"In the most remote parts of Alaska, staying in touch can involve a bit more effort than sending a text. Cell service is spotty, highways are nonexistent, and the postal service remains a vital lifeline, delivering supplies and mail by plane. But for anyone who wants to broadcast a different kind of message — a reminder to pick up milk, for example, or birthday wishes — there’s always the Muktuk Telegram."

"Deep in the Amazon, sound designer Eric Terena has been capturing the sounds of the rainforest while sitting silently beneath the dense, towering treetops with his recording equipment. He has noticed some huge changes."

"A billion-dollar seawall may shield the city’s wealthy core — but not the vulnerable communities beyond it. Who will be forced to move?"

"Like a Senate panel in July, a U.S. House of Representatives spending committee has rejected President Donald Trump’s request to gut the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A bill released today would give the agency a base budget of about $47 billion in the 2026 fiscal year that begins on 1 October, essentially the same level as this year."

"Cuts to SNAP and farm-to-school programs under the Trump administration risk worsening childhood disease, nutrition experts warn."

"Researching air quality is key to improving kids’ health, according to a new strategy from the Make America Healthy Again Commission unveiled Tuesday by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. There’s just one problem: EPA, under Zeldin’s leadership, has shuttered the preeminent laboratory in the country studying air pollution’s impact on people."

"Brazil brought the U.N.’s COP30 climate conference to the Amazon. Then the price frenzy began." "The idea had seemed symbolically fitting at first — a global climate summit set on the edge of the threatened Amazon rainforest."

"Provisions in the House and Senate annual Defense authorization bills reduce restrictions on the Pentagon’s use of “forever chemicals.”

"Transit agencies have been warning for years that the twin problems of diminished ridership and rising costs could send entire public transportation systems into a tailspin. Now, some worry that day has come."

"Disaster survivors are having to wait longer to get aid from the federal government, according to a new Associated Press analysis of decades of data. On average, it took less than two weeks for a governor’s request for a presidential disaster declaration to be granted in the 1990s and early 2000s. ... It’s taking more than a month, on average, so far during Trump’s current term, the AP found."