But that might have been a mistake, according to Elizabeth Wilson, a wind energy expert and professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College, who said state and federal leaders should have slowed down wind development during that time instead of leaning in.
“We were building a whole new sector … Building it as rapidly as we had hoped to do was even more ambitious,” Wilson said.
America’s offshore wind industry, Wilson said brightly, is now in a “learning phase.” And considerable learning, she argues, has already happened: State governments are currently more equipped to grow and manage offshore wind power than they were five years ago.
Wilson and three colleagues published a study this month demonstrating that U.S. states, even prior to Trump 2.0, were already “drawing lessons” from the challenges they encountered while trying to launch the nation’s first offshore wind farms.
In New York, for example, state regulators adapted the way they price power purchase agreements to better account for rising costs. In New Jersey, an early oversight in transmission planning led to new requirements for offshore wind developers to show how they would better coordinate transmission across the regional power grid. And throughout the Northeast, state governors — working with federal regulators — identified better processes for compensating fishermen for lost revenue due to wind farm construction.
It’s unclear what learnings will arise from Trump 2.0, but Wilson offered a few preliminary suggestions.
First, regulatory stability is paramount, especially given the industry’s long and cumbersome permitting pipeline. Trump demonstrated how much damage can be caused by a shift in the political winds.
Though it’s impossible to guarantee political stability, Wilson suggested that state and federal regulators could, under a more hospitable future administration, revise the permitting system to at least make it faster and smoother.
After all, European energy developers, who are leaders in offshore wind, were surprised by the fragmented permitting and uncoordinated regulatory landscape they encountered in America, according to Wilson.
This kind of change might address the friction that occurs for projects trying to get approved by multiple governments, which has indeed eroded investor confidence in recent years, according to BNEF’s Sholler.
Klein agreed that coordination between states, counties, and federal agencies could improve, but she also pointed out that the current way of doing things did get results.
“Our permitting process is not broken … We got 11 projects approved,” she said, referencing her time leading the federal branch that regulates offshore wind farms during the Biden administration.
Klein agreed, calling CVOW, “a little bit of a unicorn.”
The project, located nearly 30 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, has the distinction of being America’s largest offshore wind farm and the only one that is getting built by a regulated utility. The project was slated to feed the grid starting this March — and, prior to last month’s federal pause, was progressing on schedule.
Dominion Energy, the utility building the project, operates under a “vertically integrated model,” said Wilson, giving it a long-term stability that is beneficial to slow-moving offshore wind development.
Virginia is also the world’s data-center capital, with tremendous energy demand that offshore wind is especially good at serving, especially in extreme winter conditions. Thanks to CVOW’s careful site placement and community engagement, opposition from fishermen and local groups has been relatively low, according to Captain Bob Crisher, a Virginia-based commercial fisherman.
Still, the project was ultimately not spared the major political obstacle of a Trump administration stop-work order.
Perhaps the biggest lesson, for Wilson at least, is that hyping the offshore wind industry did little good. The target dates and costs estimated were possibly “overhyped,” she said, leading lawmakers and others who turned a blind eye to the reality of offshore wind farms being, ultimately, megaprojects.
Offshore wind is a megaproject sector, and “megaproject dynamics” are well studied in Europe, said Wilson. These social and political processes are predictable, in that costs always go over, timelines typically run long, and environmental impacts are often not well communicated. Over the years, these inevitable outcomes gave influential offshore wind opponents and GOP lawmakers fodder for pushing back on offshore wind.
“This is a useful framework: Megaprojects are hard,” she said.
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Great Job Clare Fieseler & the Team @ Canary Media Source link for sharing this story.
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): This is like one of these things. They’re dancing around the nuances and then they’re like, oh, people got violent. I don’t know why.
CHARLES MARINO (GUEST): Yeah, look at the side that they take when they talk about ICE enforcing the laws. Right? They’re kidnappers, they’re, you know, they’re Nazis. All this rhetoric that incites these far-left leaning, compromised mentally people in their communities that then get behind the wheel of a car and they’re surprised when they try and run over an ICE agent. You know, they’re causing these situations, you know.
By the way, this shooting is justified all day long. Twice on Sunday, I did the last department wide review in DHS of use of force policies and this is what we call a no-brainer. When someone uses a car to try and seriously harm or kill a federal law enforcement officer, deadly force is justified. And I’m tired of hearing, you know, this is tragic that somebody lost their life —
HIGBIE: It’s not.
MARINO: Look, if the choice is between that lady and an ICE officer that wants to go home to their family just because they’re doing their jobs, I want that officer to come out on the right side of this all day long.
HIGBIE: Yeah. No, I’m totally with you. I don’t lose any sleep for this woman because she seemed crazy.
Great Job Media Matters for America & the Team @ Media Matters for America Source link for sharing this story.
