The coronavirus appears to be a growing concern inside the White House as at least three staffers reportedly tested positive this week. In addition, at least 11 members of the Secret Service reportedly have the virus.

President Obama on Friday reacted to the Justice Department’s move to end its case against Michael Flynn by declaring that the “rule of law is at risk” -- as new details emerge about what the former president knew about the case against Flynn in the last days of his administration.

Joe Biden's campaign is gaining the support of key progressive groups to unite the party's factions.

Unite the Country, a super PAC supporting Joe Biden, and the Trump campaign both launched $10 million ad campaigns this week.

Trump has long railed against the Postal Service, saying the agency has been swindled by e-commerce giants like Amazon.

Israel exports ready-to-eat fully cooked and not shelf-stable poultry products to the United States. And those exports may continue, according to a report by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. That’s because Israel has passed its latest foreign equivalency audit by the United States. The audit did not turn up any deficiencies that might... Continue Reading

Coronavirus illnesses to date may touch as little as 4 percent of meat and poultry employment, but it been enough to roil the industry over how much protection the plants need to be safe. Actions taken in tight proximity to one another by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and U.S. District Court Judge Greg... Continue Reading

Meat production this week is up about 3 percent compared with the previous week, according to market reports by SiriusXM’s Rural Radio. That’s still off by as much as a third from a year ago. The numbers are causing some retailers to ration fresh meat purchases or risk selling out their entire supplies. The beef,... Continue Reading

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A former lobbyist and Republican legislator was tapped Friday to head up a new state agency created by the Legislature last year to oversee agency spending.

The Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency Oversight Committee selected Mike Jackson to serve as the agency's first executive director. The ...

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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CLAIM: Photo shows Joe Biden posing with former ...

Shopping for face masks? We consulted medical experts on how to shop for face masks and rounded up those adhering to the CDC's guidelines.

"People get so emotional when you give them communion for the first time in seven weeks," one religious leader said.

After stories of people not being allowed to say goodbye to loved ones dying of coronavirus, hospitals around the world are moving to change the rules.

The moves would clear the way for an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

TD also said it will have about $600 million of set-asides tied to U.S. credit cards

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has a brewing rebellion on his hands as counties set out to defy his plans.

The UFC comeback event on Saturday will feature one less match up after middleweight fighter Jacaré Souza tested positive for coronavirus. 

America can take its next steps toward reopening by placing an emphasis on emerging health data and closely examining how early states are performing, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson asserted Saturday.

Taking down the fossil fuel industry requires taking on the institutions that finance it. Even during a pandemic, this movement is gaining steam

1970 was a simpler time. (February was a simpler time too, but for a moment let’s think outside the pandemic bubble.)

Simpler because our environmental troubles could be easily seen. The air above our cities was filthy, and the water in our lakes and streams was gross. There was nothing subtle about it. In New York City, the environmental lawyer Albert Butzel described a permanently yellow horizon: “I not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills.” Or consider the testimony of a city medical examiner: “The person who spent his life in the Adirondacks has nice pink lungs. The city dweller’s are black as coal.” You’ve probably heard of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, but here’s how the former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller described the Hudson south of Albany: “One great septic tank that has been rendered nearly useless for water supply, for swimming, or to support the rich fish life that once abounded there.” Everything that people say about the air and water in China and India right now was said of America’s cities then.

Economic reconstruction is a chance to speed up decarbonisation, and the pandemic has shown a different kind of politics is possible

We’re already being swamped with ideas about “reforms” needed to recover from the pandemic crisis. But the word reform is like gift wrap – a handy cover for any offering, thought-through or otherwise.

Perhaps we should ditch the word entirely, and with it the forest of feelpinions about what governments “must” do to advance an author’s previously-held ideological positioning in the post-corona world.

Revealed: records show law enforcement has called demonstrators possible ‘domestic terrorism’ threats

US law enforcement officials preparing for fresh Keystone XL pipeline protests have privately discussed tactics to stop activists “by any means” and have labeled demonstrators potential “domestic terrorism” threats, records reveal.

Internal government documents seen by the Guardian show that police and local authorities in Montana and the surrounding region have been preparing a coordinated response in the event of a new wave of protests opposing the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Canada to Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.

The oil industry saw its opening and moved with breathtaking speed to take advantage of this moment

I’m going to tell you the single worst story I’ve heard in these past few horrid months, a story that combines naked greed, political influence peddling, a willingness to endanger innocent human beings, utter blindness to one of the greatest calamities in human history and a complete disregard for the next crisis aiming for our planet. I’m going to try to stay calm enough to tell it properly, but I confess it’s hard.

The background: a decade ago, beginning with indigenous activists in Canada and farmers and ranchers in the American west and midwest, opposition began to something called the Keystone XL pipeline, designed to carry filthy tar sands oil from the Canadian province of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. It quickly became a flashpoint for the fast-growing climate movement, especially after Nasa scientist James Hansen explained that draining those tar sands deposits would be “game over” for the climate system. And so thousands went to jail and millions rallied and eventually Barack Obama bent to that pressure and blocked the pipeline. Donald Trump, days after taking office, reversed that decision, but the pipeline has never been built, both because its builder, TC Energy, has had trouble arranging the financing and permits, and because 30,000 people have trained to do nonviolent civil disobedience to block construction. It’s been widely assumed that, should a Democrat win the White House in November, the project would finally be gone for good.

