"President Trump’s zest for rapidly shrinking the government is triggering anxiety about conservation priorities that have been embedded for more than five decades in the country’s national parks and wildlife refuges. Amid the staffing whiplash — chaotic firings and reinstatement of rangers, scientists, and other civil servants — America’s most vulnerable plant and animal species face new peril in their struggle to survive."

"Every year, from December to April, the Harmattan sweeps across Africa. This cool, dry and dust-laden wind gets its name from haramata, a word in the Ghanaian language Fanti. ... The Harmattan's effects go beyond reduced visibility and dryness. It has an impact on human health, agriculture and ecosystems."

"In Uganda’s Mbale district, famous for its production of arabica coffee, a plague of plastic bags locally known as buveera is creeping beyond the city."

"The Trump administration is canceling billions of dollars in grant funding to state and local health departments without warning, throwing their programs into disarray."

"At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, visitors pushed back against the claim that the museum perpetuated anti-American ideology."

"Earth has lost enough soil moisture in the last 40 years to change the planet’s spin and shift the location of the North Pole, according to a new study published today in Science that tracks how human activities have disrupted the global water cycle. The persistent loss of water from land to oceans has dried out huge portions of every continent and may be irreversible, scientists describing the new research said this week."

"President Donald Trump will nominate Susan Monarez, the acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a longtime federal staffer, to the permanent position, a White House official confirmed Monday."

"With the release of its fourth and final round of color-coded hazard maps this morning, California’s firefighting agency is showing just how much of the state is prone to wildfire — and how much that computationally-modeled danger zone has grown since the state issued its last round of local hazard maps more than a decade ago."

"With massive job cuts, the National Weather Service is eliminating or reducing vital weather balloon launches in eight northern locations, which meteorologists and former agency leaders said will degrade the accuracy of forecasts just as severe weather season kicks in."