Martin Macias

Asia’s rapidly shrinking high-mountain glaciers are flowing at a slower pace due to widespread ice loss, jeopardizing freshwater availability for downstream countries like India, Pakistan and China, NASA researchers said Thursday.

The Montana Supreme Court invalidated the state’s tuition tax credit on Wednesday ending a program that allowed taxpayers to fund scholarships for private schools, most of which are religious-based.

A leaked memo from what conservationists say is the Justice Department advises the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to withhold or delay releasing records sought in Freedom of Information Act requests regarding implementation of the Endangered Species Act.

Assembly Bill 813, introduced by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, would lump the Golden State with up to 13 states in the Regional Transmission Organization, a wholesale electricity market stretching from Canada to Baja California.

The Trump administration says its proposed revisions to the decades-old Endangered Species Act reduce regulatory burden, while conservationists call them a “massive attack” on vulnerable species that face mounting threats from climate change and development.

A bill that would merge California into a regional energy market with other Western states won’t have the backing of Los Angeles over fears that a regional grid would increase fossil fuel input, particularly from coal, into California’s energy grid.

The U.S. Department of the Interior proposed a rule to the White House this week that would effectively rescind most protections for hundreds of species of wildlife listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Protections to be eliminated include the 40-year-old rule, 4(d) in the Act, which offers the same special protections for threatened species as those categorized as endangered.