"If you want official numbers on how 2018 ranks in the annals of recent record-breaking temperatures, you’ll have to wait."

"It’s the peak of the leafy greens growing season in Yuma, Ariz., where irrigated valleys are lush and verdant amid cactus-covered mountains. .... But these are anxious times for the leafy greens industry, and the partial federal government shutdown and furloughing of many Food and Drug Administration officials has deepened the distress."

"Acting Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler’s past lobbying work for coal companies and other industries regulated by the agency is expected to draw scrutiny Wednesday when a Senate committee considers his nomination to the position."

"The FDA plans as soon as Tuesday to restart food safety inspections at facilities that handle riskier products like fresh-cut produce, as the partial government shutdown extends into its fourth week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Monday."

"President Trumphas tapped Commerce Department inspector Mark Greenblatt to be the new inspector general of the Department of the Interior."

"As men leave animal agriculture for less gritty work, more ranches are being led by women — with new ideas about technology, ecology and the land."

"Hundreds of years before John Wayne and Gary Cooper gave us a Hollywood version of the American West, with men as the brute, weather-beaten stewards of the land, female ranchers roamed the frontier. They were the indigenous, Navajo, Cheyenne and other tribes, and Spanish-Mexican rancheras, who tended and tamed vast fields, traversed rugged landscapes with their dogs, hunted, and raised livestock.

After a federal payroll division mistakenly paid workers at the Chemical Safety Board, which investigates toxic and hazardous chemical disasters, Trump officials scrambled to claw back the money.

"Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt must soon decide whether to maintain eight temporary agency directors, as the Trump administration presses into its third year without appointees for a slew of top posts at the department.

According to Secretarial Order 3345, eight temporary appointments — including the heads of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service — will expire on Jan. 31.