The dramatic images of wealthy neighborhoods burning during the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires captured global attention, but the damage was much more widespread. Many working-class families lost their homes, businesses and jobs. In all, more than 16,000 structures – most of them homes – were destroyed, leaving thousands of people ...Read more

Las Vegas locals began a project in the 1990s to protect a geological marvel at the edge of town. They made educational signs and were joined by politicians including late Sen. Harry Reid and then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, but the area was vandalized soon after.

Thirty years later, groups are no closer to increasing protections for the ...Read more

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Why is water different colors in different places? – Gina T., age 12, Portland, Maine

What do you picture when you think of water? An icy, refreshing drink? A crystal-blue ...Read more

It’s extremely easy to get sunburned while you’re skiing and snowboarding in the mountains, but have you ever wondered why?

While it’s true that you’re slightly closer to the Sun when you’re high in the mountains, that isn’t the reason.

If you go up 1 mile (1.6 km), about the elevation from Denver to the peaks of ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — On Jan. 1, polystyrene packaging became illegal to sell, distribute or import into California — the result of a landmark waste law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022, and heralded by lawmakers and environmentalists as a game-changer in the fight against single-use plastics and pollution.

But few would have known that this ...Read more

Apple and Google have restored TikTok to their U.S. app stores after President Trump delayed enforcement of a law that requires the popular video app to divest or face a nationwide ban.

The tech companies removed TikTok nearly a month ago to comply with the law, which went into effect Jan. 19.

A day later, on his first day in office, Trump ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — An overnight SpaceX launch planned for early Saturday will use a booster that’s already flown to space 25 times.

A Falcon 9 is targeting 1:14 a.m. carrying 21 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveal Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 with backup options through 2:15 a.m. as well as a Sunday launch window opening ...Read more

Companies and public officials in the Northwest had high hopes that the offshore wind industry could inject great quantities of cash and jobs here.

But they've encountered a four-year snag.

Just hours into his second term, President Donald Trump ordered a halt to any future offshore wind leases and a slow-walk review process for existing ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- While most look for ways to avoid the steady rain falling from atmospheric rivers, some take advantage of the unwieldy weather patterns to improve forecasts and to help control, and ultimately modernize, the complex labyrinth of waterways hydrating California.

Weather researchers with the Scripps Institution of ...Read more

A tourist visiting the Caribbean had to be flown to a hospital after she was attacked while trying to “engage” with a shark for a photo, according to investigators.

It happened Friday, Feb. 7, off a beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands, 600 miles southeast of Miami, and the woman is expected to survive. Her identity has not been released. ...Read more

BRANDON, Fla. —A team of veterinary surgeons performed cataract surgery on Thunder, a resident bald eagle at Moccasin Lake Nature Park in Clearwater, at a clinic in Brandon on Thursday.

Thunder was rescued after being shot by a poacher as an eaglet in her nest in Sebring in 1995, when bald eagles were still endangered. She survived, but the ...Read more

Farmworker communities are protesting the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s proposal to limit the pesticide 1,3-dichloropropene, arguing the measures don’t go far enough to protect against long-term cancer risks.

Commonly used in agriculture as a pre-plant field fumigant, 1,3-D is injected into the soil, where it turns into a ...Read more

The extraction shooter is having a moment. The gameplay mode that gained popularity in “Tom Clancy’s The Division” has flourished into a growing subgenre. It’s characterized by gameplay loop, in which players enter an area looking for loot, and once they acquire it, they have to fight their way out to claim it.

Deaths are brutal ...Read more

MIAMI — A giant plume of super salty water has been lurking underneath the Turkey Point power plant for years, tainting the surrounding groundwater along the coast of south Miami-Dade County.

Florida Power & Light, which has operated the plant’s twin nuclear reactors for more than a half-century, has been on a 10-year timeline to clean up ...Read more

Zoologist Andrew Rapp spent four hours hunched over looking through brush and scouring the short grass on the side of the road until he locked eyes with a creature once believed to be extinct.

He had to be careful not to scare it away, so he crept up to it, prepared his net and swung.

In doing so, Rapp officially documented a rare Appalachian ...Read more

It’s easy to analyze the strategies of high technology businesses if you know this: Hardware is always upgrading and software is always degrading.

The news last month about China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence breakthrough blew away Silicon Valley and investors because it defied this industry norm.

Historically, the improving ...Read more

A volcano near Alaska’s most populous city is showing signs it could be headed toward an eruption, officials said.

Mount Spurr, which sits about 75 miles west of Anchorage, has seen “volcanic unrest” for the last 10 months, including an increasing number of earthquakes, according to a Feb. 6 statement from the Alaska Volcano Observatory. ...Read more