Europe’s startup ecosystem has matured significantly; its founders are increasingly willing to scale companies domestically instead of immediately looking to relocate to the U.S.

For decades, the geography of the tech industry has felt largely fixed, with Silicon Valley dominating the global startup economy. While cities like London, Beijing, and Tel Aviv have competed for secondary influence, one of the most important conversations in artificial intelligence is happening somewhere else entirely: Paris.

France has aggressively invested in artificial intelligence research and infrastructure, with startups like Mistral AI helping Europe become a legitimate force in the global AI race. At the same time, Europe’s startup ecosystem has matured significantly; its founders are increasingly willing to scale companies domestically instead of immediately looking to relocate to the U.S.

A colossal ocean current encircling Antarctica—stronger than all the world’s rivers combined—played a far more complex role in shaping Earth’s climate than scientists once thought.

New research shows it didn’t form just because ocean gateways opened, but required shifting continents and powerful winds to align. This shift helped pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, contributing to a major cooling event that transformed Earth into the ice-covered world we know today.

Libby, Montana, sits on the banks of the Kootenay River in the far northwest corner of the state, closer to the Canadian border than any major city. In the summer, the hills are ripe with huckleberries, and every turn might reveal a big horn sheep, one of the region’s native animals. At golden hour, the huge tamaracks and pines glow in the setting sun. 

Libby wants to move past being known as “the asbestos town” — an identity it’s had since the toxic dust was discovered in a vermiculite mine. Over the years, it’s been a barrier to tourists fearing the asbestos in the air.

That’s incredibly damaging for a community that relies on tourism dollars — from hunting and fishing to recreation on Lake Koocanoosa, the reservoir just out of town. It’s something the town wants to build on— but their reputation as asbestos central is not helping. 

Global temperature record could be broken as soon as 2027, with El Niño expected later this year.

A record-breaking hot year is almost certain by 2030 as the climate crisis intensifies, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has warned.

With an El Niño event expected later this year, the global temperature record could fall as soon as 2027.

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are continuing to rise, trapping more heat and driving more extreme weather, including the record-breaking heatwave that has hit the UK and Europe this week.

Global heating is already estimated to be taking one life every minute, with the toll likely to rise unless emissions fall rapidly.

A series of low-pressure systems are drenching Australia this week, quickly turning this May into one of the wettest on record for parts of the country's east.

The focus today is north-east NSW and south-east Queensland, where summer-like humidity and instability could bring intense downpours, along with gusty winds and hail.

A separate system is also bringing rain and storms to WA ahead of a more intense burst of gales, rain and storms set to sweep across southern states from Sunday to Tuesday.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state, and in response, the Trump administration has sued, teeing up a legal battle over the most far-reaching crackdown on popular services like Kalshi and Polymarket.

It comes as states confront a growing standoff with the Trump administration over how to regulate the industry, which allows people to bet on virtually anything.

The expansion of cattle pastures, soybean farms and the exploitation of minerals and timber have long driven deforestation across the Amazon. While governments and markets have debated how to improve supply chains and curb environmental crime, a new and dangerous force has emerged in the region: Latin America’s powerful criminal organizations, fueled by drug trafficking profits.

Last week, Indigenous organizations from across the Amazon and Latin America sent a letter to the United Nations, warning that organized crime is driving violence and accelerating environmental destruction in rainforest communities. The letter, addressed to U.N. member states and agencies including the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said that expanding criminal networks threaten communities, ecosystems and local governance.

In conservative Utah, a coalition of cities and towns shows other communities how to bring new renewable energy to the electric grid in a unique way.

The share of power generated by wind and solar exceeded 30% in over a dozen states in 2025, which was a banner year for renewables even amid Trump’s attacks.

They can erase a rule from the Federal Register, but not the consequences written into soil, water, fire, and memory.

When the Trump administration finalized the rescission of the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule, it did not merely erase a regulation from the federal register, it chose, in plain sight, to narrow the meaning of care. The rule it repealed, formally known as the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, had placed conservation, restoration, land health, and ecosystem resilience more firmly within the BLM’s multiple-use mission, which governs roughly 245 million acres of public land and 700 million acres of federal mineral estate, more land and subsurface mineral estate than any other federal agency manages in the United States.

14 May 2026 – CHATHAM, MA – When boats on Cape Cod lose their winter shrink wrap coats, a model program provides a way to recycles the material and keep huge mountains of plastic out of landfills.

While the wrapping keeps boats safe and secure during the cold snowy months it also leaves behind about 30 pounds of plastic waste – per boat. With Cape Cod’s population of boats that waste adds up to tons upon tons of plastic.

However, for the past several years a model program in Barnstable county flips what would be those mountains of bulky landfill waste into the recycle market instead.

When boats on Cape Cod lose their winter shrink wrap coats a model program provides a way to recycles the material and keep huge mountains of plastic out of landfills.

