Axios

Hurricane Helene's threat of widespread flooding rains and high winds prompted NOAA to issue a rare alert Wednesday, warning the storm's effects "won't be limited to the Gulf Coast," with it "expected to travel hundreds of miles inland."

The big picture: NOAA warned in its special weather statement that "heavy rainfall will begin" in parts of the southeastern U.S. "well before" the "unusually large" storm's expected landfall along Florida's northwest coast as a major hurricane Thursday evening,

Approximately one-third of children and teens worldwide are nearsighted — a figure that's more than three times higher than it was in 1990, according to a study published on Tuesday in the British Medical Journal.

The big picture: This figure is expected to reach nearly 40% by 2050, which should inform public health policy and prevention measures, researchers wrote.

Solar power has always had one pesky limitation: It needs daylight.

• But what if it didn't?

State of play: That's the question being asked by Reflect Orbital, a startup that recently raised $6.5 million led by Sequoia Capital.