NATURE

Mississippi's capital city struggles with an unreliable water system that has problems with both quality and distribution.

The Los Angeles City Council has approved a measure to ban new oil and gas wells and phase out existing ones.

Authors of a new scientific study say greater reliance on genetic testing of baby whales and their mothers may help save a rare species from extinction.

The Environmental Protection Agency is taking a series of enforcement actions to address air pollution, unsafe drinking water and other problems afflicting minority communities in three Gulf Coast states.

Army and municipal crews have removed hundreds of vehicles stranded in snow for three days along a tollway linking Athens to the capital’s international airport.

A monkey with ghostly white circles around its eyes is among 224 new species listed in the World Wildlife Fund's latest update on the Mekong region.

The U.S. government plans to capture more wild horses on federal lands this year than ever before.

A rare species of eagle that has thrilled bird lovers and baffled scientists since arriving in Maine last month might not be in a hurry to leave.

With decreasing snowpack due to drought and climate change, the ski industry has invested millions of dollars in more efficient snowmaking systems.

A conservation group is turning over a historic redwood grove on the Northern California coast to descendants of the original Native American inhabitants.

Walmart says it has taken a stake in agriculture startup Plenty, becoming the first large U.S. retailer to significantly invest in indoor vertical farming as a way to deliver fresher produce to its stores.

The Biden administration has issued its first clean energy loan guarantee, reviving an Obama-era program that disbursed billions of dollars in guarantees to help launch the country’s first utility-scale wind and solar farms a decade ago but has largely gone dormant in recent years.

A severe snowstorm has disrupted air and road traffic in the Greek capital of Athens and in neighboring Turkey’s largest city of Istanbul.

Farmers, cattle-breeders, hunters and opposition supporters have descended on Spain's capital of Madrid to protest environmental and economic policies by Spain’s left-of-center government that they say are hurting rural communities.

Aid flights from Australia, Japan and New Zealand carrying food, water, medical supplies and telecommunications equipment landed in Tonga over the weekend, as the Pacific nation grapples with the aftermath of an underwater volcanic eruption and tsunami.

Strong winds pushed a wildfire that broke out in the rugged mountains above Big Sur to the sea, forcing hundreds of residents on this precarious stretch of the California coast to evacuate.

Vice President Kamala Harris returned to her home state during challenging times for the White House to highlight funding for federal wildfire programs.

General Motors is poised to announce next week major electric vehicle investments in Michigan.

Colorado, the U.S. government and a gold mining company have agreed to resolve a longstanding dispute over who’s responsible for cleanup at a Superfund site that was established after a massive 2015 spill of hazardous mine waste.

Government and business leaders have urged global cooperation on climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and the economic recovery at the World Economic Forum’s virtual gathering this week.

The incredible story of a retired carpenter who survived overnight in the ocean after the Tonga tsunami swept him out to sea appeared to fit with events at the time, a top New Zealand official says.

Dozens of former guests from New Zealand, Australia, the U.S. and elsewhere are raising money to help the owners of the Ha’atafu Beach Resort in Tonga after it was destroyed by a tsunami.

A federal appeals court will have to decide whether protecting historical tribal lands and a rare toad warrant blocking a major geothermal plant in Nevada as the nation tries to move away from fossil fuels amid a looming climate crisis.

Firefighters are mopping up a Central Texas wildfire after holding in check for a day with no structures reported damaged or persons injured.

Peru has declared an environmental emergency after announcing that 21 beaches on the Pacific coast were contaminated by an oil spill at a refinery run by Spain-based Repsol, following surging waves caused by the eruption of an underwater volcano near Tonga.

Trying to defuse large protests by environmentalists, Serbia’s populist government said Thursday that it was canceling all licenses for mining giant Rio Tinto to open a lithium mine in the Balkan country.

The 19-year-old Belgian-British pilot Zara Rutherford has set a world record as the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.

