For the past few days, a heatwave has glowered over the Pacific Northwest, forcing temperatures in the region to a record-breaking 118ºF. Few people in the region—neither Americans nor Canadians—have air-conditioning. Stores sold out of new AC units in hours as a panicked public sought a reasonable solution to the emergency. Unfortunately, air-conditioning is part…

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. If you’d like sign up to receive this free once-a-week email, click here. Portland General Electric (PGE) Vice President Larry Bekkedahl seemed remarkably cool considering the 110°F temperatures outside the window of his Portland office—and the unprecedented energy demand his system is facing....

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Virgin Galactic finally has the federal government’s approval to start launching customers into space from New Mexico. Richard Branson’s rocketship company announced the Federal Aviation Administration’s updated license on Friday. It’s the final hurdle in Virgin Galactic’s yearslong effort to send paying passengers on short space...

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — How do astronauts do laundry in space? They don’t. They wear their underwear, gym clothes and everything else until they can’t take the filth and stink anymore, then junk them. NASA wants to change that — if not at the International Space Station, then the moon and Mars — and stop throwing away tons of dirty clothes every year, stuffing them...

(JOHANNESBURG) — The World Health Organization is in talks to create the first-ever technology transfer hub for coronavirus vaccines in South Africa, a move to boost supply to the continent that’s desperately in need of COVID-19 shots, the head of the U.N. agency announced. The new consortium will include drug makers Biovac and Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, a network of...

JIUQUAN, China — Three Chinese astronauts have begun making China’s new space station their home for the next three months, after their launch and arrival at the station Thursday marked further advances in the country’s ambitious space program. Their Shenzhou-12 craft connected with the station about six hours after taking off from the Jiuquan launch center on the edge of the...

We’re not going to vaccinate our way completely out of this pandemic. With epidemiologists around the world increasingly accepting the reality that SARS-CoV-2 and its variants will become endemic viruses—like the seasonal flu—the push is on to develop antiviral medications that can be taken at home to prevent infections from leading to hospitalization and death. Today, the...

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. If you’d like sign up to receive this free once-a-week email, click here. For years, climate policy experts have watched as the issue has been pushed off the stage at global summits to make way for the geopolitical conflict dujour. That trend has long frustrated climate advocates who sought to make leaders...

JIUQUAN, China — Under bright-blue morning skies, China launched its first crewed space mission in five years Thursday, sending three science-minded military pilots rocketing to a new orbiting station they’re expected to reach around midafternoon. The astronauts, already wearing their spacesuits, were seen off by space officials, other uniformed military personnel and a crowd of...

JIUQUAN, China — The three members of the first crew to be sent to China’s space station say they’re eager to get to work making their home for the next three months habitable, setting up testing and experiments and preparing for a series of spacewalks. The three met with reporters Wednesday from inside a germ-free glassed-in room, hours before they are due to blast off on...

And why Chopra believes technology is an extension of human consciousness

The COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly becoming an arms race among the emerging variants of the virus, and at the moment, there’s no question which one is winning: the Delta variant—formally known as B.1.617.2—one of four strains to have emerged originally in India. It was just last month that the World Health Organization labeled Delta a “variant of...

For the last 23 years, I’ve traveled around the world as a wildlife photographer and photojournalist. The pandemic ground all that to a halt. Like most of us, I was home for more than a year. In that time, I reflected on what I’ve learned during those two-plus decades of non-stop travel. My last trip, which ended in March 2020, was part of a three-year project photographing whales...

Lilibet ‘Lili’ Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, the new daughter of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, was born on Friday, June 4, weighing in at a healthy 7 lbs., 11 oz and, according to a statement issued by the parents, “both mother and child are healthy and well, and settling in at home.” So all good for the second child of two people who are arguably the most...

Give Jeff Bezos this: the guy knows how to make the most out of semi-retirement. On July 5, the richest man in the world will step down as Amazon CEO to focus more of his energy on his two other major properties: The Washington Post and Blue Origin, a rocket company and SpaceX rival. On July 20—just 15 days after he gets his gold watch and, not incidentally, 52 years to the day after...

The U.S. Navy pilots flying maneuvers in their F/A-18 Super Hornets in 2015 did not have to wait for yesterday’s leak of the classified government report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)—better known as UFOs—to know that they were seeing things they could not explain outside their windscreens. The objects were, yes, saucer-shaped, and they were bobbing, darting and...