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Galaxy phones are finally getting a feature Android users have wanted for years
Samsung finally adds a network speed meter to Galaxy phones with One UI 9.
Galaxy phones can finally display network speed in the status bar, here’s how
No root, no third-party app: Galaxy smartphones can finally show network speed in the status bar, and we explain how to enable it.
After years of waiting, One UI 9 finally brings this status bar feature to Galaxy phones
One UI 9 now supports adding a network speed indicator to the status bar and disabling live activities using a Good Lock module.
Ex-Reno business owner indicted for allegedly embezzling $7.8 million from high-speed internet project
“Through multiple fraudulent schemes, the defendant clearly exploited trust to line his pockets,” according to an FBI official.
“The Magic Mile” Happy Hour Show Returns to Headline Long List of Free Entertainment for Race Fans at New Hampshire Motor Speedway
This August at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, fans can enjoy a mix of new and classic entertainment during New England's only NASCAR Cup Series weekend. Highlights include “The Magic Mile” Happy Hour Show, the Van Halen tribute band Everybody Wants Some, Family Movie Night with "Zootopia 2" and various games and activities throughout the weekend.
Japan's Asics to spin off Onitsuka Tiger business
Japan's Asics Corp on Wednesday said it will spin off its high-end Onitsuka Tiger business, a key driver behind four straight years of record profit, in a bid to speed up decision-making and boost competitiveness.
California's slow vote count faces changes as Supreme Court decision on late ballots looms
The U.S. Supreme Court could soon rule that California cannot accept ballots after election day. Experts are unsure what effect that would have on the counting process, but say there are other steps the state could take to speed things up.
Apple officially announces tvOS 27 – and it nearly makes up for the missing next-generation Apple TV 4K
Your streaming box is about to get speedier
From Classroom to Racetrack: How Charlie Baur is Building a Motorsports Career in a Business Discipline
Charlie Baur can trace his racing story back to a Christmas morning in Michigan — the kind that starts with snow on the ground and ends with a throttle in a kid’s hands. “I remember being 3 years old and then for Christmas that year, my parents had gotten me a 120 cc snowmobile,” Baur said. Long before sprint cars, he was a Michigan kid on snowmobiles, dirt bikes, four-wheelers and jet skis — and a regular at car shows and races with his family. Photo courtesy of Charlie Baur That early exposure became a calling. At 12, he sat in a sprint car for the first time and knew he’d found the next chapter. He started in quarter midgets, moved to go-karts, and the day before he turned 16 — one day shy of the minimum age required by track insurance — he made his first sprint car start after convincing officials to let him race. Five years later, Baur is still pushing forward, now racing sprint cars on both pavement and dirt while pursuing an automotive business education at Northwood University — with a clear-eyed understanding that motorsports encompasses more than what happens under the lights on Saturday night. “It’s a business,” said Charlie, a 20-year-old who calls Fenton, Michigan, home when he’s not at a racetrack or at Northwood’s residential campus in Midland, Michigan. Photo courtesy of Charlie Baur Racing is the product — but preparation is the job To the average fan, race day begins around dinner time. For a team, race day can be a 12-hour shift — plus the work that came before it. And Baur’s racing operation is a family affair. “The team is my parents and myself,” he said, explaining they own the cars, maintain equipment and manage the business side — from sponsor relations to budgeting. On race weekends, the core group includes Baur and his parents (Eric and Stefanie), plus a couple of additional hands (Alex Photiou and Robert Flannigan) who help with the intensity and pace of trackside work. That structure has shaped how he thinks about efficiency and professionalism. “We’ve always kind of had the mentality of we’re never working on the car for maintenance at the track,” he said. “Our goal is to do as little work as possible to the car because it should be ready when that car rolls out of the trailer to go racing.” That mindset shows up in routines: bolt checks, tire procedures, safety equipment and a repeatable process designed to limit errors. “Once I fire the car up and put my helmet on, that’s when it’s go time,” he said. “You can plan as much as possible for how the race is going to play out, but until you take the green flag … you don’t know how it’s going to go.” Photo courtesy of Charlie Baur First-generation driver, student of the game In racing, “first-generation” matters — and Baur wears that label with pride. “A lot of the drivers are third or fourth generation,” he said. “My family has never been in motorsports. So for me, we’ve always looked at it as we’re new to it and we want to be as different as possible. From a marketing standpoint, it helps us stand out.” It also pushes him to seek out mentors — especially veteran drivers who have seen every scenario, solved every problem and won in multiple eras. Baur credits accomplished driver Jason Blonde, a 10-time champion, for becoming his driver coach and helping him develop as a competitor. “To me, learning from Jason helps me because he has had lots of success and knows what to do,” Baur said. “You have to humble yourself and say, ‘I don’t know what to do; can you help me out?’” That willingness to learn extends off the track, too. Baur says one of his biggest challenges is not a mechanical limitation, but credibility. “It’s my age,” he said. “Some people won’t take me seriously because I’m so young. Even though … I do know what we’re talking about and have a general idea.” His answer has been to out-prepare, out-communicate and treat the operation like a real enterprise — because it is. Photo courtesy of Charlie Baur Northwood’s role: Turning passion into a plan Baur is majoring in automotive aftermarket management and pursuing an accelerated path that pairs undergraduate study with graduate work. He’s also exploring how to align his studies with motorsports-focused coursework as Northwood advances related programs and pathways. He sees the value clearly: motorsports needs business-literate professionals who understand budgets, sponsorship, marketing, operations and long-term strategy — and who can translate between the language of the shop and the language of the boardroom. That’s why his Northwood experience isn’t limited to the classroom. He has been involved with the Northwood University International Auto Show and serves as motorsports chair — a leadership role that demands outreach, contracts, coordination and a steady professional demeanor. “There’s so much outside work that makes the auto show successful that people don’t realize,” he said. “And it is truly student led.” He’s also participated in industry experiences through Northwood at major events such as AAPEX, SEMA and PRI, along with other automotive networking events — opportunities he describes as a fast track to understanding how business really gets done. “You learn a lot in the classroom,” he said. “But if you learn it and you can’t apply it to the real world, it loses its value. Or if you learn it and can apply it, but you don’t know anyone, it is still of no value.” In his words, Northwood helps him win because it “gives me the tools to succeed” — including flexibility and faculty support as he balances travel and racing commitments with academics. Photo courtesy of Charlie Baur Racing as an ecosystem — and a talent gap waiting to be filled Baur is blunt about what he sees across the motorsports world: a deep bench of experienced professionals, and not enough young talent entering the pipeline. “I go to car shows, I go to these different events, and typically … the average age is between 45 to 55,” he said. “There’s not a lot of young people going into the motorsports world.” That reality reinforces Northwood’s communications focus: positioning