Andrew Witherspoon

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Andrew Witherspoon |Claire de Lune

Tom Thibodeau just became the fourth-winningest coach in New York Knicks history, passing Pat Riley on Saturday as his team notched their 49th win of the season. But as has often been the case with Thibodeau’s coaching milestones, the moment wasn’t met with pure celebration. Instead, familiar questions around a controversial overtone of his NBA coaching career loomed – namely, Thibs Minutes Syndrome.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Luke Barratt |Andrew Witherspoon |Aliya Uteuova

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are operating datacentres that use vast amounts of water in some of the world’s driest areas and are building many more, the non-profit investigatory organisation SourceMaterial and the Guardian have found. With Donald Trump pledging to support them, the three technology giants are planning hundreds of datacentres in the US and across the globe, with a potentially huge impact on populations already living with water scarcity.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Gabrielle Canon |Andrew Witherspoon

Communities across the US that were once considered beyond the reach of wildfires are now vulnerable to disaster. As fires increasingly spread deep into neighborhoods, researchers estimate roughly 115 million people – more than a third of the US population – live in areas that could host the next fire catastrophe. The understanding that many more Americans are at risk of losing their homes to wildfires comes as the climate crisis turns up the dial on extreme weather, drought and heat.

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Oliver Milman |Andrew Witherspoon

How researchers ‘tried to not get any attention’When Donald Trump won November’s election, a small team working on a key new US government tool charting impacts of the climate crisis scrambled into action. They hastily renamed the resource to remove the word “climate” and quietly released it without fanfare in December, before Trump’s return to the White House.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Lauren Aratani |Andrew Witherspoon

Tens of thousands of US federal employees could lose their jobs after the Trump administration moves to reduce the size of the federal workforce dramatically. With Elon Musk at the helm of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which is overseeing efforts to cull federal employment, the White House has embarked on multiple plans to cut down on virtually all areas of federal employment.