BOISE, Idaho — Wild birds are dying by the thousands in the Treasure Valley because of avian flu outbreaks, according to a news release from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

The agency said Wednesday that it received reports of large numbers of dead birds — many of them geese — at Fort Boise, Lake Lowell and in Parma recently. Fish ...Read more

MONTEREY, Calif. — King tides return this weekend and with them a reminder of rising sea levels.

“As sea level rises, the king tides will get higher and the potential damage that extreme high tides cause will be greater,” said Annie Kohut Frankel, grants and education manager at the California Coastal Commission. “Soon the places we ...Read more

ELKHORN SLOUGH, Calif. – Though sea otters are an unofficial mascot of Monterey County and popular amongst tourists and locals alike, they are also described as voracious predators that help keep problematic invaders out of coastal waters.

A recent study was published in the scientific journal Biological Invasions, detailing that otters at ...Read more

OpenAI said it has identified and fixed an issue that left millions of global users unable to access ChatGPT and the recently released AI video generator Sora.

“We’re experiencing an outage right now. We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix,” the AI giant posted on X shortly after 6 p.m. ET. “Sorry and we’ll ...Read more

Minnesota utility regulators on Thursday unanimously approved what would be the state’s first carbon dioxide pipeline, stretching 28 rural miles from an ethanol plant near Fergus Falls to the North Dakota border.

The decision is the latest victory for Summit Carbon Solutions for its plan to capture planet-warming gases from 57 ethanol plants,...Read more

Winter is the time to look for coyotes in Missouri, from the city to the country.

These dog relatives are native to North America, and they spread as far as Alaska and the Panama Canal during the 20th century.

Meriwether Lewis described the coyotes as “little prairie wolves” in 1806, when the Lewis and Clark expedition noticed a group of ...Read more

Powerful earthquakes like the one felt last week across Northern California are stark reminders for people to plan — perhaps to fortify their home or business or, at minimum, finally build that earthquake kit.

But for the Devils Hole pupfish, a critically endangered species found only in a deep limestone cave in Death Valley, an earthquake ...Read more

Coastal populations are expanding quickly around the world. The rise is evident in burgeoning waterfront cities and in the increasing damage from powerful storms and rising sea levels. Yet, reliable, detailed data on the scale of that population change has been hard to pin down, until now.

We study human geography as a sociologist at ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- It was technically a successful scientific discovery when analysts at the Hennepin County, Minnesota, forensic science lab recognized there was a contaminant somewhere in its DNA process. That did not lessen the sense of dread.

Allison King, the DNA supervisor and technical leader, summed up the general feeling inside the lab ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — In Southern Nevada, extreme heat that is supercharged by climate change had a measurable impact this year.

Records show that at least 491 people have died in the desert heat, heat sent more than 4,000 people to the hospital, and about 460 workers filed heat-related complaints to Nevada regulators. Las Vegas broke its all-time heat...Read more

It’s a big day for insects.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday that it is proposing the monarch butterfly for threatened species status under the Endangered Species Act, a big step forward in a process set in motion in 2014 with a petition from conservationists.

After a 90-day public comment period, the agency will make a ...Read more

We all just want our stuff to work, right?

Since most of us have abandoned landlines, our cell phones are our lifelines and the main way we communicate with each other and stay informed.

One of my bigger fears is my phone or laptop running out of power just when I need it most, so I’m an “overcharger.”

My phone transitions from one ...Read more

Huawei Technologies Co.’s latest flagship smartphone is powered by a chip little different from the one that set off alarm bells in Washington a year ago, signaling a slowdown in the Chinese company’s tech advances.

The newly introduced Mate 70 Pro Plus phone runs on a processor built with the same 7-nanometer technology used in its Mate 60...Read more

A material that’s been around since people built shelters – wood – is increasingly being proposed for low- and mid-rise buildings.

Companies behind these “mass timber” projects say that wood is a lower-carbon alternative to steel or concrete and brings other benefits, such as faster construction time and lower cost than ...Read more

It's nice to write about a gadget that will save you money, but how much depends on the user. I'm referring to the Shelfy, a compact device (6.6 by 4.5 by 2.6 inches) you place in your refrigerator. It extends the life of fruits and veggies by eliminating bacteria and breaking down pollutants that accelerate ripening.

A company representative...Read more

I work in a place that has on-site daycare for its employees, and I occasionally have to go fix a computer or iPad in a room with sleeping babies and toddlers. The teachers in those classrooms are usually playing white noise to keep the kids asleep.

What those teachers taught me is that you don’t need a dedicated white noise machine. You ...Read more

Indiana Jones has been such an iconic character that he has inspired generations of new heroes, and nowhere is that more evident than in video games. Dozens of projects feature swashbuckling adventurers or daring archaeologists, all of whom owe a debt to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s protagonist.

Unfortunately, his popularity on ...Read more

Seven Western states that depend on the Colorado River are ending the year at an impasse in negotiations over the writing of new rules for dealing with chronic water shortages.

Representatives of California and other states who attended an annual Colorado River conference in Las Vegas last week said they remain deadlocked in their talks on long...Read more

The federal government has proposed listing the monarch butterfly as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, a step aimed at reversing the species’ steep population decline, particularly in California.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also proposed designating 4,395 acres of critical habitat for the western migratory population in ...Read more