The first flights carrying fresh water and other aid to Tonga finally arrived after the Pacific nation’s main airport runway was cleared of ash left by a huge volcanic eruption.

A team of scientists has explored a rare, pristine coral reef off the coast of Tahiti.

The infant endangered Sumatran orangutan at the zoo in New Orleans is being bottle-fed because his mother wasn't producing enough milk.

Teenage pilot Zara Rutherford has landed in Germany on the penultimate stop of her bid to become the youngest woman to fly around the world solo.

New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for a “paradigm shift” in the way the world approaches climate policy, saying his country would leverage its presidency of the Group of Seven industrial nations to push for standards to fight global warming.

The European Union is preparing to deduct millions of euros from payments to Poland in order to cover fines imposed on Warsaw for ignoring a court injunction to close down a open pit brown coal mine near the Czech border.

Three of Tonga’s smaller islands have suffered serious damage from tsunami waves, officials and the Red Cross say, as a wider picture begins to emerge of the destruction caused by the eruption of an undersea volcano near the Pacific archipelago nation.

The local water district for wealthy Southern California communities in an enclave nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains is taking a more aggressive approach to conservation as the drought drags on despite a wet winter start.

The Biden administration says it will significantly expand efforts to stave off catastrophic wildfires that have been torching areas of the U.S. West by more aggressively thinning forests around “hot spots” where nature and neighborhoods collide.

Japan’s environment minister says the country will gradually phase out coal plants over the next two decades while developing new technologies to reduce, capture and recycle carbon.

A tiny Wyoming town faces transformation when a company started by Bill Gates builds a new type of nuclear power plant there.

Many states in the U.S. are coming to the conclusion that solar, wind and other renewable power sources might not be enough to keep the lights on as they seek to dramatically cut their use of fossil fuels.

Despite sitting almost on top of the volcano that erupted so violently, the Pacific nation of Tonga appears to have avoided the widespread devastation that many initially feared.

China is showing no signs of slowing its demand for American lobster this year despite disruption to the supply chain and international trade caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A dangerous winter storm is whipping the East Coast with significant snowfall, strong thunderstorms and blustery winds.

New Zealand and Australia have sent military surveillance flights to assess the damage caused by a huge undersea volcanic eruption in Tonga.

Tesla is turning to Mozambique for a key component in its electric car batteries in what analysts believe is a first-of-its-kind deal designed to reduce its dependence on China for graphite.

The 19-year-old Belgian-British pilot Zara Rutherford is set to land her ultralight plane in Belgium on Monday.

Governors and state lawmakers are prioritizing climate change as they write their state budgets, devoting money to lowering emissions and guarding against natural disasters such as flood and fire.

Environmental protesters are once again demanding the cancelation of plans for lithium mining in western Serbia.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of world leaders, business executives and other heavyweights to go virtual for the second year in a row.

The tsunami threat around the Pacific from a huge undersea volcanic eruption has begun to recede, while the extent of damage to Tonga remains unclear.

Wildlife rehabilitators are decontaminating dozens of alligators, brushing their teeth and scrubbing their hides in the weeks after a pipeline rupture dumped 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel into a New Orleans area wetland.

NASA recently announced the discovery of 301 newly identified planets beyond the edges of our solar system, presenting new scientific mysteries. Here's what that discovery means.

Health bosses could not provide evidence of progress a year after the report into Elizabeth's death.

There’s been swift, early warning about the new variant but that only means there’s still a lot of work to be done.

It is the final day of the Court of Appeal hearing and a ruling will be published at a later date.

It's long been known that the Vikings arrived in the Americas sometime before Christopher Columbus. Now, a new article in the journal Nature pinpoints the exact year: 1021.

The race to decarbonize is making growing trees popular because its a cheaper, but carbon capture tech needs to be scaled up, says Microsoft in Nature article.

The incremental nature of this year’s iPhone 13 improvements is a big letdown and offers current iPhone owners little incentive to trade up.

