President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin have announced their intent to reconsider dozens of current regulations in an effort to loosen standards originally imposed to protect the environment and public health. But it’s not as simple as Trump and Zeldin just saying so.

A few of the changes,...Read more

OAKLAND, Calif. — For years, this lot just south of the West Oakland BART station has sat vacant, surrounded by RVs and broken-down vehicles.

This was supposed to be housing — a 222-unit tower with 16 apartments set aside for low-income renters. But soon after Oakland’s planning commission signed off on the project, the decision was ...Read more

A Texas man was busted for trafficking vulnerable Mexican baby spider monkeys, who were too young to be separated from their mothers, into San Diego and selling them on Facebook.

Sarmad Ghaled Dafar, 33, was recently sentenced to four months in custody and 180 days of home confinement for trafficking six of the young primates, according to the ...Read more

Black bears are expanding their territory in Michigan's Lower Peninsula and as they roam about, state officials say the best way for residents and bears to both stay safe is to ensure they can't find a reliable snack in their human neighbor's backyard.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources said while bears have long been a fact of life ...Read more

A city worker recently spotted a mountain lion in a part of Texas where there’s never been a confirmed sighting, according to officials.

The employee, a member of the city’s trail crew, was at Purgatory Creek Natural Area on the morning of Thursday, April 17, when they saw a mountain lion climb down from a tree and sprint away, the City of ...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The juvenile minke whale had been spotted swimming around San Francisco Bay for nearly a week by the time she beached herself off the coast of Emeryville April 8. Scientists had thought she seemed healthy, but after an examination, they determined she was acting abnormally and had to be euthanized due to illness.

It was the...Read more

The Las Vegas-based company that would operate the future Las Vegas Spaceport west of the city is offering wealthy customers a chance to own their own military-grade personal satellite.

United Spaceports Corp., the corporate entity that owns the Las Vegas Spaceport, has begun sales of the Black Star 1000 advanced military private satellite for ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Shooting stars will usher in Earth Day starting late Monday night as the Lyrid meteor shower reaches its peak — and Californians will have some of the best views in the country.

The annual meteor shower event will be most visible in April and is named after the constellation Lyra, the harp, located near the point in the sky ...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2025 ended a decade-old lawsuit filed by a group of children who sought to hold the federal government responsible for some of the consequences of climate change. But just two months earlier, the justices allowed a similar suit from the city and county of Honolulu, Hawaii, to continue against oil and gas ...Read more

Jabaar Edmond has long advocated for better air quality in his Childs Park neighborhood in St. Petersburg, Florida.

For decades, residents of the predominantly Black neighborhood complained of a persistent gasolinelike odor.

“We had an initiative called ‘Smell something, say something,’” said Edmond, former president of the ...Read more

Scientists using The James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered potentially earth-shattering evidence indicating a faraway world could be home to alien life.

A team at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy made the discovery while studying the atmosphere of K2-18 b, a planet orbiting a dwarf star in the constellation Leo, about...Read more

Aix Marseille University’s “Safe Place for Science” program, which aims to attract top U.S. graduates, claims it’s received nearly 300 applications from scholars “wishing to pursue their research in complete freedom.”

University President Eric Berton said Thursday the school proposed a bill this week requesting “scientific refugee...Read more

The colossal squid, the world's largest squid species, was caught on video for the first time swimming in its natural habitat, according to a California ocean research organization.

This squid, as its name suggests, can grow to as much as 23 feet in length and 1,100 pounds — the heaviest invertebrate in the world — according to the Schmidt ...Read more

President Donald Trump has said he wants to reverse decades of regulations about energy efficiency in American household appliances, claiming doing so will provide Americans with “freedom to choose” products that meet their needs.

In an April 9, 2025, statement, Trump claimed he could alter government regulations on his own, ...Read more

Mosquito season has arrived in Southern California. That means more mosquitoes will be flying around looking for someone to bite.

“There’s not a lot of things that we can all agree on, especially in this day and age, right? But if there’s one thing that can bring us together, it’s that mosquitoes suck,” said Brian Brannon, a ...Read more

The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed a rule to redefine what it means to “harm” a protected species under the Endangered Species Act, a move conservationists say will strip vulnerable plants and animals of habitat they need to survive.

The proposal advanced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries ...Read more

MOSS LANDING — Aboard a quiet, full catamaran, legendary conservationist Jane Goodall spoke to her latest mission: supporting the survival of Monterey Bay’s charming, yet still vulnerable, icon – the sea otter.

During a visit to Carmel last month, a conversation between Goodall and former Monterey Bay Aquarium Executive Director Julie ...Read more

The Tijuana River has been plagued with raw sewage and industrial waste from Tijuana for decades, fouling beaches along the U.S.-Mexico border with polluted water and sending foul odors drifting through communities in San Diego County.

On Wednesday, the environmental group American Rivers ranked the Tijuana River No. 2 on its annual list of the...Read more

A record-high share of Americans now consider global warming to be a major concern, according to a new poll.

In the latest Gallup survey, 48% of respondents said global warming will pose a “serious threat” to them or their way of life during their lifetime — the highest share recorded since 1997, when the question was first asked.

It ...Read more

Every week, millions of Americans toss their recyclables into a single bin, trusting that their plastic bottles, aluminum cans and cardboard boxes will be given a new life.

But what really happens after the truck picks them up?

Single-stream recycling makes participating in recycling easy, but behind the scenes, complex ...Read more