Over the past month, US law enforcement has uncovered some 25,000 marijuana plants growing illegally within California’s national forests, according to federal court documents reviewed by Quartz. In at least one case, the illicit growers sprayed the plants with one of the most dangerous pesticides in the world.
The Amazon rainforest is burning at an unprecedented rate, and the fires are unlikely starting themselves. Rather they may be set by people in an attempt to clear land for cattle ranching.
Right now, if you search for news about the massive fires burning in the Amazon rainforest, you might mostly find stories about the Amazon Fire line of tablets and streaming devices.
Veterinarians say the baby dugong died of shock.
Some 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a township adjacent to a state forest, oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell is building a sprawling new plant to support what it sees as the future of its business: making millions of tons of new, virgin plastic.
Agrochemical giant Syngenta funded a peer-reviewed paper published Friday that suggests glyphosate, an herbicide at the center of a worldwide public health controversy, would be better at killing weeds if it was sprayed on the plants at certain times of day.
At this point, we know enough about climate change to know that, on average, it’s making high-heat days more common and more extreme. But “attribution science,” or the science of pinning specific weather events to climate change, is getting better all the time. It’s an impactful way to internalize the effect of human-driven climate change on these extreme events—like last week’s record-breaking heat wave.
A gas pipeline explosion in rural Kentucky early Thursday killed one person and sent five others to the hospital. The blaze also set homes on fire and destroyed railroad tracks.
On August 27, 2010, in Canadian waters above the Arctic Circle, a cruise ship called the Clipper Adventurer ran aground on a rock no one knew was there. Two hundred passengers and crew had set out on an adventure few tourists have experienced: a journey through the Northwest Passage.
The latest data from Brazilian satellites shows (link in Portuguese) that deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon is accelerating, leading experts to fear that it could be approaching a tipping point past which the rainforest can’t recover.
Secretive negotiations between California regulators and four major automakers resulted in a recent agreement to make cars that meet much stricter fuel-efficiency standards than the Trump administration plans to impose, the Washington Post reports.
On Monday, July 29, we will be 209 days into the calendar year. And we will have used up all the resources the Earth could regenerate in 365 days.
The Border Patrol Foundation is a nonprofit that honors US Border Patrol agents who have been killed in the line of duty, and provides support and resources to their families. Every year they have a dinner in Washington, DC to raise funds. And for years it was held at the JW Marriott. In 2018, however, it was relocated to the Trump International Hotel.
Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have been arrested 176 times since October for a range of criminal offenses, according to internal agency documents reviewed by Quartz.
The Gulf of Mexico has an algae bloom problem—and Tropical Storm Barry is poised to make it worse.
A large, framed photo of far-right commentator Tomi Lahren posing with US Border Patrol officials hangs prominently on the wall of the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC. A person with access to the area described the setting and shared a picture of it with Quartz.
In 2007, up at the top of the world, Russia dropped a titanium Russian flag two and a half miles underwater, at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. There was nothing much around. Just vast floes of sea ice and the two Russian submarines that had made the arduous trek to stake a claim to the North Pole.
A Guatemalan migrant miscarried while being processed by the US Border Patrol on Independence Day, according to internal agency emails reviewed by Quartz.
Last month, Simon Andreas Langer and his girlfriend completed a month-long trip across the American Southwest. Now he’s facing federal smuggling charges for allegedly trying to take home endangered cactus seeds. The charge carries a potential prison term of up to 10 years.
Mental health issues are plaguing the ranks of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as officers deal with increasing job stress related to the crisis at the southern border and lingering financial problems caused by the partial government shutdown.
Japan is the world’s second-highest user per capita of plastic packaging, according to the United Nations Environment Program. It is also the host of this year’s G20 Summit, which begins Friday (June 28). Japan hopes at the meeting to showcase its efforts to deal with its plastic problem, symbolized by plans to make the 2020 Tokyo Olympic medals from recycled plastic. But experts say the country can’t recycle its way out of this mess, according to the Associated Press. It has to cut down on the demand for plastic in the first place.
The Northwest Passage is one of just two possible shipping routes through the Arctic. “Possible” is generous: The icy landscape is treacherous for all but the burliest ships. Because the passage is of limited use, countries have rarely clashed over its ownership.
Microbes quite literally support all of life on Earth. They are the very bottom of the food chain, no matter where you look, and regulate a number of processes critical to all of us. They are also the vast majority of life forms on the planet, outnumbering every other living thing by staggering amounts. But in the vast majority of cases, we have yet to understand how they will be impacted by climate change—and how in turn they will affect how climate change unfolds.
Two major brands of flour were recalled this month over concerns of contamination by Escherichia coli bacteria, a tiny single-celled creature better known as E. coli.
