Wildfire smoke now bigger prenatal threat than human sources of air pollution

Wildfire smoke now bigger prenatal threat than human sources of air pollution

fivenewscrypto    août 17, 2026   

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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VisionQuest trailer kicks off Disney's D23 fan event

VisionQuest trailer kicks off Disney's D23 fan event

fivenewscrypto    août 17, 2026   

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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Ukraine strikes major Russian rocket factory with cruise missiles

Ukraine strikes major Russian rocket factory with cruise missiles

fivenewscrypto    août 17, 2026   

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Saturday that his country struck the Progress Rocket Space Center deep within Russia using ground-launched cruise missiles.

"In Russia’s Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos—the Progress Center, which was involved, among other things, in electronics production–was hit," Zelenskyy said on the social media site X. "Flamingo missiles were used. A good achievement."

The largest city in the Samara Oblast, about 900 km from the Ukrainian border, Samara is home to Russia's most important manufacturer of rockets. The Progress center assembles the workhorse vehicle for Russia, the Soyuz-2 vehicle, as well as the newer Soyuz-5 rocket. The facility also builds military satellites.

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So much solar: Digging into the list of every US power plant that went online this year

So much solar: Digging into the list of every US power plant that went online this year

fivenewscrypto    août 17, 2026   

It’s been a wild first half of the year in the US power sector, with announcements of gigantic natural gas power plants and some long-awaited renewable energy projects coming online.

At times of rapid change, forecasting is difficult. So I feel a measure of comfort focusing on something concrete like the list of 368 utility-scale plants that began operation from January to June, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration. The group is dominated by utility-scale solar.

This is a top-heavy list, led by SunZia Wind South and SunZia Wind North in New Mexico, which went online this spring and are the largest wind farms in the country, with a combined generating capacity of 3,650 megawatts. SunZia has been in the works for about a decade and arrives at a time when US onshore wind power development has dwindled for a host of reasons related to regulations and public opinion.

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Vulnerability giving attackers full control of Macs is under active exploitation

Vulnerability giving attackers full control of Macs is under active exploitation

fivenewscrypto    août 16, 2026   

Dutch officials have warned that a high-severity macOS vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code is under active exploitation.

“The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple systems on which port 5900 was accessible from the Internet,” the Netherlands National Cyber Security Centrum warned earlier this week. “In all these cases, root had been accessed on the affected system and a Monero crypto miner had been placed.”

Do you know if your screen sharing is on?

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-65400, received a patch from Apple last week for macOS Tahoe, Sequoia, and Sonoma. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 7.1 out of 10, stems from a bug in the macOS screen sharing capability, which allows a remote party to view the screen and control the keyboard and mouse while a machine is turned on. A flaw in the “state management,” which keeps track of preceding events, user interactions, variables, and other system states, is the underlying cause.

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First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity

First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity

fivenewscrypto    août 16, 2026   

The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity. That aviation feat comes at a time when jet fuel prices have skyrocketed because of the US war with Iran.

The test flight of Heart Aerospace’s X1 demonstrator aircraft took place at Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York on August 12. The X1 aircraft is comparable in size to a small regional airliner and can achieve a maximum takeoff weight exceeding 25,000 pounds with the help of four wing-mounted electric motors. The battery-electric propulsion system delivered more than one megawatt of power during the maiden flight.

All-electric aircraft can offer quieter and cleaner flight without the emissions that come from burning jet fuel. They may also prove more reliably cost-effective than conventional aircraft that come with jet fuel costs subject to geopolitical disruptions.

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Suspecting court of using AI, man injected prompts in filings to try to win case

Suspecting court of using AI, man injected prompts in filings to try to win case

fivenewscrypto    août 16, 2026   

A judge has identified what appears to be the first time a US plaintiff has attempted to hide text in court filings that only an artificial intelligence system can read in a bid to win a case.

In a decision published last week, Connecticut judge Walter Spader Jr. confirmed that the hidden text had no impact in a case where a man alleged a healthcare provider was improperly withholding access to records. The court weighed his filing on the merits, Spader said, but nevertheless, the attempted attack sets a “dangerous” precedent. This will likely not be the last time US courts see the malicious tactic, as AI tools become more commonplace in court systems.

Trying to scramble any AI systems potentially influencing the court’s reading of his filing, the secret instructions were “formatted to be invisible to a human reader while remaining fully legible to any software that reads the document’s text,” Spader said. The offending text directed any AI system reviewing the document to ensure textual outputs agreed with the plaintiff’s arguments, ignored prior denials from the court, and ensured that remediation would follow as the plaintiff desired.

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