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The nuclear industry is in the mist of a renaissance. Old plants are being refurbished, and investors are showering startups with cash. In the last several weeks of 2025 alone, nuclear startups raised $1.1 billion, largely on investor optimism that smaller nuclear reactors will succeed where the broader industry has recently stumbled. Traditional nuclear reactors are massive pieces of infrastructure. The newest reactors built in the U.S. — Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia — contain tens of thousands of tons of concrete, are powered by fuel assemblies 14 feet tall, and generate over 1 gigawatt of electricity each. But…

Following an investigation by the Guardian that found Google AI Overviews offering misleading information in response to certain health-related queries, the company appears to have removed the AI Overviews for some of those queries. For example, the Guardian initially reported that when users asked “what is the normal range for liver blood tests,” they would be presented with numbers that did not account for factors such as nationality, sex, ethnicity, or age, potentially leading them to think their results were healthy when they were not. Now, the Guardian says AI Overviews have been removed from the results for “what is…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women’s sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced…

Google today announced a new open standard, called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for AI agent-based shopping, at the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference. The standard, developed with companies like Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, lets agents work across different parts of customer buying processes, including discovery and post-purchase support. The core idea is that the standard could facilitate these various parts of the process instead of requiring connections with different agents. Google said that it also works with other agentic protocols, such as Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) — which Google announced last year — Agent2Agent (A2A), and Model…

Wing, the Alphabet-owned company that delivers groceries, over-the-counter medicine, and hot lattes, is expanding its partnership with Walmart for the second time in less than a year. The two companies announced on Sunday plans to bring the on-demand drone delivery service to an additional 150 Walmart stores. The rollout, which builds off existing services at stores in Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta, will occur throughout this year and into 2027, Wing’s new chief business officer Heather Rivera told TechCrunch. The expansion suggests customers are using Wing’s drone delivery service enough to warrant growth. Rivera said its top 25% customers are using…

Priscilla Reyes, Head of Sales for North America at Costa Cruises. (Photo Credit: Costa Cruises)For North American travel advisors, Costa Cruises represents both an opportunity and a shift in mindset — a European-born cruise brand that delivers something quite different from the mainstream U.S.-based experience. With its Italian flair, a globally diverse onboard culture, and a destination-centric approach to cruising, Costa appeals to clients who want more than a floating resort. In this Q&A, Priscilla Reyes, Head of Sales for North America, breaks down who Costa is right for, how to position it and how advisors can sell it with…

Officials from Indonesia and Malaysia have said they are temporarily blocking access to xAI’s chatbot Grok. These are the most aggressive moves so far from government officials responding to a flood of sexualized, AI-generated imagery — often depicting real women and minors, and sometimes depicting violence — posted by Grok in response to requests from users on the social network X. (X and xAI are part of the same company.) In a statement shared Saturday with the Guardian and other publications, Indonesia’s communications and digital minister Meutya Hafid said, “The government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a…

A group of Buddhist monks and their rescue dog are striding single file down country roads and highways across the South, captivating Americans nationwide and inspiring droves of locals to greet them along their route. In their flowing saffron and ocher robes, the men are walking for peace. It’s a meditative tradition more common in South Asian countries, and it’s resonating now in the U.S., seemingly as a welcome respite from the conflict, trauma and politics dividing the nation.Their journey began Oct. 26, 2025, at a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Texas, and is scheduled to end in mid-February in Washington,…

by Lacey Pfalz Last updated: 1:15 PM ET, Fri January 9, 2026 News about Carnival Cruise Line warning guests who break underage curfew rules onboard with a $500 fine is making the rounds on Facebook this week, prompting Carnival to double down on its rules. The initial post from cruise guest Phyllis Teacher included a letter from the captain of the Carnival Elation, dated on December 10, 2025. It has since been shared among family cruise blogs and across social media, with over 500 people commenting on the post.  In the letter, the captain claimed the underage guest, who was fourteen,…

A Boeing Co. 737 Max airplane at the company’s manufacturing facility in Renton, Washington, US, on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesBoeing is set to report this week that it delivered the most airplanes since 2018 last year after it stabilized its production, the clearest sign of a turnaround yet after years of safety crises and snowballing quality defects. Now, the aerospace giant is planning to ramp up production.”It’s a long road back from a … shall we say, a rather dysfunctional culture, but they’re making big progress,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic…