The beaks of puffins are found to be fluorescent.  

Seabirds worldwide are failing to adjust their breeding schedules to adapt to the changing climate.  

The Gulf Stream and other Atlantic Ocean currents are declining in strength and are now at a record low.  

Japan discovers huge deposits of rare earth elements, enough to last for hundreds of years, in the Pacific Ocean’s deep-sea mud. These metals are essential for the construction of electric vehicles and advanced batteries and were previously thought to be in short supply. 

New Zealand will stop granting new deep-sea oil and gas drilling permits in order to move away from fossil fuels. 

Canada’s Kinder Morgan Inc. stops all work on its enormous Trans Mountain pipeline, which the tar-sands industry had counted on to get its product to port in British Columbia for shipment to Asia.

The National Weather Service is replacing human data collectors at nine weather stations around Alaska with automated units from Finland.  

Five wildlife rangers and their driver are killed in an ambush in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Virunga is home to a large population of critically endangered mountain gorillas. 

A previously shuttered coal mine in eastern Australia is reopened to power Bitcoin mining. 

Coal baron Bob Murray says that the government has to subsidize the coal industry "to make sure Grandma doesn't die on the operating table." Andrew Wheeler, a former top lobbyist for Murray Energy, is confirmed as second in command at the EPA. 

Two members appointed by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt to the agency’s science advisory board received money from the American Petroleum Institute to conduct research that was subsequently used by the auto industry to justify weaker auto emission standards. 

A career EPA staffer is fired after approving a report that finds no “specific, credible, direct threat to the EPA administrator” that might justify the $3 million he has spent on security measures.  

Pruitt wants the EPA seal (which he thinks looks like a marijuana leaf) removed from agency souvenirs and replaced with his name. A deputy to Pruitt says that the administrator ordered subordinates to book his official travel so as to maximize his frequent flyer miles.

The federal government’s top ethics official questions Pruitt’s actions at the agency.

A young male sperm whale found dead on a beach in Spain has 64 pounds of trash in its digestive system.

One in five Americans has participated in a political demonstration since the beginning of 2016.