motorsports not as a narrow lane, but as a wide ecosystem of business careers — sponsorship, logistics, data, media, leadership, hospitality and innovation — with real demand for prepared graduates. It also shapes how Baur talks to younger students who love racing but aren’t sure what their future looks like. “If you have a passion for motorsports, there’s gonna be a spot for you somewhere,” he said, emphasizing that driving is only one of many career paths — and that local tracks and hands-on experience are often the best first step. But if someone is interested in driving as a career path, it will take a team to make that happen. Baur’s team includes Stahl’s Motors and Music Experience, Rhino Racing, Randy Wise Buick GMC Chevrolet, Western Michigan Fleet Parts, Mother’s Polish, Schaeffer’s Oil, Hepfner Racing Products, Ameriguard Storage Centers, Justice Brothers, Race 1 Wraps, TBM Brakes, Behind Your Design, CharlieBaur.com and Northwood University. “There are so many people who invest not only in myself but in my race team and who believe in us to succeed,” he added. Pictured: Charlie Bauer’s sprint race car. Looking ahead: A headline worth chasing Ask Baur to imagine 2035, and he’ll give you two answers — one dream, one blueprint. “In a perfect world,” he said, “winning the Indy 500.” Realistically, he wants to build a life where business ownership and racing reinforce each other and where he can pay forward the help he has received by mentoring younger drivers, especially those trying to break into motorsports without a family legacy. “When I retire from full-time racing, I want to be able to provide the same opportunities that were presented to myself to the next generation of drivers,” Baur said. “I know how difficult it is to get your foot in the door.” For now, the focus is simple: keep building the operation, keep learning the business, and keep showing up prepared — because in sprint car racing, as in life, process matters. And once the helmet goes on? “It’s go time,” Baur said. Photo courtesy of Charlie Baur Learn more Students interested in motorsports careers — whether in competition, team operations, marketing, finance, sponsorship, data, or management — can explore opportunities through Northwood University’s Center for Automotive and Mobility Studies. For Charlie Baur’s latest motorsports adventures, follow Charlie_Baur and Charlie Baur Racing on social media. To learn more about Northwood’s Bachelor of Business Administration in Automotive and Mobility Studies and motorsports management concentration, visit www.northwood.edu/programs/automotive-mobility-studies/. Photo courtesy of Charlie Baur Pictured: Charlie Baur at Butler Motor Speedway on May 31, 2026. Share this page
Apple unveils iPadOS 27 with speed and productivity improvements, more
Today during its WWDC keynote, Apple unveiled iPadOS 27, the next major software update for iPad. Here are the new...
An up-close look at high-speed rail construction
The Hanford viaduct, a key section of California's high-speed rail project, is nearing completion as workers continue to make progress on the ambitious plan to connect the Bay Area to Los Angeles.
'It gives us less faith moving forward': State Sen. Tony Strickland slams Newsom's changes to High-Speed Rail Board
Republican State Sen. Tony Strickland slammed the newest leader of California's High-Speed Rail Authority Board after Gov. Gavin Newsom made abrupt changes to the group of people who oversee one of the most expensive transportation construction projects in the world.
California Politics 360 full episode | Ballots still being counted, major changes to High-Speed Rail
We still don’t know who will move on to the general election in November in several key races.
We moved to Italy for citizenship. Then Italy changed the rules.
An American family had originally qualified to become Italian citizens and moved to Turin to speed up the process. Then, the government changed the law.
The Best Bets for the F1 Monaco Grand Prix 2026
Monaco puts qualifying position, low-speed grip, and wall discipline at the center of betting decisions, with 2026 rules adding a new energy-management layer. Here's how to wager wisely.
Race results: Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway
Here are the complete race results to the Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway on June 5, 2026.
California High-Speed Rail board approves business plan that suggests moving downtown Merced station
A business plan that forecasts where Merced’s proposed bullet train station may ultimately end up has received unanimous approval from the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s board.
Qualifying results: Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway
Here are the complete qualifying results for the Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway on Friday afternoon.
Practice results: Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway
Here are the complete practice results for the Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway on Friday afternoon.
Scientists unveil 'living bandage' that could dramatically speed wound healing
Rice University researchers developed a "living bandage" that uses engineered cells to deliver healing proteins directly to wounds in animal trials.
Chrome Sets Browser Speed Records on M5 MacBook Pro
Google's Chrome browser hit new records on browser benchmarking tools Speedometer 3.1 and JetStream 3, Google said today. Chrome earned a score of 61 on Speedometer, a five percent improvement since last year. It earned a 469 on JetStream 3, a 10 percent improvement since the beginning of 2026. Tests were done on an M5 MacBook Pro running macOS 26.0.1. Google says it holds a dual record across all browsers, beating every other Mac browser, including Safari.
I've Used Starlink Every Day for 4 Years. Its Speeds Have Taken an Unexpected Turn
Years of testing Starlink from rural Idaho have transformed my home internet access, but my 2026 performance data raises new questions about speed, pricing, and priority tiers.
Dodgers 3B Max Muncy and D-backs 1B Ildemaro Vargas both exit after violent collision at first base
Both men looked dazed after running into each other at full speed on a close play.
NASA’s Juno Reveals New Insights into Cosmic Ray Origins
Particles traveling close to the speed of light near Jupiter were captured by NASA’s Juno mission, providing new evidence for how and where high-energy
Full-length Replay: Nashville Recap
Kevin Harvick, Kaitlyn Vincie, and Mamba Smith discuss Denny Hamlin's last-to-first win after a penalty at Nashville Superspeedway.
2027 BMW M2 xDrive Finally Adds All-Wheel Drive to M's Feisty Coupe
It chops a few tenths off the 0-60, should make the winter commute easier, and ships exclusively with the eight-speed auto.
High-Speed Rail Board Meeting Recap: New Chair, New Construction Team, New Timeline, New Business Plan
They promise that track will be laid this year.
Entry list: Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway
Check out the full entry list for Friday evening's ARCA Menards Series Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway.
US FDA proposes using existing science to speed up gene therapy development
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday proposed allowing makers of cell and gene therapies targeting rare and life-threatening diseases to use existing scientific knowledge to expedite development.
A hidden pollutant is changing how the world's forests breathe
A massive global analysis found that nitrogen pollution can either speed up or dramatically slow the natural "breathing" of forest soils, depending on the ecosystem's condition. The results reveal hidden tipping points that could affect how forests store carbon and cope with climate change.
Scientists Think a Cosmic Particle Accelerator Shot a Mystery Particle Right at Earth
A gigantic "blazar" may have fired a beam of light-speed particles at our planet, creating a 2023 "ghost particle" detection.
Bruins Have RFA Options to Address Right-Shot Defenseman
The Boston Bruins want to add this summer. They said they want more speed, skill, and a No. 1 center, […] The post Bruins Have RFA Options to Address Right-Shot Defenseman appeared first on Boston Hockey Now.
