"Sen. Tim Scott teamed up with Instagram on Wednesday to preview the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, which opens to the public Sept. 24."

"Interior Secretary Sally Jewell unveiled a sweeping conservation plan in Palm Desert on Wednesday, promising to protect millions of acres of California desert while encouraging solar and wind farms in limited areas."

"President Barack Obama plans to designate on Thursday an undersea range of canyons and peaks off the US Eastern seaboard as the country's first Atlantic marine national monument."

"PORTLAND, Ore. — Federal prosecutors today told a jury that the leaders of the armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year 'moved as a military force.'"

"Norway and Turkey were the only two of 53 countries to vote against an international ban on the dumping of mining waste at sea, at a major conservation summit in Hawaii last week."

"PORTLAND, Ore. — The trial of Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan and five of their followers, antigovernment protesters charged in the armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge earlier this year, will begin here on Tuesday in a federal court."

"U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, the first black U.S. senator from the deep South since Reconstruction, is proposing that the site where the Civil War began be raised in status to that of a national park."

"A river in the far north of Siberia turned bright red this week, residents said, leading Russians to nickname the tributary the 'blood river.'"

"Unspoiled lands are disappearing from the face of the Earth at an alarming pace, with about 10 percent of wilderness regions - an area double the size of Alaska - lost in the past two decades amid unrelenting human development, researchers said on Thursday."

"In its biggest expansion in decades, Yosemite National Park on Wednesday broadened its western boundary by adding 400 acres of lush meadowlands edged with cedars and ponderosa pines that provide habitat for some of California’s most threatened wildlife."