Investment in consumer tech startups has been in a downturn since 2022, as a turbulent macroeconomic climate and rising inflation have made VCs skittish about consumer spending power. For the past couple of years, most AI investment has focused on winning over enterprise customers, who provide fat checks, multi-year contracts, and quick paths to scale.
But one VC sees the consumer sector gearing up for a comeback in 2026.
“This is gonna be the year of the consumer,” said Vanessa Larco, partner at the venture firm Premise and a former partner at NEA, on this week’s episode of the Equity podcast.
Larco says that even though enterprises have big budgets and a frantic desire to implement AI solutions, adoption often stalls because “they don’t know where to start,” Larco says.
“The fun thing about consumer and prosumer…is that people already have in mind what they want to use it for,” Larco continued. “And so they purchase it, and if it meets the need, they just keep using it.”
In other words, adoption is quicker, and startups building AI products don’t have to guess whether they’ve actually achieved product-market fit or have just won a contract.
“If you’re selling to consumers, you’ll know very quickly if it’s fitting a need or not, and you’ll know quickly whether you need to pivot or make some changes to your product or totally scrap it and start something totally different,” Larco said.
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And in today’s anxiety-inducing economy, consumer tech products that manage to scale demonstrate an especially strong product-market fit.
There are early indications that consumer tech is having a moment. Late last year, OpenAI launched apps in ChatGPT, allowing users to shop with the Target app, scour the housing market with Zillow, book trips with Expedia, or make a Spotify playlist, all through the ChatGPT chatbot experience.
“AI is gonna feel like concierge-like services, which will do everything for you that you have in mind,” Larco said. “The question is, which of it should be specialized, and which should be general purpose?”
Or put differently, as OpenAI works to make ChatGPT the new operating system of the consumer internet, which legacy companies – like Tripadvisor or WebMD – will continue to exist in their own right, and which will get eaten by OpenAI?
While Larco does think 2026 is going to be a “gangbuster” year for M&A, she’s interested in investing in startups that “OpenAI isn’t going to want to kill.”
“OpenAI doesn’t manage real-world assets,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll build an Airbnb competitor because I don’t think they’re gonna want to manage homes…I don’t think they’re going to build any of these marketplaces that require real humans because they don’t want to manage the humans.”
Aside from which startups can fill the gaps, Larco is watching out for what happens if OpenAI “decides to pull an Apple or Android where they take a 30% cut of all the traffic they send you.”
“Is Airbnb gonna want to play ball with that?” she asked.
Overall, Larco predicts new monetization strategies and fresh business models will emerge from the evolved consumer experience online.
‘Social has to change’
While doomscrolling on Instagram about Trump’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Larco noticed something. She had come to the platform to get news on the escalating crisis, but instead she was overwhelmingly flooded with AI-generated Maduro slop.
While deepfakes have been steadily becoming mainstream on social media, this was one of the first major news events where AI-generated slop muddied the waters of the truth.
“At that point, I was like, if I’m just gonna be watching AI-generated videos and photos, I want it to be funny,” she said.
Larco says she has been inundated with enough realistic-looking AI videos on social media that she just assumes it’s all AI at this point, and she’s not alone. If we all start to assume that nothing we see on Meta’s platforms or TikTok is real anymore, the question will be, where do you get the real stuff?
Larco says others might fill in the gaps of where to find truthful, non-AI content as platforms like Reddit and Digg make moves to verify humanity. But for Meta? Maybe it just becomes an entertainment company, a platform for user-generated short films.
“I think we should move on from getting your news from [Meta],” Larco said. “You are just getting funny videos from there. It’s not social media. It’s just gaming and entertainment media.”
‘Some things are better with voice than a screen’
Meta Ray-Ban displayImage Credits:Meta / Meta
When Meta acquired AI agent startup Manus last week, many saw it as an enterprise play. Larco thinks it could be a move geared at improving Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, a product the VC is a huge fan of because they allow her to answer phone calls, respond to messages, take photos and videos, and ask Meta AI questions, all without having to pull out her phone and navigate a screen.
Larco says she thinks truly useful voice AI assistants are finally “on the cusp of happening,” fueled by more advanced tech and more robust compute.
“Some things are better with voice than a screen,” she said. “And because voice sucked, we needed the screen as a crutch. But I would love to start separating out what things are really better on a screen and what things are just better with audio.”
Getting answers to questions her kids ask about what the tallest building is? Definitely voice. Taking out her phone to type in the question now feels “archaic,” Larco said.
“I think it’ll be really fun for designers because they finally get to pick and choose what form factor is better for what use cases,” she said.
Great Job Rebecca Bellan & the Team @ TechCrunch Source link for sharing this story.
by McKinnon Rice, Fort Worth Report January 7, 2026
No.
Fort Worth is not the fastest-growing city in the United States, but it is among the fastest.
The fastest-growing city in the country by percentage increase is Princeton, Texas, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Collin County town grew by 30.6% between July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024.
The fastest-growing city in the country by numeric increase is New York, New York, which grew by 87,184 people during the same period.
Among the country’s 50 largest cities, only Miami saw a higher percentage change than Fort Worth in its population between 2020 and 2024, according to census data. Miami grew by 10.12% compared to Cowtown’s 9.71%.
Fort Worth Report partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org/2026/01/07/fact-brief-is-fort-worth-the-fastest-growing-city-in-the-nation/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org”>Fort Worth Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&quality=80&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
LUBBOCK — The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum has long stood as a landmark in the small town of Canyon. The museum, nearly as old as the city itself, is home to the largest collection of historical materials in Texas.
It’s now at risk of closing its doors for good, putting the future of more than 2 million historical artifacts in jeopardy.
Last month, West Texas A&M University, which owns the museum building, informed the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society that the university could no longer provide long-term funding to maintain the building.
University President Walter V. Wendler later said the school formally asked the society to develop a plan to relocate its vast collection, blaming decades of mounting operational costs, a decline in state funding and a laundry list of fire code violations found by the Texas State Fire Marshal.
With the museum closed since March for safety reasons, Wendler requested a written plan from the society by Feb. 1 to outline how artifacts will be transferred to a new location.
The news devastated the Panhandle region. Social media was quickly flooded with people recalling visits to the museum with family or as part of a school group. Others questioned whether they were told the real reasons for closing an important piece of Panhandle history.
It all came to a head Tuesday at the City of Canyon Commission meeting. Residents filled the room, with many holding “Save our museum” signs. Some people left voluntarily so outgoing state Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, and his team could enter the room without causing a fire code violation. City officials, Wendler and Smithee spoke about how to resolve the issue between the university and the historical society.
“I wouldn’t say this marriage is over, but it has been somewhat on the rocks lately,” Smithee said. “We got to get the commitment on both sides to make this happen. It breaks my heart, everybody else’s hearts, to drive by there and see that sign out in front of the door.”
During the meeting, Canyon Mayor Gary Hinders emphasized that he wants to keep the museum in the city, and for the university and historical society to work it out together. Hinders said the museum is a major driver of tourism and revenue for the city of just over 15,000 people.
While the city does not have a formal partnership with either the museum or the society, Canyon offers local tax funds to support it, primarily through advertising. The museum also received funding from the state Legislature, but Wendler said that has declined by 65% since 1984.
City officials discussed a number of possible solutions Tuesday — from exploring state, federal and private funding to designating the museum as a convention or visitor center to use more local tax money, which would require a public election.
“We’ve come to a dead end with the A&M system and funds there. I think there’s been nothing forthcoming there,” Hinders said. “But bottom line is, I think to get there, it’s going to take both what we can get from some of those state funds that we can get help with, then it’s also going to take private money.”
Regardless of which avenue the city takes, the museum is going to have a hefty price tag. Smithee estimated it could cost between $20 million and $40 million to reopen the museum where it is now, and $250 million to fund a new building. Smithee said the higher amount was a nonstarter for the Legislature, adding that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told him he didn’t think they could justify spending that much money even if the Alamo in San Antonio was falling down.
While the next legislative session won’t begin until January 2027, Smithee said the committees that work on the Texas House and Senate budgets will begin meeting this summer to set the next budget. He said they needed to start early on a plan to request a one-time appropriation in the range of $20 million to $40 million.
“I’m not running again, so somebody else is going to have to get this money a year from now,” Smithee reminded the commission. “But I do think I can help in laying the groundwork to get it done.”
University President Walter V. Wendler prepares to help with the hooding of a graduating student during the West Texas A&M University Commencement program at the WTAMU campus in Canyon on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2023. Mark Rogers for The Texas Tribune
Wendler told the commission that he hasn’t given up on finding a solution. However, he said the state fire marshal requested the building be vacated as it’s believed to be “dangerous.”
According to Wendler, it costs about $100,000 a month to operate the building, including modest maintenance. However, the university system does not have a funding stream because it’s not considered an “education and general building.” In a 1932 lease agreement, West Texas A&M assumed responsibility for maintaining the building, which some in the audience said the university system was violating.
Wendler insisted the society and the university are not divided on the issue and said everyone is equally frustrated by the complexities. He said the other two museums on Texas college campuses — the Stone Fort Museum at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches and the National Ranching Heritage Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock — have experienced the same challenges, but they are “miniscule” compared with the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.
“This is the most robust history museum in the state of Texas,” Wendler said. “I think the burden of what it costs to upgrade the building and address the fire and safety concerns are remarkable and beyond most people’s imagination.”
The commission opened the floor for audience comments and questions. Many of the speakers insisted the museum belongs in Canyon because of the history it holds from the nearby Palo Duro Canyon, and because area residents donated family artifacts that had been passed down by generations. Others feared the collection would move to Amarillo or Lubbock, saying neither city “deserved” the museum.
