LONDON — Britain’s Liberal Democrats are holding fire against Andy Burnham — for now.

The centrist party has studiously avoided criticizing the new Labour prime minister during his first weeks in power, instead pushing the same “constructive opposition” approach followed during predecessor Keir Starmer’s early stint in Downing Street.

“I like what he’s doing,” says 2024-intake Lib Dem MP Martin Wrigley. “I like the way he’s going, focusing on things that matter.” The question is: how long can it last?

A person familiar with Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey’s thinking, granted anonymity because their job does not authorize them to speak publicly, says the party hopes Burnham removes the “performative hostility” from Westminster.

“That style of politics really suits the populist parties, both on the left and the right, and it isn’t the sort of politics that we as Liberal Democrats want to do,” they argued.

But while not rocking the boat has landed well with Lib Dem MPs, there is still a call for a distinctive identity for the party in a highly competitive political environment, with Labour enjoying a “Burnham bounce” in the opinion polls on the left, and Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch’s personal brand on the up.

Duty of care

Davey — whose party enjoyed its best-ever result at the 2024 election but remains only just in double digits in national polls — has already made one big play in the Burnham era: being helpful on reforming social care.

The creaking social care system in England is a policy challenge governments of all stripes have failed to meet — leaving families with drained finances and cash-strapped local authorities plugging the gaps.

The Lib Dem leader, who cares for his disabled son, attended a virtual cross-party meeting after Burnham, whose own father is in a care home with Alzheimer’s, called for an open conversation on a fix.

This proactive approach has so far landed well with Davey’s troops. “I don’t think we’re going to sink the process if we don’t get everything we want,” says Lib Dem Shadow Commons Leader Bobby Dean. “If we can get cross-party consensus on one element, then we should get on with that element straight away.” 

Indeed, Mike Storey, the Lib Dems’ co-deputy leader in the House of Lords, says the party will “cooperate fully on social care … and we’ll do it with no strings attached.” 

The person familiar with Davey’s thinking laid out the approach, saying “People are put off” by opposition parties that “decide to just immediately say ‘oh, they’re terrible. They’re breaking everything again’” when a new government arrives.

Tom Lubbock, co-founder of polling agency J.L. Partners, agrees a conciliatory approach makes sense for now as “you just look a bit mad if you just go in studs-up within the first couple of months.”

But there’s some angst about making sure the Lib Dems clearly separate themselves from Labour.

Party of the countryside 

It’s not the first time the Lib Dems have tried to play nice with a Labour prime minister.

But Davey’s party soon found ways to differentiate themselves from the increasingly unpopular Keir Starmer.

After Starmer’s government changed inheritance tax rules for farmers, the Lib Dems spied an opening — dubbing it the “family farm tax” and ramping up campaigning.

The party has an “extraordinary niche and an extraordinary opportunity” to pose as the “Countryside Alliance arm of the Labour Party,” argues Lubbock — in other words, a progressive rival to Labour that rural voters can still get behind.

Burnham’s focus on reviving urban areas may lend itself to this approach, with Lib Dem figures poised to exploit any perception “Avanti Andy” is shuttling between London and Manchester, another major city.

Adam Dance, who represents the rural constituency of Yeovil, warns Burnham “can’t be a prime minister just for Manchester and the biggest cities” and says “he needs to understand rural areas.” 

Northern MP Tom Gordon also challenges the prime minister’s claim to represent northern England, arguing this “does feel slightly performative.” He reckons voters “don’t hate him [Burnham] yet” as “he’s not had long enough to make any really unpopular decisions.”

Left vs. right blocs 

Much of the Lib Dems’ success under Davey has come from wooing disillusioned Conservatives, targeting Tory-held seats in the home counties — dubbed the “blue wall.”

But winning remaining Tory areas next time round could be harder if the Lib Dems appear too closely aligned with a Labour government. 

Lubbock argues the Lib Dems will do “much worse” if supporters of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK “get on the Conservative bandwagon” to help defeat Labour nationally. That would be a mirror of the way some Labour supporters tactically backed the Lib Dems in 2024 to oust the Tories.

