To keep the lights on in her residential mental health clinic outside of San Juan, Liomarie Oyola Pérez needs money. Ms. Oyola Pérez and her staff already go to extraordinary lengths during the blackouts that have become increasingly common in Puerto Rico, juggling three generators or waiting hours in line to get gas to power them. Her facility has solar panels, but she wants to add batteries that would store energy for use when the sun isn’t shining. For that, she needs a loan. This year, her lender was awarded millions through a federal program that would provide low-interest loans to candidates like Ms. Oyola Pérez. But the money is frozen, part of $20 billion committed to finance climate and clean energy projects that was abruptly halted at the request of the Trump administration. Several nonprofit groups that were promised funds have sued; a court hearing is scheduled for Monday. At stake is funding for projects across the United States meant to assist people like Ms. Oyola Pérez and reduce their energy costs while also cutting the pollution that is driving climate change. They range from efforts to add geothermal energy to affordable housing in Iowa to energy efficiency upgrades for a senior housing community in Massachusetts. Nationwide, the federal program could finance enough new solar arrays to power up to 2.2 million homes by 2031, according to a recent analysis from Energy Innovation, a research organization, and the University of New Hampshire. For months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to claw back the money, which had been authorized by Congress under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act during the Biden administration. Since taking office, Lee Zeldin, the agency’s administrator, has repeatedly called the money a “green slush fund” and said it was vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse, though the agency has failed to produce evidence backing up those claims, despite a judge’s request. On the ground in Puerto Rico, 38 credit unions are waiting for $147 million committed under the program, which is known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. They estimate it would support 88,000 solar, electric-vehicle and energy efficiency projects by 2030. Contrary to Mr. Zeldin’s claims, these loans are vetted, supplemented by private capital and, for many recipients, are simply about keeping the lights on. When the electricity flickers off inside a mental health clinic run by Ms. Oyola Pérez, the staff follow a protocol: First, they wait two hours to see if the power comes back. Then, they fire up a gas-powered generator, then a second, then a third. If the outage persists, someone has to go wait in line for more gas, sometimes for hours. Inside the cheerful single-story building, where 22 residents include her aunt, her 106-year-old grandmother, and a shot-putter who competed in the 2023 Berlin Special Olympics, Ms. Oyola Pérez was clear about her long-term goal for avoiding blackouts. “The plan is to stay off the grid,” she said. Leaving the island’s notoriously rickety electric grid is the dream for many in Puerto Rico. Two large-scale blackouts have hit the island in the last six months, and the average resident lost power eight times last year. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, many homes were without electricity for months. Even without the threat of storms, local officials have warned that the power supply will not be sufficient to meet peak demand this summer. At the same time, Puerto Ricans have the fourth-highest electricity costs in the nation. The E.P.A. declined to comment for this article, citing a policy against discussing pending litigation. It took a six-year search for Ms. Oyola Pérez to find a loan with an affordable monthly payment to install the $75,000 panels for her solar system. After seeing an advertisement at Costco, she found a cooperativa, or a local credit union owned by community members, that could help. She installed the panels in 2023 and the savings on her electric bill now cover the full cost of her $697 monthly payments. In about 13 years, she would own the system outright. But the power outages haven’t stopped.