Mary Bearden, a former president for the historical society, told the commission she felt encouraged by the ideas presented at the meeting.
“I was worried the parties would not be able to find middle ground,” Bearden said. “So I hope, based on what we hear today and what the Legislature, A&M and the society can do, that we can keep the Panhandle-Plains Museum,” she said.
Disclosure: Texas Tech University and West Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Great Job Texas Tribune, Jayme Lozano Carver & the Team @ KSAT San Antonio for sharing this story.
The internet holds vast amounts of trustworthy information on many issues, but also huge volumes of false and misleading content, especially about climate change.
Vincent: “Right now we are seeing a lot of mis- and disinformation about climate solutions … electric vehicles, renewable energy.”
Climate scientist Emmanuel Vincent is the founder of Science Feedback.
The group includes a network of scientists who review some of the climate-related stories and myths spreading online, such as the false claim that wind turbines do not work in the cold. In fact, they do operate in low temperatures and have systems to prevent ice buildup.
Vincent: “So we have about 500 scientists … to help us verify when there is a prominent claim whether it is true or false, whether it is based on sound science and in agreement with the data. … We also go and read the scientific literature.”
They summarize their findings in free articles at science.feedback.org. The resources are written for a general audience and include links to other studies and resources that provide more in-depth information.
So the initiative provides reliable information about climate change and climate solutions – helping people separate fact from fiction.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media
Great Job YCC Team & the Team @ Yale Climate Connections Source link for sharing this story.
The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.
Iraq
+ Child marriage rates rise after changes to Iraq’s Personal Status Law
Nearly a year after Iraq amended its Personal Status Law, Baghdad’s wedding industry is booming, fueled in part by a rise in underage marriages. Vendors in Baghdad’s “Bridal Boulevard” told TheSunday Times that the surge is driven by child bride clients.
For decades, Iraq’s 1959 Personal Status Law provided strong legal protections against child marriage. But in February, parliament amended the law, allowing families to choose between it or a new Personal Status Code to be developed by the Shia Ja’afari school of Islamic jurisprudence. In August, parliament approved the new Ja’fari Personal Status Code, reviving 8th-century religious jurisprudence for Shias, the religious majority in Southern Iraq, and expanding male authority over marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody.
Despite civil law setting the legal marriage age at 15, the Ja’fari Personal Status Code allows judges to make exceptions by approving marriages based on a child’s perceived “maturity and physical capacity,” a loophole critics say has led to girls reportedly as young as nine being married.
Human rights activists in Iraq warn the amendment has effectively opened a black market, where families can trade daughters for money or social standing without consequence. Coalition 188, a group of prominent female lawyers, journalists and activists in Iraq, has spent the past year opposing the law. “We will continue to fight. The coalition will not be silenced. Even if the state continues attacks,” said founding member Jannat al-Ghezi. “We must be brave because someone needs to protect Iraq’s girls.”
Activists demonstrate against female child marriages in Tahrir Square in central Baghdad on July 28, 2024, amid parliamentary discussion over a proposed amendment to the Iraqi Personal Status Law. (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images)
Jamaica
+ Women in Jamaica carry the emotional and physical burdens as the country rebuilds
The third-strongest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history struck Jamaica on Oct. 28, 2025. It killed 45 people, and affected 1.5 million more, leaving over 90,000 people displaced and 150,000 buildings damaged. Almost half of the country still does not have electricity. Flooding and debris have led to the outbreak of a rare bacterial illness of leptospirosis. The emotional impact of the storm has also persisted—and the weeks since have shown the emotional and physical impact that Jamaicans are experiencing.
Displacement, a loss of livelihood, and damaged or destroyed social services are key issues in a crisis that has already caused so much emotional harm. Anxiety, PTSD and depression often follow climate catastrophes especially due to displacement. Coupled with Hurricane Beryl, which hit Jamaica in 2024, financial support helps but cannot undo the emotional trauma of climate catastrophe.
According to U.N. Women, more than half of those evacuated in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Cuba were women, and thousands of women and girls were sheltering in unsafe or unstable situations.
The Jamaica Gleaner explains the unique experience of women during Hurricane Melissa who typically care for the physical and emotional safety of children and the elderly as well as their own wellbeing. For pregnant women and women with small children, lifesaving and immediate healthcare can be incredibly difficult to access—and are sometimes impossible to access—leading to complications or even death during childbirth.
Cambodia and Thailand
+ Before second ceasefire, hundreds of thousands flee fighting at border between Cambodia and Thailand
2025 saw border clashes and months of fighting between Cambodia and Thailand due to a century-old border dispute. The dispute has continued over contested sovereignty of various points of their land border. However, their second ceasefire of this year went into effect Dec. 27, and has held since.
On both sides of the most recent conflict, tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes near recent fighting. A 27-year-old Cambodian woman, Suang Sreang, told Reuters that she feared she would have to give birth in a displacement camp at nine months pregnant.
