National (U.S.)

"A federal judge in California has temporarily barred the Trump administration from using the government shutdown as the basis for layoffs at EPA, the Energy Department and other agencies."

"Another round of terminations, combined with previous layoffs and departures, has reduced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workforce by about 3,000 people since January."

"Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military further from the seat of its power."

"After more than a century, these shellfish have reappeared along the Damariscotta River. Their return is a boon — and a warning of climate change."

"Retired Marine Corps gunnery sergeant Vida Rivera knows heat can be as dangerous as any enemy."

"The water isn’t always brown, but Scarlet Weathers lives like it is. Not once has she drank the tap water from her kitchen sink in her house in Sweeny, Texas. She knows, like everyone else in the town, that it can’t be trusted. Even her small grandchildren have noticed it during bathtime. Why is the water brown?"

"Google recently courted the township of Franklin, Ind., so that it could construct a giant campus to house the computer hardware that powers its internet business. But the company needed to rezone more than 450 acres in the Indianapolis suburb, and residents weren't having it."

"For as long as 55-year-old Hopi Chairman Tim Nuvangyaoma has been alive, high-voltage power lines have cut across Hopi lands in northeast Arizona, carrying vast amounts of power long distances throughout the Southwest. But residents of the Hopi Reservation have never been connected to that grid."