‘The Cardinal Countdown: 97 Days Until Kickoff’
MAURICE DAVIS #97 Height: 6’4” Weight: 250lb Position: DL Class: Sophomore Hometown: Albany, GA Summary: The Cards grabbed Davis over a few SEC squads back in 2024 and are looking for his on field development to mirror that of his improved speed and quickness. Sitting behind some high caliber weapons on the depth chart when […]
AI is devoid of meaning and humanity. That’s why its vapid voice suits this political moment
For ease and speed, we are degrading our ability to connect and to organise our societies. We must assert our trust in humans over machines, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
Michigan coach Kyle Whittingham takes wild IndyCar ride
Michigan coach Kyle Whittingham enjoyed a high speed ride at the Detroit Grand Prix despite some rivalry ribbing.
‘Molecular movie’ technology reveals a better way to thwart environmental pollutant
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The latest production from the “molecular movie” imaging technology developed at Oregon State University is a new, inexpensive way of dealing with a common environmental pollutant. Based on short-pulse lasers, the imaging technology allows chemical and biological actions to be measured as they are occurring, one high-speed frame at a time. The measurements occur on the level of the femtosecond – one-millionth of one-billionth of a second. A femtosecond is to a second roughly as a second is to 32 million years.
Steelers rookie admits to major NFL speed difference
Pittsburgh Steelers rookie Gennings Dunker didn't mince words when he described the speed difference between collegiate and NFL defenders.
Veteran Allgaier holds off rookie Crews to win Sports Illustrated Resorts 250
Veteran NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series driver Justin Allgaier raced to the victory at the Sports Illustrated Resorts 250 Saturday night at Nashville Superspeedway.
How to live stream Sports Illustrated Resorts 250: NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, TV channel
The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series heads to Nashville Superspeedway on Saturday evening for the Sports Illustrated Resorts 250. Tune in to The CW to catch the racing action. MORE: Richard Childress Racing makes major decision on Kyle Busch’s No.…
Dirt on Dirt - Feger starting on MARS pole for Red Hill Rumble
DirtonDirt.com covers Dirt Late Model racing like no other publication, magazine or website with massive amounts of original content including videos, photos, stories, columns, blogs and more. Eldora Speedway's World 100 and Dream, the Dirt Track World Championship, Lucas Oil Late Model Knoxville Nationals and all the major races are covered along with the major tours, including the World of Outlaws Late Model Series and Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.
Axios Live: Denver aims to become "the easiest place to do business"
Mayor Mike Johnston wants the city to lower costs, speed up permitting and revive downtown foot traffic to keep businesses from leaving.
Astronomers finally solve Saturn’s decades-long spin mystery
A decades-old mystery about Saturn has finally been solved thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. Scientists discovered that Saturn’s changing “rotation rate” was never caused by the planet speeding up or slowing down, but by powerful winds high in its atmosphere. Webb’s unprecedented observations revealed that Saturn’s northern lights actively heat the atmosphere, creating winds that generate electrical currents, which then power the aurora all over again in a self-sustaining cycle.
The Science of Speed, opening Aug. 1, will be a wild ride for the whole family
The Science of Speed, focusing on all kinds of motorsports, is set to open Aug. 1.
Ebola Science Is Moving Fast. It Might Not Be Enough
Amid a fast-moving Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the scientific community has mobilized with breakneck speed to find ways to stamp out the virus.
Kamin Science Center's "Science of Speed" exhibit opens in August
Kamin Science Center set to debut new Science of Speed exhibit
One Judge’s opinion: Why a ruling in Broward County doesn’t signify the end of school safety in Florida
'Elected officials still have the right to decide if school zone speed enforcement technology should be implemented in their communities.'
YouTube takes baby steps to being a real podcast app
YouTube’s AI can automatically speed up your podcast.
YouTube adds new podcast features, including an AI recommendation tool and 'Auto speed'
The update signals YouTube's ongoing efforts to compete with other platforms for podcast audiences.
Argonne to lead $2.8M project to accelerate catalyst discovery
Argonne National Laboratory has been awarded $2.77 million by ARPA-E to speed the discovery of industrial catalysts using AI, automation and rapid testing through the CATALCHEM-E program.
Researchers block key protein that helps Parkinson’s spread through the brain
A newly identified protein called GPNMB may play a major role in helping Parkinson’s disease spread through the brain. Researchers discovered that immune cells release the protein in response to damaged neurons, creating a vicious cycle that speeds up brain cell degeneration. In early experiments, antibodies that blocked GPNMB stopped the toxic process from spreading between cells.
Scientists say they've finally solved the sea level rise mystery as oceans climb nearly twice as fast
The trend is also speeding up.
Ebola, chemical plants and health, hantavirus, common colds, heat and more
As they say, bugs have ears. Public health has had a relentless May. Chemical plant (near) explosions, Ebola, hantavirus, and that's before you even get to the usual suspects: common colds, heat, and ticks. Here’s an attempt to keep you up to speed and, more importantly, what it means for you and your community. But first, an announcement: World Cup The World Cup starts in 15 days (not like anyone is counting down), and we are hanging TVs in the Health Security Operations Center. It’s going to be a gorgeous, chaotic celebration of basically every culture on earth. And it’s going to take a team effort—from communities to individuals, from public health to health care—to keep people healthy. That’s where you come in. If you’re going to the games or live within 30 miles of a stadium, we would love to hear from you. Sign up for a weekly survey here. Thanks to the more than 1,280 people who have already signed up…you will be hearing from us soon!! Global disease “weather report” Hantavirus: Two more cases The global count of cruise ship passengers with hantavirus has now increased to 13 cases (11 confirmed), with three deaths. The two new cases are overseas and among people who were already quarantining: A crew member in the Netherlands. A Spanish national passenger who was quarantining at home tested positive through daily monitoring. They are now in a biocontainment unit. In the U.S., everyone remains negative. There may be more cases, given that the incubation period of hantavirus (the time from exposure to infection) is 45 days. But this week, we will reach a major milestone: the median incubation window is 18 days, and that will pass on May 29. What this means for you: Your risk from this cruise ship outbreak remains essentially nil at this point. Ebola rages on in Central Africa Big thanks to Dr. Craig Spencer, a humanitarian physician who has treated and survived Ebola, for jumping in to provide the YLE community with an update. Craig, take it from here… The combined confirmed and suspected Ebola cases in DRC are now more than 1,000. All signs are pointing to a very long and catastrophic outbreak in Central Africa: This is a vast undercount. We know this because the test positivity rate is hovering around 50%, only 20% of contacts are being traced (and in some areas, no contacts at all), and more cases keep popping up with no known connection. This all points to widespread and undetected community transmission. This is in only a week of detection. Compared to previous outbreaks, the growth is very fast, as the huge West Africa outbreak in 2016 was first detected at 49 cases and rose to 208 cases a month later. It took four months for that outbreak to reach the size of the current one in the DR Congo. The cases are spread out across 16 health zones. There are now multiple epicenters, making containment very difficult. Next door in Uganda, the case count is seven. While