“When the fighting started I put my difficulties aside and took my children and ran away fast,” Sreang told Reuters. “My priority was to save myself, my children’s lives.” As of Dec. 14, as reported by Reuters, there were about 130,000 people in evacuation centers across Cambodia, who faced food, shelter and water shortages. According to The New York Times, the second wave of conflict has killed more than 10, and displaced hundreds of thousands on both sides.
European Union
+ EU votes to expand abortion access in historic vote
The European Parliament voted in a historic ballot to expand abortion access across Europe in an initiative called “My Voice, My Choice.” Parliament members voted in favor of a fund that would provide a voluntary financial mechanism—backed with EU funding—to help women who cannot access abortion in their own country travel to access it in another European country.
The fund will help close the gap in discrepancy of access on a country-by-country basis. There are near-total and total bans in EU member countries such as Malta and Poland, whose citizens will now be supported in accessing the care available in more abortion-progressive countries such as France.
A picture of a woman who died after being denied an abortion is held during a protest in front of the Law and Justice (PiS) ruling party office against the abortion ban in Krakow, Poland on January 26, 2022. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The vote highlights the growing backlash against women’s rights, and abortion specifically, as well as the high cost on certain countries that had already been providing services for people to access cross-border healthcare. Supporters argued that it will reduce the health risks that come with inaccessible or delayed reproductive healthcare services. Additionally, it directly addresses the many individuals who cannot afford to travel for abortion and the discrepancy in access based on socio-economic factors as well.
Belgium/U.S.
+ Additional USAID birth control meant for Africa discovered; stockpile continues to waste away in Belgium
The contraceptives have been stranded in Belgium for months, following the Trump administration’s suspension of U.S. foreign aid programs that covered their distribution in January 2025. The stockpile includes birth control pills, intrauterine devices and other implants or injectables intended for use in five African countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Mali.
Rather than allowing the supplies to be distributed or bought, the Trump administration initially ordered USAID to incinerate the contraceptives in June, at an additional $167,000 cost to U.S. taxpayers. Belgian regulations did not permit the destruction, and multiple aid organizations, including the Belgian government itself, offered to purchase and distribute the supplies. The U.S. government rejected all such proposals.
Public health experts estimate that the failure to deliver these contraceptives could result in 362,000 unintended pregnancies, 110,000 unsafe abortions and 718 preventable maternal deaths, further exacerbating maternal mortality rates across much of the continent. On Dec.15, The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State, citing its refusal to disclose plans regarding the destruction of at least $10 million worth of unexpired, taxpayer-funded contraceptives.
India
+ Indian states implement direct payments to women for household work
Across India, about 118 million adult women in 12 states are now able to receive unconditional monthly payments from their state governments. These payments, typically between 1,000-2,500 rupees ($12-$30) a month, acknowledge the unpaid labor women perform to sustain households, from cooking and cleaning to caring for children and the elderly. By the end of December 2025, the 12 participating states are expected to have spent about $18 billion (around 200 thousand USD) on payouts throughout the year.
The initiative has enabled women to become a powerful voting group. In Bihar state’s November elections, the state transferred additional funds to women right before the election, and female turnout surpassed that of men. While some called the move vote buying, its supporters argued it signaled long-overdue recognition of women’s economic contributions.
Although critics warn that the policy could reinforce gender roles, early research suggests otherwise. Studies indicate the transfers have increased women’s financial autonomy and bargaining power without reducing participation in paid work. “If the transfers are coupled with messaging on the recognition of women’s unpaid work,” said Prabha Kotiswaran, a professor of law and social justice at King’s College London, “they could potentially disrupt the gendered division of labour when paid employment opportunities become available.”
England
+ England records first year where C-sections outnumber unassisted births
For the first time, more babies in England are being delivered by caesarean section than through unassisted vaginal birth. According to National Health Service (NHS) childbirth data from 2024-25, 45 percent of births were by C-section, compared with 44 percent classified as “spontaneous,” the term used to describe an unassisted vaginal birth. Another 11 percent required additional interventions.
Nearly half of these C-sections were planned ahead of time. These procedures may be scheduled for medical or personal reasons, or performed as or as an emergency measure, due to complications during labor. The NHS attributes the rise to several overlapping factors: These include more women opting for cesarean delivery, higher rates of pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and obesity and an increase in the average age at pregnancy.
But Soo Downe, a professor of midwifery studies at the University of Lancashire, explains that circumstantial factors alone do not fully account for the steady increase in cesareans over the past decade. For many women, the decision is a choice of autonomy and control. England’s maternity services have come under intense scrutiny, with 14 NHS hospital trusts that provide maternal and neonatal care currently undergoing reviews. Downe paints a picture of women who increasingly see C-sections as the “least worst option,” with their choices borne from concerns that they will not receive adequate support for a “safe straightforward positive labour.”
