In 1965, a presidential advisory panel issued a report warning that pervasive chemical and carbon pollution was harming environmental health and changing the climate. Five years later, President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act.

Since that 1970 law and its amendments were passed, combined emissions of a half-dozen harmful air pollutants from vehicles and industrial sources have decreased by nearly 80 percent .

But mounting evidence shows that pollution from wildfire smoke is eclipsing those air-quality gains. The unchecked burning of fossil fuels is creating warmer, drier conditions that make wildfires more intense and destructive, and blanket communities in toxic smoke that is more harmful than pollution from other sources.

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It was a busy first day at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, in Anaheim, California, with Marvel Studios releasing the first trailer for VisionQuest . We also got the first teaser for Ahsoka S2; the public release of the Avengers: Doomsday special footage featured last month for attendees only at San Diego Comic-Con; a special sneak peek (for attendees only) for Star Wars: Starfighter ; casting news for the MCU's X-Men movie; and a trailer for an animated special, LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian , coming to Disney+ next month.

(Some spoilers below. One MAJOR spoiler for Spider-Man: Brand New Day ; we'll give you a heads-up when we get there.)

VisionQuest

Marvel's streaming TV portfolio has kind of been all over the place: a handful of hits, a few misses, and a bunch of middling offerings. One of the standout hits was WandaVision , followed by an excellent sequel (of sorts), Agatha All Along . VisionQuest will complete the trilogy. Yes, Vision (Paul Bettany) died in Infinity War , but WandaVision resurrected an all-white version whose memories were restored in the finale. We finally get to learn what happened afterward.

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As cancer treatments have advanced and outcomes have improved, one aspect of cancer care in the US has consistently worsened over the last decade: the wait time for surgery.

According to a study in JAMA Surgery , patients with one of six types of cancer—breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, gastric, and esophageal—have faced longer wait times for surgery than in 2012. Timeliness is considered a core metric of healthcare quality, and delays in cancer surgery have been linked to poorer outcomes, including reduced survival rates and increased patient anxiety and distress.

The findings of the new study are based on data from over 2.7 million patients who had been diagnosed with non-metastatic stage I–III cancers requiring surgery between 2012 and 2023. Researchers led by cancer expert Timothy Donahue at the University of California, Los Angeles, broke that time frame up into four groups: 2012–2015, 2016–2019, 2020–2021, and 2022–2023 to see how wait times have changed over the period.

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The Trump administration is recruiting private security firms to conduct federal government-authorized operations, including cyber attacks, against overseas-based criminal organizations that commit hacks on US persons, organizations, or government entities.

In a National Security Presidential Memorandum issued Thursday, US President Donald Trump directed the National Coordination Center (NCC), which operates under the Homeland Security Task Force, to develop a program for conducting specific cyber operations that combat foreign transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security will provide oversight. The lynchpin of that program is bringing in private sector companies to participate.

Devil will be in the still-undefined details

A fact sheet that accompanied Thursday’s memo listed ransomware, sextortion schemes, phishing campaigns, financial fraud, and impersonation scams as activities eligible for private-sector security firms to target. The memo said such firms could “conduct Cyber Surveillance Operations and Cyber Effects Operations” against “cyber-enabled” TCOs. Such groups are defined as “any foreign group that conducts cyber-enabled crime against the United States Government, a United States person, or United States interests, and that is not an institutional part of a foreign government or wholly operated under a foreign government’s direction.”

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As Virgin Galactic nears christening the first of its next-generation spaceship designed to launch customers on suborbital flights, it still is missing a key component—a name.

The self-described "commercial spaceline," which was founded by British tycoon Richard Branson, has turned to the public to vote on what to call the new vehicle . The spaceplane will be a member of Virgin Galactic's Delta-class fleet, succeeding SpaceShipTwo, which carried Branson and 31 others on 12 short hops above the US-defined boundary between Earth and space.

"You can vote for one of four finalist names for a spaceship that will join Virgin Galactic's growing fleet and the next chapter in our journey to expand access to space," the company announced on its website on Tuesday (Aug. 11). "Name a Virgin Galactic spaceship, shape a piece of spaceflight history."

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Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.

The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal .

US armored vehicles were being destroyed so quickly that they were “respawned” and sent back into the simulated fray, a US official told The Wall Street Journal. The US troops who participated in the exercise—held in Germany from April 9 to May 10—were on rotational deployment from Fort Hood, Texas .

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On Thursday, Flock announced plans to require all agencies with access to license plate reader data to use a safety tool that automatically detects abnormal activity and locks out cops who abuse their access to stalk people they know in their personal lives.

Flock’s audit assistance tool suspends access when user activity “meets defined criteria for abnormal behavior,” Flock said. The suspension can only be lifted by administrator review, with the goal being “to intervene before misuse becomes recurring or widespread.”

The tech has been available as an optional free feature since April, but only a third of agencies had opted in, Flock said. However, after a single Georgia sheriff’s office used the tool and subsequently arrested three cops who were separately using Flock cameras to stalk acquaintances, Flock CEO Garrett Langley told The Verge that dozens of incidents like these helped his company realize they made a mistake and had to act to correct it.

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Smart pet-feeder company Petlibro suffered an outage on Tuesday, giving users a harsh reminder of the risks of relying on smart devices.

Petlibro makes pet feeders that connect to Wi-Fi and, for setup with Petlibro’s mobile companion app, Bluetooth. Users can set the feeders to automatically dispense food at scheduled times, which is handy for pet care when the owner is out of the home.

In a statement to The Verge , Petlibro CEO York Wu said this week’s outage was “related to how the Petlibro app communicates with devices through its online servers.”

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Today, Instagram unveiled a refresh of its wordmark, accompanied by the usual bland corporate platitudes these kinds of announcements are always packaged with.

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri called it “leaner and more modern, with references to the original and the simplicity and craft that’s always made it Instagram.”

Sure, Adam. Simplicity and craft are definitely what everyone thinks of when Instagram comes to mind.

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