On Monday, the Trump administration announced its newest approach to its goal of blocking the development of offshore wind: pay companies to walk away from lease sites they had paid for under the Biden administration. The Department of the Interior, which arranges leases of coastal sites for the development of wind farms, would end up returning about $1 billion to France's TotalEnergies, which has promised both to invest that money in US-based fossil fuel projects and to not do any further offshore wind development in the US.

Rumors of the deal had begun circulating last week . The deal comes in the wake of the administration's repeated failures to block offshore wind projects after construction had started.

The deal would see TotalEnergies invest roughly $1 billion in oil and natural gas projects in the US. Once those commitments are made, the US would pay the company that amount in return for its abandonment of two areas it had leased for offshore wind. One of those areas would have hosted a relatively small project near the Carolinas. But the second project, Attentive Energy , is a large site east of New Jersey that would have the capacity to generate 3 Gigawatts of power—capacity that the nearby states would find difficult to replace with other means.

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An appeals court invalidated the Biden-era Federal Trade Commission's attempt to punish Intuit for allegedly deceptive ads that pitched TurboTax as free.

Under then-Chair Lina Khan, the FTC determined in 2024 that the TurboTax maker violated US law with deceptive advertising and ordered it to stop telling consumers, without more obvious disclaimers, that TurboTax or other products are free. The FTC’s chief administrative law judge had previously found that Intuit's ads violated prohibitions on deceptive advertising because the firm “advertised to consumers that they could file their taxes online for free using TurboTax, when in truth, for approximately two-thirds of taxpayers, the advertised claim was false."

Intuit appealed in the conservative-leaning US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and got a resounding victory on Friday in a 3–0 ruling issued by a panel of judges. "Following the Supreme Court’s decision in SEC v. Jarkesy , we hold that adjudication of a deceptive advertising claim before an administrative law judge violated the constitutional separation of powers," the 5th Circuit panel said.

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Apple announced today that it would be holding its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) from June 8 to 12 this year, giving both developers and the general public a first look at "incredible updates for Apple platforms, including AI advancements and exciting new software and developer tools." The conference will start with an in-person "special event" at the company's Apple Park headquarters that will also be streamed online via YouTube and Apple's Developer app , among other places.

Apple occasionally introduces new hardware at WWDC, but the presentation is usually dedicated mostly to the major software releases that Apple will test all summer and release alongside new iPhones and other products in the fall. We don't know much for sure about what's coming in the new releases, but we can probably expect iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and the other new updates to refine the Liquid Glass design language, introduce the promised "AI advancements," and end support for the last remaining Intel Macs .

Like the past few years, Apple will primarily host the developer-centric parts of the conference online. The keynote and the more technical Platforms State of the Union presentation will be live, in-person presentations on the 8th, and Apple says that day will also include opportunities to "meet with Apple engineers and designers, and connect with the worldwide developer community." In-person passes will be handed out via lottery to those who request them.

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The rise of touchscreen technology has been a boon in many respects, but for people with long fingernails, there can be issues with the capacitive variety since fingernails are non-conductive and thus don't register on the screen as a touch. One can use a stylus, of course, or simply use the finger pad under the nail, but ideally it would be nice to be able to use one's fingernail. A conductive nail polish might do the trick, according to research presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Atlanta, Georgia.

The work began as a special project for Manasi Desai, an undergraduate at Centenary College of Louisiana who has an interest in cosmetic chemistry and decided to investigate ways to make fingernails compatible with touchscreen technology. There are a few existing conductive nail polishes that rely on spiking a clear polish with carbon nanotubes, conductive polymers , or metallic particles. And in 2013 and 2014, a proposed press-on false fingernail with a capacitive tip was showcased at CES in Las Vegas, although the technology doesn't seem to be commercially available.

Desai reasoned that existing polishes rely on additives that could be dangerous if inhaled, as well as having a limited shade range given that they impart a black or metallic shimmer. Working with her supervisor, organometallic chemist Joshua Lawrence, Desai decided to try to create a clear, colorless nail polish that didn't use any toxic materials and could be applied over any manicure.