The call came late Friday to the Rev. Derrick Perkins: Three people were trapped in the Centennial Christian Church in St. Louis after a tornado had toppled part of its steeple, leaving it in dusty piles of bricks and stones. A signal from one person’s cellphone helped Pastor Perkins and emergency workers find those trapped inside. But one of the people, a beloved longtime ministry leader, was killed, Pastor Perkins said. “I was in disbelief — heartbroken,” he said, holding back tears. “Not only for the church, but for the entire community.” The grief and damage there is just a fraction of the devastation from several tornadoes that have ripped across the nation since late Friday, killing at least 27 people in Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia, and injuring dozens more. Mayor Cara Spencer of St. Louis said at a Saturday news conference that she would characterize the storm as “one of the worst” in the city’s history. “The devastation is truly heartbreaking,” she said. In Kentucky, the storm killed at least 18, a number that officials on Saturday warned could still rise. Gov. Andy Beshear said that he worried “there might be a whole block out there where everybody is dead.” “I hope that’s not the case, but you see five houses in a row, they’re just gone entirely,” he said at a news conference on Saturday. He added, “You have a lot of trauma coming out of this one.” The spring tornado season has been especially brutal in this part of the country, coming just weeks after similar storms caused deadly destruction in the region. On Friday, these tornadoes were caused by a major storm over the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic. By Saturday morning, government forecasters said they had confirmed 26 tornadoes in a preliminary count, with most of those occurring in Indiana and Kentucky. While that number so far is not the most recorded in a single day this year — there were 107 during a tornado outbreak on April 2 — states like Kentucky and Missouri were still recuperating from the damage from other storms this year. Laurel County, Ky., was hit especially hard, with 17 deaths recorded there. One person died in Pulaski County, and at least 10 people were in critical condition, according to Mr. Beshear. The ages of the victims ranged from 25 to 76, with most of them over 60, the governor said. Their identities were not released. The scene was particularly harrowing in London, a town of about 8,000 in the foothills of the Appalachians, where residents relish the trails and rivers that crisscross their forests. The town is also where, for the last 30 years, the World Chicken Festival has been held, in honor of Colonel Sanders, of KFC fame. At the London-Corbin Airport, hangars were left twisted and flattened. A plane was flipped upside down. Matthew Singer, the manager of the airport, said that no workers had been injured in the storm, but that several buildings had sustained immense damage. In residential neighborhoods nearby, plots of land were covered by dense mounds of wreckage, and scores of neighbors were helping to clear the debris on Saturday. On Miller Lane, Shirley Sturgill said she found her 90-year-old mother-in-law pinned on her couch and unable to move after a tornado ripped through. “I can’t even imagine everything in your home gone, and it looks like this,” Ms. Sturgill said, pointing to the destruction. “I can’t even imagine what these old people are going through.” This week’s storm also comes at a precarious moment for disaster relief efforts, as sweeping staffing and funding cuts have upended the usual processes for getting assistance from the federal government. Officials in both Kentucky and Missouri confirmed that they had been in touch with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Politics has no place in responding to natural disasters like this one,” said Governor Beshear, a Democrat. “And for the two events that we’ve already had this year, we’ve seen a White House and a FEMA organization that has performed well and has done what we’ve asked.” The tornadoes killed at least seven people in Missouri, with five of them in St. Louis. Two people were killed in Scott County, in southeastern Missouri, according to the county sheriff’s office. Mayor Spencer said early estimates showed that about 5,000 buildings had sustained damage. As sirens rang out on Friday in Forest Park, a nearly 1,300-acre public park that houses several of St. Louis’s cultural sites, workers quickly hustled visitors off the grounds and the handball court into a basement until the wind died down. By Saturday morning, light fixtures had been shattered, structures had splintered into pieces and some entrances to the park had been blocked by fallen trees. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Steve Burkhardt, the facilities and security manager for Forest Park Forever, which works with the city to protect the urban park, said that “it’s a whole different experience to see how beautiful the park is before and how it looks now.” When the storm swept into Virginia, two people died in separate instances after trees fell on their vehicles, according to authorities. This week’s severe weather hit at a time when the National Weather Service is facing staffing shortages, with nearly 600 people leaving the organization after the Trump administration ordered cuts. In Kentucky, where highly organized storms known as supercells spawned tornadoes, all three local Weather Service offices that provide forecasts and issue warnings have several vacancies for meteorologists. For example, the office in Jackson, which serves eastern Kentucky, usually operates with a staff of 14 meteorologists but is down to nine, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents Weather Service employees. The office is also one of several left without an overnight forecaster, but on Friday, it stayed open and was sufficiently staffed for the night, issuing 11 tornado warnings. It was “all hands on deck,” Mr. Fahy said. On Sunday into Monday, a separate system could bring severe weather, including large hail and damaging winds, across the southern Great Plains and a slice of southern Oklahoma and northern Texas, including Dallas and Fort Worth.
