🇺🇸 United States · Climate & environment, AI, Disasters & accidents
20 storiesSchool bus rollover in Florida kills 2, including a 10th grade student
A school bus carrying 39 people flipped onto its roof in a multivehicle crash in Winter Haven, Florida, on Monday morning, killing a 10th grade girl and the driver of a Jeep, authorities said. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said an oncoming…
Supreme Court hears Boulder climate suit as justices question both sides
The Supreme Court heard nearly two hours of arguments Monday on whether the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, can sue Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy in state court to recover costs tied to climate change. Conservative justices questioned…
Trump announces “Super Intelligence Force” AI task force led by Jay Clayton
President Donald Trump announced Sunday the creation of a “Super Intelligence Force,” a federal task force he said will coordinate government efforts to keep the United States leading in artificial intelligence, which he has directed the fe…
Nvidia-backed Reflection AI unveils Beam, open-weight model to rival Chinese models
Reflection AI unveiled Beam, a 501-billion-parameter open-weight AI model that the New York-based startup says matches leading Chinese open models like Z.ai’s GLM-5.2 at lower compute cost. The Nvidia-backed company says Beam is in final sa…
Gulf tropical depression forecast to become Atlantic season’s first hurricane
A tropical depression formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday afternoon and is forecast to become the Atlantic season’s first hurricane later this week, with a possible US landfall early Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center.…
OpenAI to add invisible text watermarking in ChatGPT and Codex in the EU
OpenAI said it will add an invisible watermark, called textGrain, to text generated by ChatGPT and Codex in the European Union, rolling out over the coming weeks to eligible users on all plans. API customers worldwide can opt in for select …
Bermuda mother and son identified in air ambulance crash off Nantucket
Bermuda police identified Marilyn Lavonne Bean, 66, and her son Sergio Wayne Lottimore, 41, both Bermudian nationals, as the two passengers on a Gulfstream G100 air ambulance that went missing off Nantucket, Massachusetts, around 1 a.m. Sat…
Wikimedia says OpenAI “rogue” agents may be linked to May outage
The Wikimedia Foundation said it discovered activity on its platforms by AI agents it believes were operated by OpenAI, including unauthorized wiki edits, unsuccessful attempts to exploit its public Etherpad tool and millions of automated r…
Google to limit free Gemini users to Flash-Lite model from October 9
Google will end free access to the Gemini Flash and Pro models on October 9, leaving users without a paid plan with only Flash-Lite, according to a company support page reported by tech outlets. Subscribers to the cheapest tier, Google AI P…
Ghost, founded by a 19-year-old, raises $11M for $3,499 personal AI computer
Ghost, an AI hardware startup led by 19-year-old CEO Zain Javaid, said it raised an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. It emerged from stealth with Core, a $3,499 screenless computer designed to run AI agents locally on a us…
Coast Guard suspends search for 6 missing after air ambulance crash off Nantucket
The U.S. Coast Guard said it suspended its search Sunday evening for six people who were aboard a Gulfstream G100 air ambulance that went missing early Saturday on a flight from Bermuda to Boston. A debris field found off Nantucket was conf…
Florida school bus rollover crash kills 10th grader and one other
Two people died, including a 10th-grade girl at Winter Haven High School, when a school bus flipped onto its roof in Winter Haven, Florida, on Monday morning, the Polk County sheriff said. The bus was carrying 39 people — 37 students, the d…
AI whistleblowers warn NYC council of extinction risk, urge oversight
Former employees of Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind told a New York City Council hearing on Monday that AI companies are racing to build technology they cannot control, and called for greater oversight. Former Anthropic engineer Jacob…
Open-source RemoveMacAI tool deletes Apple Intelligence models on macOS 27
An open-source command-line tool called RemoveMacAI can delete Apple Intelligence models on macOS 27 and free up roughly 12GB of storage, according to tech outlets. macOS 27 removed the single toggle that previously disabled Apple Intellige…
Italy’s Meloni seeks EU trademark for her voice to combat AI deepfakes
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni has applied to trademark her voice with the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office, filing a four-second recording of herself saying “Io sono Giorgia Meloni,” according to EU records. The move, first re…
NYC Council questions AI executives on safety as SpaceXAI skips hearing
The New York City Council held a hearing on Monday on AI safety, with policy executives from OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic and Google testifying as the council weighs guardrails proposals. Elon Musk's SpaceXAI was the only company called that did…
OpenAI safety lead resigns, says company's safety culture is broken
David Robinson, who wrote the safety reports accompanying OpenAI's major model releases, has resigned and published an essay in The Atlantic saying the company's culture is "broken" and its approach to safety is reactive. He cited a July 20…
Trump names intelligence chief Jay Clayton as AI czar, creating Super Intelligence Force
President Trump said Sunday that he had named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as his artificial intelligence czar and asked him to lead a new task force called the “Super Intelligence Force.” Clayton will keep overseeing the c…
Debris field found off Nantucket in search for missing air ambulance with 6 aboard
The U.S. Coast Guard is searching off the Massachusetts coast for an air ambulance carrying six people that disappeared on a nighttime flight from Bermuda to Boston, and planned to send sonar across the seabed. The FAA told the Coast Guard …
Nolo strengthens to Category 3 hurricane in remote Pacific, away from populated islands
Hurricane Nolo strengthened into a Category 3 storm in the remote Pacific Ocean, with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph), the National Hurricane Center said. A tropical storm warning was issued for part of the Papahanaumokuakea Ma…