Consumer

"As the Louisiana town recovers, residents wrestle with the increasingly difficult task of shielding children from a polluted future."

"Heat and drought have diminished harvests in some of the biggest wheat-producing countries, including the United States, which is expected to have its worst wheat harvest in a half-century, spiking prices. Poor countries that agreed to buy American wheat under the threat of Trump tariffs could be stuck paying abnormally high prices."

"The Trump administration is ending summertime smog restrictions on gasoline early this year in a bid to offer relief for high prices at the pump."

"More than 40 million people in the United States and Canada depend on the Great Lakes for drinking water. Each glass of treated lake water is laden with tiny bits of plastic — microplastics — made of toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other diseases. Also contaminated are fish, staples of Midwestern fish fries and fish boils, and an important part of the diet of Indigenous tribes, certain immigrant populations and communities of color."

"More governors are shifting their stances or taking more steps to squeeze data centers as the midterm elections near and public opinion sours on the energy-hungry behemoths that tech giants and developers are building to fuel artificial intelligence products and cloud computing. The backlash to the massive server warehouses is enveloping races for governor in some of the nation’s biggest states and presidential battlegrounds."

"President Donald Trump announced Wednesday he will nominate Heidi Overton, a top aide at the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, to serve as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration."

"It’s only the third such project to hook up to the U.S. grid. It comes as surging electricity demand drives interest in the source of around-the-clock clean power."

"An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule putting polluters on the hook to clean up toxic “forever chemicals” was upheld in court on Tuesday despite an industry challenge."

"Alabama Power has guaranteed that residents’ power bills won’t increase as a result. Can the state’s largest utility keep its promise?"

"Low-income homeowners are least likely to test and treat their well water for arsenic, and a state program to help them has treated fewer homes than expected."