Building the bully's border wall will require pumping 50 million gallons of water out of an arid area that is drying up. This could kill off eight species of animals that live in the region.

We should not allow water-guzzling crops to be grown in arid areas. That practice represents a competition to be the first to grab the last of a resource being drained. For society as a whole, that is imprudent, so society as a whole should stop it.

Five dangers caused by large wildfires.

An area of Australia half the size of Belgium has been ordered evacuated ahead of bushfires expected on Dec 30.

A crash vaccination campaign has ended Samoa's measles outbreak, at the cost of 81 deaths that could have been avoided by vaccinating babies earlier.

US drone bombings in Afghanistan grind on every day, killing enemies and killing civilians, all rarely mentioned in the US press because no American soldiers are present and the government says hardly anything about the casualties.

Any given Afghan civilian is not very likely to be killed in a drone bombing in a given year. But the author reports that millions of children feel terror every time they hear drones circling. How often does that typically happen? Perhaps, in some places, every day.

I don't think it is worse for people to be killed by drones than by fighter-bombers, artillery, or guns. The difference is in the systems of war that these weapons fit into.