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"The coming leadership transition at the Smithsonian Institution will give President Donald Trump his biggest opportunity yet to influence how it tells the story of America."
"Flood-hit Nepal will ask wealthier countries and global agencies for financial help this week, arguing they should contribute to the $5 billion needed for initial rebuilding as the disaster shows how climate change has hit poor countries that did little to cause it, officials said."
"It’s been a relentless summer of extremes—only the latest in a half-decade packed with record-breaking weather events. A growing body of research shows they’re becoming more frequent and severe as human-caused climate change accelerates."
"In July, the Trump administration relegated endangered leatherback turtles, sea lions and whales to mere collateral damage in its race to profit from the oceans. Now, fisheries science is in the government’s crosshairs."
"New polling shows that two-thirds of registered voters in Utah support restoring protections for the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments."
"The birds are up with the sunrise — warblers, flycatchers, sparrows and towhees calling across the treetops. Deer browse on tender buds emerging from dense shrubs. Black bears scrounge for roots, insects and other edibles." "But it’s what’s underground that has drawn scientists and investors to this 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) tract: spongy, dense peat up to 15 feet (5 meters) deep."
"Bryce Black kneels in a wheat field battered by intense drought. He holds two strands, remarking on how small the seed head is compared with what’s normal."
"In the harrowing months th�at followed the attacks on the World Trade Center, New Yorkers were repeatedly assured that the air around the fallen towers was safe to breathe. But 10 months later, health officials were still finding evidence of asbestos as much as half a mile away, according to a sample of air quality records being released on Tuesday."
"The Smithsonian Institution’s top official, Lonnie G. Bunch III, is retiring, ushering in a seismic transition at the nation’s museum and research organization just as President Donald Trump intensifies his campaign to influence its portrayal of American history." "Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian’s first Black secretary, said President Donald Trump’s pressure played no role in his decision and vowed to defend the institution’s independence until he leaves."
"The Energy Department said on Tuesday that it would lend up to $1.9 billion to help restart a shuttered nuclear power plant in Iowa, in the Trump administration’s latest move aimed at reviving nuclear energy in the United States." "No company in the United States has ever restarted a reactor that was seemingly closed for good, but there are now three major efforts underway to do so."
"A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to evict hundreds of bison from public lands in Montana."
"In recent years, public discourse on air quality in Utah has rightly focused on the dangers of wildfire smoke. Wildfire events across the Western United States have degraded air quality for days and weeks at a time. Yet, while headlines chase each new plume of smoke, a slower and arguably more dangerous crisis has been allowed to develop with remarkably little urgency: the drying of the Great Salt Lake and the toxic dust it is now releasing into the air that Utahns breathe every single day."
"Small towns in the Permian Basin have become a petri dish for the perils of living amid the nation’s largest oil fields."
"A new study identifies the chemical groups that packaging manufacturers and regulators should target for replacement in the food system to protect human health."
"This spring, the Southeast was on fire. Ninety-five percent of the region was in severe drought, and in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas what was burning was what’s called the “blowdown” from Hurricane Helene — the fires tearing through landscapes heavy with trees felled a year and a half ago and left to bake into ready fuel, waiting for a spark."
