"More than a month has passed since Venezuela’s devastating earthquakes, and the constant sound of heavy machinery still echoes through the hardest-hit neighborhoods of La Guaira on the northern coast. Dust from collapsed buildings hangs in the humid air. Garbage has piled up. Families camp outside homes deemed too dangerous to enter. Water trucks weave through damaged streets."
"A record wave of brown, smelly seaweed is washing up on beaches along Mexico's Caribbean coast, forcing closures in top tourist destinations and inflicting mounting economic damage on hotels, restaurants and shops."
"California’s wildfires are destroying forests faster than the state can replant them, and federal cuts are making the gap worse. One expert says the crisis is barely known — even though it could reshape half the state’s forests by 2071."
"As recently as 2024, the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy had 15 employees. In 2026, it has two."
"The Forest Service remains stretched on the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho — a place with ties to key agency leaders — and is leaning on volunteer groups for help."
"The latest wildfires in southern Europe this week have displaced more than 250,000 people, including some 70,000 people who were evacuated in central Spain."
"About 70 million people in the US are set to face excessive heat advisories as dangerously hot temperatures scorch much of the country’s southern and central states."
"Approximately a billion tiny plastic nurdles have entered the River Tyne after a “devastating spill”, with the pellets thought to have spread much further than first thought."
"France recorded at least 5,700 more deaths than usual during a historic heat wave last month, the public health agency said Wednesday, sharply increasing its estimates of the feared toll from record-shattering temperatures."
"More than twice the amount of swimming pool chemicals as planned were improperly stored at a Georgia plant, setting conditions for a fire in 2024 that sent a huge plume of orange and black smoke into the sky and forced residents to shelter in place, a federal agency report concluded."