Heating from humans has caused irreparable damage to the Earth that may get worse in coming decades.

Steven Bouquet has been jailed for more than five years after he killed nine cats in night attacks.

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates back Nature's Fynd, an alt-meat company whose fungus-based breakfast patties, nuggets and cream cheese are headed to grocery stores.

Police are hunting vandals who targeted the commemorative stone in Motherwell, Lanarkshire.

"Sunday Morning" takes us to the far-away shores of Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania, home to the aptly-named Fischer's Lovebirds. Videographer: Lee McEachern.

Nature: Starling murmurations "Sunday Morning" goes sky-gazing at Greenbrae, California, where flocks of starlings are performing aerial acrobatics known as murmurations. Videographer: Lee McEachern.

Nature: Baboons in Botswana "Sunday Morning" takes us among the baboons at Chobe National Park in Botswana, Africa. Videographer: Justin Grubb.

Nature: Big horn sheep in Montana "Sunday Morning" takes us to Big Sky Country, in Western Montana's Sapphire Mountains. Videographer: Brad Markel.

Nature: Elephant seals "Sunday Morning" takes us to the beach at San Simeon, Calif., a home for elephant seals. Videographer: Lance Milbrand.

In the Chicago area, full-service restaurants and hotels were singled out as contributing “far more to infections” among the superspreader locations, according to the study, which has been peer reviewed and was placed on Nature’s website Tuesday prior to final editing. The travel period examined dates to March and May, before the surges seen during the summer and now in the fall.

“I think the nature of the campaign that’s been waged against her is really a campaign against all of the criminal justice reforms we’ve been struggling so hard to enact — for people who want to go back to the bad old days when the jail was often full of poor Black and brown people who were often there on charges of nonviolent offenses and they just couldn’t pay their bail,” Preckwinkle said.

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.

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 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.

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.

People who live in those areas will experience a phenomenon like no other compared to 2004, CNN reported. This particular cicada is part of a group called Brood IX, or periodical cicadas, and they are different from the ones that arrive annually in southern states like Texas, according to CicadaMania.com. According to Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension, these particular types of cicadas emerge from the ground after 13 or 17 years of developing underground, beginning in early May and fading to around July. The timing of a 13- or 17-year cycle is one of the great mysteries of the insect world, Virginia Tech stated on their Entomology website. You can see a map of cicada activity by Brood year courtesy of USDA Forest Service by clicking here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Get ready to hear that eerie noise that can only come from a cicada! Experts said a massive amount of the noisy bugs are making their way to the skies after 17 years underground, according to a CNN report. They believe as many as 1.5 million cicadas may emerge in parts of Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. Cicadas dont do not bite or sting, and they do not pose a threat to people, experts said. However, they could cause damage to trees.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

We leave you this Sunday Morning with the mighty moose of Maine's North Woods. Videographer: Scot Miller

We end this week's episode with a return to Dallas, this time at the Great Trinity Forest. Videographer: Scot Miller

We leave you this Sunday Morning among flowers in bloom in Arizona's Sonoran Desert, near Pinnacle Peak. Videographer: Phil Giriodi

We leave you this Sunday morning at the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown, Rhode Island. Videographer: Richard Boghosian.

We leave you this Sunday Morning in Yosemite National Park in California ...amidst towering cliffs and roaring waterfalls. Videographer: Lance Milbrand

We leave you this Sunday Morning among the flowers that bloom in spring at Dallas' Great Trinity Forest. Videographer: Scot Miller

We leave you this first day of spring at our oldest National Park, Yellowstone, where the ice on Yellowstone Lake is breaking up ... an ice-out, they call it.

We leave you this Sunday morning with the quiet landscape of Antelope Canyon, Arizona. Videographer: Jamie McDonald.

We leave you this Sunday in Nature's winter wonderland, amid a display of snow-capped mountains at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Videographer: Scot Miller

We leave you this "Sunday Morning" in the mid-winter snows of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Videographer: Jeff Reisly