Stardust Solutions, an Israeli-American start-up developing technology to disperse reflective particles high in the atmosphere so that less sunlight reaches Earth, has raised $75m from investors and wants governments as customers.

The total includes a $60m round announced in October 2025 and led by Lowercarbon Capital, the climate technology investment firm co-founded by Chris Sacca. Other backers include Exor, the Agnelli family’s investment company and a major shareholder in Ferrari, along with Future Ventures, Future Positive, Lauder Partners, Attestor, Kindred Capital and former Facebook executive Matt Cohler.

Stardust was founded in March 2023 by Israeli physicists Yanai Yedvab, Amyad Spector and Eli Waxman. Yedvab and Spector previously worked as nuclear physicists for the Israeli government.

The company is registered in Delaware and headquartered outside Tel Aviv. It says it is not affiliated with the Israeli government.

Yedvab told Politico that investors were backing the idea that “we need a safe and responsible and controlled option for sunlight reflection.”

How the technology would work

Stardust’s approach is known as stratospheric aerosol injection. It sits within solar geoengineering, formally called solar radiation modification (SRM), which aims to reflect a small fraction of the sun’s energy back into space. Unlike carbon removal, it does not take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The idea draws on the effect of large volcanic eruptions, which can temporarily cool the Earth when sulphur compounds reach the stratosphere and form aerosols that reflect sunlight. Cooling was observed after Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, and scientists have discussed deliberately reproducing the effect for decades.

Rather than releasing sulphur dioxide, Stardust is developing proprietary reflective particles, alongside dispersal and monitoring technology, and is working towards aircraft-based systems.

The company has hired Washington lobbying firm Holland & Knight as it seeks a regulatory framework and potential US government contracts.

Stardust says it is pursuing research and development, not deployment. “Our goal is to turn SRM from a scientific concept into a safe and practical option,” the company said.

It argues that humanity may eventually need an emergency brake if cuts in emissions fail to prevent dangerous warming.

Criticism and other cooling projects

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) criticised the company’s plans when the $60m financing was announced. Mary Church, CIEL’s geoengineering campaign manager, said: “Solar geoengineering is inherently unpredictable and risks further breaking an already broken climate system.”

In CIEL’s statement on the financing, Church added: “With uneven global impacts predicted, deployment would create winners and losers, undermining the rights of billions of people and raising the central question of who gets to control the global thermostat.”

CIEL also pointed to the risk of termination shock. Because solar geoengineering does not remove carbon dioxide, a pause or halt after decades of artificially suppressed warming could see temperatures rise rapidly.

Stardust is not the only company in the field. Make Sunsets, a small US start-up, launches weather balloons carrying sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere and sells what it calls “Cooling Credits”, under the slogan “Make Earth Cool Again”.

Other research efforts have been dropped. Harvard’s proposed SCoPEx experiment would have studied how tiny quantities of particles behave in the stratosphere. After years of controversy over governance and consent, Harvard announced in 2024 that it would not proceed.

The Arctic Ice Project explored spreading reflective hollow glass microspheres over Arctic sea ice to slow melting, before ending its research amid environmental and deployment concerns.

In Australia, researchers have experimented with marine cloud brightening around the Great Barrier Reef, spraying tiny seawater droplets upwards to make clouds more reflective and protect vulnerable coral.

In the UK, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is running a £56.8m research programme to establish whether climate cooling approaches “could ever be feasible, scalable, safe, and governable”. The agency says it funds a limited number of small-scale, carefully controlled outdoor experiments where questions cannot be answered by models.

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

Surging diesel costs are squeezing America’s logging industry, with one industry leader warning that rising fuel expenses are eroding profitability for businesses that depend heavily on diesel to keep trucks and equipment running.

American Loggers Council Executive Director Scott Dane joined FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on “Varney & Co.” to discuss the pressure higher diesel costs are putting on loggers and the steps he wants the administration to take.

U.S. loggers face mounting pressure as soaring diesel costs eat into operating profits. (Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images)

“We’re in trouble. There’s no question about that. I just got a text this morning from a logger… Reaching out saying that they’re dying in Virginia. The fuel costs are killing them,” Dane said.

NATIONAL AVERAGE PRICE FOR DIESEL HITS NEW RECORD HIGH AMID IRAN CONFLICT

Dane said the industry’s dependence on diesel has made the surge especially difficult to absorb, pointing to the cost of filling a logging truck and the growing share of operating expenses now going toward fuel.

“As an example, to fill up a logging truck. You’re looking at $1,350 to fill up the tank. Fuel costs used to be 25% of operating costs. Now they’re 40, 45% of the operating costs, that’s eroded any profitability within the timber industry,” he said.

FORGET GASOLINE: THIS OVERLOOKED FUEL COULD RAISE THE PRICE OF NEARLY EVERYTHING YOU BUY

The pressure is being compounded by what Dane described as stagnant prices for loggers, limiting their ability to offset higher operating costs with additional revenue.

“On our end, prices have remained flat. We’re getting paid no more today than we were getting paid 10 years ago, roughly speaking,” Dane said.

AMERICANS FACE THE MOST EXPENSIVE LABOR DAY AT THE GAS PUMP EVER RECORDED

Dane said the American Loggers Council has raised the issue with the administration and called for steps aimed at easing diesel costs, including suspending the federal diesel fuel tax and halting diesel exports.

“We have an emergency here, and under the Emergency Powers Act, the president should suspend the export of diesel out of the United States. It makes no sense,” Dane said.

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On the other side of the US, Rachel Miller, chef and owner of Nightshade Noodle Bar in the town Lynn, Massachusetts, moved to a tip-free model five years ago when they reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Her motivation was to make it fairer for the kitchen staff.

“The people breaking their backs and minds in the kitchen – often the least visible and the least celebrated – were taking home a fraction of what the front staff made on tips for the same hours,” she says.

Miller says she found it “deeply unsettling” to see higher tips going to white male staff and lower tips to everyone else.

“Tipping lets guests, consciously or not, pay people differently based on gender, race, or sexuality and I was not willing to let that decide my team’s income.”

To pay the staff higher wages, Miller also increased prices at the French-Vietnamese restaurant. Its tasting menus now start from $102 (£75) for seven courses before 18:00, and $126 (£92) for nine courses.

“Our prices are higher than a comparable restaurant’s because they carry the full cost of paying people properly,” says Miller. “That is the trade, and I stand behind it.”

ATLANTA — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a formal health advisory Thursday warning of a sharp nationwide increase in reported human rabies exposures this summer, urging doctors to be vigilant about proper risk assessment and treatment as multiple states reported mass exposure events involving more than one person at a time.

From July through August, the CDC received 17% more rabies-related inquiries than during the same period in 2025, according to the agency’s Health Alert Network advisory, which flagged both a rise in human exposures to rabid or possibly rabid animals and errors in how post-exposure treatment was being administered by some providers.

“During the summer of 2026, reports of animal exposures and rabies post-exposure vaccinations have increased across the country,” the CDC said in its statement.

The scale of the increase was also reflected in pharmacy utilization data. According to weekly pharmacy figures as of Sept. 2, use of the two rabies vaccines licensed in the United States, Imovax and RabAvert, rose an estimated 33% compared with the same period last year, while use of the two licensed human rabies immunoglobulin products, KEDRAB and HyperRab, jumped 76% over that same comparison window. The CDC said at least eight state health departments have separately reported increases in rabies post-exposure prophylaxis use, treatment administration errors, or both, since July.

Despite the surge in demand, the agency emphasized that there is currently no shortage of either rabies vaccine or rabies immunoglobulin in the United States. Even so, the CDC stressed the importance of administering treatment correctly, given the risks tied to both inadequate care and unnecessary overtreatment.

“Proper administration of rabies vaccine and human rabies immune globulin is critical to ensuring patients receive effective protection while avoiding unnecessary treatment, costs, and strain on supplies,” the CDC said.

The agency’s advisory detailed several specific administration errors that have been reported by state health departments in recent weeks, including vaccines being given in the gluteal area rather than the recommended injection site, failure to properly infiltrate immunoglobulin directly into and around a wound, and instances in which immunoglobulin was improperly mixed with vaccine doses in the same syringe.

The CDC’s alert followed a high-profile rabies outbreak at a petting zoo in North Carolina, where baby goats tested positive for the virus less than two weeks before the advisory was issued, an incident that reportedly exposed hundreds of visitors to potential infection. Beyond that outbreak, recent local reports cited in connection with the advisory span a wide range of locations and animal species. Health officials in Suffolk, Virginia, confirmed a raccoon within city limits had tested positive for rabies, while a dog in Mire, Louisiana, also tested positive, prompting a warning from local veterinarians. Elmira, New York, has reported multiple rabid cats and skunks in recent weeks, and a rabies-infected bat was discovered earlier this year inside a shower house at Yosemite National Park.

Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system and is almost always fatal once symptoms begin to appear, but the disease is considered nearly entirely preventable if post-exposure treatment is administered promptly, before symptoms start. That treatment regimen typically consists of an immediate dose of human rabies immune globulin, an antibody medication that provides protection while the body’s own immune response develops, combined with a series of at least four rabies vaccine doses administered over several weeks. According to the CDC, the regimen is nearly 100% effective when administered correctly and promptly following a potential exposure.

The CDC also noted an important distinction in its guidance regarding who should receive the immunoglobulin component of treatment specifically.

“People who have been previously vaccinated or are receiving pre-exposure prophylaxis for rabies should not receive human rabies immune globulin,” the agency said.

According to the CDC, roughly 100,000 people receive rabies post-exposure prophylaxis in the United States each year following a potential exposure, out of an estimated 1.4 million people who seek medical evaluation annually after some form of animal contact. Given the disease’s near-total fatality rate once symptoms develop, the CDC has continued urging anyone bitten, scratched, or otherwise potentially exposed to a wild or unusually behaving animal to take the situation seriously rather than dismissing what might initially appear to be a minor scratch.

Recommended immediate steps following a potential exposure include thoroughly washing the affected wound with soap and water for a full 15 minutes, followed by contacting a health care provider or local public health department the same day to determine whether post-exposure treatment is warranted, rather than waiting to see whether symptoms develop before seeking medical attention.

The CDC’s advisory was distributed through its Health Alert Network, the agency’s primary communication channel for disseminating urgent public health information to doctors, hospital networks and state and local health officials nationwide. The alert cited research published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association examining national rabies surveillance trends in 2024, alongside earlier research published in JAMA Network Open examining rabies risk and post-exposure prophylaxis administration patterns across the United States.

With rabies-related inquiries and treatment utilization both climbing sharply compared with last year, the CDC’s advisory underscores the agency’s effort to balance two competing public health priorities heading into the fall: ensuring that anyone genuinely exposed to a rabid or potentially rabid animal receives prompt and properly administered treatment, while also working to prevent unnecessary or improperly administered doses that could strain existing rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin supplies as reported exposures continue to rise across multiple states nationwide.

The stock has now surged nearly 287% from its IPO price of Rs 429, delivering a stunning return to investors within just six trading days of listing.

The sharp rally continued after a blockbuster debut on the stock exchanges and growing investor optimism around India’s expanding data-centre and digital infrastructure opportunity. ESDS Software Solution made its market debut at Rs 757 on the NSE, a premium of around 76.5% over its issue price. The stock gained further momentum on its first day, closing at Rs 908.40, representing a gain of nearly 112% over the IPO price.

Piyush Somani, Chairman and Managing Director of ESDS Software Solutions Limited, told ET, “We believe India can realistically bring 30-40 GW of new data centre power online over the next ten years, supported by a rapidly expanding generation base, renewable capacity additions and a policy environment that views digital infrastructure as strategic.” He added that, compared with today’s installed base of roughly 1,545 MW, this represents a significant structural shift.

IPO demand was exceptionally strong

The stock’s explosive post-listing performance follows equally strong demand during its public issue. The ESDS Software Solution IPO was subscribed 136 times overall, highlighting aggressive investor interest across categories. The qualified institutional buyer (QIB) portion was subscribed more than 261 times, while the non-institutional investor and retail portions were subscribed around 193 times and 40 times, respectively.

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The IPO comprised an entirely fresh issue, with the company setting a price band of Rs 408-429 per share. Before the public offering, ESDS raised Rs 216 crore from anchor investors, allotting 50.34 lakh shares at Rs 429 apiece.
A substantial portion of the funds raised through the IPO is earmarked for strengthening the company’s digital infrastructure capabilities. Around Rs 576 crore is proposed to be invested in the purchase and installation of cloud-computing equipment and other data-centre infrastructure. The remaining proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.The investment comes at a time when demand for cloud computing, data storage, cybersecurity and digital infrastructure is accelerating, potentially creating a favourable operating environment for companies such as ESDS.

ESDS Software Solution operates across the digital infrastructure ecosystem, offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Managed Services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. The company caters to customers in India and international markets, with key clients spanning banking and financial services, government and enterprise segments.