Namibia
+ UNESCO Office meets in Namibia to call out online attacks on women journalists
In Windhoek, Namibia, the UNESCO Office met on Dec. 9 with the U.N. Gender Theme Group to bring attention to the digital risks women in media face. On the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, 50 participants held an event titled “Chat GBV: Raising Awareness on AI Facilitated Gender Based Violence Against Women Journalists.”
Eunice Smith, the UNESCO Head of Office and Representative to Namibia, said “Technology is now used to harass journalists, especially female practitioners, and as synthetic media tools become more accessible, the threats grow more sophisticated, and the consequences more severe. And yet, despite these escalating threats, impunity remains one of the greatest obstacles to justice.”
There has been an increased amount of attacks on women journalists, especially when reporting on gender and politics, that are often sexualized or threatening in nature. A majority of women online experience online violence, especially journalists, simultaneously targeted by AI deepfakes and manipulation. The conference stressed that when women are targeted, silenced and discredited, society loses an important measure of accountability.
Great Job Olivia Mccabe & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
LODGE GRASS, Mont. — Brothers Lonny and Teyon Fritzler walked amid the tall grass and cottonwood trees surrounding their boarded-up childhood home near the Little Bighorn River and daydreamed about ways to rebuild.
The rolling prairie outside the single-story clapboard home is where Lonny learned from their grandfather how to break horses. It’s where Teyon learned from their grandmother how to harvest buffalo berries. It’s also where they watched their father get addicted to meth.
Teyon, now 34, began using the drug at 15 with their dad. Lonny, 41, started after college, which he said was partly due to the stress of caring for their grandfather with dementia. Their own addictions to meth persisted for years, outlasting the lives of both their father and grandfather.
It took leaving their home in Lodge Grass, a town of about 500 people on the Crow Indian Reservation, to recover. Here, methamphetamine use is widespread.
The brothers stayed with an aunt in Oklahoma as they learned to live without meth. Their family property has sat empty for years — the horse corral’s beams are broken and its roof caved in, the garage tilts, and the house needs extensive repairs. Such crumbling structures are common in this Native American community, hammered by the effects of meth addiction. Lonny said some homes in disrepair would cost too much to fix. It’s typical for multiple generations to crowd under one roof, sometimes for cultural reasons but also due to the area’s housing shortage.
“We have broken-down houses, a burnt one over here, a lot of houses that are not livable,” Lonny said as he described the few neighboring homes.
In Lodge Grass, an estimated 60% of the residents age 14 and older struggle with drug or alcohol addictions, according to a local survey contracted by the Mountain Shadow Association, a local, Native-led nonprofit. For many in the community, the buildings in disrepair are symbols of that struggle. But signs of renewal are emerging. In recent years, the town has torn down more than two dozen abandoned buildings. Now, for the first time in decades, new businesses are going up and have become new symbols — those of the town’s effort to recover from the effects of meth.
One of those new buildings, a day care center, arrived in October 2024. A parade of people followed the small, wooden building through town as it was delivered on the back of a truck. It replaced a formerly abandoned home that had tested positive for traces of meth.
“People were crying,” said Megkian Doyle, who heads the Mountain Shadow Association, which opened the center. “It was the first time that you could see new and tangible things that pulled into town.”
The nonprofit is also behind the town’s latest construction project: a place where families together can heal from addiction. The plan is to build an entire campus in town that provides mental health resources, housing for kids whose parents need treatment elsewhere, and housing for families working to live without drugs and alcohol.
Though the project is years away from completion, locals often stop by to watch the progress.
“There is a ground-level swell of hope that’s starting to come up around your ankles,” Doyle said.
Two of the builders on that project are Lonny and Teyon Fritzler. They see the work as a chance to help rebuild their community within the Apsáalooke Nation, also known as the Crow Tribe.
“When I got into construction work, I actually thought God was punishing me,” Lonny said. “But now, coming back, building these walls, I’m like, ‘Wow. This is ours now.’”
Meth ‘Never Left’
Meth use is a long-standing public health epidemic throughout the U.S. and a growing contributor to the nation’s overdose crisis. The drug had been devastating in Indian Country, a term that encompasses tribal jurisdictions and certain areas with Native American populations.
“Meth has never left our communities,” said A.C. Locklear, CEO of the National Indian Health Board, a nonprofit that works to improve health in Indian Country.
LeeAnn Bruised Head, a recently retired public health adviser with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, said that despite the challenges, tribal nations have developed strong survival skills drawing from their traditions. For example, Crow people have held onto their nation’s language; neighbors are often family, or considered such; and many tribal members rely on their clans to mentor children, who eventually become mentors themselves for the next generation.
“The strength here, the support here,” said Bruised Head, who is part of the Crow Tribe. “You can’t get that anywhere else.”