An avalanche of fine particles rolled across northwest Indiana and north-central Illinois on Friday, turning day to night in an area of the country rarely hit by dust storms. A dark cloud suddenly brought near-zero visibility conditions on Friday afternoon to major highways, including Interstates 55 and 57 in Illinois, leading the National Weather Service to fire off a series of warnings about “dangerous, life-threatening” conditions on roads. As the wave of sifting dust blew into Chicago, it created a dramatic scene. Visibility dropped to a quarter-mile at Chicago Midway International Airport. “This is not common at all,” Zachary Yack, a meteorologist with the Weather Service office in Romeoville, 30 miles southwest of Chicago, said on Friday. Friday was the first time that the Weather Service office in Romeoville, which covers a large area that includes Chicago, had ever issued a dust storm warning for the city. Mr. Yack was working as the first warnings were being issued. Then the dust storm arrived at his office. “Visibility went from unrestricted to less than a quarter mile in less than 10 minutes,” Mr. Yack said. “It was a brown haze.” Dust storms can occur anywhere in the United States, but they’re most common in the desert Southwest and across the southern Great Plains, particularly in late winter and early spring. Deserts, overgrazed land and areas experiencing drought are especially prone to dust storms. Soils across central Illinois are exceptionally dry this spring, and dry soil is easily lifted up into the air by winds. “And it’s not just the topsoil that’s dry,” said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. “It’s going down a couple meters.” Mr. Hurley said the soil moisture in the area was at only 2 to 5 percent, making it among the driest ever. The Weather Service’s Romeoville office, which covers much of Northern Illinois and a sliver of northwest Indiana, has issued dust storm warnings for only one other weather event, which happened in 2023 in an agricultural area. That warning did not include Chicago. In the 2023 dust storm, seven people died in a crash involving 72 vehicles on Interstate 55 in central Illinois. Chicago was last affected by a significant dust storm during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, specifically on May 10, 1934, according to Rafal Ogorek, a forecaster with the Weather Service. Dust storms also affected portions of the Chicago metro area in April 1935 and on May 31, 1985. Mr. Ogorek noted that his office could not “find any documentation that suggested that either of those dust storms produced significant visibility reductions.” The dust storm on Friday formed near Bloomington, Ill., at about 4:30 p.m. local time when thunderstorms in central Illinois generated a push of whipping and howling winds with speeds up to 70 miles per hour. As the winds surged northward, they swept aloft dust from parched farmland. A dust storm generated by winds from thunderstorms is called a haboob, a term often used in the Middle East, where dust storms are common. Thomas Gill, a professor of environmental science and engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso, said it was appropriate to call Friday’s storm a haboob. Professor Gill said images and videos of Friday’s storm “show the classic appearance of a haboob” with a “wall of dust rolling across the land.” Traveling at about 60 m.p.h., the dust storm moved into downtown Chicago by about 6:30 p.m. Dan Belko, 51, who lives in the Old Town section of Chicago, said his wife got a warning about the storm on her phone just as they were stepping outside for dinner. “You could see the change in the atmosphere,” Mr. Belko said. “It looked like a fog, but not a very thick fog.”
Working long hours comes with a slew of health issues, from too much stress to disturbed sleep, heart conditions, and mental-health disorders like anxiety and depression. It may even cause changes in the brain, according to a new report published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Researchers from Korea found that people who regularly work long hours had significant brain differences compared to people who worked less. Wanhyung Lee, from the department of preventive medicine at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, and his team studied 110 health care workers—some of whom worked more than 52 hours a week, which under Korean law constitutes overwork, and some of whom worked less. All had MRIs that allowed the scientists to analyze differences in the volume and concentration of certain brain tissues. Advertisement People who were overworked showed changes in 17 brain regions compared to those who worked typical hours. These differences included areas responsible for executive functions like logical reasoning, as well as managing emotions. Lee says the results surprised him—in part because they suggest that the brain changes in response to stress and anxiety, with some potential negative consequences. “We anticipated that prolonged stress from overwork would affect brain structure, but finding increased volume in certain brain areas was somewhat unexpected,” he wrote in an email to TIME. “Our results suggest a potential neuroadaptive response, meaning the brain might initially try to compensate for increased cognitive and emotional demands. These surprising findings underscore the complexity of how the brain responds to prolonged occupational stress.” Advances in brain imaging now make it possible to detect even small volume differences, Lee says. “These technological breakthroughs have empowered researchers to explore previously invisible biological changes induced by prolonged stress or excessive workloads, thus opening up an entirely new dimension in occupational and environmental health research.”