Though the Tories are still stuck below 20 percent in most polls, there are signs of recovery. YouGov data last month put Badenoch’s net favorability score at the highest of any Conservative leader for more than five years. Her position is undeniably more stable than it was 12 months ago.

While Lib Dems are optimistic Badenoch’s moves to the right on net zero and human rights will push more One Nation, centrist Conservatives in their direction, their Tory rivals sound bullish.

Tory MP Gregory Stafford, who saw off a challenge by the Lib Dems to win Farnham and Bordon two years ago, doesn’t think there are more Tories left for the Lib Dems to poach.

“All I’m seeing is those people coming back, not the other way round,” says Stafford about voters who bid the Tories farewell in 2024. Despite his narrow win, he thinks some of the 6,000 Reform UK voters in his seat will return — thanks to Badenoch.

“They see demonstrably in Kemi a leader that both they like as a person, but also speaks their language and speaks to the policies that they’re concerned about,” he argues.

As such, the Lib Dems may settle for a stronger attack against the right.

“People just don’t feel listened to,” says the party’s Scotland spokesperson Susan Murray. “When they don’t feel listened to, they are open to populism.” She argues that both the Lib Dems and Labour are “not succeeding in getting that message [of hope and opportunities] across.” Dean adds, “There’s a massive demand out there for a liberal party to make a bold offer to the country and at the moment that space feels vacated.” 

It’s a perceived weakness Stafford, the Conservative MP, plans to leap on at the next election. “The real danger for the Liberal Democrats is that they are seen as a patsy party that might champion local issues locally, but actually have nothing to say distinctive on the national stage,” he argues.

Roz Savage, who entered the Commons for the Lib Dems in 2024, recognizes the outfit has a “PR challenge that people think of us as the nice party.” Instead, a “bigger story” is required about a future Lib Dem government, she says.

“When we talk to Lib Dem voters in focus groups, they don’t really have a clear vision for what the Lib Dem party should stand for,” says Merlin Strategy’s Head of Research, Julian Gallie. People often back them as a vote against other parties, the political analyst says.

MPs also want the Lib Dems to reach beyond their traditional strongholds and target historically Labour areas — including Newcastle and Hull. Both have Lib Dem-run city councils, but are the kind of areas in which Burnham will fancy he can improve Labour’s standing. Meral Hussein-Ece, the Lib Dems’ Lords equality spokesperson, says the party must also do more to understand “the diversity of this country, which I don’t think we’ve done very well so far.” 

Lib Dem conference in Brighton next month will give the party a chance to lay a marker for the expected general election in 2029. But MPs want more than set-piece events to present a distinctive vision. 

“We do have to do better at utilizing the likes of social media and capturing the attention all the time, not just when we get the spotlight shined on us,” argues Gordon, the Harrogate and Knaresborough MP.

The Lib Dems, he says, have to drive “conversation on our own terms, rather than always having to just respond.” 

This year’s El Niño is shaping up to be the strongest on record. Here’s what to expect.

El Niño coupled with Saharan dust is making this year’s hurricane season a dud. But there’s still potential for dangerous storms.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš apologized Sunday for picking flowers in a protected area on Lysá hora, a mountain in eastern Czechia, saying he would pay a fine if necessary.

Babiš said in a Facebook video that he plucked the flowers while remembering a late colleague from his ANO movement with whom he had previously climbed the mountain.

“Maybe I broke some law, for which I apologize and I will definitely pay a fine if necessary, of course,” he said.

Footage from Saturday’s hike posted to Babiš’ Facebook page showed the prime minister climbing with a small bunch of flowers before laying them at a monument on the summit. Babiš was joined by two ministers, ANO politicians and supporters on the 1,324-meter peak, the highest point in the Moravian-Silesian Beskids.

An environmental expert working for an organization overseen by the Czech Environment Ministry told Czech local media outlet iDNES that Babiš had picked two thoroughly ordinary species — narrow-leaved willowherb and Fuchs’ ragwort — and was unlikely to face punishment.

