Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

India launches test flight ahead of sending crew into space

Summary: India’s space agency has successfully carried out the first of several tests leading up to a planned 2025 mission to carry Indian astronauts into space.

Context: If successful, this mission would make India only the fourth country reach space with manned spacecraft, following the Soviet Union, United States, and China, the latter of which managed the feat in late-2003; Indian astronauts have been going to space on other countries’ craft since 1984, but never on craft built and launched by their own program, and this would be just one more space-related accolade for the Indian space program, which has been piling up successes, of late, including a recent landing near the lunar south pole.

—BBC News

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Solar giant Qcells says Dalton factory expansion is complete

Summary: A solar panel manufacturing company called Qcells has announced that an expansion to its factory in Dalton, Georgia has been completed, making this factory the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, and increasing its output to more than 5.1 gigawatts of solar panels each year, which is about 30,000 panels a day.

Context: This plant, which is owned by a Korean conglomerate, announced the expansion shortly after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which among other things aimed to spark more of this type of US-based, renewable energy production investment, and it will dramatically increase the solar power hardware output of the the US, which trails China—the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels by a huge margin—while also creating more than 500 new jobs at this existing facility, and another 2,000 at a second factory they’re building a few dozen miles further south, which will handle everything from solar ingots and wafers to cells and finished solar panel products.

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

House Republicans push unity ‘pledge’ to guarantee a speaker

Summary: In the wake of former Republican House Speaker McCarthy’s ouster by his own party, and the subsequent failure of Representatives Scalise and Jordan to secure enough votes to attain the position, House Republicans are reportedly lining up behind a sort of unity pledge meant to help them make a final determination for the role of Speaker before they bring the issue to a public vote, once more.

Context: This has, by all indications, been a fairly embarrassing several months for House Republicans, who struggled to elect McCarthy, and who since his removal by a far-right wing of the party have struggled to put someone else in charge, despite holding the majority; the theory of this unity pledge is that it’ll allow them to hold a secret-ballot vote behind the scenes, and then commit—in writing—to formally vote in favor of whomever wins that secret-ballot vote; this is meant to help avoid further embarrassment, but also to just move things forward and put someone in charge, as the House isn’t able to conduct its business without a Speaker, and that has meant Congress has been frozen at a moment in which there’s a lot happening, nationally and internationally, that requires its attention.

—Politico

The Wikimedia Foundation—the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia—only had $23,463 in annual expenses in 2004, but that figure ballooned to just shy of $146 million in 2022; the majority of those expenses are related to paying employees, and the nonprofit received nearly $160 million in cash contributions that same year from individual donations and endowments.

—Chartr

49.7 million

Approximate number of miles of transmission lines global governments and businesses will need to install or replace by 2040 in order to meet their climate and energy security goals, according to a new International Energy Agency report.

That’ll double the budget for handling such lines each year, but will allow the huge number of planned renewable energy projects to be added to the grid, replacing emitting sources of the same.

—CNBC

Trust Click

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