Campaigners welcomed Wednesday’s ruling as a victory for tribal rights and environmental protection

The controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has been dealt a major setback, after a judge revoked a key permit issued by the US army corps of engineers without properly assessing the impact on endangered species.

In a legal challenge brought by a coalition of environmental groups, a federal judge in Montana ordered the army corps to suspend all filling and dredging activities until it conducts formal consultations compliant with the Endangered Species Act.

Lawsuits are pending from groups who have challenged the constitutionality of shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

Plans finalized on Thursday for two national monuments in Utah downsized by Donald Trump would ensure that lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling.

The move comes despite pending lawsuits from conservation, tribal and paleontology groups, who have challenged the constitutionality of the president’s action. The Trump administration slashed the size of Bears Ears national monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument by nearly half in December 2017, in what represented the largest elimination of public lands protections in US history.

Conservation groups criticized the Trump administration on Thursday for spending time on management plans they believe will become moot when the court sides with their assertion that Trump misused the Antiquities Act to reverse decisions by previous presidents.

Planned sale of land to fossil fuel, mining and and timber concerns mirrors rollback of Obama-era pollution regulations

The Trump administration has ratcheted up its efforts amid the coronavirus pandemic to overhaul and overturn Obama-era environmental regulations and increase industry access to public lands.

The secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt, has sped efforts to drill, mine and cut timber on fragile western landscapes. Meanwhile, the EPA, headed by the former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, has weakened critical environmental laws and announced in March that it would cease oversight of the nation’s polluters during the Covid-19 crisis.

An oil fire burned for more than three weeks next to a freshwater lake in Vaca Muerta, Argentina, one of the world’s largest deposits of shale oil and gas and home to the indigenous Mapuche people. In collaboration with Forensic Architecture, this video looks at the local Mapuche community’s claim that the oil and gas industry has irreversibly damaged their ancestral homeland, and with it their traditional ways of life

• Indigenous Mapuche pay high price for Argentina's fracking dream
• with thanks toO11CE (Arena Documenta + m7red, Comunidad Mapuce Campo Maripe, Confederación Mapuce del Neuquén, Observatorio Petrolero Sur and Jorgelina Villarreal
  

George Fant spent most of his college days at Western Kentucky shooting basketballs and grabbing rebounds as a physical power forward with big-time hoop dreams.

While NBA teams are slowly gearing up to return to training facilities this week, the league has reportedly issued a memo prohibiting those with elevated temperatures from participating.  

Former Los Angeles Lakers player Shannon Brown was arrested last week for allegedly firing a gun at two people who entered his Georgia home that was listed for sale.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has been the most outspoken figure in the NBA to push for the season to resume but he made it clear on Thursday that he won’t even consider opening the team’s training facility until everyone is able to get tested for coronavirus. 

The UFC comeback event on Saturday will feature one less match up after middleweight fighter Jacaré Souza tested positive for coronavirus. 

Astronomers have more places to look for signs of intelligent life and more advanced tools to find it

On a ship frozen in the Arctic, scientists have spent all winter to shed light on exactly how the world is changing

Find a hobby, for starters, and don't forget the mission, say scientists who have worked at remote research stations

The containment practices of outbreaks past could have lessons for modern epidemics

The SARS-CoV-2 virus endures for days on plastic or metal but disintegrates soon after landing on copper surfaces. Here’s why

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III says: ‘It’s time to put our heads down, and work’

Spencer's ideas laid the groundwork for social Darwinism, but scholars say there was much more to the Victorian Age thinker than that

Marine biologist Cristina Mittermeier discovered that visual storytelling, rather than data sets, allowed her to be a better advocate for the ocean

What lies inside the icy cavern seems more and more like a captive, rare animal, an Earth form that might soon be lost

The sixth installment in our weekly series spotlights titles that may have been lost in the news amid the COVID-19 crisis

When a European intellectual snubbed the U.S., the well-known artist excavated the giant fossil as evidence of the new Republic’s strength and power

According to many observations, certain virus infections may play a part in the autoimmune attack that leads to type 1 diabetes. Researchers have now produced a vaccine for these viruses in the hope that it could provide protection against the disease.

High-temperature superconductors have the potential to revolutionize today's technologies. 'Higgs spectroscopy' could bring about a watershed as it reveals the dynamics of paired electrons in superconductors. Remarkably, the dynamics also reveal typical precursors of superconductivity even above the critical temperature at which the materials investigated attain superconductivity.

Researchers analyzed patient data from 10 countries. The team found a correlation between low vitamin D levels and hyperactive immune systems. Vitamin D strengths innate immunity and prevents overactive immune responses. The finding could explain several mysteries, including why children are unlikely to die from COVID-19.

Researchers find evidence of piezoelectricity in lab-grown, two-dimensional flakes of molybdenum dioxide.

Researchers have developed a safe and accurate 3D imaging method to identify sperm cells moving at a high speed. The new method has the potential to significantly improve IVF treatments.

What kind of an effect do trees have on aerosol particle concentrations in cities? Modelling carried out at the University of Helsinki revealed that the air was cleanest on the street level with three rows of trees of variable height situated along boulevard-type city street canyons.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based Gemini Observatory in Hawaii have teamed up with the Juno spacecraft to probe the mightiest storms in the solar system, taking place more than 500 million miles away on the giant planet Jupiter.

A new study finds that temperature and latitude do not appear to be associated with the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but school closures and other public health measures are having a positive effect.