"On a cold morning last March, Kenny Angel got a frantic knock on his door. Two workers from a utility company in northern Nebraska had come with a stark warning: Get out of your house. ...Minutes later, the dam came crashing down, unleashing a wave of water carrying ice chunks the size of cars. Angel’s home was wiped away; his body was never found."

"The U.S. Justice Department has issued civil subpoenas to four major automakers, demanding that they disclose details on a deal struck with California in July to follow strict vehicle emissions standards, a source briefed on the matter said on Thursday."

"General Motors has announced that it has sold its Lordstown, Ohio, plant, which it opened in 1966 and where the Chevrolet Cruze was manufactured, to the EV startup Lordstown Motors for an undisclosed amount."

"When officials at a government weather forecasting office assured Alabama residents that a September hurricane would not hit their state, they did not intend to contradict President Trump’s insistence that it would, according to newly disclosed documents."

"The Trump administration changed a 25-year-old policy to make it easier for coastal communities to take sand from protected ecosystems to improve their beaches."

"Lawyers for New York State and ExxonMobil wrapped up a landmark climate fraud trial on Thursday, shaping a tangle of testimony and evidence into competing narratives on whether the oil company misled investors about the risks it faces from climate regulation."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provided "largely non-responsive" documents in response to a final threat by House Democrats, according to committee staff, likely setting the stage for a forthcoming subpoena."

"The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general is investigating whether chief of staff Ryan Jackson was involved in destroying internal documents that should have been retained, according to two people familiar with the matter."

"The Interior Department is proposing to award one of the first contracts for federal water in perpetuity to a powerful rural water district that had employed Secretary David Bernhardt as a lawyer and lobbyist."

"Chestnuts harvested from high branches on a chilly fall morning look typical: they’re marble sized, russet colored and nestled in prickly burs. But many are like no other nuts in nature. In a feat of genetic engineering, about half the chestnuts collected at this college experiment station feature a gene that provides resistance to blight that virtually wiped out the American chestnut tree generations ago."