To the surprise and delight of conservationists, the Bush administration announced that it would abandon a draft proposal that would have narrowed the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act and sharply

At a time when a girl born in Japan can expect to life to age 85 and one born in the United States to 81, a girl in Sierra Leone can expect to live only to 36. In a report released, the World Health

The United States government has just endorsed the use of an anti-obesity drug by teenagers. The drug, called Xenical, may be effective for weight problems in some young people, but it would be far

A generation ago, a battle was successfully waged on this rugged island to preserve what was left of its premeval forests, the home to giant trees, many more than a thousand yeard old. Now tourism

In recent years, public attention has focused on imported 21st-century environmental challenges like climate change and genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs. But hazardous chemicals and

Nearly 500 years ago, fleets of Basque whalers, venturing ever farther from their home waters in Europe's Bay of Biscay, set up came on the arc of gravelly beach. They had depleted domestic stocks of

India's economy, the fourth-largest in Asia, may slow this year as below-normal rainfall reduces crops that make up 22 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Kishlaya Pathak, an economist

For millennia, societies around the world have been terrified by leprosy. But this fear has been nothing compared with the life of sheer abjection that those affected by the disease have had to

Every fall, after raising their young near Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River, tens of thousands of geese and tundra swans leave the North Slope of Alaska for more southerly shores. Some end