Last month, the U.S. House passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. They call it "a bipartisan effort to require AM radio in new vehicles," adding that the bill now "awaits action in the Senate, where a companion measure has already garnered support, according to public records." Broadcasters said AM radio remains a critical source of information, offering news and weather alerts, particularly when cell networks and internet service are disrupted or unreliable... "AM radio — all radio — has always been about connection, and in Chicago, especially, the connection is incredibly strong," Mary Sandberg Boyle, vice president and general manager of WGN-AM 720, said. "You don't need a subscription. You don't need a data plan or an app. You turn on the radio, and it's there..." Boyle said the accessibility of radio becomes especially important during severe weather and breaking news situations. "That's when local radio is really more important because we have the ability to stay live, pivot our content and what we're covering, and we can access a large amount of audience members very quickly and keep everybody safe," she said. Boyle also serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Broadcasters, which has argued that preserving AM radio access is an access issue rather than a matter of nostalgia. The legislation emerged after several automakers removed AM radio from certain electric vehicle models, citing interference from electric power systems. Companies including Tesla, Rivian, Volvo and others have either eliminated or limited AM radio in some EVs. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major automakers, has opposed the requirement. In congressional testimony last year, President and CEO John Bozzella argued that "analog AM radio does not contribute to motor vehicle safety" and requiring it as standard equipment "is not necessary to ensure public safety." Under the bill, the U.S. Department of Transportation would be required to develop regulations ensuring AM radio remains available in new vehicles sold in the U.S. The measure would also bar automakers from charging consumers separately for AM radio access... While public discussion around the legislation has largely focused on emergency alerts and news access, some scholars say preserving AM radio also has implications for media diversity... "I think the media landscape is really overwhelmingly homogenized right now, and AM radio is important in many markets," [said Zachary McDowell, associate professor of communications at the University of Illinois Chicago]. "It's a space that still allows for all sorts of different voices that is still open and accessible." The article also includes this quote from Rodney Gibbs, executive director of Heartland Signal, which operates a local talk radio station. "Despite the kind of shiny objects that digital media is, AM radio still has a viable and durable audience. It's a daily, unscripted, authentic conversation between the host and the listeners. You don't get that from broadcast television. You don't get that from digital media."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The continuation of AI chatbots arriving in CarPlay, Apple’s opt-in approach to using customer data for AI training, and turmoil surrounding WordPress leadership are the topics for this MacVoices Live! discussion. The conversation also examines Bending Spoons’ latest billion-dollar acquisition, Apple’s international iCloud+ bundles, the potential for services to expand Apple’s global ecosystem, and Michael Dell’s support for new youth investment accounts.

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La Côte d’Ivoire a lancé, le 1er septembre, sa campagne 2026-2027 de commercialisation du cacao, avec de nouvelles obligations de traçabilité. Premier produit d’exportation du pays, le cacao occupe une place centrale dans l’économie ivoirienne. Au-delà de la production de fèves, le gouvernement...

Pendant près de deux millénaires, une question a résisté aux historiens. Jules César avait-il décrit fidèlement la Lutèce gauloise, ou son récit avait-il brouillé les pistes ? Sous l’Hôtel-Dieu, sur l’île de la Cité, à Paris, une découverte pourrait faire basculer ce vieux débat.

Across the stories today, a common thread emerges: the planet is speaking in signals — some subtle, some deafening — and the question is whether our institutions can listen fast enough to act.

Start with the signals themselves. El Niño has surged to record strength weeks ahead of schedule, and its fingerprints are already visible — from Hurricane Polo’s explosive intensification in the Pacific to the climate volatility rippling through global weather systems. In the UK, an aphid outbreak wiped out 30 million lettuce heads almost overnight, a small but telling example of how shifting conditions can upend food systems in ways no one budgets for. In Malawi, an unexplained weed overgrowth has choked Chia Lagoon, stranding farmers and fishers in flooded fields nearly seven months after the rains should have drained. These aren’t isolated oddities. They’re the planet’s early warning system, written in crop yields and clogged waterways.