The federal government is launching its first in-depth review of infant formula nutrients in nearly 30 years. While the move may spark questions among families, pediatric experts say there is nothing to be concerned about: FDA-approved infant formula remains one of the most rigorously regulated food products in the country and is perfectly safe. Still, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) say it’s time for a fresh look. On Tuesday, the agencies announced that they had issued a request for information about infant formula nutrients. Advertisement The review is part of an initiative launched in March, called Operation Stork Speed, which is meant to “ensure the safety, reliability, and nutritional adequacy of infant formula for American families,” according to HHS. It’s not yet clear who will be leading the review, but the FDA is set to convene a panel of experts in June that will be accessible to the public. “Operation Stork Speed brings radical transparency to ingredients in infant formula and puts science front and center,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in the press release. “Every child has a fundamental right to a healthy start. We’re giving parents the truth and the tools to make that happen.” Read More: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Americans Should Not Take Medical Advice From Him Could infant formula change? Experts say that any effort to ensure that infant formula contains the best nutrients is important, but they caution that this review is not a sign that infant formula is dangerous, nor do they expect it to trigger dramatic changes. According to HHS, the FDA “regularly reviews individual nutrient requirements for infant formula,” but the last time the agency conducted an in-depth review of infant formula was in 1998. Dr. Steven Abrams, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, says doing a comprehensive analysis is “overdue” because there have been new developments in science and guidance since 1998. Abrams, who is due to attend the June meeting with the FDA, says it’s critical that the research is conducted slowly, cautiously, and rigorously. He says that experts, including himself, want “to make sure that [the review] doesn’t become motivated by concerns that infant formula, as it currently exists, is inherently unsafe. That’s not true.” Dr. Mark Corkins, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, says it’s possible that the review may result in recommendations for a little more of some nutrients, like Vitamin D, and a little less of other ingredients, like iron, but: “I don’t think there’s going to be any huge, earth-shaking changes that comes out of this.
If you’re the type of person who cares about conversational etiquette, the idea of interrupting someone might make you cringe. But sometimes, cutting in is necessary. However, you should only do it if your conversation partner is “saying something factually inaccurate,” says Jefferson Fisher, a Texas-based lawyer and author of The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More. “It’s not that you’re arguing with their opinion; you’re arguing an actual issue of legitimate fact.” With the right words, you can do it in a way that (probably) won’t irritate whoever is on the receiving end. Advertisement Be upfront The best way to interrupt someone is to acknowledge what you’re doing. Start with the words “I know I’m interrupting” or “I need to interrupt.” With this preamble, “people don't get defensive, because it’s you acknowledging what you’re doing,” Fisher says. “If you’re talking and you said something inaccurate, I would say, ‘Angela, I need to interrupt you,’ or ‘I know I'm interrupting you.’ You won't see it as an affront or as me just assuming that what I’m saying is more important than what you're saying.” Read More: How to Say ‘I Told You So’ in a More Effective Way The same philosophy applies to social gatherings. If you want to steal someone away who is already in conversation with another guest, announce what you're doing instead of grabbing the person’s arm and pulling them away. “If somebody comes up and says, ‘I need to take Angela for a minute,’ and then pulls you, now I understand the dynamic,” Fisher says. “It’s like giving a roadmap for what needs to happen.” Voicing what you’re doing is almost always useful, he adds. If you're in an argument with someone and you suddenly slam the door shut and leave the room, for example, it probably won't go over well. If you explicitly state that you need to leave the room, however, you’re at least making your intentions clear and setting expectations. “When you claim it, you control it,” Fisher says. “When you say something out loud, it shows your confidence in what you’re doing, which is powerful in communication.”
Gene therapy has always held enormous promise to correct genetic diseases, but turning that potential into treatments has been challenging. In a study published May 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, researchers led by teams at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania report on the first use of the gene-editing technology CRISPR in a customized therapy designed to treat one patient with a rare disease. CRISPR is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat sickle-cell anemia and beta thalassemia, in which patients receive the same gene therapy to treat an abnormality in their red blood cells. Advertisement In the latest case, the scientists developed a CRISPR treatment for a boy named KJ, who was born with genetic mutations in his liver cells that prevent him from breaking down proteins properly. As a result, ammonia builds up in his body, which can be toxic to the brain, potentially leading to developmental delays. Led by professor of medicine Dr. Kiran Musunuru at University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas, director of the Gene Therapy for the Inherited Metabolic Disorders Frontier Program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the scientists designed a CRISPR gene therapy to specifically address one of KJ’s mutations. “This drug was designed and made for KJ, so in reality this drug will probably never be used again,” says Ahrens-Nicklas of the bespoke nature of the therapy. While the therapy was created for him, the team is hopeful that the process can be made more universal and applied to other genetic mutations, for which they can plug in the appropriate genetic change to correct a disease.
