ENVIRONMENT

Weather officials say they’re retiring the names Fiona and Ian from the rotating list of Atlantic tropical cyclone names because of the death and destruction caused by the most recent storms with those names.

Congress on Wednesday approved a resolution to overturn the Biden administration's protections for thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways.

The effort to feed thousands of pounds of lettuce to starving manatees in Florida has officially ended for the winter season, as deaths of the marine mammals appear to be slowing despite the long-term threat of pollution to their main food source, seagrass.

Meteorologists are warning of a series of severe storms that could rip across America's Midwest and South over the next couple of weeks, with the first and perhaps most dangerous outbreak forecast to strike Friday.

A cold low pressure system spinning off the coast of California has sent bands of rain and snow across the state.

The countries of the United Nations led by the island nation of Vanuatu adopted what they called a historic resolution Wednesday calling for the U.N.‘s highest court to strengthen countries’ obligations to curb warming and protect communities from climate disaster.

The U.S. Energy Department said Wednesday it has a new strategy to help meet the nation’s goals to vastly expand offshore wind energy.

Oil companies including Chevron and ExxonMobil offered a combined $264 million for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico in a sale mandated by last year’s climate bill compromise.

Swiss pensioners are taking their government to a top European court over what they claim is its failure to take stronger action on climate change.

This year’s holy month of Ramadan coincides with the longest drought on record in Somalia.

Renewable energy investors who lost subsidies promised by Spain are heading to a London court to try to claw back $125 million from the government.

Hawaii authorities say they have referred 33 people to U.S. law enforcement after the group allegedly harassed a pod of wild dolphins in waters off the Big Island.

With temperatures set to soar next month, Indian authorities need more resources and better preparation to deal with searing heat particularly for the most vulnerable communities around the country, a New Delhi-based think tank said.

With water gushing through California’s rivers, some farmers have started devoting a portion of their land to capture these flows and let them seep into the ground.

A new study says warming will fuel more supercells in the United States and that those storms will move eastward from their current range.

Queen’terica Jones found her mother's lifeless body after a tornado slammed into the rural town of Rolling Fork, Mississippi.

Gautam Adani and his companies lost tens of billions of dollars and their stock plummeted after the businesses were accused of fraud and stock price manipulation.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration announced that electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal electricity production in the United States for the first time in 2022.

A new report from a public health watchdog found that more than 40,000 pounds of PFAS has been injected into more than 1,000 wells across Texas — and warned that the chemicals could pose a risk to public health

The wind power industry expects rapidly accelerating growth this year after a challenging 2022.

Philadelphia residents are being told that they may want to drink only bottled water following a chemical spill into the Delaware River in neighboring Bucks County.

As global efforts to combat climate change falter, climate activists have turned to local initiatives to rein in carbon emissions. A May vote on a city charter amendment has thrust El Paso into the fray.

The Australian government has taken a major step toward implementing a key climate policy that would force chief greenhouse gas polluters to reduce emissions.

Poverty is adding to the challenges of recovering from a massive tornado that pushed through Mississippi.

Many residents in one of the Mississippi towns hit hardest by devastating tornadoes have found solace in their church communities Sunday.

In drought-stricken Spain, around 250 villagers brought back the faded practice of a special Mass and procession to pray for rain.

For exactly 50 years, Oregon’s farms and forests have been protected from urban sprawl by the nation’s first statewide law creating urban growth boundaries.

The German news agency dpa reports that a Berlin referendum that would have forced the city to ramp up its climate goals has failed because there weren't enough necessary votes in favor.

Recent moves by President Joe Biden to pressure TikTok and approve oil drilling in an untapped area of Alaska are testing the loyalty of a young voters.

Germany and the European Union say they have reached an agreement in their dispute over the future of cars with combustion engines, allowing the registration of new vehicles with such engines even after 2035 if they use climate-neutral fuel only.

Berlin voters on a proposal Sunday that would force the German capital to drastically ramp up its climate goals.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says humanity’s survival depends on how people manage water.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has ended some of the state water restrictions.

Federal officials are expected to prohibit king salmon fishing this season along much of the West Coast, which many predict could stretch into 2024 season as the drought and other factors take their toll on the iconic Chinook fish.

The Biden administration and groups representing the forest products industry have reached a deal to promote logging practices intended to protect imperiled species on private lands.

A new report found that companies in Texas have had 21,000 unexpected pollution releases that emitted 400,000 tons of air pollution over six years, but only 1% of them prompted action by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Scientists for the federal government say documents that Georgia state regulators relied upon to conclude a proposed mine won't harm the nearby Okefenokee Swamp and its vast wildlife refuge are riddled with technical errors.

Federal officials are delaying a decision on whether to approve an oil pipeline tunnel in a Great Lakes waterway.

The World Health Organization says the death toll from Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which ravaged Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique over the past two months, now stands at more than 600 people.

India will require $900 billion over the next 30 years to move away from coal mines and thermal plants, a New Delhi based think tank said in a report Thursday.

As spring sports get underway at East Palestine High School in Ohio, organizers are trying to create normalcy for student-athletes while cleanup from the February train derailment and toxic chemical burn continues just over a mile away.

With spring now underway, California's 39 million residents are hopeful for sunnier days ahead.

Civil liberties groups and defense attorneys are outraged at the domestic terrorism charges that have been levied against 23 people who were arrested after a masked group attacked an Atlanta-area police training center construction site.

Ford’s electric vehicle business has lost $3 billion before taxes during the past two years and will lose a similar amount this year as the company invests heavily in the new technology.

One of the six oil executives with a Texas-based company who was imprisoned five years in Venezuela is suing his company for $100 million.

The United Nations chief is urging the first world conference on water in more than 45 years to address the “21st century emergency” that is wasting the world’s most important resource and has left billions of people without clean water and basic sanitation.

There's a pesky problem in a wide stretch of the Atlantic Ocean that's likely to wash up on some beaches later this year: Seaweed.

Laundry detergent bottles are looking a little different these days.

A report says 26% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water and 46% lacks access to basic sanitation.

The European Union has warned Spain that it won’t tolerate renewed plans by regional politicians in the country’s south to expand irrigation near its endangered Doñana wetlands.

Any cuts in funding in next week's spending announcement will hit poorest people hardest, warn experts.

Actor Tom Bateman recalls how he overcame his claustrophobia in Ron Howard's film Thirteen Lives.

Maggie Rogers on reclaiming her sexuality, and why she left pop music to study divinity at Harvard.

The police watchdog focused on behaviour by mostly PCs based at Charing Cross Police station.

For the third year in a row, the Washington Park neighborhood Christmas tree has been destroyed, this time by arson. The children there deserve to know good wins out. A toy drive can help with that.

It is "time we left our throwaway culture behind once and for all", the environment secretary says.

Bad candidates probably cost the GOP the Senate in 2010 and 2012. With extreme and baggage-laden candidates emerging again, could we see a repeat? Perhaps, but it's not as likely.

Award-winning singer Iona Fyfe says she was propositioned by a man from a well-known band when she was 20.

Video training for parents could improve communication with their infants, a small study suggests.

A federal lawsuit filed in Wisconsin seeks damages against Kenosha authorities for allegedly allowing armed civilians including Kyle Rittenhouse to operate freely during last summer's unrest, resulting in the death of Anthony Huber.

More than year into Covid-19, do people in your dreams wear masks or socially distance?

They made Resident Evil weird again.

There are still few places where our homeless can go," Salvation Army Major David Yardley said at the group's downtown center. Blistering temperatures can endanger health, and can lead to heat exhaustion, heat stroke and even death. The daily high temperatures in Phoenix were forecast to hit 110 degrees (43C) or very close to it during the extreme heat warning in effect through Sunday, National Weather Service forecasters said. The cooling stations in metro Phoenix open when the weather service declares extreme heat warnings They were also open for a string of days during an extreme heat warning in late April. In metro Las Vegas, where an excessive heat warning is in effect until Friday evening, four heat relief stations were open.

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday turned down a request by the Trump administration and energy industry groups to revive a permit program for new oil and gas pipelines that had been canceled by a lower court. The case originated with a challenge to the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. but has affected oil and gas pipeline proposals across the nation. Backed by numerous states and industry groups, attorneys for the government argued the cancellation would delay construction of pipelines needed to deliver fuel to power plants and other destinations. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency request to block Morris' ruling. They said in a one-page decision that the government, states and industry groups had not demonstrated sufficient harm to their interests to justify reviving the program while the case is still pending.

An Indian man selling earthen pots beneath a bridge drinks water in Ahmedabad, India, Thursday, May 28, 2020. Cyclone Amphan, a massive super storm that crossed the unusually warm Bay of Bengal last week, sucked up huge amounts of moisture, leaving dry, hot winds to form a heat wave over parts of central and northern India. Gurjar, a top official of Indias Locust Warning Organization, said his 50-person team was scrambling to stop the swarms before breeding can take place during Indias monsoons, which begin in July. Indian environmental journalist Joydeep Gupta said that the perfect storm of pandemic, heat and locusts show India must go green. Its building coping abilities of the very poor to be able to deal with stress after stress after stress, she said.

A juvenile black bear roams through Fort Myers, Fla., Tuesday morning, May 26, 2020. A black bear roaming around a Florida city proved no match for the doughnuts that lured the animal into a humane trap. Wildlife officials say bears tend to move more in the spring in search of mates and, as always, food. Brown said the bear was relocated to a state-managed wildlife area. Authorities estimate there are about 4,000 black bears in Florida.

DENVER Nearly two dozen states and several cities on Wednesday filed a legal challenge to the Trump administrations rollback of Obama-era mileage standards, saying science backed up the old regulations developed with the help of the nation's car makers. The new mileage standards require automakers to achieve 1.5% annual increases in fuel efficiency. The Obama-era standards called for 5% annual increases and were seen as the government's most forceful initiative against climate-changing fossil fuel emissions. The states and cities claim the rule violates the Clean Air Act, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. Opponents claim dirtier air from the rollback will kill and injure more people than the rollback claims to save in roadway accidents.

A U.S. judge has dealt another blow to the Trump administration's efforts to increase domestic oil and gas output from public lands, saying officials failed to protect habitat for a declining bird species when it issued energy leases on hundreds of square miles. The judge canceled energy leases on more than 470 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of public land in Montana and Wyoming. But the latest ruling, handed down Friday, appears to go further and strike at the administration's broader energy policies. Their numbers have plummeted due to energy development, disease and other factors. Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma noted that some of the cancelled leases had been sold before the Trump administration's policies went into full effect.

Circuit Court of Appeals said state courts are the proper forum for the lawsuits alleging that Big Oil promoted petroleum as environmentally responsible when producers knew it was causing damage. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)LOS ANGELES Big Oil lost a pair of court battles Tuesday that could lead to trials in lawsuits by California cities and counties seeking damages for the impact of climate change. The oil companies strategy is to keep the light from shining on their own behavior. Oil companies got the cases transferred to San Francisco federal court, where two judges reached different conclusions. The companies had argued that federal law controls fossil fuel production, and Congress has encouraged oil and gas development.

According to the ruling, Volkswagen is basically obliged to pay damages to car owners affected by the diesel scandal. Volkswagen said the decision announced Monday would clear the way for settlement of remaining consumer claims in Germany. The decision affects some 60,000 individual claims brought by car owners there; around 262,000 others have already been covered by an 830 million-euro ($904 million) class-action settlement. For the majority of the 60,000 pending cases, this ruling provides clarity, the company said in a statement. He had sought the full purchase price but the court ruled he must accept less due to depreciation related to the distance he drove.

In this Friday, May 15, 2020 photo, Joel Johnson rides his new bicycle on a bike path at Crissy Field near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Johnson hadn't owned a bicycle since he was 15, but soon after the coronavirus pandemic led to a shelter in place order in San Francisco, he bought a bike to avoid crowded public trains and buses. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)SAN FRANCISCO Joel Johnson hadnt owned a bicycle since he was 15, but the pandemic changed all that. San Francisco soon followed, closing sections of twelve streets in a city that already has a robust network of bike lanes. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, an advocacy and education group, has seen demand for its classes on city biking now online jump from 30 participants to more than 100, Executive Director Brian Wiedenmeier said.

Visitors to Yellowstone National Park often leave common sense and situational awareness at home, as those examples in the past year show. Were out there.Other national parks that have reopened include Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, where park officials urge visitors to arrive early at popular spots. We're expecting there to be less people on the trails than being open all day, said Grand Canyon spokesperson Lily Daniels. A lot of it is self-governance.That's not a good idea, said former Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger in an opinion piece Friday in The Arizona Republic. No ones an expert at reopening national parks in a pandemic, Sholly said.

In this Friday, May, 22, 2020 photo released by the Woodland Park Zoo shows a 2 1/2-month-old male gorilla, Kitoko, with mom Uzumm. Kitoko was injured Saturday, during a skirmish among his six-member family group in Seattle. (Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo via AP)SEATTLE A baby gorilla was badly injured at a Seattle zoo on Saturday when he was caught in a skirmish between his family group members, zookeepers said. Animal health experts at the Woodland Park Zoo say little Kitoko was bitten on the head, likely by accident when another gorilla tried to bite his mother, Uzumma. Gorillas tend to be gentle giants but conflicts among family members do occur, in zoos and in nature, Woodland Park Zoo mammal curator Martin Ramirez said.

Acting under an earlier order in the case, the administration in February released an analysis that said the decision to resume coal sales would make little difference over time in greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, a contention critics said was flawed. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued the administration only considered emissions from a handful of leases and failed to capture the cumulative, long-term impact of the coal program. Yet critics of the coal program note that some lease sales have continued and say the administrations moves could open tens of thousands of acres of public lands to new mining. The coal program is overseen by the U.S. If those mines are to continue operating, they will need to keep expanding onto federal lands, he said.

