"Hakim Dermish moved to the small South Texas town of Catarina in 2002 in search of a rural lifestyle on a budget. The property where he lived with his wife didn’t have electricity or sewer lines at first, but that didn’t bother him."
"Bobbi Stevenson Bauer loves her flowers. The Arlington, Virginia, resident often travels to downtown Washington, D.C., to visit the Enid A. Haupt Garden at the Smithsonian and the U.S. Botanic Garden, two of the many tourist destinations that are situated along the National Mall. ... “I haven’t seen it this empty since Covid,” she reported during a recent visit."
"The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s past recovery efforts have been impeded by staffing shortages, and officials are facing an ongoing hurricane season with even fewer employees, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday."
"The EPA on Friday terminated at least five of the roughly 140 employees who signed a public letter in June critical of the agency’s political leadership, according to the staffers’ union. At least 10 other tenured employees have gotten a notice of proposed removal, said Nicole Cantello, an EPA lawyer and president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704."
"A Chinese-owned mining company has been accused of covering up the extent of a disastrous toxic spill in Zambia that polluted a major river that millions rely on with cyanide and arsenic."
"A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that EPA can terminate $20 billion in climate grants that was awarded to nonprofit groups last year."
"As Spain takes a breath after yet another brutal summer heatwave, with temperatures above 40C in many parts of the country, the residents of the sherry-making town of Jerez de la Frontera have come up with a novel way to keep the streets cool."
"Congress is proposing to reverse measures that protect military service members, firefighters and others from harmful PFAS chemicals."
"Two firefighters working on the Bear Gulch Fire [Wash.] were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents on Wednesday."
"When a deadly landslide tore through part of Wrangell, Alaska, in 2023, there was only one place people there could go for information. "We're on an island, and there's one road, and everybody that lived south of that road lost everything — they lost their electricity, internet, television, phones," says Cindy Sweat, the general manager of KSTK, the community's public broadcaster. What was left, Sweat says, was the radio."
