AI-friendly president shared a post saying governor Kathy Hochul should scrap the one-year policy ‘IMMEDIATELY’

Donald Trump railed against the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, for pausing the construction of large new datacenters, the resource-intensive facilities that power artificial intelligence.

New York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on new datacenters on Tuesday, when Hochul signed an executive order mandating a one-year statewide pause on so-called “hyperscale” datacenters.

Star Wars director calls AI technology ‘the future’ of film-making and says ‘there’s nothing you can do about it’

The Star Wars director, George Lucas, has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.

Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”

Guardian analysis found the removals coincided with the Trump administration’s push to weaken efficiency rules

As millions of Americans prepare for another brutal heatwave, it’s now harder to find information about ways to stay cool while saving energy and keeping utility costs down.

At least 1,662 Department of Energy webpages offering guidance on protecting the electrical grid during heatwaves have gone dark as of 3 July, according to a Guardian analysis of a list of deleted URLs provided by researchers at the Internet Archive, a non-profit that hosts a repository of more than a trillion archived webpages.

Governor Kathy Hochul issues executive order enacting a moratorium on the large, resource-intensive AI facilities

New York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on new datacenters on Tuesday.

Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order mandating a one-year statewide pause on the large facilities used to power artificial intelligence products, which she signed at a mid-morning press conference.

Microsoft, Amazon and Google say they still aim to achieve net zero output despite construction boom

Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s collective carbon emissions have increased by nearly a fifth in the past year, driven largely by datacentre construction.

In the financial year ending March 2026, the three tech companies emitted 119m mTCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), or about a third of those of France.

Researchers on Beaver Island, in Lake Michigan, are trying to find a more reliable form of power using local resources

Beaver Island sits in the middle of the northernmost end of Lake Michigan, about 70 miles from the maritime border with Canada. The forested island, just a little bigger than San Francisco in size, is a popular summer destination for tourists and home to about 600 permanent residents. Getting there requires a boat or plane ride.

Getting electricity to the island is not as easy. Power comes from mainland Michigan through cables that cross roughly 30 miles of lake bed. Outages are common during extreme weather, or when there are problems with the sensitive wires. The devastating ice storm that walloped the state last year knocked out power to the island for weeks.

Political campaigns are increasingly deploying AI and deepfakes to further their messaging, and the scale of spread has experts concerned

From the comfort of his bed, Jonathan Rinaldi, a political candidate for a city council seat in Queens, New York, tinkered away on his iPhone, prompting an artificial intelligence chatbot to mock up fake news hits and endorsements he had never received.

During the campaign last October, Rinaldi shared one of those stories, made to appear real with a CNN logo, on his Facebook and Instagram. It stated that Lynn Schulman, his opponent and an incumbent Democrat, had been “forced to drop out of the race due to a series of critical mistakes”. But Schulman had not quit her campaign, and in November, won by a landslide.

Report finds widespread overbidding as rapid AI growth generates increased wealth in city where housing is scarce

San Francisco’s AI boom has buyers spending unprecedented amounts of money on homes – much more than sellers are asking for.

A new analysis from real-estate brokerage Compass, found that in the first half of 2026, more than 140 homes in the city sold for at least $1m above their asking price, 44 of them in June alone.

Experts say cuts have hindered the response to DRC’s Ebola outbreak and resulted in ‘significant numbers’ of deaths

Elon Musk has an Ebola problem. SpaceX stock dropped precipitously after its initial public offering, and Tesla faces a wave of lawsuits. But instead of focusing on his companies, Musk has posted frequently on X about the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which he helped dismantle – or, in his words, feed into the woodchipper – last year.

“Elon’s USAID crash-out over the past week has been a thing to behold,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former top USAID official who oversaw the agency’s Ebola response in 2014-2015 and the president of Refugees International. “In a way, it’s helpful that Elon is doing this, because it’s putting attention back on the issue of what he did last year.”

Manny Rutinel’s House campaign draws millions from big tech as pro- and anti-AI factions spar over regulation

Political groups funded by top tech executives have been homing in on one local race in Colorado, as the state’s Democratic primary vote gets under way on Tuesday. Democrat Manny Rutinel, who’s running in the competitive eighth congressional district for a seat in the House, has seen his campaign boosted with at least $2m in donations from committees led by the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen.

Rutinel is a progressive candidate running against former state representative and centrist Democrat Shannon Bird. During his campaign, he has focused on his Latino heritage and centered his platform around affordability and regulating Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).