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NASA unveils 4 astronauts to fly on Artemis III mission

They won’t be flying to the moon, but will be paving the way. NASA announced today the four astronauts assigned to Artemis III, a mission targeting launch from Kennedy Space Center next year.

“So you want to find out who the astronauts are?” Isaacman said jokingly before revealing the quartet during an event at Johnson Space Center in ...Read more

Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/TNS

NASA to unveil 4 astronauts to fly on Artemis III mission

They won’t be flying to the moon, but will be paving the way. NASA is set to announce today the four astronauts assigned to Artemis III, a mission targeting launch from Kennedy Space Center next year.

The agency will reveal the crew during an event slated for 11:30 a.m. from Johnson Space Center in Houston, which will stream on NASA’s ...Read more

Smoke and ash contain chemicals that can harm wildland firefighters, and not just when they breathe it in. White River National Forest/BLM via Flickr

Firefighters face a higher risk of skin cancer – nano fabrics with tiny, rough fibers can help keep them safer

Wildland firefighters are exposed to a mix of harmful chemicals in the smoke they breathe and the ash and soot that gets on their clothing. Over long assignments fighting fires that can last for days to weeks, those chemicals can be absorbed by their skin.

Some of those chemicals are carcinogens. A 2025 study found that firefighters ...Read more

In fall 2024, Tampa and other Florida cities on the Gulf coast were hit by hurricanes Helene and Milton within 13 days of each other. Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images

Home insurance and the unraveling of Florida communities

While visiting family in St. Petersburg, Florida, in November 2024, I found myself walking down a quiet residential street in Shore Acres, a low-lying, bayfront neighborhood not far from where I grew up.

Two months earlier, Hurricane Helene had sent several feet of water into homes here, even though the center of the storm had stayed ...Read more

Are you allowed to walk on the beach? Maybe Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Who is allowed to walk on the beach? It depends on where you live

Summer is here – the perfect time to take a walk on a beach. But doing so is not always as simple as it might sound.

In Wisconsin, for instance, a legal case has stretched for months over whether Paul Florsheim may keep walking on a Lake Michigan beach he has walked for over 50 years.

In July 2025, Florsheim, a retired ...Read more

Chris McGrath/Getty Images North America/TNS

Bitcoin's $235 billion crash masks bigger shift in crypto

The easiest way to understand crypto used to be to look at Bitcoin.

When the world’s largest cryptocurrency rose, money flooded into startups, venture funds, exchanges and thousands of speculative tokens. When it crashed, businesses disappeared, funding dried up and activity slowed across the industry. Bitcoin wasn’t merely the biggest ...Read more

David Guralnick/The Detroit News/TNS

Detroit River pollution projects advance with state, EPA agreement

DETROIT — Michigan and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a new $10 million partnership Monday that will accelerate pollution cleanup work on the Detroit River, a waterway loaded with toxic compounds left behind by factories, coal plants and sewage overflows that dominated the river's shoreline for a century.

Under the ...Read more

APPLE/TNS

Apple revamps Siri as it tries to catch up in the AI race

Apple on Monday unveiled a new version of its virtual assistant Siri, to take on its artificial intelligence-powered rivals such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

The California smartphone maker has lagged behind its competitors in the AI race as tech companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into advancing their chatbots and ...Read more

An Amazon data center sits next to a neighborhood in northern Virginia. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

5 ways data centers endanger their local communities and the country as a whole

Every internet search, streamed video and AI-generated response depends on a data center somewhere. Driven by rapid growth in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cryptocurrency, data centers have become the backbone of the modern digital economy. But though their key role is in enabling virtual and remote experiences, data centers ...Read more

Handout/SpaceX/TNS

SpaceX knocks out sunrise Space Coast launch with record-setting booster

A SpaceX launch at sunrise on Monday was business as usual, especially for the booster on the flight, which had made the trip 34 times previous.