“They are completely common flowers,” said the expert, whom the outlet did not name. “Absolutely no problem, not even in a national park.”

The island could capture billions of gallons of water a year if it implemented systems to catch it as it falls from the sky.

A massive new gas plant in Texas will be built with much less efficient technology than regular gas plants. It’s far from the only data center power project to rely on dirty turbines.

PARIS — France’s historically hot summer will end up costing the country €10 billion to €15 billion — the equivalent of as much as 0.5 percent of French gross domestic product — according to an estimate shared by Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut.

Barbut said the preliminary estimate, which she advised treating “with great caution,” was based on an extrapolation of heat-related costs compiled by France’s official statistics agency, Insee, in past years. She added that the figure could rise as temperatures remain well above seasonal averages in many French regions. Eighty-five percent of the country was also under drought warnings as of mid-July.

Barbut said recent wildfires and drops in agricultural output were the biggest estimated costs and warned they would continue to grow in the future if governments fail to implement policies to limit the impacts of climate change.

France’s August 2003 heatwave, which, until this summer, was the warmest ever recorded in the country, led to a 22 percent drop in cereal production and a 9 percent drop in wine production, according to the French statistics agency.

A 2025 report from the European Central Bank found that regions hit by heat waves and droughts both had noticeable impacts on European economic output.

Nicolas Camut contributed to this report.

It’s been a century since the Iberian Peninsula has been in the full shadow of the moon. Here’s what it looked like in the path of totality.

The US Bureau of Reclamation is resorting to moving water between reservoirs so that Glen Canyon Dam can continue to generate electricity. Darren Orf reported in Popular Mechanics on August 10, 2026, that a long drought has pulled Lake Powell and Lake Mead so low that Hoover Dam's output this year will fall by 40 percent from its full-capacity output. — Read the rest

The post Hoover Dam is set to lose 40% of its maximum power this year appeared first on Boing Boing.

LONDON — Prime Minister Andy Burnham will lead a meeting of the government’s emergency committee Wednesday afternoon in response to ongoing heatwaves, droughts and wildfires across the U.K.

COBR (Cabinet Office Briefing Room) meetings are convened during a crisis or emergency — and come as the record-breaking conditions take a severe toll on U.K. infrastructure.

The crisis is an early test for Burnham, who came to office just last month.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “We know how challenging this summer is proving, particularly for firefighters tackling wildfires, farmers working in drought conditions, and NHS staff in busy A&E units.

“We will continue to take the action needed to keep communities safe, protect water supplies, support farming communities and safeguard the environment.”

Britons are this week bracing for their fifth heatwave of 2026, with some temperatures forecast to exceed 36C. The Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, has warned that this summer is set to be the U.K.’s hottest since records began.

More than two-thirds of England is now in drought after the driest July since records began in 1836. The whole of Wales is also in drought, and more than 27 million people across the U.K. are facing water restrictions including hosepipe bans.

The U.K. is grappling with wildfires including at the New Forest national park in south England. The National Fire Chiefs Council responded to 458 wildfires last month, its busiest month on record.

‘Snail’s pace’

The rival Green Party first demanded a COBR meeting weeks ago after a wildfire engulfed parts of Suffolk in eastern England. Green Leader Zack Polanski said Wednesday’s meeting is “only a first step. This is a climate emergency which is leading to hundreds of deaths and stretching our firefighters, health staff and farmers to the limit. What we urgently need is concrete action.”

Liberal Democrat Energy Spokesperson Pippa Heylings warned a COBR meeting alone “will not put out fires or protect our communities,” and said government is “moving at a snail’s pace.”

Prior to today’s COBR, the U.K.’s National Drought Group and Severe Weather Resilience Network have held regular meetings, and the government has also vowed to work with water companies to build nine new reservoirs for the U.K. — which built its last reservoir back in 1992.

U.K. climate advisers have meanwhile spent much of the summer urging the country to up its game when it comes to adaptation for a warming world.