this number is low compared to DRC, a concerning development is that two health care workers recently tested positive with uncertain exposure histories. If they weren’t treating known Ebola cases, this means it’s spreading undetected in Uganda as well. On the ground, backlash, including the burning of health centers, has emerged, a pattern seen in nearly every outbreak and rooted in deep community distrust. It often stems from outside actors working in communities without fully understanding or addressing local priorities. Affected populations may recognize the severity of Ebola while still holding other concerns as more pressing, such as where their loved ones are buried. Community trust is essential to an effective response, but difficult to build during an active emergency. It is best established long before a crisis begins. U.S. priorities are made clear, and may backfire. The U.S. Administration has shown that its first priority is keeping Ebola out, with helping end the outbreak in the DRC a secondary concern. That's meant travel restrictions broader than anything we've imposed before — covering travelers from across the region, and reportedly some green card holders and permanent residents as well. For example, just these past two days, news broke that high-risk American travelers will be subject to a mandatory quarantine in Kenya before they are allowed to return. If an American is infected, the U.S. government plans to send them to a hospital it is standing up from scratch in Kenya. (Currently, Americans who were in the area are allowed to return but are diverted to three airports—Houston, Atlanta, and DC—for further screening.) Past administrations have used travel notices and stepped-up screening; this goes much further. At first blush, these strict precautions may sound prudent. But this approach could backfire in three ways: Restrictions this blunt give people every reason to hide where they’ve been and whom they’ve been near — making the people we most need to find harder to track, not easier. They also breed a false sense that this is someone else’s problem. But diseases are humbling. They find the small cracks in even the most impenetrable-seeming defenses. Lives lost. There is no treatment for this Ebola strain, which means survival depends heavily on the quality of the health system. We have that system in the States, but we are choosing not to use it for infected Americans. This is unbelievable and infuriating. (See a deeper dive from me here.) The only real way to lower the risk to Americans — and everyone else — is to end the outbreak in the DRC and across the region. What this means for you: If you have travel plans to this region, it’s time to cancel them. This is a high-risk situation in Central Africa, and CDC released a Level 4 Travel Advisory. There is also great uncertainty if and when the Administration will let you back in. To the general public in the U.S., your risk remains very, very low right now. U.S. disease “weather report” Ticks: past peak season? Good news, especially for people in the Northeast and Midwest: tick numbers continue to decline. Though we are at the peak of the season, this unusually early year is trending favorably. Heat-related illnesses in the North Heat risk is certainly not blanketing the entire country yet, but this week it will be moderate in the Midwest and the Southeast. What this means for you: Be sure to check the CDC HeatRisk tool. A red day isn’t the best day for that soccer game for a kid with asthma, and a stretch of orange days is a great time to check on your elderly neighbor. Common colds surging As far as respiratory viruses go, the only thing really going around right now is the common cold. It is higher this year than last year, but should peak very soon before returning this fall. Spotlight: Chemical plants Over the weekend, YLE California covered the serious situation that unfolded around a chemical plant in Orange County, California. Thankfully, the worst-case scenario (a chemical explosion) was mitigated, but only through luck. The health implications in a densely populated area could have been catastrophic. As the situation was winding down, another chemical explosion struck Washington State. This one was fatal. Health officials say the risk to surrounding residents from chemicals in the air and ground remains low, though the community deserves far greater clarity. Clean air and clean water consistently rank as Americans’ top public health concerns — yet when chemical disasters strike, communities are too often met with reassurances rather than transparency and accountability. Residents near the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, for example, are still waiting to understand the long-term impact on their health, with few clear answers. What this means for you: Many are wondering if facilities processing potentially dangerous materials are in their neighborhoods. This interactive map allows you to enter your ZIP code and see all facilities monitored by the EPA, including any violations. Good news Ebola vaccines and treatment for the Bundibugyo species are in development. Two vaccine platforms are being explored, at least one of which may be deployable in as little as 2 months. One vaccine is being developed by Oxford, and the other uses the same biotechnology as the FDA-approved Zaire species of Ebola. (It may provide cross-protection, but it’s unclear at this point.) On the treatment side, two promising monoclonal antibody cocktails are likely to be deployed, though doses are limited and logistical hurdles remain significant challenges. Anni over at The Biotech Tea had a great explainer about the Ebola vaccine gap, if you want to read more. [ The Biotech Tea The Ebola vaccine gap, reading vessel damage, & the Makary exit 🗝️ Paid subscribers get the Biotech Term of the Week at $30/year (~$2.50/month). I try to keep it intentionally accessible, but if cost is ever a barrier, send me a message. A few people asked about expensing your subscription, so I put together a short email template… Read more 6 days ago · 10 likes · Annicka Evans, PhD ](https://www.thebiotechtea.com/p/the-ebola-vaccine-gap-reading-vessel?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) has been officially renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), following more than a decade of debate and input from roughly 22,000 clinicians, researchers, and patients worldwide. This is good because the old name was medically misleading, leading to patients without visible cysts being dismissed or overlooked entirely. The WHO estimates that 70% of people with the condition remain undiagnosed. A more accurate name should improve recognition, reduce stigma, and ultimately help the millions of people living with this condition get diagnosed and treated sooner. Poll Loading... Bottom line Public health situations are everywhere right now. Staying healthy takes public health professionals and systems working tirelessly behind the scenes and each of us showing up for our neighbors and communities. Love, YLE Big thanks to Ed Nirenberg for staying on top of the Ebola vaccines, Hannah Totte for all the figures, Dr. Craig Spencer for the Ebola insight, and Dr. Matt Willis for covering the chemical situation in CA. Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) comprises a team of experts, ranging from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “Translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. YLE suite of newsletters reaches over 475,000 people across more than 132 countries. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below: Subscribe
Cramer's lightning round: Buy DoorDash
"Mad Money" host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he's giving his answers to callers' stock questions at rapid speed.
Get up to speed fast on the California election with our guide for the undecided
Californians are voting on a wide-open governor's race in a June 2 primary election. Xavier Becerra, Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer are leading in polls.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft uses Mars as a giant slingshot toward a mysterious metal world
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft just used Mars as a giant gravitational slingshot to continue its journey toward a strange metal rich asteroid. The close flyby boosted the spacecraft’s speed by about 1,000 mph while also producing rare crescent images of Mars glowing through its dusty atmosphere.
