Little Richard, the singer of hits "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly" has died, according to a report.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed an executive order that will send every registered voter in the state a mail-in ballot for November’s presidential election -- immediately raising concerns from Republicans that it would lead to fraud and abuse.

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.

What ingredients are required to make an ultramarathon runner? In Boulder, Colorado, Scott Jurek has concocted quite the recipe that has kept him going the distance for the past two decades. He runs anywhere between 50 miles to over 150 miles, and in his lifetime has won over 20 ultramarathons, smashing records along the way. His passion for running kickstarted his morning regimen in 1997, when he cut out meat completely. In 1999, he transitioned to a plant-based diet, which has since fueled his long-distance running career. On an average day, Scott runs about 10 miles, and this is typically before the sun rises over the beautiful Boulder Flatirons.

What we do when we wake up in the morning sets the tone for our days and ultimately shapes our lives. In this new series, we take a look at how the hyper-successful among us have leveraged rituals to create the trajectories they want.

Verdict against eight men accused in the murder of Honduran indigenous environmentalist will be handed down on Thursday

The verdict against eight men accused over the murder of Honduran indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres will be handed down on Thursday after a controversial five-week trial plagued by allegations of negligence and cover-ups.

Cáceres – who won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize – was shot dead in March 2016, after a long battle against the internationally financed Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project on the Gualcarque river, territory sacred to the indigenous Lenca people.

Environmental campaigners against electric plant and pipeline say Samir Flores Soberanes’s murder is a ‘political crime’

A Mexican environmental activist has been murdered before a referendum on a controversial thermal-electric plant and pipeline that he opposed.

Samir Flores Soberanes, an indigenous Náhuatl, was killed in his home during the early hours of Wednesday in the town of Amilcingo in Morelos state, 80 miles south of Mexico City. He was a human rights activist, producer for a community radio station and long-time opponent of the Proyecto Integral Morelos (the integral project for Morelos) – which includes the plant and pipeline.

Nation replaces Brazil for first time in annual list of murders compiled by Global Witness

The Philippines has replaced Brazil as the most murderous country in the world for people defending their land and environment, according to research that puts a spotlight on the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.

More than three defenders were killed across the world every week in 2018, according to the annual toll by the independent watchdog Global Witness, highlighting the continued dangers facing those who stand up to miners, loggers, farmers, poachers and other extractive industries.

Seed firms report huge rise in sales with people worldwide turning to gardening as hobby

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While the world may feel rather grey at times right now, lockdown has at least enabled some people to go green and inject colour into their gardens.

Britain is blooming – in one sense at least – with a record demand for seeds, and delphiniums, hollyhocks and hydrangeas are having their moment in the sun.

Welsh plan to reopen stores offers hope for UK-wide industry closed in prime sales season

Garden centres are preparing for a surge in plant and flower sales that could help salvage a catastrophic year for the horticulture industry.

The UK’s 2,000 garden centres and nurseries were forced to close in March because, unlike DIY chains such as B&Q and Homebase, they were not granted “essential” retailer status. The shutdown came at a critical time of year, with 70% of sales rung up in spring, forcing devastated growers to throw away millions of plants.

Investment mandate of the Clean Energy Financing Corporation will be changed, but no guarantee hydrogen will be produced from renewables

The Morrison government will change the investment mandate of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, directing it to make up to $300m available for a new Advancing Hydrogen Fund as part of the national hydrogen strategy.

The Coalition’s move to create a dedicated hydrogen financing fund will be confirmed on Monday, and comes ahead of other changes the government intends to make to the CEFC’s investment program, including requiring it to support new investments in grid reliability.

El confinamiento y la caída del precio del petróleo ponen en juego el futuro de un enorme yacimiento petrolífero argentino

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En las próximas semanas, se esclarecerá si el mundo vuelve a los combustibles fósiles tras la pandemia o si da un paso adelante hacia una economía limpia, mientras el FMI (Fondo Monetario Internacional) y Argentina deciden si van a continuar ofreciendo su apoyo a los inmensos yacimientos de petróleo y gas de Vaca Muerta, en Patagonia.

El objetivo del proyecto es explotar el segundo depósito más grande de esquisto del planeta (después de la Cuenca Pérmica, en Texas), pero su futuro es incierto debido al confinamiento forzoso provocado por COVID-19, que ha causado el descenso más drástico en el precio del crudo de los últimos treinta años.

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.

Warming springs can cause plants to bloom earlier, alter hibernation times and locations for migrating animals, and increase insect populations

Across the south-eastern US, trees are unfurling their clouds of leaves after winter. Yet this picturesque and usually welcome development is this year cause for consternation.

New data from the USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) shows that in parts of North Carolina, South Carolina and northern Florida, spring has arrived more than three weeks earlier than average, and earlier than at any point in the last 39 years it has been tracked.