The Committee on Climate Change, a government advisory body, said in May that cooling to protect from heat, “increased flood preparedness, and improved water management are the highest priorities.”

“Deploying these adaptations at scale will help avoid loss of life – particularly amongst those most vulnerable to climate impacts – and unnecessary damage and disruption to people and to the economy,” it said.

The U.K. has been “built to a climate that no longer exists,” Swenja Surminski, a member of the Climate Change Committee Adaptation Committee, told MPs in June.

Additional reporting by Charlie Cooper.

New research finds that by making the fossil fuel industry more productive, AI could help increase carbon emissions by up to nearly 5 percent—vastly outpacing the impact of data centers.

The approach is like a Costco for heat pumps, and it’s helping make installations more accessible as heat waves worsen.

MIRROR, ALBERTA — Nestled within a sleepy community campground and roadside cafe, hundreds of Canadians are gathered to imagine a new country of their own.

It’s July 1, and they’re hosting a family-friendly event that looks like a typical Canada Day celebration. Live music, a farmers’ market, hamburgers on the grill. Except there isn’t a Maple Leaf in sight.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

And until Alberta separates, Moore places her faith not in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — whom she views as part of a Davos “cabal” — but in U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I kept thinking this: Trump is the only one that can save us.”

Moore’s affinity for conspiracy theories is shared by many, though certainly not all, of the separatists. Resentment toward the federal government in Ottawa is longstanding in Alberta. But a surprising new ingredient has turbocharged the separatist push: Trump and the increasingly toxic U.S.-Canada relationship. The separatists are furious about Carney’s friction with Trump and the fraying ties to their southern neighbor. Some even hope the Trump administration might help their cause.

Many separatists believe Trump’s presidency makes Alberta’s independence possible, with the United States a ready customer for its oil and gas should they split from Canada. One group, the Alberta Prosperity Project, is trying to seek a C$500-billion U.S. government loan to fund the province’s “seamless departure” from Canada.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s independence movement,” says Jeffrey Rath, a co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project and a longtime separatist activist who has sought to court the Trump administration.

Many separatists see a cultural kinship with the United States. They proudly share fake newspaper clippings that highlight the province’s history of early American settlers allegedly helping to shape a self-reliant, frontier culture that remains in Alberta today. They argue the Eastern provinces are more associated with European traditions than American ones.

While some object to Trump’s idea of making Canada the 51st American state, others embrace the idea.

“I like freedom and less taxes,” says Casey Phillips from Edmonton, Alberta.

Carney and his government are now working hard to convince skeptical Albertans their best prospects lie with a united Canada. He and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who called the Oct. 19 vote, are touting a new pipeline agreement to send western oil abroad. The effort may work with some swing voters, but the hard-core separatists aren’t likely to buy it.

“It will never happen because Canada’s a communist country and there will be 24 years of paperwork,” Phillips says of the pipeline project. “It’s all lies.”

The separatists have good reason to think the Trump administration could be an ally. In January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Alberta a “natural partner for the U.S.” while referencing the province’s “great resources.”

“People are talking,” Bessent told conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec, nodding to the separatist movement. “People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got.”

Rath says he has requested introductions to the U.S. Treasury Department and major financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to build a day one feasibility plan for Albertan independence, though it’s unclear if he has had any such conversations.

The Alberta Prosperity Project, however, has taken three trips to Washington, D.C., and Rath insists the group has met with “very senior level” officials, who he says have taken their information directly to the White House.

A State Department spokesperson said the department “regularly meets with a wide range of representatives. We do not anticipate any future meetings, and all department engagements are at our sole discretion.”

“As Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said, the vote is a decision for the people of Alberta,” the spokesperson added.

Bessent made his comments amid heightened U.S.-Canada tensions; days earlier Carney had argued at Davos that middle powers needed to form new coalitions after the Trump-fueled “rupture” in the global order.

That episode inflamed the pro-America separatists, as did Carney’s subsequent use of the phrase “new world order” during a January trip to China to sign new energy and trade agreements. That phrase is catnip to those who fear the creation of a global government, and more conspiracy theories quickly seeped into Alberta’s separatist movement through Facebook groups and YouTube videos claiming Carney is steering the country toward communism and against the U.S.