Semiconductor decoupling. Powell's politics. Industrializing Ogaden. Free trade and the Magna Carta.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. Feliks Topolski, 1907-1989 8th Army’s Front, Italy 1944 Semiconductor decoupling Source: FT One thing that Jerome Powell deeply understood is that chairing the Fed under current conditions is a deeply political job. “Powell has successes and mistakes to his name. But he stands out as having thought more carefully about the Fed’s democratic legitimacy than any chair since Paul Volcker,” said Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor at the Bank of England, referring to the Fed chair who successfully fought the great inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s. … While Powell was at the Treasury in the early 1990s, he watched Alan Greenspan build relationships within the government. That convinced Powell he needed to follow the former Fed chair’s lead and spend more time in Congress than his predecessors Yellen and Bernanke. “The accountability for the Fed runs through Congress,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Fed official who is now chief economist at New Century Advisors. “That’s not just about having people on speed dial — it’s answering questions, explaining policy and getting feedback.” Source: FT Ethiopia’s PM Abiy and Nigerian business tycoon, with Chinese engineering, are driving industrialization in Ogaden/Somali region of Ethiopia. - Michael Masri’s reporting for Africa Report if fascinating. Ethiopia has launched a cluster of large industrial schemes in the Somali region, laying foundation stones for a urea plant and an oil refinery in Gode while opening the first two phases of the Ogaden LNG project. Abiy Ahmed framed the push as part of a broader strategy to link energy, agriculture and industry. “These projects embody more than industrial growth,” he said. “They represent our shared responsibility to harness opportunities, strengthen co-operation and promote peace.” The Gode urea plant, backed by Dangote Group and Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH), is designed for 3m tonnes a year. Dangote owns 60%, while EIH holds 40%. Officials say Dangote’s equity totals about $2.5bn, while the state provides land and implementation oversight. Gas from the Calub fields will be piped 108km to the site. Construction is slated for 40 months, with operations targeted for 2028. Ethiopia imports most of its fertiliser, spending more than $1.2bn a year for 1.5m–2m tonnes. Usage was roughly 1.7m tonnes in 2023, almost half of it urea, and demand for 2024–25 is put above 2.4m tonnes. If delivered on time, the Gode plant could cover domestic needs and allow exports to neighbours. Brook Taye, chief executive of EIH, called the venture “a significant milestone in the journey toward industrial self-sufficiency”. Dangote told the groundbreaking crowd that the complex would be integrated with gas supply and a polypropylene unit to support local inputs. He pointed to Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), with a capacity of more than 5,000MW, and noted his group’s cement operations and expansion plans. The Gode refinery is being developed by Golden Concord Group of China. It is designed to process 3.5m tonnes a year of crude and condensate from the Hilala field, with associated storage. Backers say it will ease foreign-exchange pressure from fuel imports and anchor further industrial activity, including a proposed steel smelting site in Dire Dawa. GCL’s chair, Zhu Gongshan, cast the project as “a key step in Ethiopia’s path to energy sovereignty”, underscoring the Beijing–Addis ties. Financing details are still being finalised, but the refinery is central to the government’s energy-security narrative. Source: The Africa Report Dangote’s Ethiopian vision: Dangote began with cement. His crown jewel, Dangote Cement, dominates Nigeria’s market and has 10 operations in other nations in Africa. The formula has been consistent: identify sectors with chronic shortages – cement, fertiliser, sugar – commit massive local investments, and scale up to serve regional demand. Ethiopia was a natural extension of that model. In 2015, Dangote launched the Mugher Cement Plant outside Addis Ababa at a cost of $600m, with an annual capacity of 2.5 million tonnes. The investment gave him a firm foothold in one of Africa’s fastest-growing construction markets. But success came with risks. In May 2018, violent unrest led to the killing of Dangote’s country manager and temporary shutdowns at Mugher. While other investors might have retreated, Dangote doubled down. Today, he is preparing to spend $400m to expand Mugher’s capacity to 5 million tonnes, alongside a new grinding unit near Addis Ababa. Cement is just one market Dangote is targeting. Ethiopia’s enormous state-controlled sugar industry, long plagued by inefficiency and debt, has struggled for years to reform. Its Omo Kuraz Sugar Development Project, touted as one of the continent’s largest initiatives, continues to face delays and mismanagement. … The most ambitious venture of all is the planned fertiliser production complex in Gode, Somali region. Publicised on 28 August 2025, the Dangote Group and Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH) deal plans one of the world’s largest single-site urea manufacturing plants. The project costs an estimated $2.5bn and has an estimated capacity of 3 million metric tonnes annually, a rate that would not only render Ethiopia independent, but even a net exporter of fertiliser. EIH, the state wealth fund of Ethiopia, will hold 40%, while 60% is held by Dangote Group. … For Dangote, Ethiopia is a trifecta: Cement demand is projected to grow by 10% annually, its sugar consumption is growing with rapid urbanisation, and fertiliser demand is all but insatiable, given that farming supports the livelihood of 70% of Ethiopians. Source: The Africa Report The stakes for Abiy are high: For Addis Ababa, the $4bn fertiliser project in Ethiopia’s Somali region is no longer simply a manufacturing investment. It is increasingly being framed as a strategic state project tied to food sovereignty, import substitution and the government’s broader attempt to build economic resilience under mounting fiscal pressure. “Becoming self-sufficient in food is our main agenda,” Abiy says during the visit. “Land is needed; we have it. Water is needed; we have it. Human resources are needed; we have it.” The scale is enormous even by African industrial standards. Once operational, the plant is expected to produce three million metric tonnes of urea annually, potentially making it one of the continent’s largest fertiliser complexes. Ethiopian officials say the project now includes a 110km gas pipeline, a 120MW power plant, a polypropylene packaging facility and a two-million-tonne NPK blending plant. For a government grappling with chronic foreign exchange shortages, ballooning import bills and pressure on agricultural productivity, the numbers matter politically as much as they do economically. The decision to anchor the project in Gode is deliberate. Long viewed as peripheral to Ethiopia’s industrial economy, the Somali region is now being repositioned by the federal government as a future irrigation and agro-industrial corridor. Officials argue that the area’s vast land reserves and access to water could eventually support large-scale commercial farming capable of reshaping Ethiopia’s food economy. The government is simultaneously building housing infrastructure for about 5,000 residents near the plant, while officials project broader industrial expansion along the corridor. Abiy goes further, comparing the long-term revenue potential of the Gode development zone with Ethiopia’s flagship state enterprise. “The investments we are making in this Gode area, combined, will generate high revenue for Ethiopia, at par with Ethiopian Airlines,” he says. Source: The Africa Report Feliks Topolski 1907-1982 Topolski’s Chronicle, ‘Nazi Revival’, Vol. 8, Is. 1-2, 1960 HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. Photo by Jakub Dziubak on Unsplash If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe Grim vision of drone warfare by Sylvie Kaufmann For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe The state of the art in Colbert-studies. Jean-Baptiste Colbert was Louis XIV chief minister from 1661 to 1683 and traditionally seen as an architect of absolutism and mercantilism. Alexander Hamilton later cited him as an inspiration in 1782. Now his legacy is disputed. Daniel Dessert, the chief critic, sees Colbert as the orchestrator not so much of an absolutist state as of an elite cabal. Would be great to have a good English-language review of this important debate. Source: lhistoire Didn’t know that the Magna Carta included free trade provisions Fighting for the right to the beach in Oregon in 1967: Source: Research Gate RAF Station – British and Polish Flags, c. 1940-45, The Ingram Collection Feliks Topolski, 1907-1989 ink and wash If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe
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From writing emails to generating computer code, much of the artificial intelligence prevalent in our daily lives has succeeded by mastering one domain: text. However, this leaves a major blind spot in the physical sciences, where models depend on the high-resolution, three-dimensional data of the physical world, like the intricate lattice of atoms in a crystal. Delivering on the promise of using AI for science requires teaching these data-driven text models to seamlessly “talk to” physics-based models. Now, a new AI framework from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), called MatterChat, solves this problem by creating a specialized “bridge.” It connects the conversational power of a Large Language Model (LLM) with a physics-based AI that models “interatomic potentials”: the complex physical forces between atoms. 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Conversely, while LLMs excel at rapid knowledge synthesis, they inherently lack the ‘structural vision’ to interpret materials directly from their underlying atomic coordinates,” said Yingheng Tang, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Applied Math and Computational Research Division (AMCR) and lead author on the paper. “MatterChat was built to solve this dilemma, empowering LLMs with a structural ‘vision’ that allows researchers to leverage their full potential for solving complex, real-world materials challenges.” Empowering language models to solve complex challenges in materials science To build MatterChat, the Berkeley Lab team drew inspiration from technologies like Vision Question Answering (VQA) and Text-to-Image (T2I) generation. In these tasks, AI must translate high-level text concepts into visual images, or vice versa. Doing so requires developers to build tools that “bridge” two fundamentally different forms of data. The researchers adapted this concept to the physical sciences. With MatterChat, they created a “bridge model” that successfully connects an LLM’s general knowledge with the deep understanding of the atomic-scale world encoded in scientific interatomic potentials. Until now, researchers using LLMs to solve materials problems usually had to feed them raw data files as if they were just strings of text. It’s like asking an AI to understand a complex 3D engine based only on a parts list: the LLM can read the names, but it can’t “see” how the atoms fit together in space. MatterChat solves this by training a specialized AI bridge model, pre-trained on millions of crystal structures and an LLM, to align the LLM’s representation of the world with the interatomic potential’s representation of the world. The bridge model can translate physical insights into a format the LLM can actually understand. By giving the LLM these “scientific eyes”— a scientific “inductive bias” in the terminology of AI — the Berkeley Lab team has transformed it into a robust research tool capable of providing grounded scientific insights into complex materials challenges, such as predicting thermal stability or analyzing electronic band gaps. “We think of atoms as living in a physical space, but from a machine learning perspective, they are just vectors living in some very non-trivially structured manifold in a high-dimensional Euclidean space; and, of course, the same is true for the sentences and paragraphs that we use to express our ideas about those atoms,” said co-author Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Lab’s Scientific Data Division (SDD) AI Initiative Research Lead. “The bridge model basically gets those two structures to ‘talk with’ each other.” As a proof-of-concept of this general approach, the team trained their bridge model on a dataset curated by pairing nearly 143,000 stable atomic structures from the Materials Project with their corresponding physical properties. This training data was automatically assembled using the Materials Project’s API and deliberately enriched with properties fundamental to microelectronics design — like formation energy and bandgap — allowing MatterChat to learn the complex patterns connecting a material’s atomic blueprint to its functional performance. To validate their model, the researchers benchmarked MatterChat against a suite of other AI systems, from general-purpose LLMs to other specialized scientific AI methods. The results show that MatterChat consistently outperformed its competitors across a range of tasks. The model was more accurate in classifying material types and demonstrated superior precision in predicting numerical properties. For example, it excelled at predicting a material’s bandgap, a property critical for designing new electronics from high-capacity energy storage to next-generation computer chips. “Our design is significantly more efficient because we don’t have to build a massive AI model from the ground up,” said co-author Zhi (Jackie) Yao, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s AMCR. “Instead, we take two powerful, pre-trained models — a structural encoder for materials physics and an open-source LLM — and use them off-the-shelf. The only component we actually train is the lightweight ‘bridge model’ that translates between them. It’s the difference between building an entire car factory and simply designing a smart adapter that connects a world-class engine to a world-class navigation system. This approach is not only computationally efficient, but also makes the system modular, so we can easily upgrade components or adapt the bridge for other scientific domains in the future.” Crucially, this modular design highlights exactly how institutions like Berkeley Lab and the Department of Energy are carving out a highly valuable niche in the booming AI landscape. Rather than competing with Silicon Valley tech giants to build ever-larger language models from scratch, the lab is focusing on the specialized connective tissue that makes commercial AI useful for hardcore science. Because the bridge model approach underlying MatterChat is forward-compatible, it is perfectly positioned to leverage these parallel tracks of innovation. As Mahoney pointed out, “We expect that industry will continue to develop improved LLMs, and we expect domain scientists and facilities will continue to generate new data. An important part of scientific machine learning is not simply to solve problems on today’s data, but instead to develop general methods that will be forward-compatible with orders of magnitude more data, whether from scientific domains or from LLMs.” According to Yao, the MatterChat project, which was initially developed and enhanced with funding from a Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) Program, will now expand its capabilities. In a collaboration with Fermilab, MatterChat is already contributing to a U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission project — called Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon (AXESS) — that aims to speed up the development of next-generation, high-speed, radiation-hardened detectors for challenging particle physics experiments by using advanced 3D integrated circuits (chiplets) and AI-driven data analysis. In addition to the LDRD support, the team also credits supercomputing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located at Berkeley Lab, with MatterChat’s success. “We are incredibly grateful to NERSC; this research simply would not have happened without access to the Perlmutter supercomputer through their AI for Science program,” said Tang. Wenbin Xu, a NERSC postdoctoral fellow at the time, was also a major co-author of the work, as was Benjamin Erichson, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s SDD, highlighting the benefits of AMCR-SDD collaboration on AI for science. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. 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At the end of a whirlwind week of news on carbon pricing and electricity strategy, capping a madcap year of pretty much non-stop, dramatic change, the word across much of Canada’s climate and energy transition community is that climate policy in this country has been shredded. Eviscerated. Hit with a sledgehammer by policy rollbacks that have pushed the country’s 2050 net zero target “well out of reach”. That means it’s never been more important to look for the rays of hope and glimmers of possibility. To glimpse the seeds of the next set of strategies to get Canada’s climate pollution under control and the country into the accelerating global dash away from fossil fuels. And then, once we’ve spotted those possibilities, get on with the hard, day-to-day slog of trying to make them a reality. Nothing takes away from the frustration and the deep disappointment so many climate and energy hawks are expressing, the sense of betrayal by the author of Value(s) and the former UN special envoy for climate action and finance. But we knew two things as the week drew to a close. We’re looking at the world as it most definitely is. And we don’t get to give up finding the pathways to confront climate change and deliver faster, deeper carbon cuts that leave no one else behind. So really, the first question we all have to ask ourselves is: What’s next? Subscribe All the Oxygen in the Room The outpouring of anger and grief over the carbon pricing deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been absolutely understandable. So much of the climate community poured years, more than a decade, into dragging the current federal pricing regime across the