Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St. Rose, in southeastern Louisiana. Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3 a.m. and fled to an all-night IHOP. In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard…
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Just a few days before Tehran and Washington signed a now-defunct ceasefire agreement, local media in Iran reported that 25 goitered gazelles were killed in U.S. airstrikes on Kharg Island in the northern Persian Gulf. The small coral island is a key terminal for Iran’s oil exports and its unique wildlife includes white-headed seagulls, hawksbill sea turtles, and ospreys. It also hosts the ruins…
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Omaira Garcia didn’t realize life on her small ranch in Abilene, Texas, was about to change forever until clouds of dust — kicked up by a mysterious project next door — began to engulf her home. The Air Force veteran said she found out about OpenAI’s plans to build its flagship Stargate data center directly beside her property only after construction began in the summer of 2024. Today…
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This summer, military forces from 30 nations are gathering in Hawaii for Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2026, the world’s largest maritime exercise. For its organizers, RIMPAC isn’t just five weeks of trainings, drills, and live-fire exercises — it’s an opportunity to enhance coordination and communication (what the military calls “interoperability”), which they say is critical for military…
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Physicist Ronald Koopman appeared at a Southern California Air District meeting in 2018 to talk about what seemed like an arcane scientific topic: hydrofluoric acid dispersion and water mitigation testing. Hydrofluoric acid, also known as hydrogen fluoride or HF, is used to manufacture a range of materials, including refrigerants, gasoline, fluorine-based pesticides and fluoropolymers like…
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In photos taken from above, the collapsed tank at the Nippon Dynawave paper mill in Longview, Washington, looks like a crushed tin can. Capable of holding 900,000 gallons of chemicals, the massive tank was filled to 90 percent capacity when it ruptured on the morning of May 26. Norman Barlow’s family says he worked as an electrical engineer at the Nippon mill for only three months before the…
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