As Republicans look to broker a sweeping budget deal, top GOP leadership in the House of Representatives unveiled a series of cuts this week to the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) aimed at tackling climate change. This includes proposing to curtail tax credits for clean electricity generation and domestic clean technology manufacturing. To enact the proposed language would deal a swift blow to U.S. efforts to cut emissions and transition to cleaner energy sources. It would also stifle a surge in manufacturing investment that has swept much of the country. “It will come to a screeching halt without the credits,” says George Strobel, co-CEO at Monarch Private Capital, which finances solar projects. “That’s just the way it is.” Since the language was announced on May 12, many Senate Republicans, who would need to approve the measure before it becomes law, have balked, fearing that such a pullback would kill jobs in their home states and harm American businesses. For that reason, they say, the language should represent a starting point, certain to be revised in the lengthy negotiations necessary to approve the changes. “Anything that comes over from the House, almost by law, we’ve got to redo,” Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski told reporters. The debate on the fate of the clean technology tax incentives is likely to center on immediate concerns: on one side jobs and the implications for American businesses and, on the other, simple number crunching to fund other priorities including a continuation of broad corporate tax cuts. But jobs in congressional districts and U.S. carbon emissions represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the massive implications of a U.S. pullback from clean technology. The U.S. is already behind in developing an economy around mature technologies—namely wind, solar, and electric vehicles. To nix IRA incentives without a considered replacement would effectively wave the white flag, acknowledging that the U.S. has no plausible way to catch up. Perhaps more significantly, abandoning the incentives would make it even more difficult for the U.S. to capture the market of early-stage technologies where the country can still compete—think of geothermal, advanced forms of nuclear energy, and hydrogen, to name a few. All of this is of significant consequence for the shape of the global economy. China already dominates manufacturing in technologies like electric vehicles and, with an absent U.S., could do the same with future tech, too. All of which is to say: these negotiations will matter for decades to come. “To some extent, I think it’s hanging in the balance,” says Greg Bertelsen, CEO of the Climate Leadership Council, a non-profit that works at the intersection of climate and economic policy. “This is a critical period of time.” Advertisement To understand what enacting the proposed changes to tax incentives would mean, it’s helpful to sit with some numbers. In a research note Tuesday, the Rhodium Group said that the cuts would risk “a meaningful amount” of the $522 billion clean technology manufacturing investment already in the pipeline in the U.S. It could result in a greater than 70% decline in domestic clean energy deployment through 2035—and higher electricity prices for consumers and industry alike. The clean technologies in question are part of a global market expected to total more than $100 trillion by 2050, according to a 2022 report from the Boston Consulting Group. And the ripples extend beyond clean tech: higher energy prices would make the U.S. a less attractive place for AI and manufacturing investments. In the past, a U.S. pullback might have been enough to derail this global clean tech momentum. The U.S. is, after all, the world’s largest economy. But, in 2025, the rest of the world is less likely to shift gears in response to one administration. Advertisement A big reason for that is China. The country has become a manufacturing hub for a wide range of clean technologies and has facilitated their export around the world. And, in many cases, the clean technologies manufactured there have simply become better than traditional alternatives. Chinese electric vehicles, for example, are widely thought to offer a better experience at a lower price point than anything coming out of the U.S. or Europe. (Indeed, they’re quickly expanding not just in China but around the world.) More broadly, in parts of the developing world, solar power has become cheap enough that it’s the fastest and simplest way to rapidly electrify. Since President Trump took office, I’ve spent much of my time outside of Washington, talking to policymakers and business leaders from around the world. As shocked as many have been by the Trump Administration's assault on climate policy, few have expressed interest in following suit and instead continue to see opportunity in green investments. Advertisement And so the question for members of Congress is how much, if any, of that $100 trillion market they want to capture. The text proposed by GOP House leadership is just the start of the discussion and unlikely to become law in its current form, but for those looking to capture a share of the future of energy technologies it isn’t an encouraging one.
President Donald Trump’s whirlwind three-country tour of the Middle East saw him receive a royal welcome in the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Trump’s arrival in the Saudi capital of Riyadh was flanked by an escort of F-15 fighter jets, a show of the grandiose visit that awaited him. He was later accompanied by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to a state banquet dinner. The President made a number of investment agreements with the Crown Prince, which the White House said are worth up to $600 billion, including an arms deal worth $142 billion. Advertisement Trump also met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa after announcing he plans to lift U.S. sanctions on the country. In Qatar, the President signed further investment deals with the country’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The President concluded his visit in the UAE, where talks focused on AI infrastructure investment in both countries. Potential progress on a nuclear deal with Iran was discussed too. Read More: Key Moments From Trump's Whirlwind Tour of the Middle East At the close of the trip—which lasted from Tuesday, May 13, to Friday, May 16—Trump received a "drop of oil" as a gift from Emirati officials. Accepting the gift, the President joked: “This is the highest quality oil there is on the planet, and they only gave me a drop. So, I’m not thrilled, but it’s better than no drop.” Some key moments from Trump’s Middle East trip are captured in the images below.
