"The Senate narrowly defeated a controversial amendment Thursday that would have stripped funding for clean water protections and ensured defeat of a $37.5 billion energy and water spending bill."
"About 170 countries are expected to sign today in a move the UN hopes will ensure early ratification of the deal".
"Right now, and in the coming weeks, from Northern California to Alaska, commercial and amateur mushroom hunters will be scouring hills that were ravaged by fires last summer and fall. Their prey? Morel mushrooms."
"Vietnam said on Thursday it was investigating whether pollution is to blame for a spate of mysterious mass fish deaths along the country’s central coast after huge amounts of marine life washed ashore in recent days."
"A massive explosion rocked a major petrochemical facility of Mexican national oil company Pemex in the Gulf state of Veracruz on Wednesday, killing at least three people, injuring dozens more, and pumping a cloud of noxious chemicals into the sky."
"San Francisco today became the first major city in the country to approve legislation requiring solar panels on new buildings."
"A still-controversial 1992 law intended to boost California’s striped-bass population can be scaled back, the Obama administration now believes."
"More than 100 people are feared dead in India in an early-summer heat wave which forced schools to close and halted outdoor work like construction, government officials said on Thursday."
"Volkswagen AG and U.S. officials have reached a framework deal under which the automaker would offer to buy back almost 500,000 diesel cars that used sophisticated software to evade U.S. emission rules, two people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday."
"Representatives from more than 150 countries will gather at the United Nations on Friday to officially sign a global accord aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing climate change. But in the four months since that historic pact was negotiated in Paris, a drumbeat of grim scientific findings has underscored that staving off the worst consequences of global warming may take far more aggressive actions."
