A woman in Rome is arrested for violating shelter-in-place restrictions by taking her turtle—described as being "as big as a pizza"—for a walk. 

US deaths from COVID-19 pass 30,000, with more than 660,000 people nationwide testing positive. Twenty-two million Americans have filed for unemployment assistance in the past four weeks. Worldwide, nearly 1.5 million are infected and 147,000 have perished. 

Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park. 

A widespread pause in commercial fishing during the coronavirus outbreak may allow some depleted fish stocks to bounce back. 

In the first three weeks of California's shelter-in-place order, deaths and injuries from traffic accidents declined by half. In New York City, drivers are staging drag races on deserted streets. 

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels could drop by 5 percent this year. 

Harvard's school of public health finds that people who breathe fine particles of air pollution are 15 percent more likely to die of COVID-19. Against the advice of EPA staff scientists, administrator and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler dismisses calls to tighten federal soot standards and proposes leaving them as they are.   

The EPA loosens regulations on releases of mercury and other toxics, and in doing so makes it more difficult to regulate air pollution in the future. 

Georgia regulators nix the last proposed coal plant in the United States. 

An idled coal mine in Indiana is being redeveloped as a craft distillery.  

Virginia becomes the first state in the South to pledge to go carbon-free (by 2045).  

Scientists on a research vessel off Western Australia discover a siphonophore—a stringlike creature "like an incredible UFO"—estimated to be 150 feet long, which would make it the longest creature on the planet.  

Rains help Ukrainian firefighters put out forest fires burning near the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 

Asserting a need to create jobs in the timber industry after the coronavirus pandemic ends, the US Forest Service extends timber contracts in national forests by two years, and three years for Alaska's Tongass National Forest.  

The latest trapping season in Alaska's Alexander Archipelago eliminated 97 percent of the wolves there. 

Adán Vez Lira is murdered in Veracruz; he is the third Mexican environmental activist to be killed this year. 

A second wave of locusts—20 times worse than the first wave—threatens East Africa. 

Belgium closes parks and woods during its annual bluebell bloom and fines people who come to see them.  

Astronomers identify a potentially habitable Earth-size planet only 300 light-years away.