State sought to stop system off coast of Santa Barbara from resuming operations after Trump ordered its reopening

An oil pipeline can continue to operate off the California coast after a judge gave it the green light this week, despite the opposition of state regulators and environmental groups.

The system off the coast of Santa Barbara resumed operations earlier this year for the first time in more than a decade after Donald Trump ordered Sable Offshore Corporation to reopen it, citing US energy needs during the war in Iran.

Administration’s plan to scrap drilling-free buffer zone around New Mexico site prompts scrutiny from Unesco

The Trump administration’s push to expand oil and gas extraction across the US is set to bring drilling near cherished natural and cultural sites, raising alarm among conservationists and prompting questions from the UN’s heritage body.

Unesco said it had received information on the administration’s plan to scrap a drilling-free buffer zone around the Chaco Culture national historical park in New Mexico, a world heritage site and one of the most important cultural areas in the US. A Unesco spokesperson said it had procedures regarding “potential threats” to a world heritage property and was awaiting a response from the federal government as to its impact.

Regulations that would block sale of older tires praised by environmental groups amid rightwing backlash

California has become the first state in the nation to mandate that replacement tires be energy efficient, a major auto industry regulation set to block the sale of older tires and make vehicles on the road greener.

State regulators have said the new rules will reduce emissions and drivers’ fuel costs. But the rules – which come as the Trump administrations fights to block other California restrictions to promote greener cars – have already sparked a rightwing backlash, with one conservative news outlet calling the policies a “massive overreach”.

Discovery marks latest grim finding in lake as water levels in crucial reservoir outside Las Vegas continue to decline

Human remains have once again been discovered at Lake Mead outside Las Vegas, Nevada, marking the latest in a line of gruesome discoveries as water levels in the crucial reservoir continue to drop, authorities said.

These remains were discovered on 16 August, USA Today reported. The National Park Service (NPS) told the outlet there did not appear to be anything suspicious about the body.

Image captured in early June shows animal foraging in the waterway in first since early 1900s, signaling its recovery

An otter has been spotted in the Bronx River for the first time in more than 100 years, in a further sign that New York’s previously befouled waterways are recovering some of their ecological health.

The North American river otter was photographed by a motion-activated camera foraging near some vegetation in the Bronx River, a waterway that flows through New York’s Bronx and empties into the East River.

Firefighters describe being pushed to limit by a brutal wildfire season, with key leadership roles going unfilled

The US has faced a critical shortage of firefighters at the US Forest Service (USFS) this summer as thousands of fires erupted across the country.

Despite officials’ claims that the firefighting workforce was stronger than ever, the agency has failed to keep pace with escalating conditions and the catastrophic fires fueled by them, according to nine firefighters who spoke to the Guardian anonymously, because they are barred from disclosing the information to the public.

Storm also caused destructive flooding and damage to homes and infrastructure with one woman dead

• Tropical storm Lala wreaks ‘devastation’ to some areas of Hawaii’s Big Island

Crews in Hawaii are working to restore power to thousands of residents after the outer bands of Hurricane Lala battered the islands over the weekend, causing destructive flooding and killing one person.

On the hard-hit Big Island, crews were working to clear and restore roads, but some communities on the southern end of the island remained isolated as they were cut off from communication.

Almost 45m acres of national forests could be potentially opened to road construction, drilling and logging

The Trump administration said on Tuesday it plans to rescind the “roadless rule” that has protected old-growth forests in the US for 25 years, potentially opening up almost 45m acres of national forests to road construction, drilling and logging.

Conservationists had feared the announcement was coming since last summer after Brooke Rollins, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, targeted a rule brought in by Bill Clinton’s administration, describing it as “overly restrictive” and an “absurd obstacle” to development.

Officials have had to remove thousands of tons of sargassum from Florida’s beaches amid the climate crisis

Dealing with seaweed is the bulk of Chris Bumpus’s job during the summer. As chief of conservation for Miami-Dade county’s parks, recreation and open spaces department, Bumpus is in charge of cleaning sargassum off 17 miles (27km) of county beaches. But some days, the odds are stacked against him and his team.

