5 International Stories You'll Care About Next Week

NEW YORK — Welcome to Beyoncé country. When it comes to the 2025 Grammy Award nominations, “Cowboy Carter” rules the nation. She leads the nods with 11, bringing her career total to 99 nominations. That makes her the most nominated artist in Grammy history. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Cowboy Carter” is up for album and country album of the year, and “Texas Hold ’Em” is nominated for record, song and country song of the year.

When Donald Trump was last President, ChatGPT had not yet been launched. Now, as he prepares to return to the White House after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, the artificial intelligence landscape looks quite different. AI systems are advancing so rapidly that some leading executives of AI companies, such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and a prominent Trump backer, believe AI may become smarter than humans by 2026.

Across the United States, more buildings than ever are relying on electricity instead of fossil fuels—a huge milestone towards our transition to a cleaner electricity grid. That’s good news, given buildings account for 35% of our nation’s carbon emissions. But with more people opting for electric vehicles and electric heat pumps, alongside multi-billion dollar investments to electrify manufacturing and heavy industries, we are seeing unprecedented demand for electricity that may very well push the grid to its limits.

On Tuesday night, as election results poured in, I sat on a rock on the coast of Rhode Island and watched the moon set. As a mother, grandmother, and climate activist, I felt despair and grief. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Climate change wasn’t on the ballot this election cycle. The subject barely made the debate stage, although one candidate once referred to it as a hoax while his newly designated most trusted advisor, who has made a fortune on electric vehicles, can’t go that far but says the impacts are highly exaggerated.

WASHINGTON — Racist text messages invoking slavery raised alarm across the country this week after they were sent to Black men, women and students, including middle schoolers, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other agencies. The messages, sent anonymously, were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

(To get this story in your inbox, subscribe to the TIME CO2 Leadership Report newsletter here.) This week, on a blistering, record-hot election day, Americans went to the polls and voted to put former President Donald Trump back in power. If a second Trump term is an epochal event for American democracy, so too is it for the global efforts to address climate change.