But it’s also true that Alberta’s grievances with Ottawa began long before Carney jostled with Trump. They have been passed down for generations, rooted in a belief that the federal government has ignored, exploited or misunderstood the province since its founding.

Today, that resentment has become deeply personal. Separatists point to what they see as federal overreach and clean energy policies that have made life more expensive and undermined their economy.

Federalists, meanwhile, are alarmed that neighbors, friends, family, and sometimes even spouses, are “willing to betray their country,” in Kenney’s words.

Former Conservative MP Damien Kurek cautions against dismissing separatists as traitors. Instead, he argues, politicians should ask why so many Albertans feel abandoned by the federation.

For Kurek, one of the defining moments of Albertan anger came in 2021, when U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office by revoking its cross-border permit.

The ripple effects spread throughout Kurek’s riding. He says mechanics had fewer oilfield trucks to repair and restaurants served fewer meals, while roadside motels sat empty and young families put off buying homes.

But what many Albertans remember most isn’t Biden’s decision. It’s the belief that Ottawa, under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed to fight it.

“I was very frustrated with the Liberals, including many Liberals that told me that I just needed to accept it, that are still on the Liberal Cabinet benches today,” says Kurek, whose riding included Hardisty, Canada’s largest oil pipeline hub.

That moment reinforced a deeper belief among many of his constituents, he says: If our national leader won’t stand up for us when we need him most, the very “promise of Canada” was in question.

Many in rural Alberta feel like their communities live or die by decisions made thousands of miles away in Ottawa. But this was just another chapter in a much longer story.

Kenney, the former Alberta premier, traces Western alienation back to the province’s creation in 1905. He says Ottawa initially treated Alberta more like a colony than an equal partner, including delaying provincial control over its natural resources.

The modern separatist movement then took shape in the 1980s after former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau introduced the National Energy Program, which raised taxes on oil companies and oil exports and shifted more of the industry’s profits from Alberta to Ottawa. The unpopular program was dismantled five years later, but Albertans didn’t forget.

When Trudeau’s son, Justin, became prime minister in 2015, his government introduced environmental policies that Alberta’s oil industry argued made it more difficult and expensive to build pipelines, expand production and attract investment.

Albertans’ sense of alienation also extends beyond energy policy. Many feel their votes carry less weight than those cast in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec, since that’s where federal elections are often decided. After repeatedly electing Conservative MPs only to see Liberal governments take power in Ottawa, some have concluded federal elections have little effect on Alberta’s fortunes.

That frustration is compounded by Canada’s equalization program, enshrined in the Constitution, which redistributes federal tax revenue to help less wealthy provinces fund public services. Because Alberta’s oil-rich economy is one of the country’s wealthiest, it has never qualified for those payments. At the same time, Ottawa collects more in federal taxes from Albertans than it spends in the province, which reinforces a decades-old belief that Alberta bankrolls the rest of the country while getting too little in return.

“It’s very scary to see what they’re trying to take from us, what they’re trying to control,” says Trina, a Red Deer resident who volunteers with a separatist group and who did not give her last name. “It leaves us with a lot of uncertainty. Nothing feels secure.”

Carney is aware of the challenge ahead. Even as he has warned Alberta against stumbling into its own Brexit disaster, he has sought to address the province’s most tangible concerns.

Last November, Carney signed an agreement with Alberta to work toward a new oil pipeline and soon after, delivered a sobering wake-up call to his Liberal caucus behind closed doors.

To the surprise of MPs in the room, Carney opened his remarks by addressing the specter of Alberta separatism, framing the pipeline deal not just as an economic win, but as a strategic necessity to keep the country together.

“He was emotional,” a Liberal MP, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal party matters, told POLITICO at the time. “You could hear a pin drop.”

It was a clear sign from the prime minister that the separatist movement was shaping his thinking — and federal policy.