More and more sargassum, a kind of floating brown algae, has been washing up on the beaches of south Florida, west Africa, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, near death on Welsh beach in 2023, is thriving in Houston despite lingering pneumonia

A Kemp’s ridley sea turtle native to the Gulf of Mexico is largely thriving after he was found nearly dead on a beach in Wales in late 2023, nursed back to health and then flown to Houston recently to continue recovering – though scans revealed signs that the creature has been grappling with lingering pneumonia, according to his caretakers.

Rhossi’s condition was detailed in a blogpost on Friday from the Houston zoo, whose veterinary team was tasked with caring for the creature – believed to be no older than age four – and giving him the best chance possible at an eventual, successful return to the wild.

Famous raptor helped livestream viewers in difficult moments, and inspired a conservation project at her lake home

The bald eagle Jackie made her home on the shore of southern California’s Big Bear Lake for most of her 14 years. But her death earlier this week drew international attention.

The Los Angeles Times described her as “arguably the world’s most famous bald eagle”. For years, millions of people tuned into a live stream of Jackie’s nest, watching her rear her eaglets, work out life with her mate, Shadow, and, perhaps most memorably, incubate her eggs while almost completely buried in snow.

Molendotech will collate data from daily tests that detect E coli and other bacteria amid reports of swimmers falling ill

A UK university spinout behind a rapid bacterial water testing kit is planning to launch live water quality maps, as scores of beachgoers report falling ill after swimming.

Molendotech, a spinout from the University of Plymouth, sells a portable test that detects E coli and other bacteria in water and delivers results on the spot, without waiting for days to get laboratory results.

National Weather Service reports that more than 11in of rain fell over a two-day period in some areas

At least five people are dead after devastating floods that swept through Indiana this week, officials said, as storms continued to batter the state on Saturday and first responders used boats to rescue more people from rising waters in neighborhoods along the White River in Indianapolis.

The mayor of Indianapolis, Joe Hogsett, and other state officials implored residents in areas at risk of flooding to heed any evacuation warnings at a news conference.

Heavy machinery seen operating in famous Santa Elena Canyon amid outcry over new wall infrastructure in beloved Texas park

Bulldozers have begun plowing up ground at the mouth of Big Bend national park’s famed Santa Elena Canyon as part of the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar “smart wall” expansion on the US-Mexico border, according to new footage taken by activists who have been monitoring the site.

Tensions have run high since the Trump administration announced plans to erect new border security infrastructure in the roughly 500-mile Big Bend region of south-west Texas, which includes the Lone Star State’s largest and most-visited national park.

Study of 56m-year-old leaves counters claims from Trump administration members of ‘benefits’ of fossil fuel pollution

Adding huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is set to cause the Earth’s forests to wither and die rather than flourish, according to a new study that counters erroneous claims that fossil fuel pollution will green the planet.

An analysis of fossilized leaf cells from a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred about 56 million years ago, has helped reconstruct how the world’s forests responded when planet-heating gases were previously being released at a rapid rate.

South American fish with razor-toothed jaws was probably released by someone who owned it as a pet, officials say

An eight-year-old boy fishing for bass in Pennsylvania was stunned to catch something more associated with the Amazon – and countless horror movies – than the rolling landscape of the eastern US.

Seamus Coffey, who was fishing with his father Michael in a lake near Philadelphia, hauled in a large red-bellied piranha, complete with the razor-toothed jaws that the fearsome breed is so famous for.

State is US’s largest user of pesticide that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson’s disease

California is banning paraquat, a highly toxic, controversial herbicide used across millions of acres of American cropland.

Public health advocates characterize it as a deadly substance that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson’s disease. It is already outlawed in more than 70 countries, including China, the UK and the EU. Yet in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reapproved it for use in 2021 and 2024.

Indiana faced most outages at 267,000, about 8% of its customers, with severe thunderstorms and wind ahead

Power supply was cut on Thursday ⁠to about 540,000 homes and businesses across the US midwest as severe storms battered the region, data ⁠from PowerOutage.us showed.

Indiana ⁠was the ​hardest-hit state, with more than 267,000 outages, representing about 8% of its roughly 3.3 million customers, the data ⁠showed.

The dangers of AI become clearer every day. Why are we still acting as if we have no choice about our future?

Rather than producing jobs, the US economy actually lost 23,000 jobs in July, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released on Friday. In addition, May and June’s job numbers were revised downward, showing a combined 103,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

As if this weren’t bad enough, wage growth has also slowed. Average hourly earnings rose by just 0.1% from June.