One of the best things about rural living is sharing the landscape with wildlife. Peering out the window and seeing a moose in the yard. Walking in the woods and catching a fleeting glimpse of a bobcat. Prowling ponds after dark to view the spring salamander migration. Sometimes their presence is taken for granted, but keeping wildlife as visitors, especially for a developing area, can require knowledge and intentionality.

Historically, conservation groups have focused on protecting pristine places that have intact ecosystems. But a rising awareness in the last 20 years has prioritized the importance of connecting those different habitats. Many animals need to move for their survival, and maintaining connections between habitat areas is crucial for preserving biodiversity and adapting to climate change. Rather than protecting natural islands in a sea of development, there is a need for islands of development in a sea of wild or semi-wild landscapes.

One California town is in a state of emergency and 50,000 people are under an evacuation order as a malfunctioning chemical tank at an aerospace plant is overheating and could leak or explode.

Some 50,000 residents of Garden Grove, California remain under an evacuation order Sunday as emergency response teams struggle to deal with a potentially explosive situation at a nearby aerospace manufacturing plant.

Here's the latest on what's happening at the plant, and what could yet come.

AT&T has filed a suit in California seeking to preempt state requirements that it believes are preventing the company from retiring copper-based phone services, arguing that those requirements conflict with new FCC rules.

Alongside that suit, filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of California, AT&T is seeking permission from the FCC to discontinue plain old telephone service (POTS) in portions of California (the initial ask is for permission to discontinue 60% of its wire centers in the state, or about 360 wire centers) where it can offer a like-for-like alternative over fiber or wireless rather than via the operator's power-hungry copper networks. It could take until at least June for the FCC to undertake that process and come to a decision.

Susan Johnson, AT&T's senior EVP, transformation and global supply chain, told Light Reading that the 360 wire centers initially identified are in areas where AT&T has adequate fiber and wireless coverage to support a POTS replacement and address the concerns raised by state authorities. And the vast majority of customers in those areas, she added, also have three or more alternative service providers, she added. 

This past Sunday, I found myself walking across the snowless ski runs of Sierra-at-Tahoe in California, which sits on public land in the El Dorado National Forest. I had come to chase down a rumor.

Numerous Tahoe-area residents had told me the Forest Service’s plan to spray the controversial herbicide glyphosate—part of the agency’s forest restoration plan for about 75,000 acres scorched by the devastating 2021 Caldor Fire—had been delayed until 2028. A local news site, along with a major local environmental group—Keep Tahoe Blue—were telling people some version of that.

But I had my suspicions. I dug up maps from the Forest Service’s website, and headed to a spot where one of them indicated spraying might already be happening. It was strange to be standing in the middle of a ski run, with neither snow nor skiers around. But I knew if spraying were happening, it would be obvious.

Is waste heat from data centers affecting the weather? A new study says they are making their local environment hotter.

Data centers continue to spread across the U.S. landscape as demand for artificial intelligence, social media and digital services surges. Their impact on energy and water supply is well documented, but the first in a series of new studies has revealed another potential impact of data centers: They may be creating enough heat to affect temperatures around them and produce data center heat islands, or DCHIs.

What Is A Heat Island?

A new Gallup poll has found that most Americans would really prefer not to live next door to a data center.

For the first time, the polling organization asked people what they think of data centers, the massive computer-warehouses required to operate (among other things) large AI models.

Data centers need significant space, energy and water to operate, and they don’t provide many jobs relative to the investment they require. And they’re often unpleasant neighbors: their cooling systems can be noisy, and many include onsite gas turbines that belch black smoke into the air.

Gallup found seven out of ten Americans would be opposed to a data center in their backyard, with nearly half of those surveyed (48 percent) “strongly opposed” to data centers in their area.

We often laud China for its boom in renewable energy projects, but seem to ignore the fact that it’s still building coal-fired power plants at a faster pace than any other country.

Experts are questioning whether China's gains in green energy will be clouded by the black smoke billowing from its robust fleet of coal plants. Air pollution in China kills 2 million a year.

On the topic of China’s “green” energy boom, it’s also important to note that many of the critical mineral operations key to its renewable projects are harming workers and the environment across South America and Africa. This week, as Trump landed for talks in Beijing, the feeble US Congress released a paper on China’s “mineral mafia”. The report wasn’t driven so much by criticism of China’s practices but by imperial jealousy. 

Exclusive: Commission says alert would trigger coordinated international response that could help avoid millions dying.

The climate crisis should be declared a global public health emergency by the World Health Organization, or millions more people will die unnecessarily, leading international experts have said.

The independent pan-European commission on climate and health, which was convened by the WHO, concluded the climate crisis was such a worldwide threat to health that the WHO should declare it “a public health emergency of international concern” (Pheic).

The international spread of vector-borne disease, such as dengue and chikungunya, as well as the health impacts of extreme weather events, global heating, food insecurity and air pollution make a Pheic necessary, said the commission’s report, which will be presented to European ministers on Sunday before the WHO’s world health assembly starts on Monday.