Avi Asher-Schapiro

President Joe Biden's administration is advancing a first-of-its-kind proposal to safeguard indoor and outdoor workers from the perils of extreme heat as the United States swelters under record-breaking temperatures this summer.

But it will still likely take years to enact a federal rule that could be undone with the stroke of a pen should Donald Trump win the White House – or by a U.S. Supreme Court that just dealt a major blow to the federal government's regulatory authorities.

Maru Mora-Villalpando had been living in the United States for 21 years when a letter arrived at her door with a deportation notice.

It was 11 months into Donald Trump's presidency, and Mora-Villalpando thought she had taken all the necessary steps to keep her address hidden from authorities.

After a particularly gruelling day delivering packages in 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) outside of Philadelphia, Amazon delivery driver Randy woke up feeling off, checked the weather, and decided he didn't feel safe going into work.

Worried that his boss might punish him by taking away future shifts, Randy, who asked to use only his first name for fear of retaliation, lied when he called in sick and said he was seriously ill.

After a particularly gruelling shift lifting heavy boxes in an Amazon warehouse in New York State, Keith Williams' hands and wrist stopped working - when he woke up the next day, he could barely grasp a milk jug.

Williams blames the injury in February last year on the breakneck pace of work at the Amazon facility, which he said the company enforced by precisely measuring his productivity and pushing him to work faster. 

With bitcoin prices breaking new records in recent months, fights over the cryptocurrency's energy usage and environmental impact are escalating across the United States. 

President Joe Biden's administration is demanding the industry disclose how much electricity mining operations use, while cryptocurrency groups are pushing for legislation to shield mines from local regulations that limit their expansion. 

"In the good old days," mused DreamWorks co-founder and former Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg late last year, "it took 500 artists five years to make a world-class animated movie. I don't think it will take 10% of that three years out from now."

With Hollywood already replacing staff with generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, people working the industry want rules to govern the new technology and to make sure it does not use images they have created without compensating them.

U.S. neurologist Sean Pauzauskie used to rely exclusively on expensive and cumbersome hospital kit to capture his patients' brainwaves and analyse problems in their electronic pathways.

But in recent years, the Colorado doctor turned to consumer headbands, commonly sold online to monitor sleep patterns or boost brain function, to capture the brain activity of some patients suffering seizures.

Last spring, after six years working as a nurse in care homes around Ohio and making between 500 to 600 dollars a week, Sadie decided she needed to try something new.

On the advice of a colleague, she downloaded Clipboard Health, an Uber-style app that allowed her to book short-term stints in elderly care facilities, for as much as twice the pay of some of the previous jobs she worked.

It should have been the smoothest of rides: rolling out robotaxis in San Francisco, America's tech capital. But there were bumps in the road and today driverless cars face mounting criticism across California even as firms plan for expansion.

In August, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to allow General Motors' Cruise and Waymo, owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, to run round-the-clock robotaxis in San Francisco for the first time.

If the internet was once Gaza's window to the world, that window has now slammed shut and the strip's nascent tech industry has gone from incubator to grave in six weeks of all-out war.

Some of Gaza's brightest brains have died in the punishing Israeli bombardment, much of the strip's fledgling digital infrastructure has been destroyed, and hope for a better future obliterated. Many now fear that local, tech-savvy talent will also rush for the door.