60 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Justine Calma

Justine Calma

Senior Science Reporter

Senior Science Reporter

    More From Justine Calma

    Justine Calma
    Justine Calma
    The EPA is delaying final rules on power plant pollution.

    Measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions from gas-fired power plants operating in the US probably won’t be finalized until November — after presidential elections. It’s a risky gamble for environmental groups pushing the Biden administration to take more time to tighten proposed regulations. If Donald Trump is elected, policies to tackle climate change could just go out the window like they did during his last stint in office.

    Justine Calma
    Justine Calma
    AI is making data centers more power hungry.

    AI eats up a lot of electricity, and that’s driving up data centers’ energy use. It’s also changing the physical footprint of data centers and making it harder for companies to hit their sustainability goals, the New York Times reports. With the AI-fueled boom in new data centers, sites under construction in North America could eventually use as much power each year as the San Francisco metro area, according to a real estate report published yesterday.

    Justine Calma
    Justine Calma
    A nuclear weapons facility is back online after a fierce fire forced non-essential workers to evacuate.

    The blaze is still tearing through the Texas Panhandle after scorching 500,000 acres. The Smokehouse Creek Fire is now the second largest in state history, with 0 percent contained as of Wednesday morning. The facility responsible for disassembling a majority of the nation’s nuclear weapons shuttered briefly Tuesday night as flames drew near.

    Justine Calma
    Justine Calma
    Elizabeth Warren is still pushing crypto mines to divulge their electricity use.

    Warren has been urging federal agencies to scrutinize energy-hungry Bitcoin mines. But crypto groups secured a temporary pause on the Department of Energy’s survey of their electricity consumption.

    “The Department is asking cryptominers to report basic information about their energy usage—like other industries have done for decades—so the public and lawmakers better understand how cryptomining’s electricity use and carbon emissions affect the power grid and environment,” Warren said in a statement to The Verge after the news came out.

    Justine Calma
    Justine Calma
    Clean energy projects are coming to tribal and rural communities in the US.

    The Department of Energy announced $366 million for 17 clean energy projects across 30 Tribal Nations and 20 states. All of them are connected to “disadvantaged communities that are disproportionally overburdened by pollution and historically underserved.” That includes off-grid solar and battery storage for the Hopi and Navajo Nations, aiming to give 300 rural homes electricity for the first time. More than one-fifth of Navajo homes and one third of Hopi homes lacks electricity, according to the DOE.