Feds lease 10 new firefighting aircraft as wildfire season gets underway CBC Mon, May 25, 2026 at 8:32 a.m. PDT 2 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Add Yahoo on Google A water bomber assists crews on the ground at the Paddy's Pond wildfire just outside St. John's on Aug. 14. (Paul Daly/The Canadian Press - image credit) Firefighting agencies across Canada have 10 new aircraft they can use as the 2026 wildfire season gets underway. Eleanor Olszewski, the federal minister of emergency management, announced in Ottawa on Monday that provincial and territorial wildfire agencies can now request the aircraft through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC). "These additional aircraft will strengthen Canada’s wildfire response, protect front-line personnel and protect communities across the country," she said. The 10 aircraft include four firefighting air tankers, one birddog plane and five heavy lift helicopters, along...

   What’s up with home insurance nonpayment rates? If the arrival of the Summer House reunion special didn’t already tip you off, the US is entering disaster season. But, according to the Wall Street Journal , “many Americans face a near flip-of-the-coin chance” that they’ll get relief from home insurance carriers when weather damages their house. Insurance, not assurance In the outlet’s analysis, the five biggest home insurance groups—Allstate, Farmers Insurance, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, and United Services Automobile Association (USAA)—didn’t pay out on more than 44% of claims resolved last year. That’s up from 36% in 2015. Some of the reasons why include: New risk-assessment methods. Traditionally, insurers based underwriting on historical data—what has happened—but are increasingly using predictive models—what they believe will happen—to set premiums. The use of drone footage to calculate a home’s “risk score” is also driving up costs for some customers. Reinsurance c...

  Trump Mobile’ s T1 Phone is just a golden rebadge of an old HTC smartphone?   Remember the T1 Phone? Yes, the one that suffered long delays at Trump Mobile, then got a redesign mid-way through the advertisement cycle, and got the number of stripes on the US flag wrong? Yeah, that T1 Phone. Well, this is not a truly Made In America phone, and neither is it an original device. The folks over at iFixit tore it down and found that it’s essentially a rebadge of an old HTC smartphone. “Sourcing ICs from multiple suppliers between production runs isn’t uncommon, so I can confidently say that this is the same phone as the HTC U24 Pro,” says the outlet. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, well, the T1 Phone got a measly reparability score of just 3 out of 10 points.

   Pope delivers major AI warning Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images Despite his Chicago roots, the pope didn’t spend yesterday grilling by the lake. Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical yesterday, and spent most of the 83-page document offering a warning to Silicon Valley and policy makers about artificial intelligence. The encyclical—a pastoral letter outlining the church’s position on a topic—is titled “Maginifica Humanitas,” which translates to Magnificent Humanity. Leo cautioned that AI could be the “ new Tower of Babel ”: The document warned that AI power shouldn’t be concentrated among just a few private companies and that people’s jobs should be protected. Leo wrote that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.” Leo also urged more independent oversight and AI regulation, saying “a more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.” Without calling out any specific conflict, the pope criticized ...

  Meta’s AI chatbot let hackers compromise over 34,000 Instagram accounts   Meta found itself at the center of another embarrassing privacy storm after bad actors tricked its Meta AI chatbot into account takeover. Even the former White House social media account for President Barack Obama and one belonging to a senior official in the Space Force department were breached to post controversial messages. The attack was embarrassingly easy, but devastating. As per internal documents seen by The New York Times, more than 34,000 Instagram accounts were affected. For nearly 20,000 of those accounts, hackers were able to extract sensitive details such as email addresses, phone numbers, and birth dates, among others. “More than 3,500 of the accounts had their user names taken over and changed from the hack,” says the report. Earlier this week, a dormant face scan system was discovered in the software of Meta’s uber-popular smartglasses. 

  Move over, MAGA — it’s time to take America back  by William S. Becker, opinion contributor   - 06/08/26 8:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied Sixty years ago, after several women were attacked while walking alone after dark, Americans launched the “ Take Back the Night ” movement, drawing attention to the fact that rapists and thieves had stolen women’s right to feel safe in the simple act of walking home.     Today, we need a broader “Take Back America” movement because thieves have stolen our ideals, standards, symbols and words.  The far right cloaked itself in the American flag and made it a symbol of hatred, intolerance, racism and insurrection. We need to take it back .  Seditionists and militant groups also rewrote the very concept of patriotism, despite trying to overthrow the Constitution and wanting America to become a far different country than the one described in the Declaration of Independence. We need to take back the title of “patriot.” ...

Trust in news hits a new low, research suggests 7 hours ago Share Save Add as preferred on Google Paul GlynnCulture reporter Getty Images Trust in the news has fallen to an all-time low globally - the lowest since annual reports by the Reuters Institute began more than a decade ago (2015). The research published on Tuesday suggests that public trust worldwide is at 37%, three points down on this time last year. In the UK, it has fallen by five points to 30% - 20 points lower than 10 years ago. More than half of respondents said they now get their news from third-party platforms like social media and video networks, although a similar number still use news websites and TV news as well. Traditional sources are still more popular in the UK. "Our data points to a mix of anxiety, disengagement and cynicism from audiences, many of whom don't like the way publishers are covering long-running news stories such as immigration, inflation and international conflict," the institute...

  Why do Americans call it soccer? Thank the Brits The Football Association’s original 1863 minute book. Jan Kruger/Getty Images The origins of the word “soccer” aren’t as black and white as the ball might suggest. For starters, it’s not even an American invention. Per Britannica: England’s Football Association formalized the rules for modern-day soccer back in 1863. But rugby football was also a thing back then. To distinguish between the two, some Brits called rugby football “rugger” and the Football Association sport “assoccer,” which got shortened to soccer . Rugby football eventually joined Madonna territory and became simply rugby, while the no-hands sport exclusively became known as football. Things played out differently on our side of the pond, where a new sport, gridiron football, got abbreviated to just football, and the soccer moniker caught on for the other sport. In fact, the word soccer is also used in other countries besides the US, like Canada and Australia, w...

  Find a playlist that goes a little lower Niv Bavarsky On Tuesdays, the Brew’s Matty Merritt brings you the news you need to make life a little easier during your 9-5, 5-9, or OOO. Need to lock in and send 70 emails? Some people are swearing by music tuned to 432 hertz , a slightly different frequency than the more common 440 hertz (or how many cycles a sound wave completes per second). To the standard listener, a song in the nontraditional tuning might just sound a little lower, but some people think it feels more grounding and can help them relax. Be warned: searching for a 432 hertz compilation on YouTube can lead you down a conspiratorial rabbit hole claiming that 440 hertz was created as a form of mind control. Plus, there’s no real scientific evidence that listening to music at 432 hertz helps with focus or has healing properties—it’s more likely that some people just prefer it. Still, if you want to try it out for yourself, here’s a fun mix .

  Gym rats beware: A protein powder shortage is here Getty Images We protein-maxxed too close to the sun. You may soon notice higher prices on foods containing whey powder as suppliers struggle to handle the rush to add it to everything from Doritos to Starbucks cold foam, Bloomberg reported yesterday. A major squeeze is underwhey: Whey powder’s wholesale prices jumped to the highest levels on record in April, according to market data reported by The Atlantic. Some whey suppliers are sold out for the rest of the year, according to the USDA, as companies scramble to buy out inventories. Straight-up protein powder has already been affected: A whey powder tub that cost ~$40 on Amazon roughly six months ago hit $54 last month, per The Atlantic. A different supplement company recently paused sales of their tubs of whey after their costs jumped more than 300% from 2023, Bloomberg reported. Now, food companies that planned to counter slowing snack sales by appealing to gains-ob...

  Pizza Hut is turning back the clock to the ’90s Tim Leedy/Getty Images, Brett Coomer/Getty Images Pizza Hut is on a mission to inject 1990s nostalgia straight into the veins of Gen X and millennials. Hundreds of locations are being remodeled with red cups, stained-glass lamps, old-school salad bars, and Pac-Man games in an effort to make them look the way they did when your crush wore JNCO jeans. In all, 144 dine-in eateries have been converted into “Pizza Hut Classics” since 2019, when the company partnered with franchisees to turn back time. Tim Sparks, the president of Daland Corporation, which operates 93 Pizza Hut locations, has already put 38 spots through a time machine. CBS reported last week that those eateries are among Daland’s top performers. with some customers making three-hour trips to visit them. The Hut has been getting outpizza’d: Pizza Hut announced in February that it was closing 250 locations due to lagging sales. Contrast that with Domino’s, which is...

   Record 274 climbers summit Everest from Nepalese side in single day Climbers take advantage of clear weather after threat of ice fall on normal route delayed start of spring season Peter Beaumont Thu 21 May 2026 12.06 BST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google A record 274 climbers have reached the summit of Mount Everest from the Nepalese side in a single day after a spring season that started late because of the threat of ice fall on the normal tourist route. The climbers took advantage of the clear weather on Wednesday, said Rishi Ram Bhandari, of the Expedition Operators Association Nepal . “This is the highest ​number of climbers in a single day so far,” Bhandari told Reuters, referring to the Nepali record, adding that the number could rise as some climbers who had summited might not have informed the base camp yet. View image in fullscreen Members of an expedition team at Khumbu icefall last month. Photograph: Purnima Shrestha/Reuters All but one of the climbers reach...