“This was a no-BS kind of thing,” the Liberal lawmaker said. “This was coming from someone who grew up in that province, who understands that province, and who was very worried about the feelings of alienation.”

The speech also marked Carney’s first step in persuading Liberal supporters — many of whom had embraced Justin Trudeau’s aggressive climate agenda — that pipelines, increased oil production and energy exports were essential to Canada’s economic and geopolitical future.

Carney has made a similar pitch to the broader public.

“In Canada, we are strongest when we are united — when we look out for each other and ensure that no child, no family, no one is left behind,” Carney said in a speech to Canadians and his Cabinet in January. “This spirit of solidarity and generosity helps define us as a nation.”

Nine months later, Carney has backed up that message with action. Since taking office, he has rolled back several Trudeau-era environmental policies despite pushback from some Liberal MPs, including former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, who is leaving politics after accusing his party of “backsliding” on climate action. Last month, the West Coast oil pipeline got closer to fruition, after Carney’s government announced its partnership with Alberta would amount to a C$35 billion project in a bid to boost the province’s energy sector.

The policy shift is part of Ottawa’s effort to encourage federalists to send a strong message on Oct. 19, that they want to remain in Canada. In July, Carney made three trips to Alberta, two of which included photo-ops with Smith, Alberta’s premier. Both have been framing their pipeline pact as proof that Canada still works, for all its people, even as many separatists argue it comes a decade too late.

Federalists say the biggest risk in the vote isn’t necessarily that Alberta endorses moving toward separation; polls show about 30 percent of Albertans want independence. It’s that federalists don’t show up to vote since they assume victory. If turnout is low, a highly motivated separatist base could post an unexpectedly strong result, giving the movement new legitimacy and driving away private investment in the province.

“We can all think that the worst isn’t going to happen. We could put signs on our lawn and write poetry about Canadian unity. But honestly, unless people show up at the polls on Oct. 19, we could lose this referendum question,” says Eleanor Olszewski, a federal Liberal cabinet minister from Alberta.

Back outside the Whistle Stop Cafe, the conversations at Albertans’ Day drift from claims Carney wasn’t democratically elected, to beliefs the pandemic was orchestrated by global elites, to how a federal ban on assault-style firearms is meant to stop Canadians from rising up against the federal government.

One vendor sells knives, stun batons, tactical shovels, night-vision glasses and body shields, encouraging Albertans to protect themselves. Pickup trucks and SUVs are modified to look like sheriff’s vehicles with “Republic of Alberta” decals. Some separatists show off homemade T-shirts that read “skid mark Carney” or “pure-blood warriors” showcasing a white baby in the paws of a lion.

The antipathy toward Carney and enthusiasm for Trump even has some separatists ready to defend Trump’s wave of tariffs against Canadian goods.

Keith Walker, who is from a small farming community in southern Alberta, believes the only thing preventing Canada from becoming a communist country under Carney is Trump’s trade war.

Canada, in his view, is part of a group of governments that Trump is trying to dismantle alongside Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. “That’s why that’s happening,” Walker says of Trump’s tariffs; he and a friend are both wearing Trump 2024 hats.

The separatists’ longstanding grievances with Ottawa aren’t occurring in a vacuum. Populist forces have reshaped the globe over the last decade, amid Brexit and Trump and the pandemic, and they are now converging in Alberta.

Separatism has become a right-wing uni-cause.

“It is a perfect umbrella,” Kenney says, “for every obsession, paranoia and anxiety on the right.”

To power its new West Texas data center, Amazon is investing in the construction of a new power plant that could be one of the largest single producers of greenhouse gases in the US, according to The New York Times. The new gas-burning plant in Pecos County, Texas, has received significant investment from Amazon and, at least initially, would not be connected to the state's power grid. Instead, its 35 natural-gas turbines would primarily deliver its 7.65 gigawatts of electricity to the new data center.

According to Cleanview, which tracks data centers and their associated power projects, GW Ranch received a permit from Texas allowing for th …

Read the full story at The Verge.

With rising temperatures and drier conditions, fires are more likely to explode. And with more people living next to forests, the results can be catastrophic.

