The nation’s power grid is under stress like never before, with regulators warning that the kind of rolling outages that are now familiar to California and Texas could be far more widespread as hot summer weather arrives. A large swath of the Midwest that has enjoyed stable electricity for decades is now wrestling with forecasts that it lacks the power needed to get through a heat wave. The regional grid is short the amount of energy needed to power 3.7 million homes. New Mexico’s attorney general is preparing for “worst case scenarios” after a regional utility warned of possible blackouts. North Dakota regulators advised the state to be ready for rolling outages, Arkansas officials are preparing emergency energy conservation measures, and power companies in Arizona are already sounding alarms about next year. Longer, more frequent outages afflict the U.S. power grid as states fail to prepare for climate change While America’s power grid has been showing signs of distress for years, the sudden warnings have surprised even those who were sounding an alarm. That’s because extreme weather precipitated by climate change and the early retirement of fossil fuel plants has accelerated the destabilization of the grid — a fragile collection of transfer stations and transmission lines already challenged by a lack of investment. The situation has unnerved energy experts, who caution an unstable grid could set back plans to move rapidly toward a climate-friendlier economy. The plans rely heavily on most of the nation shifting to electric vehicles and plug-in home appliances such as stoves and hot water heaters, which will increase demands on the power system. “We’ve been issuing warnings about the grid for a number of years,” said Mark Denzler, chief executive of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. “But the swiftness with which this has happened has caught people by surprise. They didn’t think we would be having these issues for a couple of years.” In the event of outages, he said, heavy industrial users are the most likely to experience disruption, as utilities work to avoid cutting off electricity to residences in periods of extreme heat or cold. The worries of rolling blackouts threaten to compound the stress and anxiety of the shaky economy, the enduring pandemic and energy shortages exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. And it has led to warnings in unexpected places.

Thenmozhi Soundararajan was uninvited from giving a talk at Google about caste bias after some employees said such discrimination doesn't exist.

David C. MacMichael, an intelligence analyst who resigned from the C.I.A. in 1983 to go public with evidence that the Reagan administration was preparing to launch a coup against the government in Nicaragua, a revelation that would in part lead to what is known as the Iran-Contra Affair, died on May 16 at his home in Front Royal, Va. He was 95. His daughter Alicia Williamson confirmed the death. A history professor turned contract analyst for the C.I.A., Dr. MacMichael was one of the agency’s leading experts on Latin America at a time, in the early 1980s, when fears were rising over the Soviet Union’s support for left-wing governments in the region. Of particular concern was Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas, a socialist movement, had taken power in 1980. The Carter administration initially provided aid to the new government, but suspended it after evidence emerged that the Sandinistas were funneling Soviet weapons to rebels in El Salvador. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he maintained that the Sandinistas would destabilize the region, and immediately began pushing for aid to right-wing rebels known as the contras. At the time, Dr. MacMichael’s job was to help write intelligence briefings about Central America. What he saw startled him: The Carter administration’s pressure tactics had worked; the flow of aid and weapons from Nicaragua to El Salvador had slowed to a trickle. Yet the Reagan administration continued to insist otherwise, and Dr. MacMichael had evidence that the president had approved a plan to build a secret military force to invade Nicaragua. Fearing a repeat of C.I.A.-backed coups in Iran, Guatemala and Chile, Dr. MacMichael refused to stay silent. He resigned from his C.I.A. contract in 1983, then traveled to Nicaragua at his own expense to investigate. He called on members of Congress. And finally, in 1984, he took what he knew to The Washington Post and The New York Times. “There is a point where exaggeration becomes impossible to distinguish from prevarication,” he told reporters. “If ever a major public policy of the United States has been justified on such flimsy grounds, such patently unprovable claims, I cannot recall it.”

It’s not just Uvalde. Cops nationwide can’t stop crimes from happening or solve them once they’ve occurred.

The largest-ever Medicare premium increase will pad the pockets of insurance executives who donated millions to the president’s election campaign.

Long tarnished by their own actions, two heroes of the ’90s seek to reclaim their voices.

Law enforcement officials in Uvalde have asked the media to leave the school district headquarters or they will be criminally charged with trespassing, according to a video posted on social media.

After #MeToo, the backlash

While other cities are gearing up for big celebrations Glasgow has very little planned - and while some say that is correct in a cost of living crisis, at least one councillor branded it "mean spirited."

Federal prisoners said to be the most dangerous are sent to a special unit at an Illinois penitentiary. NPR and The Marshall Project have uncovered violence, abuse and a string of inmate deaths there.

When a couple decides to try to have a child by in vitro fertilization, it’s often accompanied by anticipation, anxiety and worry about whether the egg and sperm will unite and produce a healthy baby. So when the procedure to retrieve eggs from a woman’s ovary turns out to be physically painful, it can create long-term emotional pain, as well, according to a lawsuit and two women who underwent the procedure at the Yale University Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Clinic. They are among dozens of women and spouses who are suing Yale University, claiming the staff at the clinic should have known that, instead of receiving fentanyl to relieve pain during the procedure, they instead were being injected with saline — salt water.

The storm was the strongest ever recorded to make landfall in May during Pacific hurricane season.

CA Bakehouse, a small, family-run bakery in San Jose, had been selling mochi muffins for about two years when the cease-and-desist letter arrived. The letter from Third Culture Bakery in Berkeley, whose success has been driven by its cult favorite mochi muffins, demanded that CA Bakehouse immediately stop using the words “mochi muffin” or face legal action. Third Culture trademarked the term in 2018. CA Bakehouse owner Kevin Lam was shocked, not only by the legal threat but that such a common term — a description for chewy, glutinous rice treats baked in muffin tins — could be trademarked. “It’s like trademarking plain bread or banana muffin,” Lam said. “We were just getting started, and we’re a small family business compared to them. So we changed the name, unfortunately.”

It’s common knowledge that anyone associated with Donald Trump eventually (if not immediately) gets burned, but one Proud Boy didn’t get the memo.

MetaDocs’ NFTs were designed to "revolutionize medicine." But its social media–famous doctors can’t prescribe for or diagnose NFT holders.

The Bank of England will take over collapsed “stablecoin” companies to prevent a cryptocurrency crash hitting financial stability, under Treasury plans. Stablecoin issuers would be placed into special administration by the Bank to protect consumers if they fail, a Government consultation said on Tuesday. The proposals would mean companies offering stablecoins, cryptocurrencies designed to hold their value, would fall under similar rules as banks and other systemic institutions. The Treasury plans to recognise stablecoins as a legal form of payment under efforts to make Britain a “crypto hub”.

“Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger,” said Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers in a meeting with GOP activists in Wayne County last Nov. 6. It is one of a series of recordings of GOP meetings between summer of 2021 and May of this year obtained by POLITICO. Backing up those front-line workers, “it’s going to be an army,” Seifried promised at an Oct. 5 training session. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

The would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley, will receive an unconditional release from prison, a federal judge has confirmed.

Elon Musk says The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is one of his favorite books. That checks out: the novel is about a lunar colony that bravely cuts off resources to its starving Earth dependents.

If “key money” is a nearly forgotten term, I propose a new one for this kind of palm-greasing: cuck money. It encapsulates the abject indignity of the renter right now, in a market in which not only is everything more expensive, but the competition is so crazy tenants are offering to make it even more expensive themselves simply to end the process and crawl home in shame. The crassness offers its own kind of precision: The tenant is not just getting fucked over by the landlord. The tenant is asking if the landlord would please fuck them over. Cuck money is a form of collective debasement — and there is no sign that it will abate anytime soon.