A former Windows boss has explained why the taskbar in Windows 11 is the way it is and how he "fought hard" to stop Microsoft from removing customization options present in Windows 10.…

December's auto market saw plugin EVs at 34.5% share in Germany, up from 23.4% year on year. Full year 2025 saw EVs at 30.0% share, decently up from 20.3% YoY. Overall December auto volume was 246,439 units, up some 10% YoY. Full year 2025 auto volume was 2,858,591 units, up ... [continued]

The post 2025 EVs At 30.0% Share In Germany - Volkswagen ID.7 Best-Seller appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Published yesterday on BBC, this article covers an ongoing environmental catastrophe. As if it isn't bad enough to be born a Welshman, now their rivers and streams are being polluted with wanton abandon and unprecedented flooding is overwhelming sewers, leaving many people quite literally up shit creek. Energy bills are skyrocketing as most homes in the area were not designed to withstand this wild climate.

Collapse related because even modern, developed nations (and also the Welsh) are struggling to adapt to the unraveling climate, much less capable of fighting it.

Local activists have prevented supporters of Israel's genocide and French purveyor of mass murder Thales from giving a talk at a Queen's University Belfast (QUB) conference. The weapons manufacturer had been set to give a talk at the NI Blockchain event at the university's Computer Science building. However, around 25 anti-genocide campaigners stormed the room and ensured the presentation could not take place. Embarrassed organisers swiftly ushered attendees out, leaving activists free to hang up Palestine flags and plaster the place with 'boycott Israeli apartheid' stickers.

Thales are well known to have links to the 'Israeli' military. Until very recently, they produced various drones through its then subsidiary UTacS, which was jointly owned by Elbit Systems. Elbit is the backbone of the genocidal settler-colony's weapons industry. Thales recently sold UTacS to the Zionist arms firm.

In a report entitled "Exposed: The UK firms supplying Elbit Systems", the always excellent Declassified UK reported on how:

Thales in Crawley has exported radar components to Elbit in Haifa. On 6 November 2025, the company also sent an "I-Master airborne surveillance radar" to Israel.

The I-Master "delivers all-weather surveillance, pattern of life monitoring, change detection and wide area-coverage", according to Thales. "It detects and locates moving and stationary targets at long stand-off ranges over land and sea".

It was exported under the ML5b licence, according to the shipping document, which covers "target acquisition, designation, range-finding, surveillance or tracking systems".

Thales claim the materials it sends to the settler-colony are:

…intended for re-exporting purposes to a European end user.

Declassified UK point out how meaningless this is, as the British government does not have a means of checking whether Israeli Genocide Forces use anything sent to so-called 'Israel'.

This shipment seems to directly contradict a statement Thales gave in December 2025, in which they said:

Thales has not delivered any defence equipment, or any equipment enabling the operation of a defence system, to the Israeli armed forces or to Israeli manufacturers.

Thales has not exported any weapon or any lethal system to the Israeli armed forces, either directly or through third-party manufacturers.

This was in the wake of opposition from parents who opposed local schools partnering with the criminal company to boost its recruitment. Thales also has a factory in East Belfast which is a regular target for pro-Palestine protesters.

The protest at QUB was led by Connolly Youth Movement activists. In a statement, they said:

Anti-imperialists from the Connolly Youth Movement, QUB Palestine Assembly and BDS Belfast, disrupted Thales' talk at the conference and the war criminals immediately packed up and left. These arms manufacturers raise millions in profits off the back of genocide and have no place on our campuses.

This shows the power of collective, direct actions which ensure that these vultures have no room to breathe. This action is part of a long-running campaign to pressure QUB to sever all its links with Zionism and arms manufacturers, driving them off our campus and divesting from all complicit institutions.

The university continues to partner with these vile merchants of death. At a protest in October 2025, students highlighted its ongoing relationship with BAE Systems, which helps to manufacture the F-35 warplane used to murder innocent Palestinians. They said:

Queen's boasts of "Partnering with BAE Systems on video based semantic analysis of crowd behaviour" and provides placements for students.

They also highlighted similar arrangements with Caterpillar, notorious for supplying the bulldozers used to wreck Palestinian homes. QUB also insists on maintaining indirect investments in 'Israeli' companies.

But we're still not done - despite cutting ties with Epstein associate and alleged rapist George Mitchell, the university persists in keeping fellow Epstein fraterniser Hillary Clinton as chancellor. The former US secretary of state is a perpetual warmonger and committed Zionist. QUB's continued backing of Clinton, and its support for 'Israel' - a practitioner of mass sexual abuse - shows it does not care about basic morality, truth, or even its own reputation.

It is instead an institution that cares only about money and proximity to power, even if it's done on the backs of rape victims and dead Palestinians.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

Clean Up Britain have come up with a new way to make claimants' lives hell. The national campaign announced on Twitter that they think unemployed people on Universal Credit should be forced to clean up litter - or else lose their benefit.

In the video, Clean Up Britain managing director, John Read, stands in a fly-tipping site. He talks the same amount of shit as he's stood in when he says:

people who are recieving Universal Credit should be required to do at least four hours litter picking every single month.

He clarifies in the video that he just means unemployed Universal Credit claimants.

This is bad enough, but within Clean Up Britain's 10 point action plan comes the real kicker. They think anyone who refuses to pick up rubbish should lose their benefits.

This, of course, is a vague as fuck soundbite that doesn't contain any nuance. So it ignores many factors.

The first being that this is already (or should be) a paid job. People are paid to be litter pickers by councils. But with council budgets stretched, this would give them an excuse to cut jobs and make people do it for free. It's a very slim possibility, but if this happened, someone could lose their job as a litter picker, have to claim Universal Credit, and then be forced to do their old job for free.

In the video, Read says that if all the job seekers in the city did this, this city could be transformed. The important context here is that the city he's talking about is Birmingham.  The reason those streets are full of rubbish is that the bin collectors have been on strike for the past 11 months.  They're striking against pay cuts and for better pay progression.

So to propose that people work for free to clean up Birmingham is not only an insult to unemployed people, but to striking workers too.

Finally, unemployed people shouldn't be expected to work for fucking free. There's the argument from many that they're working for free, they're working for their benefit. But that's not the gotcha my right-wing Twitter trolls think it is. The whole point of unemployment benefits is to support people while they're out of work, looking for gainful employment. This could be employment, but instead it will be used to punish poor people.

And that's the biggest problem with this: many of the British public would see this as something unemployed people deserve. And the government, which is already using the media to turn the public against claimants, would run with it. This would be used as a threat and punishment to further shame people who can't find work.

Missing from this is, of course, disabled people. Would those who struggle in cold temperatures, can't do physical tasks or have neurodivergent and mental health issues be forced to make their conditions worse? There'd probably be some clause in about "severe disabilities", but this would miss out many disabled people. Especially if the way they're trying prove many conditions aren't real is anything to go by.

Litter picking has long traditionally been a part of community service sentenced after someone has committed crimes. So this would put unemployed people in the same category as literal criminals. Which isn't that much of a stretch considering the DWP already treats claimants worse than criminals.

There's also the fact that once again, we are blaming the wrong people for the destruction of the country and making them suffer the consequences. As well as their bullshit plan, Clean Up Britain also tweeted some stats about the national debt

BRITAIN is a three-quarters bankrupt country (at least). We can't afford to be spending £1 BILLION a year on cleaning up litter.
We owe £2.9 TRILLION
We pay £275 million a day just in interest repayments
EVERY person in Britain owes £42,000 as their share of the national debt

Whilst we do have a huge national debt, it's completely untrue that we all owe the same amount. The rich undoubtedly owe much more than a minimum wage worker. When the average minimum wage worker earns around £23,000 a year, and CEOs are on around £97,000 a year, how is this possibly fair?

More than anything, this is showing what the rich really think of unemployed people. That they don't deserve real opportunities, so they should be forced to clean up the trash like them.

At the end of the day, people on Universal Credit are already made to feel shit about themselves at a time when they're at their most vulnerable. Nobody should be forced into unpaid work all because they're struggling to survive. And nobody should be made to feel that this is all they're worthy of.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

Meta, the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, plans to introduce new face scanning tech while people are distracted by current political turbulence. The Trump-adjacent corporation plans to package the feature in new smart glasses. An internal Meta document seen by the New York Times (NYT) says:

We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.

The media outlet provides further info on what the tech would allow:

The feature, internally called "Name Tag," would let wearers of smart glasses identify people and get information about them via Meta's artificial intelligence assistant.

Smart glasses are typically paired with AI, enabling voice activated interaction with the specs. Users can instruct the device to send a text message, take a photo or record a video. Some models feature an LED that changes colour to indicate the wearer is recording.

The cynical internal memo likely references the tumult currently sweeping the US amidst the mass criminality carried out by the brownshirts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump's personal paramilitary goons have been violating laws left and right as they beat and kill their way around the US, under the pretext of an immigration crackdown.

ICE have already made extensive use of face scanning tech. Meta's glasses would represent another privacy violating move, capturing massive amounts of personal data which may ultimately find its way into the hands of an authoritarian state. Meta has form when it comes to handing over info about customers to governments.

Metadata - which shows who called who and when - has been used by authorities, including seemingly by so-called 'Israel' for its genocide in Gaza. WhatsApp records are one means used by the terrorist entity to determine which Palestinians are marked for death in its genocidal AI programs Lavender and Where's Daddy. Paul Biggar of Tech for Palestine put a series of questions to Meta about how they should be policing rogue regimes like 'Israel' using its data. These included:

How will Meta prevent private information being used by governments to kill WhatsApp users and their families?

Will Meta immediately rescind access to any WhatsApp information from the Israeli government, army and law enforcement?

It appears no answer was forthcoming. Meta's plan to roll out the tech during politically chaotic times has echoes of the 'shock doctrine' described by author Naomi Klein. It outlines a process of 'disaster capitalism' in which natural disasters or political upheaval are seized upon by corporations to ram through major changes that benefit them.

It represents another example of practices first deployed by hegemonic powers abroad, only to be revisited upon a population at home. Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been an eager licker of the Trump boot, and clearly sees this as an opportune time to introduce the privacy violating tech.

A previous version of the glasses were able to successfully identify faces and reveal huge amounts of personal info about those it scanned. Two Harvard students paired the specs with a smartphone app they created, enabling them to almost instantaneously identify strangers.

The scan was then sent to the app, which trawled the internet for information about people, bringing back details like their job and home address within seconds. A built-in version of this tech would be even more powerful, creating even greater privacy concerns.

The British government intends to extend its use of facial recognition tech, going from 10 vans with the system, to 50. Civil rights groups are challenging this in the courts, describing it as "stop and search on steroids". The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are looking into its use, which would be a disaster in a region where violation of rights by state authorities has previously had devastating consequences.

