National (U.S.)

"Brought to the United States as an ornamental porch decoration, the kudzu vine has reshaped itself into ladder fuel for wildfires."

"The U.S.'s ocean regulator plans to make industry-friendly changes to a longstanding rule designed to protect vanishing whales, prompting criticism from environmental groups who cite the recent death of an endangered whale."

"Garbage has begun to pile up on street corners in the Cuban capital of Havana, attracting hordes of flies and reeking of rotten food, in one of the most visible impacts of the U.S. bid to prevent oil from reaching the Caribbean's largest island."

"California was walloped Monday by a powerful winter storm carrying treacherous thunderstorms, high winds and heavy snow in mountain areas."

"The United States will essentially have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient America’s passenger cars and trucks should be."

"When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rescinded its bedrock endangerment finding Thursday, it explicitly excluded a controversial report issued last year by the U.S. Department of Energy that argued the dangers of human-induced climate change were being overstated."

"More than three dozen Democratic senators have begun an independent inquiry into the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) following a huge change in how the agency measures the health benefits of reducing air pollution that is widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis."

"Billions of American chestnut trees once covered the eastern United States. ... But by the 1950s, this venerable tree went functionally extinct, culled by a deadly airborne fungal blight and lethal root rot. A new study out Thursday in the journal Science provides hope for its revitalization, finding that the genetic testing of individual trees can reveal which are most likely to resist disease and grow tall, thus shortening how long it takes to plant the next, more robust, generation."