Signs of Rebuilding
On a fall day, Quincy Dabney greeted people arriving for lunch at the Lodge Grass drop-in center. The center recently opened in a former church as a place where people can come for help to stay sober or for a free meal. Dabney volunteers at the center. He’s also the town’s mayor.
Dabney helped organize community cleanup days starting in 2017, during which people picked up trash in yards and alongside roads. The focus eventually shifted to tearing down empty, condemned houses, which Dabney said had become spots to sell, distribute, and use meth, often during the day as children played nearby.
“There was nothing stopping it here,” Dabney said.
The problem hasn’t disappeared, though. In 2024, officials broke up a multistate trafficking operation based on the Crow reservation that distributed drugs to other Montana reservations. It was one example of how drug traffickers have targeted tribal nations as sales and distribution hubs.
A few blocks from where Dabney spoke stood the remains of a stone building where someone had spray-painted “Stop Meth” on its roofless walls. Still, there are signs of change, he said.
Dabney pointed across the street to a field where a trailer had sat empty for years before the town removed it. The town was halfway through tearing down another home in disrepair on the next block. Another house on the same street was being cleaned up for an incoming renter: a new mental health worker at the drop-in center.
Just down the road, work was underway on the new campus for addiction recovery, called Kaala’s Village. Kaala means “grandmother” in Crow.
The site’s first building going up is a therapeutic foster home. Plans include housing to gradually reunite families, a community garden, and a place to hold ceremonies. Doyle said the goal is that, eventually, residents can help build their own small homes, working with experienced builders trained to provide mental health support.
She said one of the most important aspects of this work “is that we finish it.”
Tribal citizens and organizations have said the political chaos of Trump’s first year back in office shows the problem with relying on federal programs. It underscores the need for more grassroots efforts, like what’s unfolding in Lodge Grass. But a reliable system to fund those efforts still doesn’t exist. Last year’s federal grant and program cuts also fueled competition for philanthropic dollars.
Kaala’s Village is expected to cost $5 million. The association is building in phases as money comes in. Doyle said the group hopes to open the foster home by spring, and family housing the following year.
The site is a few minutes’ drive from Lonny and Teyon’s childhood home. In addition to building the new facility’s walls, they’re getting training to offer mental health support. Eventually, they hope to work alongside people who come home to Kaala’s Village.
As for their own home, they hope to restore it — one room at a time.
“Just piece by piece,” Lonny said. “We’ve got to do something. We’ve got these young ones watching.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
When I asked him how bad things really were, Clarke looked at me with a sigh. “Look, I’ve been at this a long time. This is the worst shortage I’ve ever seen. Demand is way ahead of supply. And it’s driven by AI. It’s driven by infrastructure. You’ve seen the spot market price—it’s up to five times from September. That will manifest. It already has in contract pricing.”
While the average person can buy straight from a retailer, laptop manufacturers have to negotiate contracts on DRAM. According to an analyst from Citrini Research, prices on DRAM increased by around 40 percent in the final quarter of 2025. It’s not slowing down; it’s escalating. Prices will be up to 60 percent higher in the first quarter of this year. From everyone I talked to this week, I got the impression that the memory shortage would last not months but years.
So, if waiting this one out isn’t the solution, what is? As it turns out, there are some very clever people in the world with some incredible ideas, all based around reducing our dependency on AI in the cloud.
The Real AI PC
You may not have heard of Phison, but the multibillion-dollar Taiwanese company has been building critical controllers for NAND flash memory chips for decades and even claims to be the inventor of the original removable USB flash drive. The founder and CEO of the company, Pua Khein-Seng, has been outspoken for months about warning about the coming memory shortage.
Pua explained to me that the current storage shortage isn’t necessarily about revenue. It’s about storytelling. “Every CEO, every company—they want to increase valuation,” he says. “Stock price is storytelling. Memory companies need a story.”
From his perspective, that’s how we ended up where we are. But at CES, Pua didn’t just bring more concern and warnings. He brought a solution. The product is called aiDAPTIV, an add-in SSD cache for laptops that can “expand” the memory bandwidth of your PC’s GPU. Flash memory, such as what’s found in an SSD, is typically used for long-term storage, leaving the DRAM for the fast, temporary storage that your system needs to function. AiDAPTIV, which is built using a specialized SSD design and an “advanced NAND correction algorithm” can, Phison claims, effectively expand the available memory bandwidth for AI tasks, which are currently bottlenecked.
What does all that have to do with solving the memory shortage issue? Well, while enabling more AI is what aiDAPTIV was originally developed for, Pua also positioned it as a solution to the DRAM shortage. As he explained, manufacturers could lower the DRAM capacity of laptops, going from 32 GB to 16, without reducing the PC’s capabilities. That sounds like a great deal, especially since it’s what Dell, HP, and Lenovo were planning to do anyway.
