As the former superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park — and a 38-year career employee for the National Park Service — I have seen the undeniable benefits that come with conserving our public lands. Nowhere has this become more clear than in the California desert, where conservation efforts have nurtured a growing and sustainable outdoor ...Read more

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court stripped federal oversight from millions of acres of wetlands long protected under the Clean Water Act. Now, erecting safeguards to ensure those waters are not polluted, drained or filled in by developers falls to the states.

They’re finding that it’s not easy.

“States and tribes already didn...Read more

In the face of heavy opposition from environmental groups, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his administration are pushing forward with a controversial plan to build a 45-mile water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta — a project the governor says is vital to modernizing the state’s aging water system.

State officials ...Read more

The global resurgence for nuclear energy starts in the barren, high desert of Idaho.

Almost every nuclear plant in the world today can trace its lineage back to Idaho National Laboratory’s sprawling 890-square-mile complex. Researchers there were the first to generate electricity from splitting the atom back in 1951, and countless scientists...Read more

California has committed to substantially reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, aiming for carbon neutrality by 2045. The pledge is key to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claims of climate leadership, which featured prominently in his recent visits to China and the United Nations.

But the California Air Resources Board recently released a preliminary ...Read more

CHICAGO — In late October, a young sea otter pup was found in the remote coastal town of Seldovia, Alaska, stranded and calling out in distress with no mother in sight. After being rehabilitated, fed and healed, the tiny otter — barely over a month old — began a cross-country trip to his new home in Chicago.

After being rescued by the ...Read more

When Sam Altman was abruptly fired last month as CEO of artificial intelligence powerhouse OpenAI, the rupture left him with a lot of thinking to do.

But looking back on the experience, Altman told comedian Trevor Noah in a video podcast released Thursday morning, there may have been some upside.

"The empathy I gained out of this whole ...Read more

In 2015, the world’s governments declared a collective ambition: to limit the rise in global temperatures to just 1.5 degrees Celsius. Since then, two things have become clear. First, the costs of exceeding that threshold are greater than believed eight years ago. Second, the goal looks increasingly difficult to reach. Even if governments ...Read more

China notched a diplomatic victory in its race against the U.S. for influence in space, with Egypt agreeing to support Beijing’s plan for a proposed project on the moon.

The China National Space Administration on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Egyptian Space Agency that will see them cooperate on the International ...Read more

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to enlist shooters to kill more than 500,000 barred owls over the next 30 years in the Pacific Northwest to preserve habitat for northern spotted owls, a protected species.

Barred owls are native to the East Coast but since the 1950s have been expanding their range in the Northwest. They are ...Read more

A federal agency wants changes in how container ships are anchored off Southern California as well as new safety measures for vessels near offshore pipelines to help prevent or minimize ruptures like the one that spilled 25,000 gallons of crude oil off Huntington Beach.

The 2021 spill caused damage to beaches and wetlands and killed scores of ...Read more

When Jungsang Kim came to Duke University in 2004, he wasn’t sure he’d live long enough to witness quantum advantage: the elusive moment when a quantum computer outperforms a classical computer to solve a real-world problem.

Back then, the emerging field was more theoretical. The experimental building blocks existed; scientists had already ...Read more

What if a missile could jet toward a moving target — and then fly back home to try again if it missed?

That's the idea behind the Roadrunner, a novel combination of AI-powered drone, bomb and boomerang designed by the defense tech company Anduril Industries and announced on Thursday.

The company unveiled the product at its Costa Mesa ...Read more

This week a reader wrote, “Since purchasing an iPhone 15, my phone doesn’t connect to the Qi charger in my vehicle because the camera bump prevents the phone from lying flat and making contact. Is there a solution for this?”

This is an interesting situation that mainly involves the 6.1-inch iPhone 14 and 15 models.

Apple has increased ...Read more