Justine Calma

Planting too many trees can do more harm than good. The Verge has said this again and again with tree-planting schemes becoming a popular way for brands to paint themselves green. A big part of the problem was an initiative to plant a trillion trees spearheaded by the World Economic Forum and backed by a contested study from the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich. Apparently, the lab’s namesake, Thomas Crowther, took the stage during the recent United Nations climate conference to push countries to protect existing forests instead. “If no one had ever said, ‘Plant a trillion trees,’ I think we’d have been in a lot better space,” Crowther tells Wired.

Apple filed a copyright lawsuit against Corellium in 2019, claiming the company — which created virtual iPhone environments for security testing — illegally replicated iOS. The dispute was nearly settled in 2021, but Apple went on to file an appeal against a judge’s ruling that Corellium had operated within fair use laws. Now, Apple and Corellium have finally reached an undisclosed settlement, Forbes reports.

The group of 18 youth between the ages of 8 and 17 from California say that the EPA “intentionally allows life-threatening climate pollution to be emitted by the fossil fuel sources of greenhouse gases it regulates, harming children’s health and welfare.” The suit follows a major win in Montana, where another group of young people successfully sued the state for violating their right to a clean environment.

The new Office of Critical and Emerging Technology is supposed to track developments in AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, and biotech. The DOE also appointed a new Chief Artificial Intelligence, Semafor reports. Joe Biden’s October executive order on AI development established the office.

The US Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of two gene-based therapies for sickle cell disease, one of which uses the genome editing technology CRISPR. It’s a big milestone, but access to the therapies for now will still be very limited and expensive, the New York Times explains.