US stock market hits record highs as AI profits pile and oil prices ease

S&P 500 shot up 1.8% and the main measure of Wall Street’s health topped its prior all-time high set a few months ago

The US stock market rallied to records on Tuesday as profits kept piling up for companies and as oil prices eased.

The S&P 500 shot up 1.8%, and the main measure of Wall Street’s health topped its prior all-time high set a couple months ago. The Dow Jones industrial average added 907 points, or 1.7%, to its own record set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 2.6%.

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Thousands in US expected to protest against ICE, datacenters and voter suppression this weekend

Demonstrations planned across the US this weekend will focus on three issues likely to define the midterm elections

Thousands of Americans are expected to take to the streets this weekend in mass protests around issues likely to define the midterm elections: widespread violence from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, voter suppression and datacenter construction.

The protests – some recently planned in response to last week’s ICE shootings, others an annual event with new urgency – will take place not just in big cities and progressive towns, but also in rural and red areas.

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Datacentres are growing target of global climate-related legal cases, report finds

LSE analysis highlights litigation linked to energy sources, water consumption and air pollution

The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world, from the US and UK to Chile to Ireland, a report has found.

In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implications.

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Majority of datacenters are vulnerable to climate threats like floods and fires, study finds

Study warns AI datacenters are vulnerable to the climate hazards that their global greenhouse gas emissions bolster

Amid rising concern that the artificial intelligence boom is fueling the climate crisis, a new report has found that nearly 80% of datacenters are also exposed to extreme climate hazards, including flooding, extreme winds and wildfires.

Those impacts are leaving the infrastructure vulnerable to disrupted operations, increased time offline and inflated insurance and repair costs, the research from climate risk analytics firm First Street shows.

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