Wildlife conservation efforts are essential to preventing outbreaks, scientists and advocates say

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For more than five years, wildlife conservationists in the US have been clamoring for the government to provide Endangered Species Act protections to pangolins, a group of imperiled ant-eating mammals that are widely, and often illicitly, trafficked for their scales and meat. The Trump administration, however, has refused to act and that refusal has suddenly taken on grave new implications.

Earlier this year, scientists in China identified pangolins, along with bats, as one of the possible animal hosts involved in the transmission of the deadly coronavirus from wildlife to humans.

Hundreds of workers pass through Ajo, Arizona, daily. Residents say they have been partying and visiting stores in large groups

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Unlike the rest of the US, the sleepy border community of Ajo, Arizona, is busier than ever these days, as hundreds of border wall construction workers pass through each day.

“The rest of us are staying at home just the way the governor has ordered,” said Susan Guinn-Lahm, an Ajo resident in her 60s. “We’re taking this seriously. They are not.”

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
  

Asian giant hornet, which became more active in the state in April, is the world’s largest and can kill humans with multiple stings

• Alarm over deaths of bees from rapidly spreading viral disease
  

Researchers and citizens in Washington state are on a careful hunt for invasive “murder hornets”, after the insect made its first appearance in the US.

The Asian giant hornet is the world’s largest and can kill humans. But it is most dangerous for the European honeybee, which is defenseless in the face of the hornet’s spiky mandibles, long stinger and potent venom.

Which NFL teams have the most difficult 2020 schedules?

The NFL Players Coalition and other athletes and coaches called on the Justice Department and the FBI to launch a federal investigation into the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in a letter Friday.

Vanessa Bryant, the widow of late NBA star Kobe Bryant, filed a legal claim Friday against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over graphic photos that deputies allegedly took and shared of the helicopter crash scene where her husband, 13-year-old daughter, Gigi, and seven others were killed in late January.

There were fans in the stands for baseball in Taiwan on Friday, albeit spaced far apart as a safeguard against the spread of the coronavirus.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the government will cover fixed operating costs and waive all fees related to licensing applications, renewals and revisions.

In a famous 1970 teach-in demonstration, prosecutors hammered away at the nation’s most powerful defendant

As the pachyderms increasingly clash with farmers and villagers over disappearing land, scientists study the way the animals' minds work

The outbreak, and the travel bans and fears that come with it, have endangered long-running research projects

The green-and-white banner from an Illinois high school recalls the first Earth Day 50 years ago

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Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot Alfred "Al" Worden, an aviator, engineer and storyteller passed away on March 18, 2020

Past public health crises inspired innovations in infrastructure, education, fundraising and civic debate

Researchers suggest that the Humboldt squid uses bioluminescent backlighting for visual cues in the dark deep sea

Fragments of a comet likely hit Earth 12,800 years ago, and a little Paleolithic village in Syria might have suffered the impact

One detects an active infection; another signals that the virus has already left the body. Both are critical for tracking the spread of disease

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

An American doctor operating out of Philadelphia made clinical observations that where patients lived, not how they lived, was at the root of the problem

The outbreak was far deadlier than COVID-19, but the empire survived

Celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Smithsonian's "David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins" with some of the biggest discoveries in human evolution

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

A new book argues that controlling cancer is within reach if scientists are able to anticipate the evolution of resistance to traditional treatments

The extent to which Brazilian soy production and trade contribute to climate change depends largely on the location where soybeans are grown, according to a new study. In some municipalities, carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the export of soybean and derivatives are more than 200 times higher than in others.

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

Over the past quarter-century, changes in Antarctic sea-ice cover have had profound impacts on life on the ocean floor.

A new study has found an association between low average levels of vitamin D and high numbers of COVID-19 cases and mortality rates across 20 European countries.

An international research team has conducted the first in-depth, wide-scale study of the genomic history of ancient civilizations in the central Andes mountains and coast before European contact. The findings reveal early genetic distinctions between groups in nearby regions, population mixing within and beyond the Andes, surprising genetic continuity amid cultural upheaval, and ancestral cosmopolitanism among some of the region's most well-known ancient civilizations.

A lipid metabolism enzyme controls brain stem cell activity and lifelong brain development. If the enzyme does not work correctly, it causes learning and memory deficits in humans and mice, as researchers have discovered. Regulating stem cell activity via lipid metabolism could lead to new treatments for brain diseases.

A new process to harness multiple disease models for outbreak management has been developed by an international team of researchers. The team will immediately implement the process to help inform policy decisions for the COVID-19 outbreak.

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.

Millions of people around the world use acid suppressants called proton pump inhibitors for conditions like heartburn, gastritis and stomach ulcers. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now report that how the long-term use of these drugs could increase the risk of developing dementia. Their results are published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia.

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.