Record rainfall causes airport chaos, other disruptions

TOPSHOT – Cars are stranded on a flooded street in Dubai following heavy rains on April 18, 2024. Dubai’s giant highways were clogged by flooding and its major airport was in chaos as the Middle East financial centre remained gridlocked on April 18, a day after the heaviest rains on record. Giuseppe Cacace | Afp … Read more

Kam Ghaffarian sets his sights on the stars with space companies

Jeff Bezos wants to build permanent outposts on the moon and colonize space. Richard Branson wants to make spaceflight as commonplace as air travel. Elon Musk wants to settle Mars to make humanity multiplanetary. IBX’s Kam Ghaffarian wants to go even further: the stars. “There’s this common denominator of combining altruism, to do something purposeful … Read more

The Rise of the Carbon Farmer

Patrick Holden strolls across the field, pausing from time to time to bend and point out a bumblebee, or a white butterfly, or a dung beetle. A wide expanse of blue sky stretches above. Beneath, undulating green hills, sprawling hedgerows, a horizon broken only by the jagged tips of Wales’ Cambrian mountain range. Sun-soaked goodness. … Read more

At Least 424 Cargo Ships Lost Power In U.S. Waters Over The Last 3 Years

After the MV Dali brought down the Franklin Key Bridge in Baltimore, folks wondered how this could happen, and could it happen again? As if to answer this unspoken question, it almost immediately happened again: the APL Qingdao lost power near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York Harbor earlier this month. Behind The Wheel Of … Read more

Ottawa looks to launch national flood insurance program within 12 months – National

The federal government says the plan is to implement a long-promised national flood insurance program sometime next year, setting aside $15 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year in Tuesday’s budget. “This is part of a much wider plan, one where we’re looking at how do we do proper mitigation as well,” Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit … Read more

Alberta, coal lobbyists talked for years about more open-pit mining in the Rockies: documents

Documents released under Alberta Freedom of Information laws confirm the United Conservative Party government was talking with the coal industry about relaxing a policy that protected the Rocky Mountains from open-pit mines long before making those plans public. The documents also show the province was talking about opening those landscapes to the potential of more … Read more

Unsold Chinese EVs Are Piling Up At Ports

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, April 17, 2024, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know. The Toyota CH-R Is Dead in America 1st Gear: Ports Are Filling With Unsold Cars, Mostly From China … Read more

No, Dubai’s Floods Weren’t Caused By Cloud Seeding

Dubai is underwater. Heavy storms have caused flash flooding across the United Arab Emirates, leading to shocking scenes circulating on social media: Cars abandoned by the roadside, planes sloshing through flooded runways. Hundreds of flights have been canceled at Dubai’s busy international airport, and at least 18 people have died in neighboring Oman. News reports … Read more

Biden wants to triple China tariffs on steel, aluminum imports

President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are expected to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November. Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images President Joe Biden is calling on the U.S. Trade Representative to triple the China tariff rate on steel and aluminum imports … Read more

A shift to renewable energy is ‘hopeless’ without efficiencies, environmentalist says

Solar panels and wind turbines in the Netherlands. Daniel Bosma | Moment | Getty Images Explorer and environmentalist Bertrand Piccard has called for a renewed focus on cutting energy waste, saying it’s “hopeless” to shift to renewables without improving efficiency. Around three-quarters of the world’s energy is wasted, Piccard told an “IOT: Powering the Digital … Read more