One of the great advantages of aiDAPTIV is that it doesn’t require any internal changes to the existing hardware. It just slots into an open PCIe slot. MSI and Intel have announced early support, and theoretically, things could begin to shift rather quickly. We might all have to accept laptops with less DRAM, but if Phison’s claims are true, that might not matter in practice as much as we used to think.
The Hail Mary
Ventiva’s cooling design.
I also spoke to Carl Schlachte, the CEO of a company called Ventiva, which has invented a novel thermal approach that replaced laptop fans with a specialized iconic cooling engine. No fans, just a solid-state thermal solution that ionizes air to create a silent way of moving air. That’s fascinating on its own, but again, there’s a way this new technology also addresses the long-term problem of the memory shortage. Once you remove fans from a system, it opens up lots of extra space for other things, such as extra memory.
Great Job Luke Larsen & the Team @ WIRED Source link for sharing this story.
It’s not every day you see a comic with the phrase “gay snakes.” But that’s exactly what happened when I attended the Houston Zine Fest in November and came across Chris Kill, one of over 50 vendors at the cornucopia of weird and wonderful self-published comic strips and books too underground for the mainstream.
Gay Snakes (now up to three volumes with fans clamoring for a fourth) is exactly what it says on the xeroxed, tract-sized paper. Kill has an instantly accessible absurdist humor. One snake curled around a clutch of eggs offers to be an egg donor for a same-sex snake couple, who are appropriately grateful. Another couple share a moment in the bathroom where one assures the other that early molting bald spots don’t make his husband less perfect. It’s downright wholesome, if admittedly strange.
“There was a Friday night that . . . you know after a hard day at work I had a couple drinks, and I drew two snakes kind of sniffing at each other’s tails, and I just wrote down the phrase ‘gay snakes,’” said Kill in a phone interview. “The next day in the sobering light of Saturday, I looked at them. I just felt like that’s such a funny idea, and it has become the most popular thing I’ve ever produced.”
While wholesome, it’s also one of the reasons that Kill publishes under a pseudonym. His day job is as a Texas middle school art teacher. In the current environment, publishing something called Gay Snakes, no matter how sweet and innocuous, could be a problem.
Though Kill has always liked art, he never saw himself becoming a comic strip artist. Two creators changed his outlook on the medium. One was Jeffrey Brown. These days, he’s most famous for his books re-imagining Star Wars as a Family Circus-style strip, but before that he wrote largely autobiographical work.
The same is true for Kill’s other main influence, Ben Snakepit, who has been putting out comic strips about his day-to-day life for more than two decades. Snakepit in particular has become a mentor to Kill, who launched his career with a zine about having multiple sclerosis.
“There’s a very raw quality to Chris’ work that makes the reader empathize with him,” said Snakepit in an email interview. “He needs to tell his story, and he’s not going to let his technical limitations stop him.”
Kill is more than Gay Snakes. One of his other popular series is S*** My Art Students Say, two collections of the wit and wisdom of seventh graders that will make you cheer and weep for the next generation. He also recently published a polaroid photo zine focused on gravestones and roadside crosses.
Kill says that his students often know that he self-publishes art and sometimes try to track him down. While it’s always flattering to be the cool teacher, he keeps his work separate and uses their interest as an educational tool instead.
“I do sometimes show the students work that I’ve done, especially more in recent years as as I wrote them with young people in mind,” said Kill. “Of course, the kids will inevitably ask, well, where can I buy this book? A lot of the time, you can also just sort of redirect it to them and be like, Well, show me what you can do. I want to see what you do. And they’ll draw you their pictures, and you can kind of try to bring up the next generation of artists.
Like most teachers, Kill has a small collection of art current and former students have trusted him with. Even when it’s very silly, the art reflects the artist. As Snakepit says, the biographical and the visual resonates with young minds.
“Comics are very simple and easy to understand in just a few seconds,” Snakepit said. “The reader isn’t afraid to invest that small amount of time, and that gives the artist a chance to convey their message instantly, whether the reader wants it or not.”
Meanwhile, Kill continues happily. He has no aspirations of becoming a full-time comic artist, preferring to work when and wear he can and using venues like Zine Fest to find new audiences on his terms. Creating regular strips is hard work; and he’s in it for the art.
It also lets him keep focusing on subjects he wants to. His graveside collection, Memento Mori, isn’t the kind of thing that will reach a wide audience, but it made him happy to collect the images after the passing of his own mother. Even Gay Snakes, ridiculous as it is, is a potent commentary in a state where LGBTQ+ organizations are banned at public schools. Whether drawing on in the classroom, Kill is teaching.
“I want to be able to be myself, but also do my duty of being a good educator and being a contributor to the community, which is why I like teaching in the first place,” said Kill. “I like getting out there and helping out. I don’t have children of my own, so helping the youth and bringing up creative minds? I think is a good way to contribute to the world.”
Great Job Jef Rouner & the Team @ The Texas Signal for sharing this story.