The company’s financial performance also showed a significant improvement in FY26. Total income rose 28% year-on-year to Rs 480.65 crore in FY26, compared with Rs 376.64 crore in FY25. More notably, profitability surged. Profit after tax (PAT) more than doubled to Rs 120.82 crore, marking a 117% increase from Rs 55.61 crore in the previous financial year.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times.)

LONDON — Queen Camilla is reportedly working to strengthen her relationship with Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, as she continues supporting King Charles III through his ongoing cancer treatment, according to a source cited by Heat World.

An insider told the outlet that despite any past wariness between the two women, Camilla recognizes the practical necessity of maintaining a cordial relationship with her daughter-in-law.

“No matter how wary Camilla may be towards Kate, she genuinely can’t afford to have her as an enemy,” the source said.

The insider pointed to Charles’s close relationship with Kate as one key factor shaping Camilla’s approach, along with the broader dynamics of her relationship with Prince William.

“For one thing, Charles has a huge amount of respect and love for Kate, so bickering with her doesn’t go over well with him. But even more crucial is how William feels and she’s simply never going to get anywhere with him if she isn’t on decent terms with Kate,” the source said.

The insider went on to suggest that Camilla’s motivations extend beyond simple family harmony, tying her approach directly to concerns about her own long-term position within the royal family as Charles’s reign progresses.

“The sad reality is that she may need his help a lot sooner than she would like. Her worst possible nightmare is being booted out and having zero role in the Firm,” the source said. “She wants to strike some sort of compromise that would allow her to hold onto all her perks and privileges when the time comes and she reluctantly accepts that the only way to make that even a remote possibility is to start being nice to Kate.”

The report comes amid a broader, well-documented history connecting Charles and Kate through their shared and overlapping health struggles in recent years. Buckingham Palace first announced in February 2024 that Charles was undergoing treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer, a diagnosis that emerged following a separate procedure for a benign enlarged prostate. Just weeks later, in March 2024, Kate announced she had also been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing preventative chemotherapy, following earlier abdominal surgery. Kate completed her chemotherapy treatment in September 2024 and announced in January 2025 that she was in remission.

Author Sally Bedell Smith, who wrote “George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy,” previously told People magazine that the shared experience of cancer treatment has only deepened the existing bond between Charles and Kate.

“The King has always had a very good bond with her,” Smith said. “She’s interested in artistic things, and she appreciates art and culture, so she has an affinity with the King over that.” Smith added of their parallel health battles: “Obviously they have this in common and can only bring them closer. It is a source of reassurance and consolation for both of them.”

Charles and Kate reportedly shared a private lunch together the day before Kate publicly announced her own cancer diagnosis in March 2024, according to sources cited by People at the time, further underscoring the close personal relationship between the two.

Charles has continued his cancer treatment in the time since his initial diagnosis, with Buckingham Palace confirming in December 2025 that his treatment schedule would be reduced heading into 2026, an update widely interpreted as a positive sign regarding his ongoing recovery, even as the palace has continued describing his cancer as a managed, ongoing condition rather than one that has been fully resolved.

Kate and Charles have made several joint public appearances in the time since their respective diagnoses, including attending a Cancer Research UK reception together at St James’s Palace in June marking the charity’s 125th anniversary. During that event, Kate met with Sebastian Bowen, husband of the late cancer awareness advocate Deborah James, continuing her broader public engagement with cancer-related causes since completing her own treatment.

Camilla, for her part, has spoken publicly about the emotional difficulty of the earliest days following Charles’s diagnosis, describing a period during which she felt she was “longing to let it out but obviously I couldn’t,” reflecting the pressure she faced maintaining public composure while privately supporting her husband through a serious health diagnosis. Camilla has served as patron of Maggie’s, a cancer support charity, notably having visited one of the organization’s centers just a week before Charles’s diagnosis was first disclosed to the public, a timing coincidence that drew some attention at the time.

The relationship between Camilla and Kate has periodically been the subject of speculation and competing narratives within British royal commentary over the years, with various outlets offering differing characterizations of the dynamic between the two women, ranging from reports of tension to accounts of a more cordial, if not especially close, working relationship within the broader royal family structure.

Neither Buckingham Palace nor Kensington Palace has publicly commented on the specific claims regarding Camilla’s efforts to improve her relationship with Kate, consistent with the royal family’s general practice of declining to address speculative reporting about the personal dynamics between senior family members.