Then there’s the human response — uneven, but not absent. Germany’s landmark pledge to phase out fossil fuels by 2045 marks a rare moment of policy catching up to urgency, moving beyond vague “carbon neutrality” language toward something more concrete. The UK’s decision to declassify a once-suppressed intelligence report — warning that climate breakdown is a direct threat to global security — suggests governments are quietly acknowledging what scientists have said for years, even if political will lags behind. And at UN climate talks in New York, amid what The Guardian describes as a genuinely grim mood, solar power’s continued growth offered rare, tangible hope. As Al Gore noted twenty years after An Inconvenient Truth, he’s surprised by the ferocity of fossil fuel pushback — but still believes, cautiously, that the fight can be won.

Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time. In the Andes, villagers near Villa de Arma are turning to ancient wetland systems as glaciers they once walked across vanish into bare rock. In Guam, resident Leevin Camacho learned his family’s water contained a pesticide banned since 1987 — a stark reminder that militarization and environmental cost are often intertwined, especially in the Pacific. And in Sarawak, Indigenous communities are still reckoning with displacement from the Bakun megadam three decades later, a cautionary tale as the world races toward a “clean” energy future that doesn’t always ask who pays for it.

It’s a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together. Endangered birds on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula won last-minute protection from a rocket launch site — a genuine conservation victory — even as a Norfolk Broads housing levy was quietly slashed, raising fears that environmental safeguards elsewhere are eroding. Meanwhile, olive ridley sea turtles nesting for the first time ever on California beaches offer something rarer: wonder. A signal, too, but one that invites curiosity rather than alarm — proof that the natural world is still capable of surprising us.

As the week unfolds, all eyes will be on whether momentum from Climate Week — bolstered even by a monster from Sesame Street reminding children it’s okay to feel both fear and courage — translates into follow-through. The data, the disasters, and the small human stories all point the same direction: the era of asking “if” is over. What remains is the harder work of “how fast,” and “for whom.”

The post Hurricane Polo Explodes in Pacific, UK Aphid Swarm Wipes Out 30 Million Lettuces, Glasgow Braces for Rubbish Pileup — Today’s Environmental Briefing for Thu, Sep 24 2026 first appeared on EnviroLink Network.

L’intelligence artificielle commence à entrer dans les salles de contrôle du ciel américain. Baptisé Smart, ce système doit anticiper les embouteillages aériens, les effets de la météo et les conflits de trajectoires. Cette révolution technologique n’est pas tout à fait du goût des contrôleurs...

Meta a du mal à faire décoller ses IA, alors la firme a pensé autrement avec sa nouvelle application Muse. Plutôt que de proposer un chatbot, le groupe de Mark Zuckerberg mise sur une autre bataille : celle des agents capables d’agir à la place de l’utilisateur. Et les premiers chiffres montrent...

After nearly two decades, America's war on CO2 is being brought to a well-deserved end, with Lee Zeldin, the head of Trump's EPA, scrapping Biden-era green power plant rules, says Tilak Doshi.

The post Trump’s EPA Ends America’s War on CO2 appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Archaeologists rarely identify a settlement from one object. They combine buildings, hearths, tools, food remains, activity areas, and patterns of rebuilding to understand a site.

The post How Do Archaeologists Tell a Settlement From a Ritual Complex? appeared first on Curiosmos.

Nearly 1,000 bones and teeth from three Granada caves show that Neolithic cannibalism was not one practice or one event. The dates and traces point to different stories.

The post What Happened in These Neolithic Caves? Human Bones Record More Than One Kind of Cannibalism appeared first on Curiosmos.

Un purificateur d'air domestique pour faire baisser la tension artérielle : l'idée peut sembler surprenante. Pourtant, une étude publiée en août 2025 dans le Journal of the American College of Cardiology apporte des preuves sérieuses : 3 mmHg de moins sur la pression systolique. C'est modeste,...

Many materials, both living and engineered, are powered from within. Scientists have thoroughly investigated how such ‘active’ materials

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Rising temperatures contributed to the disaster by destabilizing the permafrost and ice around the collapsed rock, scientists concluded.