This Aug. 1, 2018, aerial photo made available by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection shows Grayton Beach State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. The squeak,' squeak, 'squeak of the sand when you walk in it.It's a large reason the beach was picked as the best in the United States by Stephen Dr. Beach Leatherman, a coastal scientist and professor at Florida International University, who has been ranking the nation's beaches for 30 years. Grayton Beach State Park won the list's top spot even without a smoking ban based on its sheer beauty. I have caught lots of fish at Grayton Beach State Park, Cherry said.

This Aug. 1, 2018, aerial photo made available by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection shows Grayton Beach State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. The squeak,' squeak, 'squeak of the sand when you walk in it.It's a large reason the beach was picked as the best in the United States by Stephen Dr. Beach Leatherman, a coastal scientist and professor at Florida International University, who has been ranking the nation's beaches for 30 years. Grayton Beach State Park won the list's top spot even without a smoking ban based on its sheer beauty. I have caught lots of fish at Grayton Beach State Park, Cherry said.

BRUSSELS The European Commission unveiled plans Wednesday to protect biodiversity across the 27-nation bloc while building a more sustainable food system, insisting on the need to both reduce the use of pesticides and promote organic farming. The commission also wants to plant at least 3 extra billion trees over the next ten years. The use of antimicrobials, which include antibiotics, should also be reduced by 50% for fish and animal farming. The commission also estimates that investing in organic farming will help create 10-20% more jobs per hectare than traditional farming. Farmers alone must not bear the brunt of the costs of further environmental and climate protection," said COPA president Joachim Rukwied.

(Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP)WASHINGTON Democrats on Wednesday blasted the Trump administration's moves to roll back environmental regulations during the coronavirus crisis, with one senator saying a "pandemic of pollution'' has been released. Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the EPA remains open for business" and "at work meeting our mission of protecting human health and the environment.'' While the rest of the country works around the clock to combat and overcome this deadly respiratory pandemic, the Trump EPA has been spearheading a pandemic of pollution, Carper said. An EPA spokeswoman disputed Democrats claims that the temporary enforcement waiver allows companies to openly exceed pollution limits. He said that Trump's EPA has saved U.S. businesses more than $5 billion in regulatory costs.

The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found. The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found. For a week in April, the United States cut its carbon dioxide levels by about one-third. The study was carried out by Global Carbon Project, a consortium of international scientists that produces the authoritative annual estimate of carbon dioxide emissions. By contrast, the study found that drastic reductions in air travel only accounted for 10% of the overall pollution drop.

FILE - In this May 18, 1980, file photo, Mount St. Helens sends a plume of ash, smoke and debris skyward as it erupts. May 18, 2020, is the 40th anniversary of the eruption that killed more than 50 people and blasted more than 1,300 feet off the mountain's peak. (AP Photo/Jack Smith, File)COUGAR, Wash. The coronavirus outbreak disrupted what had been big plans to mark the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. And Mount St. Helens may not be done yet. The first of a series of small explosions on Oct. 1 shot volcanic ash and gases into the air.

FILE - In this April 5, 2020 file photo, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks at the National Palace in Mexico City. Industry associations said it will affect 28 solar and wind projects that were ready to go online, and 16 more under construction, with a total of $6.4 billion in investments, much of it from foreign firms. Mexico also has been slow to build supplementary plants for the times when wind or sun power naturally decreases. But the situation really hit crisis levels when the pandemic caused a huge drop in electricity demand as factories closed. There was literally nowhere for the fuel oil to go if the state-run plants didn't burn it, and no money to subsidize the unused power plants.

FILE - In this Wednesday, May 13, 2020, file, photo beachgoers walk and exercise on the beach in Malibu, Calif. Phil Murphy issued guidance Thursday to officials in shore towns on reopening beaches, directing them to set occupancy limits and spacing requirements. Free public beaches opened a few weeks ago. Public health officials were concerned large gatherings could allow the virus to spread. Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine, said it was sensible to start reopening beaches and see how it goes.

who urged Americans to help fight a worldwide pandemic by recycling the packing materials from their delivery orders. "Right now there is a critical need for all raw materials in the manufacturing supply chain, especially paper and cardboard." Groups in the UK and Europe have also warned of possible shortages of cardboard as a result of increased home deliveries. Here are five ways to be nice to the planet, reduce waste and support efforts to ship you all the things you need (and want). Just don't throw your masks, gloves, and wipes into the recycling during the pandemic -- or anytime.