"At the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission headquarters in Virginia, staff knew their crumbling asphalt parking lot was in desperate need of repair. But instead of replacing the lot with more dark blacktop, the group chose an alternative."

"In the year since President Donald Trump signed an executive order promising to create a deep-sea mining industry from scratch, businesses have raised millions of dollars from investors, stock prices have soared and federal regulators have raced to fast-track a permitting process."

"A federal appeals court said a judge erred in ruling that adding fluoride to water poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s brain development."

"Plans for a celebrity-backed “hyperscale” data center in rural Utah, so massive that it would consume more than double the state’s current electricity use, have generated an intense public and political backlash in a state where the motto is “industry” and a Republican supermajority tends to be deferential to development."

"In the year since President Donald Trump signed an executive order promising to create a deep-sea mining industry from scratch, businesses have raised millions of dollars from investors, stock prices have soared and federal regulators have raced to fast-track a permitting process."

"A developing El Nino that is forecast to get quite strong will likely dampen the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season, but it won’t make the potentially deadly storms disappear, federal and outside meteorologists predict."

"The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crabs have clawed their way out of the cellar. The dredge survey conducted last winter by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Virginia Institute of Marine Science found that the Bay’s crab population — especially the young crustaceans — have rebounded from a protracted slump, despite an unusually harsh winter."

"The general manager of President Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., has offered suggestions to guide the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and helped recruit one of the contractors for the job, according to federal documents and a government spokeswoman."

"The Trump administration has determined that atrazine, a weedkiller used widely on corn and other crops, does not pose an extinction risk to threatened or endangered wildlife, effectively justifying its continued use, according to a federal review made public this week." "The finding effectively paves the way for continued use of atrazine, a widely used herbicide that has been linked to birth defects and cancer in humans."

"The Senate on Monday narrowly confirmed Steve Pearce, a former New Mexico congressman with a long history of pushing for federal public land sell-offs, to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management."