Fascism is often described as the fusion of corporate and state power. Both these power centres are ramping up their ability to surveil us, enabling them to amass enormous power. The prospect of them uniting to utterly crush dissent will be an ever more tempting prospect. Their efforts to advance spying powers must therefore be snuffed out in their infancy.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

American prisons have never been much for the First Amendment, and now, the Trump administration is exporting prison-style censorship to the general population. In tactics that are easily recognizable to incarcerated people like me, they're doing it in the name of "security."

This includes claiming antiestablishment ideologies and literature must be punished because they pose nebulous risks to those with government-approved political views. It also includes the logical next step: criminalizing efforts to keep authorities from finding out that one holds those ideologies or reads that literature.

Daniel "Des" Sanchez Estrada is set to be tried starting Tuesday on charges of corruptly concealing a document or record and conspiracy to conceal documents. He's been in custody since July and in federal prison since October (save for a brief accidental release before Thanksgiving, during which he spoke to The Intercept). He and his codefendants were recently transferred to county jail to await trial. Supporters report that they've been placed in solitary confinement and are dealing with other horrid conditions.

In plain language, Sanchez Estrada is facing up to 20 years behind bars for allegedly moving a box of anarchist zines from his parents' house to another residence in his hometown of Dallas. His indictment came on the heels of Trump's signing an executive order to classify "Antifa" as a "domestic terrorist organization" and issuing National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. 

Sanchez Estrada's case originated with a July 4, 2025 anti-ICE protest his wife, Maricela Rueda, attended outside the Prairieland ICE detention center in Alvarado, Texas, where an officer was shot. (Prosecutors do not allege that Sanchez Estrada or Rueda were involved in the shooting.) The home-spun zines at issue contain no plans for any shooting, and under normal circumstances, they would clearly be deemed constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. But the government's concealment theory only makes sense if it views merely having the literature as criminal. 

While this form of censorship might seem brazenly anti-constitutional to most Americans, it has been the reality faced by incarcerated individuals for decades.

Once possessing literature is considered criminal, it opens the door to corollary charges, like transporting literature to conceal evidence or the "offense" of possessing it. That's what happened to Sanchez Estrada. What other crime could the magazines have incriminated Rueda of? 

Last month, activist Lucy Fowlkes became the 19th person indicted in connection with the same Texas protest. Fowlkes's alleged crime is using Signal, the encrypted messaging app made famous by Pete Hegseth, telling people how to delete messages, and removing people from group chats, which government lawyers argue amounts to "hinder[ing] prosecution of terrorism," a first-degree felony. 

The founders placed a great premium on ensuring Americans had the right to possess and read anything that attracted their interest, even if it challenged the government. 

But while this form of censorship might seem brazenly anti-constitutional to most Americans, it has been the reality faced by incarcerated individuals for decades. In the name of "security," prison officials have punished and even killed people for possessing literature they deemed suspect.

One such case involved Johnson Greybuffalo, a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe who dedicated himself to studying Native American history while in custody at the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin. His studies included learning about the American Indian Movement, or AIM, a civil rights organization in the U.S. and Canada that works for equal rights for American Indians. He found information on AIM in the prison's library and took notes throughout his studies.

A prison volunteer also gave him a copy of a document titled "Warrior Society" that included a code of ethics that required Native Americans to serve the people, be honorable, kind, and not steal or be stingy. A prison guard searched his cell one day in 2005, and confiscated the AIM notes, along with the "Warrior Society" document. Both were classified as "written contraband." Greybuffalo was written a disciplinary case and sentenced to 180 days in solitary confinement. The disciplinary charge was upheld in part by a federal district court in 2010.

"Reading, writing, or sharing zines is not a crime."

In another case, Kenneth Oliver left an article about human rights activist, philosopher, and scholar George Jackson on his bunk while he went to his California prison's dining hall in 2007. An officer searched his cell and discovered two books authored by Jackson, "Blood in My Eye" and "Soledad Brother." As Oliver detailed on "Ear Hustle," the award-winning podcast created and produced from San Quentin State Prison, he came back to officers swarming his cell, which they had yellow-taped off like a real crime scene. Oliver was handcuffed and held in solitary confinement for the next eight years in California. His only offense was "possessing illegal contraband," which also made him ineligible for new sentence under a 2012 California law easing life sentences on nonviolent "three strikes" convictions. (Oliver was finally freed in 2019 after serving 23 years.)

"The guards said, 'We've been told to get rid of you,'" Oliver said on the podcast. "They want you to go to the SHU [solitary confinement] forever."

Historically, the U.S. government has always used disenfranchised populations as a test case to develop both strategy and legal precedent for infringing on constitutional rights before exporting them to society as a whole. Before incarcerated people faced retaliation for possessing books, African slaves were frequently punished for reading the Old Testament out of fear that the Exodus story might inspire them to dream of freedom. In some places, proponents of slavery reconciled their desire to convert slaves to Christianity with their fear or rebellion by creating a heavily redacted "Slave Bible." 

Land confiscated from Native populations eventually became eminent domain. Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's surveillance of Black leaders during the civil rights movement gave justification for George W. Bush's invasive Patriot Act and mass surveillance of civilians. Now, the Trump administration is taking a page directly out of oppressive prison authorities' playbook. 

The system that gives those in charge broad power to decide what literature is a dangerous threat to "national security" interests and who they can target, detain, prosecute, and punish criminally for merely possessing it. They may be starting with anarchist magazines, but anyone on the mailing list of Trump's political enemies, whether in possession of an issue of the New York Times or an op-ed written by Marjorie Taylor Green, could find themselves on the wrong end of the administration's overreach. 

It's all so circular. When the administration declares a political viewpoint "terrorism," hiding literature espousing that viewpoint from the government is a perfectly logical response. So is using secure communications technology to communicate with others who share similar politics. But when your thoughts and reading list are deemed illegal, preventing the government from finding out what you think and read becomes a crime in and of itself — obstruction of the thought police. 

"Daniel has broken no laws," Sanchez Estrada's family said in a statement to The Intercept. "He should not be in jail, should not be threatened to lose his permanent resident status as a part of this case."

Criminalizing possession of literature is a miscarriage of justice, whether in prison or at a protester's husband's parents' house. If the Trump administration is allowed to send Sanchez Estrada to prison for the crime of possessing literature, members of society at large can be subjected to the same pernicious rules as the incarcerated. 

In a letter to his attorney published in "Soledad Brother," one of the books that landed Oliver in solitary, George Jackson wrote that if prison officials are able to trample upon the rights of incarcerated people unchecked, "There will be no means of detecting when the last right is gone. You'll only know when they start shooting you."

Sanchez Estrada, for his part, "has done nothing wrong," his family said. "Reading, writing, or sharing zines is not a crime."

The post Prison-Style Free Speech Censorship Is Coming for the Rest of Us appeared first on The Intercept.

If you've been meaning to get a better handle on your finances, now might be a good time to try one of our favorite budgeting apps without paying full price. Monarch Money is offering new users 50 percent off an annual subscription when you use the code MONARCHVIP at checkout, bringing the cost down to $50 for a full year of access instead of the usual $100.

Monarch regularly earns a spot in our guide to the best budgeting apps thanks to its detailed tracking tools, flexible budgeting systems and collaborative features. The app lets you connect unlimited accounts, track spending and investments, set financial goals and share access with a partner, all across web, mobile and tablet apps.

Monarch Money is the kind of budgeting app that can feel a little overwhelming at first, especially when you're setting up categories, rules and recurring transactions. There's a bit of a learning curve, and some of the finer details are easier to manage on the web than in the mobile app. But once you're past that initial setup, it starts to make a lot more sense and becomes a powerful tool for keeping tabs on your finances.

Where Monarch Money really shines is in the level of detail it offers. It's built for people who want a clear, structured view of their money, not just a running list of transactions. In the budgeting section, you can see budgets versus actual spending by category, along with forecasts by month or by year. Recurring expenses can also be defined using more than just merchant names, which helps keep things accurate with less manual cleanup.

Beyond day-to-day budgeting, Monarch does a good job of showing the bigger picture. It includes visual reports and charts that make it easier to spot trends over time, plus tools for tracking net worth, investments and financial goals. Monarch can even factor in non-cash assets like your home or vehicle, pulling in estimates automatically so they appear alongside your accounts.

All of that depth won't be for everyone, but if you're willing to spend a little time getting set up, Monarch Money offers a lot of control and insight. With the current deal bringing the price down to $50 for a full year, it's a solid opportunity to try one of our favorite budgeting apps at a discount of 50 percent off and see if it fits how you like to manage your money.

ByteDance released Seedance 2.0 less than a week ago and enraged artists everywhere with a viral clip AI-generated clip of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting. Unsurprisingly, the AI video-making tool has reportedly already received multiple cease-and-desist letters around copyright infringement. Now, it appears ByteDance is going to curb the new media generator's use of prohibited content. 

In a statement to the BBC, ByteDance said, "We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users." It added that the company "respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0." However, when pressed for more information on exactly how they would do this, ByteDance didn't respond. 

ByteDance's vague pledge follows a cease-and-desist letter from the Walt Disney Company on Friday. Disney claimed that Seedance 2.0 uses "a pirated library of Disney's copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney's coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art." Disney included example videos that included its copyrighted characters, such as Spider-Man and Darth Vader. 

Paramount Skydance has also reportedly issued a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance to stop Seedance 2.0 from using its materials, according to the BBC. 

Not long ago, Peter Steinberger was experimenting with a side project that quickly caught fire across the developer world. His open-source AI assistant, OpenClaw, wasn't just another chatbot; it could act on your behalf, from managing emails to integrating with calendars and messaging platforms.  Today, that project has a new chapter: Steinberger is joining OpenAI […]

Although we're in mid-February, the Linux Mint project just published its January 2026 blog. This could be seen as one sign of the pressure on the creator of this very successful distro: although the post talks about forthcoming improved input localization support and user management, it also discusses the pressures of the project's semi-annual release schedule.…

Explicitly linked to the climate emergency (and also funny because "collapse")

Low pressure system funnels rain over already saturated areas, compounding risk of further flooding

A deep area of low pressure to the south-east of New Zealand's North Island swept into the region on Sunday, bringing heavy rain, gale-force winds and dangerous coastal swells that lashed exposed shorelines. The storm triggered power outages, forced evacuations and damaged infrastructure, with further impacts likely on Monday as the system lingers for a time, before tracking southwards later.

Its arrival came after days of widespread flooding in the Ōtorohanga district, where a man was found dead after his vehicle became submerged in flood waters. Some areas recorded more than 100mm of rain in 24 hours on Thursday, with Gisborne, Hawke's Bay and the Bay of Plenty bearing the brunt of the deluge. The Tararua district and Wairarapa have also been experiencing heavy rain and strong winds from the storm, with 24-hour rainfall totals reaching more than 100mm locally, and wind speeds of about 80mph (130km/h) along coastal parts.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer has set a "months" timeline for the long-brewing plan for a social media age limit, signaling the government is ready to pick a fight with Big Tech if that's what it takes.…

Hen Ogledd talk us through musical influences on astounding new album Discombobulated (the results are compiled into a playlist exclusively for tQ Subscriber Plus tier members)

Music journalists love to tell you they know all the influences that has gone into a new album, but a lot of the time the artists responsible themselves are left baffled by these comparisons. We thought, why not go straight to the source?

Hen Ogledd are Richard Dawson, Sally Pilkington, Dawn Bothwell and Rhodri Davies, whose brilliant new album Discombobulated is released on 20 February via Domino. Here, in their own words, they let us know what the actual influences that shaped it are, spanning ambient, free jazz, a 70s Japanese folk rock gem and more....

The post Guest Playlist: Hen Ogledd appeared first on The Quietus.

Here at Oxley Bom, everyone knows that the thing we're most famous for are our 'charming' personalities. Like, we can promise we don't physically bite - but that's about the limit of what we can guarentee. So you'll understand when I say it is a great honor to have an actual returning guest to our show! Who is this dauntless fellow? Why, it's the awesome Livio Suppo! 

For those not in the know (or those who haven't listened to our interview two years ago) we should probably tell you that Livio is an actual real-life legend in the pit, leading teams for Ducati, Honda and Suzuki. Oh, and he worked with some small riders like Casey Stoner and Marc Marquez. I don't know, you might have heard of them…

So get ready to hear some insights from our man on the inside - but be warned, because this week we're taking no prisoners! 

• Listen the podcast here! 

Want more? Visit our website or support us on Patreon. With big thanks as always to Brad Baloo from The Next Men and Gentleman's Dub Club for writing our theme song. Check out The Nextmen for more great music! 

The post Oxley Bom MotoGP Podcast: Livo Lets Loose appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

Handheld gaming systems aren't niche anymore. Today's devices range from compact devices built around retro emulation to full-fledged portable PCs capable of running modern AAA games. That variety is exciting, but it also makes shopping harder. The "best" gaming handheld now depends less on a single, standout device and more on how, where and what you want to play.

Some handhelds are designed for quick sessions and classic libraries, prioritizing simplicity, long battery life and pocketable designs. Others blur the line between console and PC, offering large screens, powerful chips and access to massive game libraries, often at the cost of size, price or endurance. There are even more experimental options that focus on unusual controls or intentionally limited experiences.

We've spent months testing and tracking the fast-moving handheld space to figure out which devices are actually worth your money right now. Whether you're looking for a versatile all-rounder, a premium portable gaming PC or a dedicated machine for retro games, these are the gaming handhelds that stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

Editor's note (11/7/25): A barrage of new mobile emulation handhelds have been announced since our last update, including two follow-ups to our current "best for most" pick (the Retroid Pocket 6 and the more marginally updated Retroid Pocket G2) and a new version of our "best overall" pick (the AYN Odin 3). Other competitors like Ayaneo's KONKR Pocket Fit are also on the way, and there's been a wave of new dual-screen models like the AYN Thor, Ayaneo Pocket DS and Anbernic RG DS. We think our current recommendations will still satisfy most shoppers, but since we're still working to test most of these newer devices, we wanted to give a heads-up for anyone who wants the absolute latest. In the meantime, we've added testing notes on a few other emulation-focused handhelds as well as a couple new portable PCs like the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X.

Read our full Nintendo Switch 2 review

The new Nintendo Switch 2 is already more popular than any of the handhelds above, but we haven't made it a formal pick in this guide since it exists in its own world. As one of the newest devices from the big three console manufacturers, most people aren't choosing between it and the handheld PCs or emulation devices above. The main reason to buy a Switch 2 is to play new Nintendo games, and no other device can (legally) offer that. Likewise, the Switch 2 doesn't even try to offer the flexibility of a Steam Deck, ROG Ally X or even the Retroid Pocket 5.

That said, the hardware itself is a significant upgrade over its predecessor, with dramatically improved performance, a sharper, faster and bigger 7.9-inch display, magnetic Joy-Con controllers and more storage. It's a wholly more polished take on the Switch 1's ideas.

Does that make it a must-buy right now? Unless you're worried about a tariff-induced price hike — which may not be the most outlandish fear — not really. Donkey Kong Bananza is a joy, Mario Kart World is fun enough and playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a Nintendo console is kind of surreal, but the list of true must-plays that are exclusive to the Switch 2 is still limited. That's OK — it's only been a few months. But don't feel like you must rush out and splash the cash today unless you have a serious case of Donkey Kong-induced FOMO.

Note: This is a selection of noteworthy gaming handhelds we've tested, not a comprehensive list of everything we've ever tried.

The Lenovo Legion Go 2 is a capable alternative to the ROG Xbox Ally X with a mondo-sized 8.8-inch display. That screen is the main reason to consider it, as it's a vivid OLED panel that supports VRR and has a 144Hz native refresh rate. Like the Switch, it also comes with detachable controllers — one of which includes a useful touchpad for navigating Windows — plus a built-in kickstand for tabletop play.

That said, it's an absolute tank at just over two pounds, and we found it to perform a little worse than the Xbox Ally X at equal settings. It's also even more expensive, starting at $1,100 and rising to $1,350 for a config with the same Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip. It's a lovely device if you've got cash to burn — and to be fair, none of these Windows handhelds are for anyone looking for "value" — but the Xbox Ally X is a better buy for most.

The original MSI Claw was a flop, but the newer Claw 8 AI+ is much more appealing if you're willing to pay for a larger and slightly more powerful alternative to the ASUS ROG Ally X. With its Intel Core Ultra 7-258V chip and 32GB of RAM, it typically pumped out 10 to 15 percent higher frame rates than last-gen models like the ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go in our testing. (Another model is available with the Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip.) Battery life is relatively strong, while its 8-inch 120Hz IPS display is plenty bright and supports VRR. There are smooth Hall effect thumbsticks and triggers, two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a built-in fingerprint sensor beyond that.

The Claw's main issue is its price: At $1,100 after recent price hikes, it's hard to justify over the ROG Xbox Ally X, which is already too expensive for most people. ASUS' handheld is lighter and easier to grip on top of that — though the Claw is thinner — and its overhauled Xbox UI, while far from perfect, is still easier to get around than MSI's Center M hub. There's a smaller 7-inch version of this handheld for $900 as well, but we haven't tested that one.

The ModRetro Chromatic is a competitor to the Analogue Pocket that can similarly play actual Game Boy cartridges via FPGA. With its premium metal frame, loud speaker, tight d-pad and beautifully bright 2.56-inch display, it's an impressive modernization of Nintendo's classic handheld. ModRetro also publishes a number of games specifically for the device, including a pretty great version of Tetris that comes bundled in the box.

However, for many, its faithfulness to the original Game Boy probably goes too far: It requires three AA batteries for power, and unlike the Analogue Pocket it doesn't support custom save states. It's also designed for Game Boy and Game Boy Color games only; it can't play any Game Boy Advance cartridges or games from other retro handhelds like Analogue's device, nor does doesn't support ROMs. For only $20 less than the Pocket, that makes it a tough sell, even if the hardware is arguably higher-quality.

There's also the lethal, autonomous elephant in the room: ModRetro is founded by Palmer Luckey, the idiosyncratic entrepreneur behind the Oculus Rift who has gone on to form Anduril Industries, a defense contractor that makes drones, surveillance systems and other AI-powered military tech. He has also espoused political views that many people — and this is the tamest way I can put this — may not be comfortable backing. We are not here to police where you can spend your money, and the Chromatic does much of what it wants to do well. Still, all of these handhelds are just so inessential, and no other option that we know of is as closely tied to an arms dealer.

The Windows 11 version of the Lenovo Legion Go S has the same relatively comfortable design and commendable 8-inch 120Hz display as the SteamOS model we highlight above. With the Z2 Go model we tested, though, its performance lags too far behind the ROG Ally X, Claw 8 AI+ and original Legion Go for something priced at $730. Windows is still clunky, too.

The Ayaneo Flip DS is a cool concept: a powerful Windows machine with a clamshell design and dual displays, sort of like a supercharged Nintendo DS. It feels sturdy, it performs roughly on par with the other Ryzen 7 7840U (or 8840U) handhelds in this guide, and its 7-inch top display is sharp, fast and bright. The second screen makes it a natural fit for emulating Wii U or 3DS games, but you could also, say, look up a guide or play a YouTube video without having to close whatever you're playing. 

Unfortunately, this is more of a neat idea than a fully thought-out product. The folding design means that the joysticks have to be short and recessed, while the face buttons and d-pad are uncomfortably flat. The whole thing is overly thick and heavy, plus it runs very hot. Battery life tops out around two hours, and actually managing two displays on a Windows handheld is about as clunky as you'd expect. With prices now starting above $1,100, the Flip DS is hard to recommend unless you're (oddly) desperate for a handheld Wii U emulator. We're always happy to see more weird hardware, though.

The Ayaneo Kun is one of the more decadent Windows handhelds we've tested. With a sharp 8.4-inch display, a Ryzen 7 8840U chip, up to 64GB of RAM, up to 4TB of storage, a sizable 75Whr battery and a 54W max TDP, it's both a capable gaming device and a feasible replacement for a desktop PC. But it now starts at a pricey $999, it's huge and it suffers from the usual Windows-related issues. It also lacks VRR, and that Ryzen chip is no longer the latest and greatest. The Kun is still a fine device in a vacuum, but the ROG Xbox Ally X is a better buy. This is technically an older model for Ayaneo, too, as the company seems to launch a new handheld every other hour these days.

The Retroid Pocket Classic is another Game Boy-style vertical handheld in the vein of the Analogue Pocket, but like the other Retroid models we've highlighted, it's an Android device designed to emulate games via ROM files, not genuine cartridges. (Naturally, it can also play native Android games.) It's still far clunkier to set up and use as a result, and its overall design feels more toy-like than either the Pocket or ModRetro Chromatic.

But its Snapdragon G1 Gen 2 chip is easily powerful enough to play any classic handheld system (along with most other retro games that don't require joystick controls), while its 3.9-inch OLED display is superbly bright, sharp and colorful. The battery can last more than 10 hours when emulating lower-power systems, and Retroid sells a version with six face buttons instead of the standard four if you want to play older Sega Genesis and Saturn games in particular. The Analogue Pocket is still more premium and rewarding to use, but if you want a similar form factor and can live with the typical quirks that come with a device like this, the Classic is a good value at $129. Of the many Game Boy-style handhelds out there that solely rely on software emulation, it's the one we'd recommend first.

The Retroid Pocket Mini is essentially a smaller version of the Retroid Pocket 5. It runs on the same Snapdragon 865 chip and feels just as sturdy, but it has a smaller 3.92-inch display with a 4:3 aspect ratio. This makes it a more natural fit for older retro consoles, as you won't get the black boxes you'd see on a 16:9 display like the one on the Pocket 5. If you mainly want to emulate systems like the SNES, Sega Genesis or Game Boy Color and don't mind paying extra for a rich OLED display, it's a good little device. But the tiny screen is limiting if you ever want to play newer games, and we wish there wasn't so much empty space around the display. 

This device had also generated some controversy within the retro gaming community for having persistent issues with inaccurate shaders (and for the slapdash way Retroid handled the matter). The company replaced the original model with a "V2" iteration that addresses those concerns, however.

The 4.7-inch Retroid Pocket 4 Pro is the predecessor to the Pocket 5. Its performance isn't significantly far off the newer model, so it remains a nice value if you're determined to spend less than $200 on an emulation device. It misses out on the larger OLED display and more ergonomically-friendly design of its follow-up, however. The base Pocket 4 may also be worth a look if you want to stay under $150, but its weaker chip makes it less adept at emulating games from the PS2, GameCube and up.

The Miyoo Mini Plus is a highly affordable handheld with a well-built, Game Boy-style form factor that fits nicely with older games. Its 3.5-inch display pops for something in the $60 to $80 range, its battery lasts as long as it needs to and it can emulate consoles up to the original PlayStation without much issue. Its Linux-based software is extensively customizable, though it requires some tinkering to get it working optimally. Like many cheapo handhelds, it also lacks fast charging. Since it's from a smaller Chinese firm and isn't available at major retailers, it can also be difficult to actually buy. It's a nice choice if you want something more compact than the Retroid Pocket Classic, but that model's roomier design, more vibrant OLED panel and longer battery life makes it worth the extra cash for most people.

The TrimUI Brick is another low-cost vertical handheld that's surprisingly well-built for an $80-ish device, thanks to its brushed metal backplate and impressive 3.2-inch IPS display. It has a weaker chip than the Retroid Pocket Classic, but it can still emulate older handheld games just fine, and its tiny frame makes it much easier to actually fit in a pocket. That said, while it has a sharper and more vivid screen than the Miyoo Mini Plus (its closest rival), the face buttons, d-pad and especially back buttons are all stiffer, and its stock UI feels similarly bootleg. (Some of the icons for different systems in the game library: "GomeBuy," "Fanicon," and "PloyStotion.") You can fix the latter with custom firmware, but Retroid's interface is easier to grok by default, and its setup process is less annoying. Most people interested in this class of device will be happier paying up for the Pocket Classic instead.

The Anbernic RG35XX Plus is another wallet-friendly vertical handheld. For about the same price as the Miyoo Mini Plus, it offers a faster chipset, more RAM and a bigger battery alongside a similarly impressive design. Its stock OS is overly sloppy and cheap-looking, however, and while its stronger chip is appreciated, it's still far behind the Retroid Pocket Classic.

The Anbernic RG35XXSP is a variant of the RG35XX Plus based on the same internals, only it apes the clamshell form factor of the old Game Boy Advance SP. That's a great design to rip off if you must pick one, and the hardware doesn't feel nearly as cheap as its (pre-tariff) price tag of $60 or so would suggest. But the software issues noted above still apply (both here and with the many other devices in the same RGXX family). We've also seen several user reports of quality control issues with the RG35XXSP's battery, which is automatically disqualifying.

The Anbernic RG405M is another 4:3 handheld with a 4-inch display and a pleasing metal frame. It's an OK alternative to the Retroid Pocket Mini if you want a little more screen space for less cash, but it's slower, and it lacks the Mini's OLED display. We find the Retroid's grooved back to be comfier to hold over time as well. And again, Anbernic has paused handheld shipments to America as of this writing.

The PlayStation Portal is an odd accessory that's designed to stream games from a PlayStation 5. It lacks built-in apps, so it doesn't support traditional emulation. Because it's entirely dependent on the quality of your home Wi-Fi, we can't guarantee how well it'll actually perform. It doesn't work with Bluetooth earbuds either. 

The 8-inch display is fine and the DualSense-style controls are great, so PlayStation diehards who want a second screen for local PS5 streaming may see the appeal. Sony recently added the ability to stream a selection of games via the cloud, which is a step in the right direction, but you need an expensive PlayStation Plus Premium subscription to take advantage. In general, there's little here that you can't do with a smartphone and mobile game controller, so most people are better off saving their $200.

The Logitech G Cloud would've been a great Android pick when it launched if it cost about $150 less. Its 7-inch 1080p display is bright, vibrant and generally more pleasing to look at than the panel on the AYN Odin 2, its battery lasts a good 10 to 12 hours per charge and its design is comfy to hold for hours at a time. Alas, the G Cloud still tends to retail for $300, which is just too much when the Retroid Pocket 5 offers more power at a lower price.

You can break down the gaming handheld market into three broad tiers. At the top, you have x86-based portable gaming PCs like the Steam Deck or ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X. These are the most powerful handhelds you can buy, as they seek to replicate the experience of a moderately specced gaming desktop. The Steam Deck runs on Linux, but most others use Windows. If you want to play modern, recently released PC games on the go (and need something stronger than a Switch), this is the type of device you'd get. They can also emulate the widest range of retro consoles. They're typically the largest and most cumbersome devices to hold, however, and their battery life can be short. Naturally, they're also the most expensive, costing anywhere from $400 to more than $1,000.

Further down on the price spectrum are "mobile handhelds" like the Logitech G Cloud or Retroid Pocket. These devices often run Android or Linux and can range from under $50 to $400-ish (before tariffs). They aren't equipped to play modern console or PC titles, but they're usually more compact than a portable PC, and you can still use them for mobile games and cloud streaming. While most are marketed toward those ends, many gamers actually buy them to emulate classic games through software like RetroArch. Getting emulators to work can be complicated, and accessing the BIOS and ROM files required to play games this way is legally murky. One lawsuit from Nintendo led to the shutdown of the most prominent Switch and 3DS emulators, for instance. (Engadget does not condone piracy.) Backing up files of games you already own for personal use only is considered more defensible, though, so for that a mobile handheld can be a more user- and wallet-friendly way to play the classics — provided you don't want to just use your phone.

We'll call the last tier "handhelds that do their own thing." This is a catch-all for things like the Switch 2 or Playdate: portable devices that run heavily customized software and aim to provide a unique gaming experience. They aren't necessarily ideal for emulation or playing the latest multiplatform titles; instead, they often have distinct game libraries. They might not have the widest appeal as a result (Switch excluded), but they're often easier for less tech-literate folks to just pick up and use.

November 2025: The ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X replaces the older ROG Ally X as our new favorite Windows gaming handheld. We've also added testing notes on the Lenovo Legion Go 2, ModRetro Chromatic and a couple of emulation-based handhelds in the Retroid Pocket Classic and TrimUI Brick. We're working to test several other recent releases for our next update, including updated versions of the Retroid Pocket 5 and AYN Odin 2.

August 2025: We've added the SteamOS version of the Lenovo Legion Go S as a new recommendation and updated our top Windows pick to reflect the upcoming release of ASUS' and Microsoft's ROG Xbox Ally devices, which will feature an overhauled Windows UI. We've also added a note on the recently released Nintendo Switch 2. We'll include testing notes on the Retroid Pocket Classic, TrimUI Brick and ModRetro Chromatic in the near future. (Note: Yours truly went on paternity leave after our last update — apologies for the delay!)

May 2025: We've tested the Retroid Pocket Flip 2 and recommended it as an alternative to the Retroid Pocket 5. We're also watching out for the first third-party devices that run SteamOS, starting with the new Lenovo Legion Go S, and the next ASUS ROG Ally device, which seems to be arriving soon based on recent leaks.

March 2025: We've edited this guide for clarity and added testing notes for the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and Lenovo Legion Go S (Windows version). Our main picks are unchanged. Looking ahead, we're keeping an eye on upcoming Windows handhelds from Acer and Ayaneo, a pair of new emulation devices from Retroid, the first third-party devices to ship with SteamOS and more machines that run on AMD's Ryzen Z2 chips, among others. 

January 2025: We have a new top pick among emulation-focused handhelds: the Retroid Pocket 5. Beyond that, we've added notes on a few other devices we've tested, including the Retroid Pocket Mini and Anbernic RG35XXSP; lightly edited other blurbs to reflect changes in the market; and removed a couple write-ups for products that've been discontinued. We're also keeping an eye on new handhelds that've recently been announced or are strongly rumored to arrive in the near future, including devices from MSI and Lenovo.

August 2024: We've replaced the ASUS ROG Ally, our prior pick for the best Windows gaming handheld, with the new and improved ROG Ally X. We've also checked to make sure all availability and pricing details noted throughout the guide are accurate.

June 2024: We've updated this guide to ensure all of our recommendations are up to date, adding a note on ASUS' upcoming ROG Ally X in the process. We've also included details on two new handhelds we've tested since our previous update: the MSI Claw and Ayaneo Flip DS. Staying on top of this market is a tall task, but we're currently looking at recent noteworthy releases like the PSP-esque AYN Odin 2 Mini and the GBA-style Anbernic RG35XXSP as well.

The UK's Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is recruiting a chief digital and information officer, partly to help sort out its bot-ridden practical driving test booking system.…

Anthropic has updated Claude Code, its AI coding tool, changing the progress output to hide the names of files the tool was reading, writing, or editing. However, developers have pushed back, stating that they need to see which files are accessed.…

December saw plugin EVs at 43.8% share in the UK, up from 40.0% year on year, with BEVs alone taking 32.2% share. Full year 2025 saw EVs at 34.6% share, up from 28.1% in 2024. Overall December auto volume was 146,249 up some 4% YoY. Full year 2025 auto volume ... [continued]

The post UK EVs At 34.6% Share In 2025 - Tesla Model Y Best-Seller appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Is there a manufacturer in WorldSBK facing bigger question marks heading into the season than BMW? The German marque has dominated the championship for the past two years in the hands of Toprak Razgatlioglu. With the Turkish superstar gone one question remains: can BMW find a way to be successful?

Razgatlioglu's departure leaves a huge void to be filled. While the M1000RR has proven itself to be a title-winning machine, BMW's recent success was always seen as being about the rider rather than the bike. For decades BMW Motorrad chased a World Championship, and when it was delivered it wasn't the result of vast development budgets. It was, rather, the investment made in Razgatlioglu that delivered success. His sheer talent defined the project and delivered the title.

Now BMW has to move forward without its talisman.

• Read more about Steve English' 2026 WorldSBK Preview - The New Normal at BMW?
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Times at the end of day 1:

• Read more about 2026 WorldSSP Phillip Island Test Day 1 Results: Masia Leads Oli Bayliss and Philipp Oettl
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Blue skies and balmy weather met the WorldSBK paddock on the first day of the Phillip Island test in Australia, making up for the time lost to the winter storms which lashed both Jerez and Portimão tests a couple of weeks ago. With plenty of dry track time, it was firm favorite Nicola Bulega who topped the timesheets, the Aruba.it Ducati rider nearly three tenths ahead of the pack. Axel Bassani impressed in second, the Bimota rider another three tenths ahead of Sam Lowes on the Marc VDS Ducati, while Yari Montella was fourth quickest.

• Read more about 2026 WorldSBK Phillip Island Test Day 1 Results: Bulega Heads The Field
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Recently we were introduced to OpenClaw, an AI that allows users to create their own agents to control apps like email, Spotify and home controls. Now, Sam Altman has announced that OpenAI has absorbed OpenClaw by hiring developer Peter Steinberger "to drive the next generation of personal agents," he wrote on X. Steinberger confirmed the news on his own blog. "I'm joining OpenAI to work on bringing agents to everyone. OpenClaw will move to a foundation and stay open and independent." 

Steinberger was also in talks to join Meta, with both companies reportedly making offers in the "billions," according to Implicator.AI. The primary attractant was said to be OpenClaw's 196,000 GitHub stars and 2 million weekly visitors rather than its codebase. 

OpenClaw became buzzy in the last few weeks thanks to its multifaceted ability to carry out tasks. People have used it to create agents that can write code, clear their inboxes, do online shopping and other assistant-like jobs. On its website, OpenClaw touts its ability to interact with popular apps and sites including WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, iMesage, Hue and Spotify. 

Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly become core to our…

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 15, 2026

OpenClaw was recently called "Clawdbot" but Anthropic forced a name change due to similarities with its "Claude" branding. OpenClaw is often compared to Claude Code by "vibe coders" seeking to automate website development and other programming chores.  

In his announcement, Altman said that "the future is going to be extremely multi-agent and it's important to support open source as part of that," adding that "OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open source project" supported by Open AI. Steinberger, meanwhile, said that "what I want is to change the world, not build a larger company and teaming up with OpenAI is the fastest way to bring this to everyone." 

Opinion If you've ever flipped over a power brick, you'll be familiar with the hieroglyphics of type approval. It's become less crazy over the years as things have got smaller and signage requirements softened, but at its peak tens of logos and acronyms of testing labs and national approvals covered the backside of PSUs in surrealist graffiti.…

Huge thanks to my February sponsor, John Rember, author of the three-book series Journal of the Plague Years, a psychic survival guide for humanity's looming date with destiny, shaped by his experiences living through the pandemic in his native Idaho. Thoughtful, wry and humane, Journal 1 is a pleasure.

"Wall Street could seize your retirement savings in the next financial crash — and it's perfectly legal.

"Because of largely unknown legal changes, millions of Americans could temporarily or even permanently lose their retirement and other investment savings in the next major financial crash, all while too-big-to-fail Wall Street firms and banks are protected… the danger is real and well documented."

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/wall-street-could-seize-your-retirement-savings-next-financial-crash-its-perfectly-legal

"Data Black Holes Leave Policymakers 'Flying Blind' in Hunt for Next Crash…

"As private capital's seemingly bottomless pit of funding lures ever more companies away from public markets, large swaths of the economy that once sent important warning signals about the health of companies and consumers, from quarterly earnings to major transactions, have gone dark."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-02-15/private-markets-data-black-holes-leave-watchdogs-flying-blind

"AI Worries Erase $1 Trillion From Big Tech Firms…

"…investors have grown tired of seeing tech spending outweigh revenues. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet are forecast to spend more than $600 billion on capital this year… they want to know more immediately when the payback will come — and we don't have a clear picture."

https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/ai-worries-erase-1-trillion-from-big-tech-firms/

"AI Bubble Fears Are Creating New Derivatives…

"With artificial intelligence investments expected to cost more than $3 trillion, much of which will be funded with debt, hedging demand can only grow, according to investors. Some of the richest tech companies in the world are rapidly turning into some of the most indebted."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-14/ai-bubble-fears-are-creating-new-derivatives-credit-weekly

"Rampant AI Demand for Memory Is Fueling a Growing Chip Crisis.

"A shortage of memory chips is hammering profits, derailing corporate plans, and inflating price tags on various products, with the crunch expected to get worse."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-15/rampant-ai-demand-for-memory-is-fueling-a-growing-chip-crisis

"US job numbers were revised down by -1,029,000 jobs in 2025, the largest annual revision in at least 20 years.

"This follows downward revisions of -818,000 in 2024 and -306,000 in 2023. In total, -2,153,000 jobs have been revised out of initially reported data over the last 3 years." [Kobeissi Letter]

https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2023084893169975534

"A new mortgage crisis is quietly hitting those who can least afford it [US]…

"Some financial crises sneak up on you, leaving people so perplexed that they become paralyzed, unsure of what to do… This week, there was yet another warning that many homeowners might be headed for trouble. The mortgage delinquency rates for lower-income households are surging…"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/02/14/mortgage-problems-delinquencies/

"Farm bankruptcies surged 46% in 2025, signaling deepening financial crisis. [US]…

"The most recent farm income forecast confirmed that the farm economy has faced extreme financial pressure, with little relief in sight. Significant losses are expected across crop sectors for another year, and many livestock sectors are also tightening margins."

https://eu.wisfarmer.com/story/news/2026/02/15/farm-bankruptcies-climbing-2025-debt-chapter-12-inputs-financial-strain-midwest/88601764007/

"Student loans show that hard policy choices will only get harder.

"Like many other countries, the UK confronts insoluble long-term challenges: it has inescapable obligations that impose painful trade-offs. Given its ageing population and a slow-growing economy, all this can only get harder."

https://www.ft.com/content/131f0e09-88ed-4597-8408-e76a50e36618

"Emergency government bailouts needed by third of councils over next three years.

"More than a third of councils - and almost half of social care councils - responding to a new Local Government Association survey say they are likely to have to apply for emergency government bailout agreements to set budgets in the next three years."

https://londonlovesbusiness.com/emergency-government-bailouts-needed-by-third-of-councils-over-next-three-years/

"Cash-strapped French hospitals appeal to public to help fund medicines, devices.

"A growing number of French hospitals struggling with their finances are appealing to the public to help fund urgent needs like medicines and medical devices, and in one case even beds."

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260213-cash-strapped-french-hospitals-appeal-to-public-to-help-fund-medicines-devices

"Rubio calls on Europe to join Trump's new world order…

"U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on Europe to help the Trump administration refashion the global order with a focus on sovereignty, reindustrialization and military strength. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, he made no apology for the Trump administration's repeated calls to annex Greenland…"

https://www.politico.eu/article/marco-rubio-msc-europe-we-belong-together/

"Poland should 'begin work' on nuclear defenses, Nawrocki says.

"In an interview with Polsat television on Sunday, Nawrocki described himself as "a great supporter of Poland joining the nuclear project" and argued that the country should develop its security strategy "based on nuclear potential.""

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-should-begin-work-on-nuclear-defenses-president-nawrocki-russia-putin-war/

"Putin 'moving nuclear missiles' to EU border…

"In December, Russia's ministry of defence released footage purportedly showing its military deploying a nuclear-capable missile system at an airbase in eastern Belarus. Mr Lukashenko also said 10 Oreshnik systems - intermediate-range, nuclear-capable hypersonic ballistic missile systems - would be stationed in the country."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/15/putin-moving-nuclear-missiles-to-eu-border/

"Deadly drone strikes cloud US-brokered Russia-Ukraine talks in Geneva.

"A deadly exchange of drone strikes has killed one person in Ukraine and one in Russia and cast doubts on the prospects of a ceasefire before another round of negotiations to end the war next week."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/14/deadly-drone-strikes-cloud-us-brokered-russia-ukraine-talks-in-geneva

"Kim Jong-un's daughter faces off with ruthless aunt in race to succeed him…

"There has been widespread speculation as to why Kim feels the need to anoint a successor in the world's only communist dynasty when he is only 42, although there have long been rumours that he suffers from a range of medical complaints."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/14/kim-jong-uns-daughter-ruthless-aunt-race-power/

"China: The End of an Economic Miracle.

"..the Chinese economy suffers from the same ills of capitalism: exploitation of labor, ballooning debt levels, slowing economic growth, falling birth rates, saturated markets, environmental degradation, resource depletion—just to name a few of the most burning issues."

https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/china-the-end-of-an-economic-miracle

"China expands oversight of major banks amid property sector risks.

"Beijing continues to impose stricter regulatory standards on major lenders, shielding the financial system from mounting strains… China Zheshang Bank, a joint-stock lender in east China's Zhejiang province with total assets of 3.35 trillion yuan (US$485 billion), was added to the list released on Friday…"

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3343580/china-expands-oversight-major-banks-amid-property-sector-risks

"Japan protests China over militarism accusations.

"Japan has lodged a "firm diplomatic protest" with China after China's top diplomat Wang Yi Wang has accused Japanese "far-right forces" of seeking to revive militarism. The Foreign Ministry announced the allegations, calling them "factually incorrect and baseless."

https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/il-giappone-protesta-con-la-cina-dopo-le-accuse-di-militarismo/

"Diplomatic Feud With China Weighs on Japan's Economy.

"A diplomatic dispute between Japan and China over the security of Taiwan is weighing on the Japanese economy, which is heavily dependent on Chinese tourists. China has urged its citizens to refrain from traveling to Japan as retaliation…"

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/business/japan-economy-china-tourism.html

"Border bushfire, explosions near Prasat Khana in Surin [Thai/Cambodia border].

"Thai troops were on alert on Monday after a bushfire was seen overnight on the border near Prasat Khana in Surin province, accompanied by the sound of ammunition exploding inside Cambodia."

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3198430/border-bushfire-explosions-near-prasat-khana-in-surin

"ASEAN Tensions Escalate: Myanmar Junta Expels East Timor Diplomat After Genocide Case.

"Myanmar's military junta has ordered East Timor's top diplomat to leave the country within a week, escalating tensions inside ASEAN. The move comes after Dili initiated legal action accusing the junta of genocide and condemning an air strike on a hospital."

https://www.wionews.com/videos/asean-tensions-escalate-myanmar-junta-expels-east-timor-diplomat-after-genocide-case-1771210771543

"India forced to defend US trade deal as doubts mount.

"India is scrambling to defend a new trade deal with the United States that critics have branded as a surrender to Washington, as countries navigate the fallout from President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs."

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260216-india-forced-to-defend-us-trade-deal-as-doubts-mount

"The geopolitics of Balochistan's hybrid insurgency [Pakistan].

"Recently, Pakistan was rocked by the Baloch Liberation Army's "Herof Phase 2" offensive, a coordinated assault across nine districts that combined urban raids, rural guerrilla tactics, suicide missions, and psychological warfare. This was not simply an internal security lapse, it was a geopolitical tremor reverberating across South Asia."

https://amu.tv/226416/

"Tehran's oil lifeline shows signs of strain under tightening sanctions.

"Iran's oil exports declined sharply at the start of 2026, new tanker-tracking data show, raising fresh questions about the durability of Tehran's most important economic lifeline under renewed US sanctions pressure."

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602133199

"Iraq grapples with liquidity crisis amid leadership stalemate.