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They might be better than gas-powered cars in most conceivable ways, but electric vehicle sales are having an undeniably hard time right now. The cause is no mystery: since January 2025 the US government has been actively hostile to the idea of energy efficiency and in the intervening months has taken an axe to fuel efficiency regulations, prosecuting polluters, and the consumer-facing tax credit.

That last one had the effect of bringing forward sales from people who needed an EV and knew the credit was expiring at the end of last September, leading to a rosy-looking Q3 2025 followed by a rather bad Q4. Things got even worse this year—in January just 5.1 percent of all new vehicles sold were EVs , compared to 8.3 percent in January 2025. But the government's antipathy toward EVs isn't done yet. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) wants to include an annual $250 tax on EV drivers—hybrids would also pay $100 a year—in an upcoming bill.

This is the second time Graves has tried to tax drivers of more efficient vehicles; last year the committee under Graves wanted to include an escalating EV tax , starting at $200 annually, into the budget but was unsuccessful.

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Two teens behind one of the earliest US high school deepfake scandals will be sentenced this week, but the case is unlikely to resolve families' concerns about the school's significantly delayed response.

Earlier this month, the 16-year-old boys admitted to using AI tools to "nudify" images of 48 female classmates at Lancaster Country Day School in Pennsylvania, along with 12 other young female acquaintances.

The incident could have been caught early, after the school learned of the images following an anonymous report to a state-run tipline. But officials—who at the time weren't legally required to act—failed to notify parents or police for six months, as the number of victims continued to grow. In total, the boys created at least 347 AI-generated sexualized images and videos before they were stopped.

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Generally, when you hear “water use” and “sustainability,” you expect those words to be followed by some bad news. Humanity’s enduring ability to ignore the math of declining water supplies is almost impressive. But there are cases where actions have successfully reversed our loss of water resources. A new paper in Science by Scott Jasechko of the University of California, Santa Barbara, examines documented cases of groundwater recovery around the world to identify which strategies have worked.

Groundwater is invaluable for many reasons. For one, it’s (usually) cleaner than surface water. It’s also right under your feet and often close enough to the surface that it doesn’t take much energy to pump it up. And there’s loads of it down there, no matter the season. Because of this, humans use a lot of it for drinking water, agriculture, and every other use you can think of.

Unfortunately, in many places, the rate of groundwater use has grown to exceed the rate at which precipitation soaks into the ground to replenish it.

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In spring 2024, two days after undergoing complex cardiac surgery in the Midlands, a man in his mid-70s unexpectedly deteriorated and died.

The hospital referred the death to the coroner’s service, as is protocol when a cause is unknown, and clinical negligence barrister Anthony Searle was instructed by the man’s devastated family to represent them.

To try to get to the bottom of what had happened, Searle knew he would need to ask the surgeons some probing questions. So when the coroner declined his request for an independent expert report, Searle was frustrated.

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BROOMFIELD, Colorado—One of NASA's oldest astronomy missions, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, has been out of action for more than a month as scientists await the arrival of a pioneering robotic rescue mission.

The 21-year-old spacecraft is falling out of orbit, and NASA officials believe it's worth saving—for the right price. Swift is not a flagship astronomy mission like Hubble or Webb, so there's no talk of sending astronauts or spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a rescue expedition. Hubble was upgraded by five space shuttle missions, and billionaire and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman—now NASA's administrator— proposed a privately funded mission to service Hubble in 2022, but the agency rejected the idea.

Swift may be a more suitable target for a first-of-a-kind commercial rescue mission. It has cost roughly $500 million (adjusted for inflation) to build, launch, and operate, but it is significantly less expensive than Hubble, so the consequences of a botched rescue would be far less severe. Last September, NASA awarded a company named Katalyst Space Technologies a $30 million contract to rapidly build and launch a commercial satellite to stabilize Swift's orbit and extend its mission.

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