finish line, then defending it from a deluge of three-syllable rhymes after the Trudeau government proved utterly incapable of delivering its own message. The policy foisted on us by neo-classical economists took up all the oxygen in the room, burned through years of climate response time that we won’t get back, while cornering climate hawks into the position that the best response to the crisis of our lifetimes is a new tax…in an era of historic anti-tax sentiment. I mean, really—what could possibly have gone wrong? Against that history, let’s appreciate columnist Max Fawcett’s point that even a modest carbon pricing agreement with a government as off-the-wall libertarian/conspiracist as Danielle Smith’s—those adjectives are mine, not Max’s—is a win worth savouring (as long as Smith keeps her promises for a change). But part of living in the world as it is (no, I’m not letting that go) is to be clear-headed about what we can and can’t control. And one thing we get to decide, after seeing this week’s carbon price festivities take up all the oxygen yet again, is whether we want to keep letting that happen. Particularly when success down that road depends on a factor that no one with a climate agenda can control or influence—a provincial carbon pricing mechanism that has been manipulated and eroded beyond its lowest possible denominator. Thankfully, that’s not the way it has to go. Not when we have so many other powerful, practical tools at our disposal, including the ones still available to us through this abominable Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. Tools In Our Toolbox When I started roughing out this list, I didn’t expect it to grow to nearly a dozen bullet points. It’s probably still incomplete. Some of the greatest hits in today’s climate solutions toolbox include: • No Carbon Capture, No Pipeline: On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly stated that there’s been no change to the MOU provision that there will be no West Coast pipeline without an industry commitment to build its massive, $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage (CCUS) hub in Northern Alberta, and vice versa. The two megaprojects were joined at the hip when the MOU was signed Nov. 27, and the implementation agreement this week affirmed that they still are. A parade of independent analysts have spent years pointing to the economic and technical flaws in CCUS, while the industry kept postponing its investment decision until it could arm-twist the government for more “clarity” (by which it meant even more lavish taxpayer subsidies) on the project. Now the industry itself is running away from the CCUS hub and insisting the pipeline should proceed without it, but Carney doesn’t seem to be budging from a central tenet of the MOU to which Smith has signed on. • No Subsidies, No Investors: Climate analysts and advocates have quite rightly been hammering away at Carney and his team, insisting that any new capacity the industry wants to build must proceed without new subsidies. The government has responded with a growing collection of funding and financing mechanisms for the very wide menu of industrial development and nation-building projects they say they want to take on, and that menu always includes fossil fuel infrastructure. But it’s hard to see how even the combined fiscal clout of the federal and supportive provincial governments will deliver the financial backing private investors would need when the business case for new fossil fuel development is evaporating before their eyes. Particularly when… • No Market, No Demand, No Investors: As our friend Markham Hislop at Energi Media (our apparently sleepless friend, given the massive volume of great material he’s been churning out) points out this morning, the biggest vulnerability in any pipeline deal is the assumption that Asian buyers will want the oil or liquefied natural ga that our fossil industry is so keen to send them. Hislop writes in part: Ottawa and Alberta are effectively betting that countries like China and India will continue increasing oil imports for decades as their economies grow and energy consumption rises. That assumption underpins the entire economic rationale for expanding oil sands production and building billions of dollars in new export infrastructure. But Asian energy systems are changing rapidly… China, India, South Korea, and other major hydrocarbon importers are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into electricity systems built around wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, hydro, and expanded transmission infrastructure. Domestic “energy sovereignty” is increasingly replacing the old energy-security model based on stable oil and gas imports. Those investments are expected to sharply slow oil demand growth and eventually reverse it, even as overall energy consumption continues rising. There are also refining constraints. Many Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes are already optimized to process discounted heavy crude from the Middle East and Latin America. That raises serious questions about how much additional Canadian bitumen Asian markets can absorb at profitable prices. Small wonder that there’s still no private sector investor for the project, despite Smith’s government desperately beating the bushes to put together a deal. For now, Alberta is acting as proponent and covering early start-up costs for a pitch to the federal Major Projects Office, which could actually turn into the next tough hurdle for Smith and her pipeline to jump. • Canada Day Looms: How ironic that Canada’s birthday this year could become a major chokepoint for the provincial premier who’s been working so diligently to tear the country apart! The July 1 target date for Alberta’s pipeline proposal is baked into the MOU, was reaffirmed by the implementation plan, but it hadn’t dawned on me that it cuts both ways. As one very smart colleague wrote in an email yesterday, “they’ve thrown the ball into Alberta’s court to get the project proposal on the table really quickly and to have to do a whole pile of work to put together a massive, complicated project that would typically take years to assemble, and they’ve given them weeks to do it.” That makes July 1 a looming deadline that Smith won’t be able to run away from politically, especially with the separatists in her party and her caucus breathing down her neck. (See previous ref to off-the-wall.) But if Alberta comes in with a sloppy, incomplete submission, even after Carney bent over backwards to simplify the application process and the rules that govern it, it may be harder for the province or the industry to blame Ottawa and insist on the faster process they claim their investors are demanding. (Oh, wait—which investors would those be??) • We’ll See You In Court (Then We’ll See You Again): If Carney did cave, that would be just one more reason for Indigenous and other affected communities to take the government and the process to court—Just as Alberta First Nations did, successfully, in response to Smith’s half-baked separation referendum. Veterans of the Harper era have been warning that a shoddy process around fossil fuel infrastructure or other major projects will be a recipe for the very delays that process seeks to avoid. And now more than ever, with renewable energy and energy storage eating fossil fuels’ lunch in import markets around the world, a delayed pipeline or LNG terminal may be as good as a cancelled one. • Charged Up, Ready to Go: With its goal of doubling Canada’s electricity supply to meet a doubling of demand by 2050, the national electricity strategy that Carney unveiled Thursday has a lot to like. With its explicit language about speeding the shift from fuels to more efficient and affordable electricity, global investment and deployment patterns that already favour that shift, an emerging bidirectional power grid, the role of front-line options like rooftop solar and heat pumps, the emergence of electric vehicles as behind-the-meter energy storage, and the domestic jobs and manufacturing to make it all happen, the document doubles down on the essential cornerstone of a faster shift off fossil fuels. The strategy envisions a more prominent role for gas and nuclear power. But some of those provisions were already in the Clean Electricity Regulations that climate hawks are now fighting so hard to defend, inserted as a compromise in a futile attempt to mollify the industry and its political representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But once again, gas will be a tougher sell when it’s more expensive and now so much more unpredictable than the clean alternatives. The new nuclear technologies are still speculative and deeply vulnerable to cost overruns. Increasingly, utilities, developers, and investors know it. Carney declared Thursday that “it doesn’t do us good to be sitting in court all the time with provinces. It doesn’t do us good to be talking past each other. What does do us good is to come together with specific projects.” There are no guarantees, but so much of the language and narrative-building in the electricity strategy suggests the lion’s share of those projects will be renewable. • The Party Has Already Started: The electricity strategy only rarely digs down to specific projects, but