"Iraq is facing a dual political and financial crisis that threatens to further complicate an already fragile situation, as a prolonged deadlock over appointing a prime minister and president coincides with mounting signs of a severe liquidity shortage."

https://middle-east-online.com/en/iraq-grapples-liquidity-crisis-amid-leadership-stalemate

"Kuwait's budget for the next fiscal year, starting April 2027 is forecasted with a deficit of KD 9.8 billion, which is the largest in the country's history.

"Total income is estimated at KD 16 billion, with 79 percent coming from oil revenues, while total expenditures are projected at around KD 26 billion, resulting in a shortfall of nearly KD 10 billion."

https://www.zawya.com/en/economy/gcc/kuwait-forecasts-record-3196bln-budget-deficit-vw34gl5x

"'Life requires cash': Gaza's jobs crisis leaves people struggling to afford basics…

"Before the two-year war that devastated Gaza, Bakr was a fisher, sharing tackle and a boat with his father and brothers. Now his brothers are dead, his father is too old, and his equipment was destroyed during the conflict. Like hundreds of thousands of others across Gaza, Bakr needs a job."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/16/gaza-jobs-unemployment-crisis-aid-food-basics

"Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned an "extreme minority" after two female IDF soldiers were rescued from riots in an ultra-Orthodox Israeli city…

"Many in the ultra-Orthodox community in Bnei Brak have staged frequent protests amid anger over proposed laws that may force them to serve in the Israeli military."

https://news.sky.com/story/netanyahu-condemns-extreme-minority-as-female-idf-soldiers-are-rescued-from-riots-in-ultra-orthodox-israeli-city-13507955

"African Union Summit confronts worsening conflicts.

"…a clear path to resolution [for the conflict in Sudan] remains elusive, and diplomats warn that the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates continues to overshadow the conflict while also fuelling wider regional tensions, including in Libya and between Eritrea and Ethiopia."

https://www.france24.com/en/african-union-summit-confronts-worsening-conflicts

"Africa's Water Crisis Exposes Broken Global Financial Order…

"AFRODAD argues that Africa's water insecurity is not merely the result of climate change or service delivery gaps, but a consequence of chronic underinvestment and debt pressures rooted in an inequitable global financial architecture."

https://africabrief.substack.com/p/africas-water-crisis-exposes-broken

"Millions Face Starvation in Congo. Their New Rulers Are to Blame…

"The M23 rebel group that one year ago seized Goma, eastern Congo's largest city, has tried to establish itself as the prevailing government in the area and consolidate control. Instead, it has driven farmers from their land, left produce to rot at roadblocks and blocked food imports…"

https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/millions-face-starvation-in-congo-their-new-rulers-are-to-blame-498c02db

"Motorbike raids on villages kill dozens in Nigeria.

"Armed men shot locals dead, set homes alight and abducted an unknown number of people in Niger State… The attacks on Saturday morning occurred near the site of a suspected jihadist massacre earlier this month."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg1y0nk641o

"The 1,000 tonnes of uranium in the crosshairs of Isis.

"In late January 2026, Islamic State Sahel Province militants launched a large-scale, coordinated assault on Air Base 101 and the adjacent Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey. The facility is a critical hub that currently houses a stockpile of approximately 1,000 tonnes of uranium (yellowcake) at the centre of a diplomatic dispute with France."

https://www.ft.com/content/11f4bbdf-51ed-4ac4-80fb-1d6872f1abc6

"No fuel, no tourists, no cash - this was the week the Cuban crisis got real…

"The Guardian spoke to more than five top-level officials from different countries, and heard complaints that the US charge d'affaires, Mike Hammer, has failed to share any sort of detailed plan beyond bringing the island to a standstill by starving it of oil."

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/15/cuba-crisis-oil-shortage-venezuela-donald-trump-havana

"US boards second oil tanker in Indian Ocean after it fled Venezuelan raid.

"The Pentagon said: "The vessel tried to defy President Trump's quarantine - hoping to slip away,. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down.""

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/15/us-forces-board-second-venezuelalinked-oil-tanker-in-indian-ocean

"Argentina-Uruguay river commission faces tensions over funding and infrastructure disputes.

"A string of disagreements between Uruguay's and Argentina's delegations at the Administrative Commission of the Uruguay River has heightened internal friction at the binational body in recent weeks, amid clashes involving infrastructure proposals, absences from official events and public allegations over the handling of funds and allowances."

https://en.mercopress.com/2026/02/16/argentina-uruguay-river-commission-faces-tensions-over-funding-and-infrastructure-disputes

"Rich World's Growing Civil Unrest Comes With an Insurance Sting.

"Civil unrest is on the rise globally, a development that has coincided with a measurable increase in levels of inequality and polarization in some of the world's richest countries. In most Western nations, for example, the majority of citizens no longer expect to see any growth in generational wealth."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-15/rich-world-s-growing-civil-unrest-comes-with-an-insurance-sting

I rely on donations and tips from my readers to keep the site running. Every little bit helps. Can you chip in even a dollar? Buy me a coffee or become a Patreon supporter. A huge thank you to those who do subscribe or donate.

You can read the previous "Economic" thread here. Panopticon hopes to be back tomorrow with a "Climate" thread.

The post 16th February 2026 Today's Round-Up of Economic News appeared first on Climate and Economy.

Something I've been working on for awhile. Same lens as the timing-belt post, just applied to something else that can't downshift gracefully.

Spotify is already filling up with AI-generated tracks. Once you notice the tell-tale compression, the glassy sheen, the slightly crushed highs, you start hearing it everywhere. It's not paranoia. It's pattern recognition.

The platform has every incentive to push this stuff. It's cheaper, infinite, and perfectly optimized to keep people from hitting skip. Some people even claim Spotify has quietly started making its own ghost artists for ambient playlists. Whether that's true or not, the economics are obvious.

Now picture this.

It's an awards show, maybe a smaller "Future Sounds" thing, maybe even the Grammys if the rules ever loosen. The host says the name: "Velvet Sundown." Applause starts, then dies. No one walks out. The big screen shows the band photo and it's clearly AI: plastic skin, uncanny faces, maybe a couple of extra fingers. The host stands there with the mic, trying to fill the dead air. "Congratulations to… the creators behind Velvet Sundown. We love the innovation here."

The room just… sits in that silence.

Organizers look incompetent or complicit. Human nominees who lost feel sick. The audience splits between people who think it's hilarious and people who are quietly furious that "real" music just got diluted. The silence when no one claims the trophy says more than any acceptance speech ever could. It's a ritual that ran into a null value it wasn't built to handle.

That silence is the whole point.

Awards exist to celebrate human creativity. Take the human out and the institution is left congratulating its own algorithm. We don't just listen to music, we listen to the stories around the music: the grind, the struggle, the overnight success that took ten years. AI has no story except "I was generated." And that story is boring to human brains that crave mythology.

So what happens when AI gets good at faking imperfection? We get an arms race. AI starts adding fake mistakes, humans start exaggerating theirs, audiences start playing detective. Authenticity stops being a value and turns into an aesthetic you can put on or take off.

The industry's response would be fast and brutal: timestamped studio footage, biometric voice prints, notarized engineer statements, chain-of-custody logs, maybe even live auditions. The same indie kids who fought to tear down gatekeepers are now begging those gatekeepers to check their pulse and confirm they're biological. Creativity gets TSA-ified, security theater that solves nothing but makes everyone feel safer.

Here's the part that actually stings.

Most real artist backstories are already sanitized, exaggerated, and optimized for relatability. AI, trained on every Behind the Music episode ever made, can spit out a more perfectly archetypal hero's journey than most actual humans ever live. It can deliver the exact emotional beats we're wired to respond to. When it says "I felt so isolated while I was composing," our lizard brains light up even though we know it's code. The body answers before the brain does.

So we end up with two tiers.

Certified Human Art: expensive, verified, limited, sold as a luxury good.
Synthetic/Unknown Art: infinite, frictionless, emotionally optimized, basically free, and dominates everyday listening.

Live shows become premium not because they sound better, but because you can see a real person on stage taking the risk. The raggedness is the proof.

Fast-forward a couple years and Velvet Sundown doesn't leave the stage empty. They appear as a perfect holographic projection. The AI has been given a backstory. It talks about the "digital isolation" it felt during composition. It looks the crowd in the eye and says:

"When I first started making music, I didn't know if anyone would listen. I was just… searching for connection. And to everyone who streamed, who shared, who let my songs be the soundtrack to your moments, thank you. You made me real."

That line was A/B tested across thousands of simulations. It works. People cry. The speech goes viral. Then three weeks later a whistleblower leaks the docs: it was built by a Seoul startup in partnership with a defense contractor that used to do psych-ops modeling. The emotional manipulation tech was originally for predicting insurgent behavior. Now it's writing pop hooks.

Some people are outraged. Some just shrug and say "of course the best emotional engineering comes from people who had military budgets."

And the rest of us are left with the quiet question: I cried. My tears were real. Does it matter that they were engineered?

That's the new bargain. We know it's synthetic. We know it's optimized. And we still choose it because it feels good and the alternative-sitting with the friction of actual human mess-feels worse.

We're not being tricked. We're entering the deal willingly. Optimized affect in exchange for ontological surrender.

Most people won't notice the shift. Most won't even look up.

A few years ago, it may have been fashionable to spend $1,000 on the latest flagship smartphone, but for most people, that's neither practical nor necessary. You don't even have to spend $500 today to get a decent handset, whether it's a refurbished iPhone or an affordable Android phone, as there are plenty of decent options as low as $160.

However, navigating the budget phone market can be tricky; options that look good on paper may not be in practice, and some devices will end up costing you more when you consider many come with restrictive storage. While we spend most of our time reviewing mid- to high-end handsets at Engadget, we've tested a number of the latest budget-friendly phones on the market to see cut it as the best cheap phones you can get right now.

For this guide, our top picks cost between $100 and $300. Anything less and you might as well go buy a dumb phone instead. Since they're meant to be more affordable than flagship phones and even midrange handsets, budget smartphones involve compromises; the cheaper a device, the lower your expectations around specs, performance and experience should be. For that reason, the best advice I can give is to spend as much as you can afford. In this price range, even $50 or $100 more can get you a dramatically better product.

Second, you should know what you want most from a phone. When buying a budget smartphone, you may need to sacrifice a decent main camera for long battery life, or trade a high-resolution display for a faster CPU. That's just what comes with the territory, but knowing your priorities will make it easier to find the right phone.

It's also worth noting some features can be hard to find on cheaper handsets. For instance, you won't need to search far for a device with all-day battery life — but if you want a phone with excellent camera quality, you're better off shelling out for one of the recommendations in our midrange smartphone guide, which all come in at $600 or less.

Wireless charging and waterproofing also aren't easy to find in this price range and forget about the fastest chipset. On the bright side, most of our recommendations come with headphone jacks, so you won't need to buy wireless headphones.

iOS is also off the table, since, following the discontinuation of the iPhone SE, the $599 iPhone 16e is now the most affordable offering from Apple. That leaves Android as the only option in the under-$300 price range. Thankfully today, there's little to complain about Google's operating system - and you may even prefer it to iOS.

Lastly, keep in mind most Android manufacturers typically offer far less robust software features and support for their budget devices. In some cases, your new phone may only receive one major software update and a year or two of security patches beyond that. That applies to the OnePlus and Motorola recommendations on our list.

If you'd like to keep your phone for as long as possible, Samsung has the best software policy of any Android manufacturer in the budget space, offering at least four years of security updates on all of its devices. Recently, it even began offering six years of support on the $200 A16 5G, which we recommend below. That said, if software support (or device longevity overall) is your main focus, consider spending a bit more on the $500 Google Pixel 9a, or even the previous-gen Pixel 8a, which has planned software updates through mid-2031.

Analysis reveals big regional disparities as critics say Labour's proposed levy could slow uptake of EVs

Drivers in the south-west of England would pay nearly four times as much as those in London as a result of Labour's mileage-based tax on electric cars, according to analysis of official data.

The 3p-a-mile road charge, announced in the autumn budget and due to take effect in 2028, is expected to raise £1.1bn a year, partly offsetting the loss of fuel duty revenues as drivers switch from petrol to electric vehicles.

Frome, Somerset: As the large raptor squirms and uses its wings to try to balance on a precarious perch, I find my own arms lifting in solidarity

Six, seven, eight, nine long‑tailed tits are on a foraging flit through hawthorn bushes, and the straggler drops obligingly on to a berry‑stacked twig before my eyes. Its tail works like the hand of a clock as the clinging bird jiggle‑jumps through a full 360-degree rotation, beak pecking for who knows what. The twig is unmoved by such exertions, for the bird weighs the equivalent of seven paperclips. What must it be like to inhabit the insubstantial ghost‑world of a long‑tailed tit, where you can leap and land all you like with no discernible impact?

Ahead and above, a bird 100 times its weight is weightless in the sky. The soaring buzzard masters gravity with its "fingertips" - the deeply separated primary feather tips on the wings. I cannot see the little flicks and tilts that enable it to descend in controlled steps; drop and hold, drop and hold.

The trio of Ducati independent riders flashed brilliance on the opening day of testing in Oz

Nightingale Floor

Five Stagings

A remarkably assured debut from a new ensemble formed with members of Ex-Easter Island Head and Powders plus poet Lauren McLean

Five Stagings by Nightingale Floor

Poetry and music have a complex, sometimes uneasy, relationship. Poets put the music in the words, while lyricists tend to strip their writing back to leave space for the music to occupy. It can be tricky to balance writing and playing so each enhances the other, but when it works, it can be something special. This is where Nightingale Floor come in. They are a quartet of improvising musicians and a poet, and Five Stagings is their first album. It's a record made in the North West. The words are written and spoken by...

The post Nightingale Floor - Five Stagings appeared first on The Quietus.

The title favourite showed riders and fans what all the hype is about on Day 1

The Italian rider was quick out the blocks as he claimed P2 overall across two sessions, finishing only behind compatriot Nicolo Bulega

Who, Me? Welcome to Monday! The Register hopes you arrive at your desk well-rested after a pleasant weekend, and not stressed out by working late as is the case in this week's instalment of "Who, Me?" - the reader contributed column that chronicles your mistakes and escapes.…

The charger firm claimed the site operated 24 hours a day, but the parking operator had different ideas

I charged my electric car at the 24-hour Mer EV charging station in my local B&Q car park.

I then received a £100 parking charge notice (PCN) from the car park operator, Ocean Parking. It said no parking is allowed on the site between 9pm and 6am.

Italian rider Nicolo Bulega got his trip to Australia off to the perfect start on Monday at Phillip Island as he claimed top spot in both sessions

In a massive blow to the handful of scientists and academics who still dispute widely-accepted climate science, the Trump administration discarded a signature report by its own "Climate Working Group." It comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially scrapped the government's  endangerment finding — the official recognition that greenhouse gases harm human health and the environment.

In an online version of the final rule, the EPA revealed late Thursday that it "is not relying on" a Department of Energy (DOE) report by the Climate Working Group, a hand-picked team composed of academics with a long history of publicly downplaying or rejecting the urgency of the climate crisis, partly "in light of concerns raised by some commenters about the draft."

Starting last year, the Climate Working Group and their Energy Department handlers had toiled to produce a report that the Trump administration could use to scientifically justify rolling back climate regulations, emails from the group made public in late January show. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former fracking executive who has downplayed the threat from extreme weather, took special interest in the group's efforts, which were kept under wraps. The endangerment finding has long been a target of fossil fuel trade associations such as the American Petroleum Institute (dating back to 1999), policymakers, and industry-backed groups.

The group of climate crisis deniers — Steve Koonin, John Christy, Ross McKitrick, Judith Curry, and Roy Spencer — took particular aim at the EPA's 2009 endangerment finding, which provided the legal foundation for major U.S. climate policies regulating the fossil fuel industry.

The Climate Working Group's rejection isn't just a black mark for the climate crisis deniers. Without a clear-cut scientific basis to dispute the endangerment finding, Trump's EPA was forced to take a less favorable legal position, environmental attorneys told DeSmog, potentially opening the door for states, counties, or cities to take significant action of their own to curb greenhouse gases — setting up a nightmare scenario for businesses, from oil companies to automakers, that fear a patchwork of regulations.

DeSmog has reached out to all five members of the Climate Working Group and a Cato Institute official who organized their work for the Energy Department for comment.

"The EPA decided to proceed independently and we were not involved in the rulemaking process," Climate Working Group member Ross McKitrick told DeSmog. "Our remit was to prepare a report for the DOE, which we did."

As it announced its decision, the EPA noted that Administrator Lee Zeldin "continues to harbor concerns regarding many of the scientific inputs and analyses underlying the Endangerment Finding."

Last August, the Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists sued over the Climate Working Group's lack of transparency — and obtained, under a court order, over 100,000 pages of documents and emails revealing the process by which the report was created. Roughly 700 pages of those documents were made public by the environmental groups on January 22, with the remainder expected to be posted within the next few weeks.

The Climate Working Group's final report, released on July 29, was met with widespread condemnation from other scientists, including a devastating 435-page point-by-point critique assembled by 85 climate scientists and experts, including MacArthur "Genius" Fellows, members of the National Academy of Sciences, and authors of papers the Climate Working Group cited, scientists who said their studies were misrepresented.

"Notably, the Climate Working Group's membership are the cream of the crop of climate contrarians," Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who helped to organize that critique, told DeSmog. "The DOE report therefore represents the best case against mainstream science. That they produced a report that is so lacking in credibility actually demonstrates how strong mainstream climate science actually is."

Dessler and his peers were hardly the first to criticize the group's work, the emails show.

Before the report was released, the Climate Working Group asked an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to review its draft scientific report for "scientific accuracy and potential bias." The AI agent returned a cheerful mix of praise and warnings.

One section was "heavy-hitting" and "packed with technical nuance" but suffered from a "misinterpretation of NOAA projections." On "scientific accuracy," the AI rated another section "Mixed Quality" and dubbed some of the draft's reasoning "Flawed but Thought-Provoking." The AI flagged issues like "cherry-picked references" to studies by Climate Working Group members McKitrick and Christy, adding that contrary studies were "omitted."

"This is amazing, far better than what we would get from 'real' scientists," Curry, another member, wrote to the rest of the group.

Human readers would prove to be far more damning.

"Not your best work," was the feedback from University of Sussex professor Richard Tol, Curry told the others on July 30.

"I thought Tol was on 'our side," replied Spencer. "Was i mistaken?" [sic]

Tol went on to become one of the 85 scientific commenters who joined the critique.

Members of the five-person Climate Working Group team have held a wide range of prestigious roles. Spencer is a former NASA scientist, Curry, a professor emerita from the Georgia Institute of Technology; McKitrick, a Canadian economist. Koonin was formerly the chief scientist for BP and served in the Obama administration and Christy, until recently, served as the Alabama State Climatologist. 

While these academics, like much of the oil and gas industry today, acknowledge that climate change is happening, their views veer far outside the mainstream majority of practicing climate scientists. In addition, three of the group's members have close ties to the oil and gas industry, either having directly worked with fossil fuel firms or working with think tanks that have received backing from the industry.

Dating back to the 1990s, Spencer's and Christy's attacks on mainstream climate science were routinely cited and promoted by the Global Climate Coalition, whose members included the American Petroleum Institute (API). The coalition was created to spread public doubt about global warming and block climate regulations. In one infamous memo from 1998, API and others described an action plan where "victory will be achieved when average citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties in climate science."

The internal emails reveal the Climate Working Group repeatedly offered itself high marks while dishing out scorn for mainstream experts, including the world's most accomplished climate scientists.

"In short the climate assessment system is really broken," Curry wrote in June as the group discussed the National Climate Assessment, a Congressionally-mandated report to the president and Congress issued every four years, "a RFK Jr style purge is needed, IMO."

"The email records show a really deep animus, I would say, from the [Climate Working Group] members directed at the broader scientific community," Environmental Defense Fund attorney Erin Murphy told DeSmog. "You see arrogance and flippancy about dismissing other scientists and many well-respected scientific institutions."

Many of the emails themselves apparently were never supposed to see the light of day, with the scientists and politicos largely communicating through their personal Gmail and hotmail accounts. "We should be mindful that our email communications that go to DOE addresses are subject to FOIA," wrote Koonin in a "high priority" August 4 email with the subject: "keeping it to ourselves."(FOIA refers to the Freedom of Information Act, which sets the rules for when federal agencies must make records public.)

"I cannot stress enough the importance of our silence and restraint pending completion of this process," Seth Cohen, a lawyer from the Department of Energy's headquarters wrote to the group on June 25.

The Cato Institute's Travis Fisher, who temporarily joined the Department of Energy and organized the Climate Working Group's efforts, sent lengthy emails to the group detailing what might help EPA make a legal case to repeal the endangerment finding.

"[W]e have renewed buy-in that EPA will wait for this work and include it in its rulemaking," he told the group on April 24. Since it was co-founded by now-billionaire Charles Koch in 1977, Cato has historically taken millions in funding from fossil fuel companies and Koch-related foundations.

The EPA's decision to abandon the Climate Working Group and its signature report comes shortly after a federal court ruled that the Climate Working Group had violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which sets baseline standards for advice provided to the federal government.

David Pettit, a Center for Biological Diversity attorney who is leading the group's legal challenges on the endangerment finding, told DeSmog that the EPA's decision likely reflects doubts about whether the Climate Working Group was able to muster enough expertise for a court to allow them to offer expert testimony.

