabet-owned company spent more than $1 million between April and June on lobbying the federal government, more than double its outlay a year earlier, according to filings. That put Waymo’s spending close to Uber’s and well ahead of rivals including Amazon’s Zoox and Tesla.

The rise in lobbying comes as Waymo and Uber push competing visions for the future of ride-hailing. Waymo wants a faster route to fully driverless commercial services, while Uber is advocating a staggered rollout in which robotaxis operate alongside human drivers.

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Nvidia has disclosed that it owns nearly 123 million shares in SpaceX, further highlighting the chipmaker’s entangled financial relationships with some of its biggest customers.

The $5.5 trillion company owned SpaceX stock worth nearly $21 billion at the end of June, according to an SEC filing on Friday. Elon Musk’s rocket conglomerate’s shares have fallen sharply since its June initial public offering, meaning Nvidia’s stake would now be worth $17 billion.

The disclosure marks a huge pay-off on Nvidia’s investment in xAI, completed in January, shortly before Musk combined the AI lab with SpaceX.

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Leading US AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic are releasing cheaper models as they fight to retain cost-conscious customers who are switching to cut-price alternatives from Chinese rivals.

The price war comes as rising AI bills push companies to curb usage and seek cheaper models, helping Chinese developers including Moonshot and DeepSeek make inroads with users from Silicon Valley to Europe.

OpenAI recently said that it was slashing prices for GPT-5.6 Luna, its “fastest and most affordable model”, by 80 percent. Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 5, touting the system’s “frontier intelligence... at half the price” of Fable 5, the company’s most capable model.

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Cory Solovewicz receives more unwanted emails than you. Seriously—it’s a lot more. Since December 2024, one of the domains at which the security researcher receives email has registered 401,796 messages—by his calculations that’s an average of 699.99 pings per day.

This deluge isn’t the regular flood of spam, newsletters, and unwanted deals that fill many people’s inboxes. Instead, companies and other organizations are inadvertently sending Solovewicz other people’s private information and company secrets. Over the last few years, he’s received injury reports from a city government, confirmation of people’s pizza orders, and account setup emails from a school platform. “I get service orders for people that need repairs. I get lots of test platform credentials,” says Solovewicz, a security researcher and consultant.

Solovewicz is receiving the avalanche of messages as he’s the owner of the domains noreply.us and noreply.net, which he purchased in 2020 and 2024, respectively. After originally planning to use the noreply.us domain as a catch-all email—which receives mail sent to any @ address on that domain—to filter messages and enhance his privacy, the researcher quickly noticed that other systems were sending mail to @noreply.us addresses. “I created an accidental honeypot,” Solovewicz tells WIRED. “I had no idea it was going to turn into this.”

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In October 2025, a storm brewed over the Caribbean Sea. Weather models differed on its trajectory. Would it remain weak and end up in Haiti, or would it intensify and head to Jamaica? Artificial intelligence model WeatherNext, developed by Google’s DeepMind and Google Research, went with the latter. Five days before landfall, it predicted with 80 percent confidence that the storm system would hit Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane.

Hurricane Melissa was catastrophic, causing flooding and landslides across Jamaica. But the AI model helped forecasters give an earlier warning to communities in its path, so they could better prepare.

In a paper published on Thursday in Nature, researchers show that the WeatherNext AI model can predict cyclones with unprecedented accuracy. On average, it gives forecasters a day more lead time than existing models; this means its predictions three days out are as accurate as previous models’ predictions two days out. On the ground, that extra day can mean a lot.

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In October 2025, a storm brewed over the Caribbean Sea. Weather models differed on its trajectory. Would it remain weak and end up in Haiti, or would it intensify and head to Jamaica? Artificial intelligence model WeatherNext, developed by Google’s DeepMind and Google Research, went with the latter. Five days before landfall, it predicted with 80 percent confidence that the storm system would hit Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane.

Hurricane Melissa was catastrophic, causing flooding and landslides across Jamaica. But the AI model helped forecasters give an earlier warning to communities in its path, so they could better prepare.

In a paper published on Thursday in Nature, researchers show that the WeatherNext AI model can predict cyclones with unprecedented accuracy. On average, it gives forecasters a day more lead time than existing models; this means its predictions three days out are as accurate as previous models’ predictions two days out. On the ground, that extra day can mean a lot.

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ByteDance is training an AI model that could approach the size of Anthropic’s most cutting-edge Mythos system, as Chinese companies continue to narrow the gap with the top US labs.

The Chinese tech giant is at an early stage of training a model with as many as 10 trillion parameters—three times larger than Moonshot’s Kimi K3, the biggest Chinese model released to date, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The ByteDance model is being pre-trained—a stage that typically takes three to six months—before it is fine-tuned and released if all goes well, one of the people said. The exact model size would only be determined at a later stage.

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SpaceX shares dropped on Wednesday after Elon Musk’s plans for blockbuster spending to position his AI and rocket company as a data center developer spooked investors.

SpaceX surpassed analysts’ expectations in Tuesday’s debut earnings report, posting quarterly revenues of $7.8 billion, well above analysts’ estimates of $6.82 billion and up 92 percent from a year earlier. It posted a net loss of about $541 million, better than estimates of $2.12 billion.

But shares in SpaceX fell 10 percent in early trading after it reported capital expenditure of almost $16 billion on AI, double the previous quarter and well above Wall Street’s expectations. It said spending would persist at current levels for at least two more quarters.

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