provinces representing three-quarters of Canada’s population are already embracing a faster transition. Hydro-Québec is working on a 10-year, $185-billion renewable energy and grid buildout by 2035. Ontario recently brought 10 provinces and territories together in a National Energy Corridor Agreement to boost interprovincial and -territorial transmission infrastructure. And the MOU implementation agreement commits Alberta to facilitate investment in renewable energy projects, a big step back from its continuing, punitive restrictions on renewables development. The electricity strategy envisions much of the financing and infrastructure that will be needed to pull those advances together into an integrated whole. • Delivering on Affordability: The MOU implementation plan has little or nothing to say about affordability (are you surprised?), but the electricity strategy does, with a top-line pledge to reduce home energy costs for seven out of 10 Canadian households by 2050, a total saving of $15 billion across the board. It’s just a start, but it puts affordability on the government’s narrative map. If they’re serious and deliberate about patching together a least-cost energy strategy, it’ll have little if any room for oil, gas, or nuclear—not with powerful evidence, for example, that electricity prices are higher when those prices are set by gas. • Smith Proves that Canada Works: By signing a deal that makes it harder to claim the federal government is blocking a new pipeline, Smith has helped prove Carney’s constant anti-separatist refrain that “Canada works”—incurring the rage, no doubt, of her own political base. Canada also needs to work for anyone who depends on a clean environment, healthy and thriving ecosystems, and safe, stable climate. But with Smith and her separatist constituents setting up as a fifth column for annexation by Donald Trump’s United States, let’s set aside any notion that 51st state status for Canada is a recipe for anything other than climate disaster (and so much else). Resisting and withstanding Trump (just 170 more sleeps until mid-term elections, which is a damn sight better than the 730 we started with) doesn’t mean a free pass for a pipeline, but we can still appreciate it that keeping Canada whole and sovereign is still Carney’s Job One. • The Words Not Spoken: Apart from a commitment to export a million barrels of “low-emission” Alberta bitumen per day (memo to Smith and Carney: You realize that that’s less than the industry is already exporting??), the MOU implementation plan says nothing about the international trade and economic sovereignty deals that Carney has been travelling the world to negotiate. It didn’t have to. Carney doesn’t need permission from Danielle Smith, her American enablers, or her separatist allies to continue building the alliances that will ratchet down our economic dependency on our unstable, unreliable neighbour to the south. But every connection he builds with countries outside North America helps align our economy and our future with a faster shift off fossil fuels. Little if any of this was on our bingo cards a year or two ago. But it’s the pathway that has opened up to us. And if it gives Canada any climate or energy gains at all in an era still dominated by Trump and his increasingly ridiculous tariffs, his loutish trade negotiations and his continuing annexation threats, we have to take the wins. Not least because they’ll be the point of departure for what we can achieve in 2027, 2029, and beyond, as Trump’s grip and this era begin to loosen and then fade. What is Carney Doing? If this line of thought is right—and it’s a possibility, not a prediction—it means that Carney’s actions and decisions are largely about buying time. Time for Trump’s power to wane. Time for Alberta’s separatist/conspiracist virus to spread, mutate, die out, or at least die back, with help from a vaccine of federal steadiness and calm (appropriate enough, for a movement populated largely by vaccine deniers) that no conspiracy theory can dismiss. And time for the government’s trade and investment agenda to deliver results—even knowing that some of those results will bring impacts that front-line communities will not and should not accept. In the immediate moment, none of this changes the way the wider climate community has to respond, from campaigners to investors to front-line practitioners. All of our voices are still essential. But those voices will be stronger and more confident if we have a clearer sense of the brutal game we’ve been pulled into, and a plausible path (or two it three) for playing it to the win we need. This conversation also underscores our biggest task for the remaining years of what was supposed to be the “decisive” decade for climate response: if we can shift the energy narrative in Canada, make it a mainstream view that the country’s preoccupation with oil and gas has us falling farther behind a changing world, we’ll see far better results in the 2030s and beyond. For many veteran climate advocates, taking on that part of the fight will begin with recognizing that most of our friends and family, neighbours and colleagues already understand that climate change is real and right in front of us: they’re looking away and staying silent because they don’t have what climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “efficacy”. As Hayhoe recently pointed out in a feature interview with The Energy Mix, it amounts to science denial to keep hammering away at the dire news about global warming without also helping audiences understand what they can do about it, with multiple studies telling us why that won’t work. Far better to open those conversations with the dominant crises like energy security, food security, emergency preparedness and business continuity, affordability, and financial security that have knocked climate change far lower on the list of public priorities, and will likely keep it there. We Knew This Would Happen Climate hawks have always known this day would come. For decades, we warned that everyone had to pay attention to climate change right now, because it would be much tougher to respond once the crisis itself started affecting our daily lives. We were right, and here we are. But now, thanks to decades of hard work, communities and countries have an alternative to doubling down on fossil fuels. “In 10 years everyone will have ‘always known’ that solar and batteries were going to win,” Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade writes on LinkedIn. With the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy priorities around the world, Canada and the United States are among the shrinking number of countries that are still very keen on fossil fuel development. Understanding that gap is a first, essential step in spotting the opportunities ahead, and averting the deep economic as well as environmental and social risk we face if we don’t seize them. Thanks for reading The Energy Mix Weekender! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender. Chart of the Week BYD Eyes 20 Dealership Locations After Canada Greenlights Chinese EV Imports ‘Sledgehammer’ Carbon Price Deal Boosts Emissions by 230Mt, Aims for Fall 2027 Pipeline Approval ‘Worse Than Harper’: Regulatory Rollback Would Stop Canada from Assessing Project Impacts, Critics Warn Electricity Strategy Aims for Doubling by 2050, Allows ‘Flexibility’ for Gas Power Plants Opposition Mounts as O’Leary’s Data Centre Approved in Drought-Stricken Utah Diluted Carbon Price Misses ‘Reality of the World We’re In’, Could Impede Diversified Trade: Climate Institute $200B in Clean Energy Investment Will Need On-Time Delivery, Reliable Policies, Trade Association Says ‘Sovereign Pipeline’: CEO Pitches to Keep Trans Mountain in Government Hands What a Supercharged El Niño Could Mean for Canada Canada’s future is electric, and here’s how a power grid superhighway would get us there (Toronto Star) The Perilous Waters of Hecate Strait (Globe and Mail) Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East (The Guardian) Farmers confront rising cost of fertilizer and fuel as spring seeding under way (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Clarkson forecasts 24% decline in offshore oil, gas capital expenditures (Oil & Gas Journal) Pipe Dreams: How Oil and Gas Fail to Deliver Economic Development in Africa (Oil Change International) Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition (Climate Home News) Iran war threatens the dream of a post-oil economy in the Gulf (Washington Post) U.S. Oil, Gas Work Force Hits Lowest Level Since 2022 (Rigzone) Why Polestar Is Doubling Down on Net Zero as Rivals Pull Back on EVs (Bloomberg) Why this Michigan utility plans to sell its hydro dams for $13 (E&E News/Politico) Levees can no longer save New Orleans (Vox)
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Fans enjoy activities outside of Dover Motor Speedway before the race
Take a trip to All-Star Weekend at Dover Motor Speedway and see all of the festivities going on around the track on May 15, 2026.
Fans enjoy activities outside of Dover Motor Speedway before the race
Take a trip to All-Star Weekend at Dover Motor Speedway and see all of the festivities going on around the track on May 15, 2026.
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