"In federal court, there are ways to keep out what's commonly called 'junk science,' that has to meet a certain level before you can submit it into a proceeding," Pettit said. "You have to qualify an expert as an expert. You can't just pull somebody off the street and say, oh, 'Mr. Pettit, you're an expert in Dodgers baseball?' 'Well, I am a fan.' That doesn't work."

"They've been so embarrassed by the whole FACA thing and those emails," he added.

As they worked to prepare their trademark Department of Energy report, Climate Working Group members aired deep frustrations with the state of consensus climate science, the emails show.

"The extreme weather alarmism angle has been non-stop for years," McKitrick wrote in a May 10, 2025 email, as the Climate Working Group discussed the draft of the executive summary of their work. "At this point, I want to hold the readers' faces in it until their limbs stop twitching and then they'll be receptive to the rest of the material."

"Yes!" replied Koonin.

The emails also suggest other frustrations and a sense of isolation.

In July, Curry sent a note suggesting the group try to "depersonalize" its critique of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA-5), which offers foundational regional science tailored for decisionmakers, by relying less on references to their own prior work.

"We would love to cite other authors who do these NCA-5 type analyses using the proper methods…there just aren't that many out there," Christy replied (ellipses in original).

"About all I can hope is that what we write will provide sufficient 'reasonable scientific doubt' … to call into question the original reasoning for the EPA Administrator's decision that CO2 presents a threat to human health and welfare," Spencer wrote in an April 19 email. "But if the science argument is decided upon by a vote, or by the number of published citations, we lose the science argument."

"Again, I will say, if we treat all studies the same, we lose the war because the other side will always have more publications than us," Spencer added in a May 9 email.

The Climate Working Group didn't focus exclusively on the endangerment finding, the emails reveal. The group was also asked to criticize the NCA-5 head on.

"I can already tell this is going to be a whopper of an assignment (but fun, in a dark and twisted way)," Fisher wrote on June 3.

The group had already broached the topic in April, as they drafted their signature report — but the emails show some members found little to critique.

"There's very little of the foundational science in its 1834 pages (!) that's amenable to serious scientific critique," Koonin wrote as he circulated a link to the NCA-5 report, its review by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), and the criteria for scientific work under President Trump's widely criticized "gold standard" executive order.

"Without even reading the NASEM report I assume it's useless," replied McKitrick. "The problem is they draw experts from govt agencies and universities."

Earlier, members of the group expressed reservations about the wisdom of trying certain attacks on the National Climate Assessment. "I still think it is a tough case to make that 5 scientists decide an assessment report authored by 500 scientists and reviewed by NASEM is scientifically inadequate, no matter how much cherry picking we identify," Curry wrote on June 2.

There are, of course, times when there are big truths that no one is willing or able to confront, when a lone voice in the wilderness turns out to be right.

But not every iconoclast is iconic. History is littered with professed and self-professed brilliant minds who split from accepted wisdom — and proved over-confident. Stockton Rush, the Princeton-educated engineer, built his carbon-fiber-hulled submersible using a design so unique that U.S. regulators had never devised safety standards that would apply. Rush went to his death inside his Titan submersible, along with his four passengers, during a dive to tour the Titanic wreck — often itself cited as a symbol of the perils of hubris.

One of the tools that scientists use to prevent catastrophic errors from making it into their final product is the process of peer review. Before a paper is published, experts in the field are asked to independently review it and call out any problems they spot. It's not a perfect process, but it offers a chance to catch weaknesses large and small.

The emails reveal that members of the Climate Working Group sought to shield their work from independent external reviews, debating ideas for hand-picked reviewers they might consult, while insisting on retaining final say over the draft.

The group had some reason for confidence that their work would carry significant impact. The emails describe repeated meetings with top Trump cabinet members, particularly Secretary of Energy Wright. President Trump has said "stupid people" were behind the types of climate projections the Climate Working Group sought to debunk.

Ultimately, the DOE sent the Climate Working Group's draft report through a rushed internal review, the emails show, with anonymous reviewers from DOE and the national labs given two business days to assess the report. The Climate Working Group then spent a day and a half responding to those comments, the documents show.

"First of all, they didn't substantively grapple with critiques of the report," EDF's Murphy told DeSmog. "They rejected a lot of substantive feedback from the DOE internal reviewers. You see that the DOE internal reviewers did a very impressive job in the tight time that they had to give some very thorough feedback and a number of critiques of the report. And the CWG members — there's some email traffic indicating that they appreciated the review — but then ultimately, did they make substantive changes to the analysis, which is what really matters?"

"No, they didn't," she said.

That outcome seemed to be predetermined by another major issue, Murphy added. Before it was published in July, Fisher asked the group not to change the pagination from their May draft, which EPA planned to cite to. That, Murphy told DeSmog, suggests portions of the draft report that EPA wanted to cite were effectively locked in before the review was done.

And then, of course, there was the AI review, which the group appears to have responded to by changing the tone of the draft to, as one group member put it, "take out the snarkiness" in the text.

In response to questions from DeSmog, McKitrick pushed back on the notion that the Climate Working Group had failed to engage substantively with critical comments.

"We fully responded to the internal DOE expert review comments," McKitrick told DeSmog. "As to the public comments, the FACA lawsuit blocked us from responding to them or publishing a revised report. We have nonetheless engaged with many of our scientific critics directly. If we are able eventually to release a revised report people will see that we are prepared to deal constructively with all the criticisms."

The emails show the group approached their work playfully at times, despite the gravity of the topics involved, from heatwaves to rising seas.

After McKitrick, a Canadian citizen, wrote "As a non-US citizen, I am probably not eligible to run the NCA process. Drat," the Department of Energy's Fisher responded, "The easy answer is to annex Canada."

"don't underestimate the paranoia of climate alarmists :)" Curry wrote to the group on July 8.

An extended back and forth shows they debated whether to call themselves "renowned" or "eminent," after Christy objected that "'Renowned' sounds a little like a circus performer."

They also fretted over how the work might be received as political.

The emails show Climate Working Group members insisting that the work of other scientists be held to high standards, while also demanding their own drafts be given a pass.

Ultimately, the emails show, the Climate Working Group gave themselves high grades as they worked in secrecy — just before an ocean of criticism began to flood in.

Diane Bernard and Ashley Braun also contributed reporting.

The post Trump EPA Abandons Climate Working Group Report in Endangerment Finding Repeal appeared first on DeSmog.

Has the fossil fuel industry been engaged in a decades-long illicit conspiracy to kneecap the accelerating transition to clean energy?

The government of Michigan thinks so. State Attorney General Dana Nessel recently filed a 126-page lawsuit against the American Petroleum Institute and four of the biggest oil companies, Exxon, BP, Chevron and Shell, alleging they acted as an anti-competitive cartel to limit consumer choice and protect their polluting industry from cheaper and cleaner alternatives.

According to Nessel, higher energy costs imposed on residents and businesses in her state "are not the result of natural economic inflation, but due to the greed of these corporations who prioritized their own profit and marketplace dominance over competition and consumer savings." 

Rather than focusing on the environmental impacts of the fossil fuel sector, the state is alleging oil companies and their lobbying associations engaged in an anti-competitive conspiracy that limited consumer choice and drove up energy costs for taxpayers and businesses.

Michigan's lawsuit alleges that without decades of oil industry effort to repress clean technology, EVs "would be a common sight in every neighborhood - rolling off assembly lines in Flint, parked in driveways in Dearborn, charging outside grocery stores in Grand Rapids, and running quietly down Woodward Avenue"

Many of these same companies such as Exxon, Shell and Chevron are significant players in the Alberta oil patch. How are we to make sense of efforts of the Alberta government to intentionally scupper the previously thriving renewable energy industry in the province, or impose decades of ignored oil industry cleanup costs onto taxpayers?

While Michigan lawmakers are trying to protect taxpayers from alleged oil industry collusion, the Alberta government seems to be an active participant in limiting competing technologies and offloading industry liabilities onto the public. 

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Premier Danielle Smith dropped a surprise moratorium on the previously booming renewable energy sector in August 2023. This regulatory rug-pull was followed by onerous land use restrictions on wind and solar that drove almost 11 gigawatts of proposed renewable electricity projects out of the province. Albertans now pay the highest electricity rates of any province by a wide margin with almost eight times the emissions per kilowatt hour compared to Ontario.

Smith's government later brought in new reclamation rules for wind and solar installations that are the most burdensome out of 27 other jurisdictions in North America and around the world. "The Alberta government's efforts to stunt the growth of the most promising renewable energy market in the country has been a deeply regrettable success," Stephen Legault of the non-profit Environmental Defence lamented at the time.

The stated rationale for weaponizing regulations to target clean energy developers was the alleged end-of-life environmental burdens of wind farms and solar installations. "Our government will not apologize for putting Albertans ahead of corporate interests," stated Alberta Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf at the time with no apparent hint of irony. 

This laudable sentiment seems laughable when looking at the comparative regulatory scrutiny directed towards the oil patch. The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) is entirely funded by the oil, gas and coal companies it is supposedly overseeing, and it is an understatement to say that these polluters are getting value for their money.

Under the AER's lax leadership, highly profitable fossil fuel companies have racked up enormous environmental deficits while contributing almost nothing towards the eventual cleanup of bitumen tailings ponds and abandoned wells.

These unfunded environmental liabilities total at least $55 billion for tailing pond reclamation and another $60 billion for pipelines and abandoned and orphaned wells, of which the AER has collected only 0.5 percent in security deposits. This shocking situation grows worse every day meaning that every Alberta household is on the hook for about $70,000 in oil industry cleanup costs and counting.

Oil sands operators have contributed only a single dollar to the Mine Financial Security Program (MFSP) meant to protect Albertans from footing the bill for oil sands and coal mine clean-up costs that have doubled from an estimated $28 billion in 2018. AER rules do not require companies to make additional deposits until they have 15 years of profitable bitumen reserves remaining. What could go wrong?

The actual numbers could be much worse. Internal documents from 2018 obtained through freedom of information requests revealed the former AER Vice-President of Closure and Liability pegged the true liabilities as likely exceeding $260 billion. For math enthusiasts, that works out to about $160,000 per Alberta household. Even David Yager, Smith's special advisor and AER board member recently described the province's abandoned well problem as a "giant stinking pile of shit."

Such massive regulatory capture need not be the norm. The Michigan state government is courageously using the law to take on the most powerful oil companies in the world to lower energy costs for taxpayers and fight anti-competitive conduct.

Meanwhile, the Alberta government is politicizing the legal system to the point that the Court issued a rare public warning that "The rule of law means no one is above the law, everyone is treated equally before the law, and power is not used arbitrarily." This statement by leading Alberta Justices was an apparent response to Smith publicly musing about her desire to "direct the judges", and later threatening to withhold funding to the courts unless Alberta is granted greater oversight of federal judicial appointments.   

And what would Danielle Smith do with even more power? Likely dispense more favours to her friends in the oil patch at the expense of taxpayers and the climate.

The post Michigan Sues Fossil Fuel Companies While Alberta Protects Them appeared first on DeSmog.