"Hurricane Irma hammered a string of northeast Caribbean islands, thrashing them with rain and winds of up to 180 mph, and leaving at least nine people dead."
"Vaccine giant Sanofi Pasteur has quietly pulled the plug on its Zika vaccine project, a move that underscores how difficult it may be at this stage to develop a vaccine against the virus."
"When his investigators dug into corruption allegations at a Superfund site, Oklahoma State Auditor Gary Jones believed they'd found criminal wrongdoing. But Scott Pruitt, then Oklahoma's attorney general, didn't agree with Jones about activities at the Tar Creek site. In 2015, a little more than a year after getting Jones' report, he said he wouldn't bring criminal charges."
"Wildfires burned across hundreds of thousands of acres in the American and Canadian West this week, fueled by scorching temperatures that are breaking heat and fire records across the region." "'These unprecedented extreme events are exactly the types of events that are more likely due to the global warming that’s already occurred.'"
"The tug of war over how much more fuel efficient new cars and trucks should be in coming years — a fight that once seemed all but settled — will play out again on Wednesday in a downtown Washington hotel."
"The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the unusual step of putting a political operative in charge of vetting the hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the EPA distributes annually, assigning final funding decisions to a former Trump campaign aide with little environmental policy experience."
"Hurricane Irma, packing winds of 185 m.p.h., made landfall in Barbuda, an island of about 2,000 people, around 2 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said."
"The Elwha River starts at Dodwell-Rixon Pass, a high crack in Washington’s Olympic Mountains. There, a hiker who crossed would find the Elwha Snowfinger, formed by heavy winter storms and the avalanches that pour off the surrounding mountainsides."
"President Trump’s pick to be the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) chief scientist is on track to face one of the rougher confirmation battles of the administration."
"Texas on Monday edged toward recovery from the devastation of Hurricane Harvey as shipping channels, oil pipelines and refineries restarted some operations and authorities lifted an evacuation order for the area around a once-burning chemical plant."
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