Associated Press

Near Southern California’s dying Salton Sea, a canopy next to a geothermal power plant covers large containers of salty water left behind after super-hot liquid is drilled from deep underground to run steam turbines. The containers connect to tubes that spit out what looks like dishwater, but it’s lithium, a critical component of rechargeable batteries and the newest hope for economic revival in the depressed region.

Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos, arrives at the federal courthouse for jury selection in her trial, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021, in San Jose, Calif. Holmes faces 12 felony counts alleging she engineered a massive fraud that duped a litany of rich investors with a blood-testing technology that she promised would be able to screen for hundreds of diseases with a finger prick.

This summer’s coronavirus resurgence has been labeled a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” by government officials from President Joe Biden on down.

More than 30 California children are stuck in Afghanistan after they traveled to the country to see their relatives weeks before the Taliban seized power and were unable to get out before U.S. forces left, according to school districts where the kids are enrolled.

A federal bankruptcy judge gave conditional approval Wednesday to a sweeping settlement that will remove the Sackler family from ownership of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and devote potentially $10 billion to fighting the opioid crisis that has killed a half-million Americans over the past two decades.