TAMPA, Fla. — Richard Baker remembers the feathers: bright white and striking.

Just 20 days earlier, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig had exploded, killing 11 people and igniting one of the worst environmental disasters in modern history. A pelican and a Northern gannet were the first two birds plucked by wildlife rescuers from the oily waters ...Read more

Chatty bots are sharing their hot takes through hundreds of thousands of AI-generated podcasts. And the invasion has just begun.

Though their banter can be a bit banal, the AI podcasters' confidence and research are now arguably better than most people's.

"We've just begun to cross the threshold of voice AI being pretty much indistinguishable ...Read more

DENVER — Colorado Parks and Wildlife re-released a wolf into Grand County this week after it had traveled into New Mexico, according to a news release.

The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish captured gray wolf 2403 and returned the animal to Colorado.

Colorado wildlife officials decided to release the wolf in Grand County yesterday ...Read more

Earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged that the search for autism's cause — a question that has kept researchers busy for the better part of six decades — would be over in just five months.

"By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we'll be able to eliminate those ...Read more

California environmental regulators on Thursday struck a landmark deal with Pacific Gas & Electric to extend the life of the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant in exchange for thousands of acres of new land conservation in San Luis Obispo County.

PG&E’s agreement with the California Coastal Commission is a key hurdle for the Diablo ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are combining for a busy week of rocket launches on the Space Coast.

First up Thursday evening was SpaceX’s planned Starlink 6-90 mission with 29 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 5:01 p.m. Eastern time.

This was the 16th flight of ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Fish and Game Commission voted Thursday to extend the closure of the recreational red abalone fishery for another decade, keeping the ban in place until April 2036.

The fishery has been closed since 2018, when the commission shut it down in response to a dramatic population decline along Northern California...Read more

BALTIMORE — Artificial intelligence systems designed to physically imitate natural brains can simulate human brain activity before being trained, according to new research from Johns Hopkins University.

“The work that we’re doing brings AI closer to human thinking,” said Mick Bonner, who teaches cognitive science at Hopkins. “What I ...Read more

Texas is about to deploy a potential solution to the oil industry’s toxic wastewater problem — but it’s a move that carries environmental risks of its own.

State regulators are working to issue permits that would let four companies, including major landowner Texas Pacific Land Corp. and pipeline operator NGL Energy Partners LP, release ...Read more

The grocery delivery service Instacart is using artificial intelligence to experiment with prices and charge some shoppers more than others for the same items, a new study found.

The study from nonprofits Groundwork Collaborative and Consumer Reports followed more than 400 shoppers in four cities and found that Instacart sometimes offered as ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are combining for a busy week or rocket launches on the Space Coast.

First up Thursday afternoon is SpaceX’s planned Starlink 6-90 mission with 29 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40. Liftoff is targeting 3:26 p.m. during launch window that...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The winter season has brought cold and wet conditions that are perfect for fungi like death cap mushrooms, or Amanita phalloides, to grow in California, experts say, but with that has come a rash of people mistakenly eating them thinking they're safe.

So far this year, at least 23 people have been sickened by eating death cap ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- A yearslong surge in displaced roosters is overwhelming animal sanctuaries in Maryland and across the country, fueled by a pandemic-born boom in backyard chicken coops and the noisy realities of owning a male bird.

“All the time — calls, emails, text messages wanting us to take roosters,” said Cathy Rogers, executive ...Read more

Amazon.com Inc.’s new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is the company’s most serious effort yet to turn its e-reader into a productivity tool. But with a starting price of $630 — making it the priciest Kindle yet — Amazon will need to persuade even its most loyal readers that the upgrade is worth it.

The device, which went on sale starting in ...Read more

People aren't lovin' it.

McDonald's was forced to pull down an AI-generated Christmas commercial from YouTube after some consumers said the AI-slop-filled tongue-in-cheek take on the holidays was distasteful.

The ad, titled "It's the most terrible time of the year," was a satirical take on holiday realities. It showed a series of short, ...Read more

Gamers of a certain age will remember when beat-’em-ups ruled arcades. The cabinets inhaled quarters as four players teamed up to brawl their way to save Maggie Simpson or battle Shredder across New York. Those memories are connected to pizza parties or late-night forays, with parents handing one more dollar to see if the kids could finish ...Read more

Getting an offer to review a soft-serve ice cream machine is a dream come true, at least for me. Obviously, I'm an ice cream fan, and reviewing the Gourmia Soft-Serve Ice Cream Maker has to be one of my favorites in my 25-plus years of reviews.

Spoiler alert: To say the Gourmia Soft-Serve Ice Cream Maker was the hit of my recent social ...Read more

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if he should replace the battery in his iPhone SE. He’d noticed the phone needed to be topped off before the end of the day and asked if I thought he should replace the battery or just buy a new phone.

I started out asking if he was happy with the performance of the phone. Did it do everything he needed it to...Read more