Carey L. Biron

Names translated as months of the year, incorrect time frames and mixed-up pronouns - the everyday failings of AI-driven translation apps are causing havoc in the U.S. asylum system, critics say.

"We have countless examples of this nature," said Ariel Koren, founder of Respond Crisis Translation, a global collective that has translated more than 13,000 asylum applications, warning that errors can lead to unfounded denials.

When Florida officials in May issued a statewide ban on using cellphones in classrooms, administrators in one county felt they did not go far enough.

In a unanimous August decision, Orange County's school board – overseeing one of the largest districts in the country – barred the use of cellphones or smart watches at any time during the school day, including at lunch or between classes.

A New York City pilot program is seeking to get money quickly to families affected by flooding – and avoid the cascading financial problems that can spell economic ruin long after climate disasters have struck.

The program, the first of its kind in the United States, targets the key period right after floods when families can wait weeks or months for insurance payouts or government aid.

Efforts to address strained U.S. city budgets, battered by the pandemic and coupled with the end of related federal assistance, are sparking concern over the expansion of speed cameras and other traffic enforcement technologies.

Washington has become key grounds for debate after Mayor Muriel Bowser in March proposed a budget that warned of a nearly $400 million drop in revenue – and suggested adding hundreds of new traffic cameras to the city's streets.

Mobile home parks have been overlooked by U.S. policymakers for decades, but heavier and more frequent flooding fueled by climate change is adding urgency to efforts to protect them as a key source of affordable housing.

"We simply can't afford to lose housing units," said Sue Fillion, planning director in Brattleboro, Vermont, where floods this month submerged streets in the state capital and revived memories of a devastating storm dubbed Irene 12 years ago.

Jenn Bakowski's cancer diagnosis and back-to-back medical procedures had already turned her family's life upside down when she started receiving the bills, late notices and collections warnings that are still arriving four years later.

"I probably get 10 to 12 bills sent to me a week, even to this day. I keep going through them, and I try my best, but it's impossible," Bakowski, 53, who lives outside Fort Lauderdale in Florida, told Context by phone.

Natural gas still heats the water and cooks evening meals in housing at California State University's Monterey Bay campus - but under plans for a multimillion-dollar electrification project, the fuel could soon be a thing of the past.

The roughly $17-million project being led by one of the state's largest utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), highlights how some U.S. gas providers are adjusting their business model as part of efforts to cut planet-heating carbon emissions.

Over the past year, Karen Reside has walked across Long Beach, California, searching out the cameras, censors and other data-gathering devices that she says have proliferated on her city's streets.

The results have been startling.

Maryland's Montgomery County already has the largest fleet of electric school buses in the United States, but it also wants to use its vehicles as "batteries on wheels", sending power back to the grid to ease peak demand and help the clean energy transition.

As part of a broad green agenda, the large county just outside Washington is working to expand its fleet of 86 all-electric school buses to 1,400 within a decade and is installing rows of bright yellow chargers at school district facilities.

In a church on Chicago's West Side near where he grew up, Marques Jones Jr. is hoping to earn more money and help his family by learning how to install and maintain the solar panels he now sees everywhere he goes.

Jones is midway through an inaugural 11-week course for workers interested in joining the green transition and finding jobs in a sector the federal government has started pouring billions of dollars into.