diff --git a/.env.example b/.env.example
index aca436e..d544bc1 100644
--- a/.env.example
+++ b/.env.example
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 # Pinecone Vector DB — get at https://app.pinecone.io
 PINECONE_API_KEY=your_pinecone_api_key_here
 PINECONE_INDEX_NAME=your_pinecone_index_name_here
+PINECONE_NAMESPACE=c2si
 # HuggingFace Inference API — get at https://huggingface.co/settings/tokens
 HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN=hf_your_token_here
 HF_TOKEN=hf_your_token_here
diff --git a/db_update/Update.py b/db_update/Update.py
index 4109397..fae5565 100644
--- a/db_update/Update.py
+++ b/db_update/Update.py
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ def update_database(overwrite=(len(sys.argv) > 1 and sys.argv[1] == '--overwrite
 
     # Connect to the index
     index = pc.Index(index_name)
-    namespace = "c2si"
+    namespace = os.getenv("PINECONE_NAMESPACE", "c2si")
     from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer, SparseEncoder
     import numpy as np
     
diff --git a/models/NewsModel.py b/models/NewsModel.py
index c859a3e..c60acd3 100644
--- a/models/NewsModel.py
+++ b/models/NewsModel.py
@@ -1,12 +1,13 @@
 from config.Database import client
 from datetime import datetime
+import os
 
 class CybernewsDB:
     def __init__(self):
         from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer, SparseEncoder
         self.client = client
-        self.index_name = "cybernews-hybrid-test-2"
-        self.namespace = "c2si" 
+        self.index_name = os.getenv("PINECONE_INDEX_NAME", "cybernews-index")
+        self.namespace = os.getenv("PINECONE_NAMESPACE", "c2si")
         self.index = self.client.Index(self.index_name)
         
         # Initialize native local embedding models