Brussels is going head-to-head with social media platforms to change addictive design.

The week of February 23-27 presents attorneys representing Delta communities with an impossible calendar. The State Water Board's Delta Conveyance Project water rights hearing has added February 23, 24, and 25 as hearing days. The Delta Stewardship Council has scheduled its appeal hearing on DWR's certification of consistency with the Delta Plan for February 26 and 27—and has required that parties appear in person.

On Monday, February 9, 2026, Administrative Hearing Officer Nicole Kuenzi denied Somach Simmons & Dunn's motion to stay the Delta Conveyance Project water rights hearing pending resolution of DWR's disqualification motion in Sacramento Superior Court. The hearing will continue as scheduled, with most of the protestants' rebuttal case likely to conclude before the March 20 court hearing on DWR's motion.

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Stephen Acquisto today granted Somach Simmons & Dunn’s motion to stay the consolidated Delta Conveyance Project CEQA cases through March 27, 2026. He set a hearing on DWR’s motion to disqualify the firm as counsel for Sacramento County and the City of Stockton for March 20, 2026. From the bench, the judge described the potential disqualification as “monumental.” He indicated that he understood how severely it would impact Somach’s clients: local governments representing approximately two million Delta-area residents who have relied on the firm’s representation in Delta Conveyance matters since 2007.

On January 23, 2026, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) filed a motion in Sacramento County Superior Court seeking to disqualify the law firm of Somach Simmons & Dunn, longtime counsel for the County of Sacramento, the City of Stockton, in three of the ten consolidated cases challenging DWR’s approvals of the Delta Conveyance Project. Somach has represented these local governments on Delta matters since 2007.

Jay Lund published a clever satire of California water rhetoric today, and he’s right that policy-based evidence-making occurs in our water debates. I worked with Jay and other Delta Independ…

Meteorologists are surprised that the weather model that did the best job forecasting hurricanes this year was a new one, introduced by Google. AI may be the beginning of a new era of forecasting.

A Chinese container ship has completed a pioneering journey through the Arctic to a UK port, state-run news agency Xinhua reported, cutting in half the usual transit time for the electric vehicles and solar panels aboard destined for Europe.

YouTube video by This Week in Science (TWIS)

The AI firm declined requests by contractors working with federal law enforcement that could see its tools being used for surveillance.