Science & Environment

The battle of billionaires in space between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is ready to enter a new arena: satellite internet. Amazon, the company that Mr. Bezos started as an online bookseller three decades ago, is now a merchandising behemoth, the owner of the James Bond franchise, a seller of electronic gadgets like Echo smart speakers and one of the …

Mark Poynting and Erwan Rivault BBC Climate & Data teams Planet Labs A prolonged dry spell created perfect conditions for wildfires The area of the UK burnt by wildfires so far this year is already higher than the total for any year in more than a decade, satellite data suggests. More than 29,200 hectares (292 sq km or 113 sq …

The melting Arctic icecap. Record-smashing wildfires across several provinces. A country that, on average, is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. And yet, as Canadians go to the polls Monday, climate change isn’t even among the top 10 issues for voters, according to recent polling. “That’s just not what this election is about,” said Jessica …

The 36-page official national strategy document bears the presidential seal and involves 10 agencies from across the federal government. It isn’t the government’s policy on tariffs or border security. It’s President Trump’s master plan to eradicate paper straws and bring back plastic. “My Administration is committed,” the document declares, to “ridding us of the pulpy, soggy mess that torments too …

Helen Briggs Environment correspondent, BBC News•@hbriggs Getty Images The swallow is a common summer visitor, arriving in April and leaving in October With what’s being called a mini-heatwave looming for the UK, it’s not just humans looking forward to warmer weather. The warm spell is expected to give a temporary boost to nature as migratory birds arrive from afar and …

David Paton, an idealistic and innovative ophthalmologist who started Project Orbis, converting a United Airlines jet into a flying hospital that took surgeons to developing countries to operate on patients and educate local doctors, died on April 3 at his home in Reno, Nev. He was 94. His death was confirmed by his son, Townley. The son of a prominent …

Life at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is slow, dark and quiet. Strange creatures glitter and glow. Oxygen seeps mysteriously from lumpy, metallic rocks. There is little to disturb these deep-ocean denizens. “There’s weird life down here,” said Bethany Orcutt, a geomicrobiologist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Research in the deep sea is incredibly difficult given the extreme …

A federal prosecutor in Washington has contacted The New England Journal of Medicine, considered the world’s most prestigious medical journal, with questions that suggested without evidence that it was biased against certain views and influenced by external pressures. Dr. Eric Rubin, the editor in chief of N.E.J.M., described the letter as “vaguely threatening” in an interview with The New York …

Federal health officials have reversed the decision to fire a few dozen scientists at the Food and Drug Administration’s food-safety labs, and say they are conducting a review to determine if other critical posts were cut. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the rehirings and said that several employees would also be restored to the …

Late yesterday, Sethuraman Panchanathan, whom President Trump hired to run the National Science Foundation five years ago, quit. He didn’t say why, but it was clear enough: Last weekend, Trump cut more than 400 active research awards from the N.S.F., and he is pressing Congress to halve the agency’s $9 billion budget. The Trump administration has targeted the American scientific …