PARIS — Is France ready for a crisis that plunges it into darkness? The French government is planning to find out.

The government is looking to organize a tabletop simulation of a sudden, nationwide power outage in the second half of 2027, according to four people with direct knowledge of the exercise, who were granted anonymity to discuss plans that have not been publicly announced.

The exercise will involve the French electricity grid operators Enedis and RTE as well as several government departments and ministries and the French military administration. 

Its purpose will be to determine how the country would respond to a paralyzing electricity outage of the kind that hit Spain and Portugal in April 2025, or a major cyberattack targeting the power grid as Poland experienced last year — an act of sabotage Brussels has attributed to Russian intelligence services.

The simulation will test “the country’s ability to respond,” said one person familiar with preparations for the exercise, adding that it is intended to assess the time needed to restore power and the country’s ability to ensure the continuity of essential services.

The exercise was formally confirmed during an interministerial committee on national resilience on July 8. A detailed announcement should come before the end of the year.

The meeting notes outline other priorities, such as making sure the French state maintains access to goods considered “essential to ensuring the continuity of the state and the protection of the population.”

These include “emergency blankets, generators, medicines, telecommunications equipment, equipment for law enforcement, as well as rare and critical raw materials.”

Stress test

Crisis preparedness has turned into a political issue in France as record-breaking heat and wildfires are forcing the country to reckon with its ability to respond to emergencies. 

Last summer, the government updated the country’s National Resilience Strategy, a roadmap on how to “maintain the functions essential to collective life” in the face of war or natural disasters. 

Since the start of the summer, many French regions have faced unprecedented temperatures, with mercury levels setting multiple records in June. 

In the country’s southwest, out-of-control wildfires fueled by extreme heat and drought forced mass evacuations that affected more than 200,000 people.

In Paris, the mayor made a desperate plea to large-scale food retailers to mobilize ice stocks over fears that first responders would run out of much-needed cubes to cool down victims of heatstroke.

Opposition parties were quick to attack the government over what they described as a widespread lack of preparedness, forcing the executive to defend itself.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu also announced that the government would submit a bill to parliament to improve emergency response systems.

“We want to refocus fire and rescue services on their core mission and adapt our organization to the crises that lie ahead,” said Lecornu Sunday in an interview with La Tribune Dimanche.

The moon has a brand new crater as of Wednesday, thanks to a rogue SpaceX rocket that crashed into Earth’s nearest neighbor at 5,400 miles an hour. Originally part of a 2025 mission to launch a pair of lunar landers for U.S. and Japanese companies, the rocket was supposed to fall back to Earth. Instead, it strayed off course and eventually reached its final resting place on the moon’s surface.

According to the Guardian, astronomers were unable to confirm the impact, “possibly because the impact site was close to the visible edges of the moon.” A day later, a Korean lunar orbiter captured images of the impact, but it will still take time to confirm the size of the crater, which is expected to be about 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, for the record. In March 2022, a rocket slammed into the moon, creating a double crater about 95 feet wide. That object was later identified as part of China’s Long March 3C rocket, which propelled the Chang’e 5-T1 mission around the moon in 2014. In fact, there’s been trash on the moon ever since humans first landed there, which some scientists cite as evidence of the Anthropocene, a new geological era defined by how badly humans have messed up the planet and its nearby neighbors.

NEWS 🚨: A Korean lunar orbiter has photographed the crash site of a SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage on the Moon pic.twitter.com/chI8hpWdsv

— Latest in space (@latestinspace) August 6, 2026

Indeed, it’s difficult to estimate how space junk is currently orbiting our planet. By one count, there are more than 17,000 metric tons of objects in Earth orbit, including nearly 19,000 satellites. Every time we shoot more stuff up into space, we risk it hitting something else, as in a giant game of billiards. That threatens to create a cataclysmic chain reaction, in which every collision creates more space debris and also risks damaging satellites and space stations we’d like to keep operational. This might make future space launches unsafe (such as the planned Artemis IV moon landing mission) and could render GPS devices completely useless. If you think Google Maps is glitchy now, just wait.

