Thursday, August 27, 2026
Water Street in downtown Eastport, Maine. Photo: Ken Gallager / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A week after Eastport banned data centers for 180 days, federal regulators accepted the...

The developer cut the plan from 400 acres to 27 and from 51 megawatts to 15 after FERC found four deficiencies, and comments close October 19.
Cape fur seals at a breeding colony. Photo: Hans Hillewaert / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A deadly cross over: In South Africa, rabies moves from land animals to seals

Cases have been confirmed along the Western Cape and Northern Cape coastlines since May 2024. A South African government agency says it is the first time rabies has established itself in a marine mammal population anywhere in the world.
Cracked mud on the bed of a dried-out reservoir at Bouhanifia, Algeria. Photo: Hydrosami / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

GEF Proposes $140 Million Program to Strengthen Drought Resilience

The Drylands and Drought Management Integrated Program would run from 2026 to 2030, and answers requests from parties to the UN desertification convention for the fund to give drought financing greater priority.
A Google data center outside Council Bluffs, Iowa. Photo: Chad Davis / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Three-quarters of Americans would oppose a data center near their home, new polling finds

Opposition has swung 33 points in a year as utility bills climb, and more than 530 counties and towns have restricted or banned the facilities.
A cloud to ground lightning strike over Tampa, Florida. Photo: Christopher Hollis, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Using thunderquakes to X-ray Earth – a new study shows urban seismology in action

With the help of thunderstorms and everyday fiber-optic cables, these scientists are revealing a hidden world underground.
Industrial plants on Zug Island, seen from the Delray neighborhood of southwest Detroit. Photo: Notorious4life, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

They grew up breathing Detroit air. Generations of women are pushing for new approaches...

DETROIT — Joyce Collins has buried nearly her entire immediate family. Her father died in 1992 after cancer spread to his bones. Her oldest sister was diagnosed with lung cancer, later developed breast and brain cancer, and died in 2013. Another sister died from pancreatic cancer in 2007.
The dam at Carraizo Lake in Trujillo Alto, one of the reservoirs supplying drinking water to the San Juan area. Photo: Mtmelendez / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Puerto Rico is rationing water, but many residents stopped trusting the tap long before...

Drought and a ruptured pipeline have forced Puerto Rico into revolving water shut-offs. For many people, the disruption started years earlier, as did loss of faith in the utility.
Old-growth forest in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. Photo: Forest Service Alaska Region, USDA (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Forest Service files proposal to rescind the roadless rule on more than 44 million...

The rule's own text puts the 2001 protections at 58.5 million acres, and comments close at midnight on September 21.
A technician works on a server rack at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Photo: Derrick Coetzee (CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

There’s a better way to cool data centres that cuts their huge thirst for...

Piping water into the server halls could be a much more efficient way to remove waste heat.
An aerial view of the Rio Solimoes and surrounding Amazon rainforest in Brazil, 2009. Photo: lubasi (CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Brazil marks borders for isolated Indigenous group in the Amazon after decades

Agents of Brazil’s Indigenous agency, FUNAI, spent 60 days in June and July 2026 physically marking the borders of the Rio Pardo Kawahiva Indigenous Territory. The 411,000-hectare area in the Amazon biome of Mato Grosso state is home to the Kawahiva, an isolated Indigenous group.