"Police and prosecutors from Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname have arrested nearly 200 people in their first-ever joint cross-border operation targeting illegal gold mining in the Amazon region, authorities said Thursday."
"On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finalized a new rule making it easier for companies to apply for the right to mine the deep ocean floor."
"The House of Representatives voted 214 to 208 Wednesday to open up hundreds of thousands of federal acres to mining near the border of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness."
"The world is facing irreversible water "bankruptcy", with billions of people struggling to cope with the consequences of decades of overuse as well as shrinking supplies from lakes, rivers, glaciers and wetlands, U.N. researchers said on Tuesday."
"House Democrats asked the Interior Department’s inspector general on Tuesday to investigate whether Karen Budd-Falen, the agency’s third highest ranking official, played a role in the federal approval of a lithium mine after her husband entered into a $3.5 million financial relationship with the mine’s developer."
"An international agreement to safeguard marine life is now in effect. Known as the High Seas Treaty, it represents the first time that international waters, which lie outside of any country’s jurisdiction and cover nearly half the globe, can be protected."
More heat pumps than ever are going into homes and businesses in the United States these days. But they are just one small-scale use of geothermal energy, a promising utility-scale technology that is growing worldwide — and with a minimal carbon footprint to boot. But there are drawbacks as well. The new Issue Backgrounder explains how it all works.
"Decades of water depletion, dam building and repression of scientists and environmentalists have driven Iran toward ecological crises that are fueling protests rocking the country."
"Beneath an eight-lane expressway, Nigerian men stand waist-deep in the Lagos Lagoon, lowering buckets into murky water. Each load brings up sand, reshaping the coastline of Africa’s largest city and driving away fish and livelihoods for some of its poorest people."
"The Republican Study Committee on Tuesday published a framework for a second reconciliation package that calls for selling off federal public lands to build housing, adopting a contentious proposal previously championed by Utah Sen. Mike Lee."
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