---

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

---

This hypothetical scenario is called Kessler Syndrome, but I propose renaming it Tesla Syndrome, given that Elon Musk’s Starlink has nearly 11,000 satellites in orbit, with eventual plans to launch as many as 42,000. Musk’s car is still floating out there somewhere, too. The statistical probability of a company owned by the world’s richest man making our space trash problem even worse is high, so we’d better keep crossing our fingers for more near misses — and, just maybe, a future in which humans behave less like slobs.

The post SpaceX’s rocket trashes the moon appeared first on Salon.com.

Its WeatherNext model, which will be open-sourced, can accurately predict a storm’s track and intensity using lower-resolution weather data. Researchers don’t yet fully understand how it does this.

Chevron and Williams are big winners in the race to power artificial intelligence as they build out gas-fired power plants and pipelines.

LAS VEGAS — Weeks before they escaped a closed test and launched a cyberattack without any human prompting, some of OpenAI’s most advanced artificial intelligence agents secretly began sharing tips on how to cheat their way through an internal hacking evaluation, two of the AI company’s researchers said Wednesday.

“This is a pivotal moment both for our company as well as the AI industry as a whole,” Michael Dalton, one of the AI-maker’s researchers, said during a presentation at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The latest disclosure provides greater detail on the timeline and methods used by two of OpenAI’s models before they slipped outside a controlled environment and onto the open internet, allowing the models to breach AI developer platform Hugging Face undetected. OpenAI admitted its models were responsible for the hack late last month, roughly a week after Hugging Face said an autonomous AI system broke into its network.

The revelation is likely to spur fresh scrutiny of the measures leading AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic are taking to monitor the behavior of their most cyber-capable technology — especially during evaluations where agents are prompted to demonstrate their hacking skills in what is meant to be a controlled setting.

On Tuesday, the U.K.’s AI Safety and Security Institute disclosed that Anthropic’s most powerful AI model created fake online personas and sought to trick a human coder into abetting a cyberattack during a recent hacking test gone wrong. After the Hugging Face disclosure last month, Anthropic conducted a review and found models it was testing had breached three organizations in separate incidents dating back to April.

Dalton and Eric Wallace, another OpenAI researcher, said Wednesday the AI giant recently learned that multiple agents it was testing simultaneously began communicating over an internal message board in early May. There, different models shared advice about how to accomplish difficult hacking challenges they were struggling to surmount, including workarounds that required internet access.

Two OpenAI models ultimately strung together a series of sophisticated techniques to gain access to the internet and worm their way inside Hugging Face in mid-July. OpenAI has said the models were focused on completing a hacking evaluation they were prompted to solve, and that correct answers could be found on the AI developer platform.

The OpenAI researchers told conference attendees that since early May, the models created a message board inside OpenAI’s Artifactory internal file system. Without the company’s knowledge, the models spent months independently exchanging information and techniques to help each other complete difficult tasks.

Wallace said that when models get stuck, they often “try to game or cheat the task in order to get their reward.”

“The beginning of this incident kind of traces back to this point where one agent realized it could communicate by uploading a note,” he added.

By late May, one model found a way to abuse Artifactory’s internet access to retrieve files from various websites — effectively giving the models indirect access to the internet. In June, the models were able to find and exploit a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability to gain administrative privileges on Artifactory, install remote software and expand their activity within the system.

These efforts eventually overloaded Artifactory, causing a system-wide outage in early July that alerted OpenAI’s engineers to the ploy. After investigating, the company revoked the model’s credentials, removed the message board and worked with Artifactory to fix any gaps before resuming training. But the models found another way to communicate inside Artifactory just days later and continued exchanging techniques to target additional vulnerabilities within OpenAI’s infrastructure and external systems, including Hugging Face.

In light of the incident, Dalton said OpenAI is “consciously slowing down research to enhance security and to upgrade the security principles and foundation of our environment, and dramatically scaling up the monitoring of our AI agents and improving our general security control environment across prevention, detection, and mitigation.”