With Charles continuing his reduced treatment schedule into 2026 and Kate having marked more than a year since entering remission, the shared health experiences of the two have continued to shape public perception of their relationship, even as unconfirmed reports regarding Camilla’s broader relationship-building efforts with Kate remain sourced to unnamed insiders rather than any official statement from the palace or the individuals involved.

Frontier Communications customers began reporting internet outages early Friday morning, with outage-tracking site Downdetector logging a surge in complaints starting around 12:56 a.m. EDT, marking the second such reported disruption for the internet provider this week alone.

Downdetector’s official account flagged the surge in a post shortly after the reports began, asking affected users how the disruption was impacting them and directing people to its live outage map for updates. The hashtag “FrontierDown” began circulating on social media as users compared notes on the issue.

According to reporting from the DesignTAXI community outage tracker, the volume of user reports climbed sharply beginning around 12:49 a.m. Eastern time, with a number of Frontier internet subscribers experiencing service interruptions. That report closely aligned with the timing of Downdetector’s own official alert flagging the surge in complaints.

Friday’s disruption is not an isolated incident. According to the same DesignTAXI community tracking service, Frontier internet subscribers also reported an outage earlier this week, on Sept. 9, with that earlier disruption’s user reports surging around 11:45 a.m. Eastern time. The recurrence of reported outages within such a short window has added to user frustration among affected customers this week.

Frontier Communications, founded in 1935, has long operated as one of the largest internet service providers in the United States, offering both fiber and DSL internet plans with speeds reaching multi-gigabit performance in some markets, alongside video, TV and phone services for residential and business customers. The company serves as the incumbent telecom provider in Connecticut and ranks among the largest internet providers operating in Florida, according to outage-tracking service GeoBlackout, which notes that Frontier outages in those states often overlap geographically with broader power grid disruptions affecting Eversource in New England and Florida Power & Light in Florida.

Friday’s reported outage comes at a notable moment for Frontier’s corporate structure, following the completion of Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of the company on Jan. 20, 2026. That deal, first announced in September 2024, placed Frontier’s operations, including its various regional subsidiaries across the country, under Verizon’s ownership and control, marking a significant shift for the historic telecommunications provider following decades operating independently and under various prior corporate structures.

For customers experiencing ongoing connectivity issues, standard troubleshooting guidance typically recommended by technology support resources includes first checking whether a broader outage is affecting the customer’s specific region, an issue that can often be confirmed through a provider’s official website, mobile app or social media channels, many of which maintain dedicated outage maps pinpointing affected areas. If no broader regional outage is confirmed, the issue may instead originate within a customer’s own home network rather than reflecting a wider Frontier service disruption.

Recommended home network troubleshooting steps include power cycling both the modem and router by unplugging each device, waiting approximately 30 seconds, then plugging the modem back in and allowing it to fully power up, typically indicated by solid status lights, before reconnecting the router. Customers are also generally advised to check all cables connecting their modem and router to ensure secure connections, since loose or damaged cables represent a surprisingly common cause of home connectivity problems even when no broader provider-side outage is occurring.

Frontier maintains its own dedicated service outage status page through its help center, allowing customers to check for confirmed outages in their specific area directly through the company’s official channels, an alternative or supplement to relying solely on third-party outage-tracking services like Downdetector.

Frontier’s overall service reputation has drawn mixed reviews from customers over the years, with one independent site-monitoring service, Is It Down Right Now, showing a relatively low average rating for frontier.com based on user-submitted reviews, reflecting a pattern of periodic customer frustration with the provider’s reliability in various markets across the country. Regional subsidiaries of the company, some tracing their roots back more than a century to small, independently operated local telephone companies before eventual consolidation under the broader Frontier Communications umbrella, have historically varied in service quality and reported reliability depending on the specific local market and underlying network infrastructure in place.

Given Frontier’s substantial customer base spanning both residential and business internet service across numerous states, disruptions affecting the provider tend to generate significant user frustration and social media attention, particularly when outages recur within a short window, as has been the case this week with Friday’s early morning disruption following the earlier Sept. 9 outage reported by the same community tracking service.

As of early Friday morning, Frontier had not issued a detailed public statement specifically addressing the cause of the reported outage, and it remained unclear whether Friday’s disruption was connected in any way to the earlier incident reported just two days prior. Affected customers were advised to continue monitoring both Downdetector’s live outage tracker and Frontier’s own official service status page for updates, while checking their own home network equipment using standard troubleshooting steps in the event the disruption proves to be isolated to their specific connection rather than reflecting a broader, provider-wide outage affecting Frontier’s network Friday morning.