A Falcon 9 on the Starlink 10-35 mission carrying 29 Starlink satellites launched at 6:13 a.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40.

The first-stage booster flew for a ...Read more

Halcyon Crimsonbolts/Scopely/TNS

‘Monster Hunter Now’ Season 10 brings two big monsters to the game

Summer is the best time of year for location-based mobile games. School is out, workers are on vacation, and it’s time for adventure, whether traveling to new cities or doing a staycation. Franchises such as “Pokemon Go” have taken advantage of the free time and have done big extravaganzas, and Scopely’s sister franchise “Monster ...Read more

Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images North America/TNS

Commentary: Does science need autonomous AI?

As technology developers and researchers rush to develop autonomous AI research tools (i.e., systems that independently perform tasks by designing their workflows and utilizing available tools) an urgent but rarely discussed question is: Do we really need such tools at all?

Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold (an AI tool that visualizes the 3D ...Read more

Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel/TNS

Iguanas bounce back in South Florida after February freeze wiped out thousands

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Michele Holtfreter planted fresh pentas in her yard this spring — only to find an iguana was tearing into her blossoms.

“After they started flowering, there was a big green iguana hanging around my palm tree,” recalled Holtfreter, of Deerfield Beach. “Next thing I know, the tops of the pentas are being chewed ...Read more

Liv Paggiarino/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS

Lake Mead is barreling faster than ever toward 'system crash,' top experts say

LAS VEGAS — The Colorado River Basin faces a complete “system crash,” with little chance that a wet winter will fully prevent a worst-case scenario, a leading group of experts says in a new academic paper.

That is, unless water managers can get serious about cutting water use fast.

Study author Anne Castle, a fellow at the University of ...Read more

JASON CONNOLLY/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Colorado rancher acknowledges her employee shot wolf in March

DENVER — Fourth-generation Colorado rancher Susan Nottingham acknowledges that one of her employees was behind the killing of the matriarch of the new King Mountain wolf pack in March.

“One of my employees ended up shooting the mother female. The investigation is still ongoing and extremely stressful, costing me tens of thousands of dollars...Read more

Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Farewell, my Smilodon: La Brea Tar Pits to close for 2 years

LOS ANGELES — The back rooms of the La Brea Tar Pits are, at the moment, a maze of packing crates tagged with handwritten sticky notes that say things like "bison skulls" or "camel hip."

Every bone, down to the last dire wolf rib, must be carefully sheathed in a custom foam shell. Sloth jaws and sabertooth fangs and a truly astonishing amount...Read more

LA region begins the year with the smoggiest first 5 months in a decade

LOS ANGELES — The first five months of 2026 in Southern California have been the smoggiest — with the highest number of unhealtful air days — in more than a decade, according to statewide air monitoring.

So far this year, the South Coast air basin, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, has seen 39 days...Read more

tuq0/U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/TNS

A flesh-eating worm from the 1960s is re-invading the US. Are California cattle at risk?

LOS ANGELES — Federal agricultural inspectors detected a case of New World screwworm larvae — maggots that burrow into the flesh of living animals and sometimes humans — on a 3-week-old calf in south Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. Officials anticipated the arrival of screwworm in the United States and say they're prepared to contain ...Read more

Photo by Marra X. Finkelstein/Miami Herald/TNS

3D-printed bones? Science fiction comes to life at University of Miami's new lab

MIAMI — Inside the University of Miami’s newly opened 3D-bioprinting lab, the future of medicine looks a lot like science fiction. Think miniscule robotic devices that repair the body. Molecules designed to hunt down cancer cells. And a printer capable of creating a prosthetic ear in less than 10 minutes.

“You thought it was science ...Read more

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/TNS/TNS

Oil companies continue to show little interest in Arctic refuge drilling

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Oil companies on Friday once again showed little interest in the latest lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, but the results were enough to disappoint groups that have fought to protect the region along the Arctic Ocean from development.

The lease sale raised just $3.7 million with only two parties...Read more