"Subtropical Storm Theta became the 29th named storm of the tumultuous 2020 hurricane season on Monday night, breaking a record set in 2005."

"As the largest wildfire in Colorado history spread beyond 200,000 acres, Mark Kempton began to worry it would incinerate so much of the Fort Collins watershed that the city would be unable to guarantee water to its residents."

"A strengthening Tropical Storm Eta made landfall on Florida’s Lower Matecumbe Key on Sunday night, days after leaving scores of dead and over 100 missing in Mexico and Central America."

"President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced the members of his coronavirus task force, a group made up entirely of doctors and health experts, signaling his intent to seek a science-based approach to bring the raging pandemic under control."

"The remnants of Hurricane Eta unleashed torrential rains and catastrophic flooding on Central America, with fatalities sharply up on Thursday mostly because of mudslides as streets turned into rivers and bridges came tumbling down."

"A rapidly rising flood of coronavirus infections engulfed much of the United States on Thursday, setting records for new cases in 20 states, killing 1,158 people and straining the health system’s capacity to keep up with the pandemic.

On Thursday, 116,707 new cases were reported, the second straight record for a single day and a figure that dwarfed the total for any day in the previous worst two periods of the outbreak, in April and July. From Washington state to West Virginia and from Texas to Pennsylvania, the country was awash in record or near-record case counts Thursday.

"The world’s largest mink producer, Denmark, says it plans to cull more than 15 million of the animals, due to fears that a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines."