ENVIRONMENT

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high deforestation rates in the Amazon.

Orlando was more like San Antonio from a climate perspective.

The Dutch government plans to cut the maximum number of flights allowed each year at the country’s busiest aviation hub, Schiphol Airport, in an attempt to reduce noise and air pollution.

Back-to-back world leader summits in Europe opening this weekend will focus on uniting Western nations behind Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion and overcoming Turkey’s opposition to NATO membership for Finland and Sweden.

The Biden administration is dropping a rule adopted under former President Donald Trump that limited which lands and waters could be designated as critical habitat for imperiled animals and plants.

Tanzania’s Maasai people, resisting government pressure to leave their ancestral homes in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, have presented their demands for Indigenous land rights to negotiators in Nairobi finalizing the proposed U.N. global biodiversity framework.

Israel has dispatched two water-dropping aircraft to help battle a large wildfire that has scorched at least 10,000 acres of forest on the foothills of the Pentadaktylos mountain range in the breakaway north of ethnically divided Cyprus.

The White House is launching a partnership with 11 East Coast governors to boost the growing offshore wind industry, a key element of President Joe Biden’s climate change plan.

Leaders of Commonwealth nations are calling for increased climate action at a meeting in Rwanda this week, ahead of the United Nations climate change summit in the seaside resort of Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt later this year.

Three consecutive summits over the next week will test Western resolve to support Ukraine and the extent of international unity as rising geopolitical tensions and economic pain cast an increasingly long shadow.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida discovered and captured the largest python yet found in the state, measuring 18 feet long and weighing 215 pounds, according to a Wednesday news release.

The owner of seven Louisiana nursing homes whose residents suffered in squalid conditions after being evacuated to a warehouse for Hurricane Ida has been arrested.

If “invasive carp” doesn't sound appetizing, how about a plate of copi.

A Houston dredging company has been ordered to pay a $1 million fine for an oil spill that occurred when a subcontractor cut through a pipeline during Louisiana barrier island restoration work in 2016.

European Union lawmakers are requiring deeper emission cuts from power plants, factories and planes in Europe while endorsing an unprecedented import tax to step up the fight against global warming.

Scientists say climate change is a factor behind the devastating floods in Bangladesh and northeastern India.

Thousands of farmers have gathered in the central Netherlands to protest the Dutch government’s plans to rein in emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia.

Extended drought conditions in several Mediterranean countries, a heat wave last week that reached northern Germany and high fuel costs for aircraft needed to fight wildfires have heightened concerns across Europe this summer.

Throngs of tourists have gleefully returned to watch geysers erupt and bison cross roads at Yellowstone National Park as it partially reopens following destructive floods.

Firefighter groups are applauding steps taken by the Biden administration this week to temporarily raise wages for the men and women on the front lines of the nation’s largest wildfires.

Major flooding has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in southern China, with more rain expected.

U.S. Forest Service employees made multiple miscalculations, used inaccurate models and underestimated how dry conditions were, causing a planned burn to reduce the threat of wildfires to turn into the largest blaze in New Mexico's recorded history.

The industrial hub of Monterrey has long been one of Mexico’s most prosperous cities, so its almost 5 million residents were shocked when they lost the most basic of services: water.

Villagers in northeastern Bangladesh are crowding makeshift refugee centers and scrambling to meet boats arriving with food and fresh water as massive floods, which have killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds of thousands there and in neighboring India, continue to wreak havoc.

The war in Ukraine is fueling fears of a natural gas emergency in Europe.

The trade association for U.S. nuclear plant operators says it hopes to nearly double their output over the next three decades.

Federal officials and tribal nations have formally reestablished a commission to jointly govern the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

In the wake of the worst year for manatee deaths on record, Florida wildlife officials last week found yet another potential killer of the threatened species in the Indian River Lagoon — red tide.

Wildfires in northern Arizona are crossing land rich with signs of human existence through centuries.

A giant stingray caught in the Mekong River last week is more than a giant — it is the biggest of them all.

Hundreds of homeless people die in the streets each year from the heat, in cities around the U.S. and the world.

Cooler temperatures are helping firefighters stabilize a wildfire in northwestern Spain that reports say is the biggest on record in the country.

Authorities in India and Bangladesh are struggling to deliver food and drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from their homes in days of flooding that have submerged wide swaths of the countries.

Federal officials say most of Yellowstone National Park should reopen within the next two weeks.

With Yellowstone National Park pushing to re-open to tourists more quickly than anticipated after record floods pounded southern Montana, some of those hardest hit in the disaster live far from the famous park’s limelight and are leaning heavily on one another to pull their lives out of the mud.

Yellowstone National Park will partially reopen at 8 a.m. Wednesday, after catastrophic flooding destroyed bridges and roads and drove out tourists.

Yellowstone National Park is celebrating its 150th anniversary as it faces its biggest challenge in decades.

People are flocking to parks and pools across Western Europe for a bit of respite from an early heat wave that saw the mercury rise above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in France and Spain.

Hot real estate markets have made some homeowners wary of participating in voluntary flood buyout programs.

Russian hostilities in Ukraine are preventing grain from leaving the “breadbasket of the world.”.

A federal appeals court has rejected a Trump administration finding that the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup does not pose a serious health risk and is “not likely” to cause cancer in humans.

Army troops have been called in to rescue thousands of people stranded by massive floods that have ravaged northeastern India and Bangladesh, leaving millions of homes underwater and severing transport links.

A dog in Florida was attacked by an alligator, dragged into the water and eaten earlier this month.

The U.S. is adding $103 million this year for wildfire risk reduction and burned-area rehabilitation throughout the country as well as establishing an interagency wildland firefighter well-being program.

A culmination of unique events led to the recent extensive flooding in the Yellowstone region.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving closer to a final rule that would dramatically change what public companies reveal about the risks posed by climate change to their operations.

Water is so low in large stretches of Italy’s largest river that local residents are walking through the middle of the expanse of sand and shipwrecks are resurfacing, but authorities fear there’ll be far greater consequences for farmers and local populations.

Montana's governor was not in Montana — or in the U.S. at all — when punishing floods hit Yellowstone National Park and communities on its fringes this week.

A bird flu outbreak in the U.S. that led to the deaths of more than 40 million chickens and turkeys and contributed to a spike in egg and meat prices appears to be waning, but experts caution the virus hasn't disappeared and worry another surge could take hold this fall.

Industry officials say thousands of cattle in feedlots in southwestern Kansas have died of heat stress due to soaring temperatures, high humidity and little wind in recent days.

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.

MOSCOW An alligator that many people believe once belonged to Adolf Hitler has died in the Moscow Zoo. The zoo said the alligator, named Saturn, was about 84 years old when he died on Friday. According to the zoo, Saturn was born in the United States and later sent to the Berlin Zoo, from which he escaped when the zoo was bombed in 1943. His whereabouts were unknown until 1946, when British soldiers found him and gave him to the Soviet Union, the zoo said. Almost immediately, the myth was born that he was allegedly in the collection of Hitler and not in the Berlin Zoo, the zoo said in a statement.

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.

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.

TEQUESTA, Fla. Water officials in South Florida say the region's only nationally-recognized wild and scenic river is being poisoned by a lack of fresh water as dry conditions allow the ocean to sour the unique ecosystem. The Palm Beach Post reported that Albrey Arrington, executive director of the Loxahatchee River District, asked the South Florida Water Management District board for an emergency infusion of fresh water to stave off further damage before wet season rains arrive. The Loxahatchee River, which traditionally receives a stipend from Grassy Waters Preserve to fight saltwater intrusion during the dry season, has been cut off from that tap for weeks with preserve waters themselves running low. Its a similar step to emergency measures taken last month by the district that installed pumps to gush water into a dry Everglades National Park. The river needs supplemental water and you were able to raise a segment of the Everglades eight-tenths of a foot, Arrington said Thursday.

With tourists gone and their money, too, protecting endangered wildlife like black rhinos has become that much more challenging. We are more alert because maybe more poachers will use this time to come in to poach," Tekeles said. The number of black rhinos in Africa has been slowly increasing though the species remains critically endangered, according to a report in March by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN. Ol Pejeta is home to more than 130 black rhinos, the single largest population in East and Central Africa, said Richard Vigne, the conservancys managing director. And the population of black rhinos had been growing by an annual rate of 2.5% between 2012 and 2018 to more than 5,600.

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.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. A baby hippopotamus born at the San Diego Zoo last month has a name. The zoo says the river hippo calf will be called Amahle (pronounced ah-MA-shay), which means beautiful one in Zulu. Amahle is the ninth hippo calf born at the zoo and the 13th to her mother, Funani. Amahle's father, Otis, is an East African hippo who arrived at the zoo in 2009 specifically to breed with Funani, zoo officials said. Zoo visitors can see Amahle and her mother in the hippo habitat on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends, officials said.