Underground water is being pumped so aggressively around the globe that land is sinking, civil wars are being waged, and agriculture is being transformed. By Laura Parker.

Over 100 years after the most powerful explosion in documented history, researchers are still trying to figure out exactly what happened. By Melissa Hogenboom.

It’s been about 230 years since the last eruption killed half the population. But locals won’t let the volcano dictate their future. By Jennifer Nalewicki.

I know of no person who understands the science and politics of modern weaponry better than William J. Perry, the US Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997. When a man of such unquestioned experience and intelligence issues the stark nuclear warning that is central to his recent memoir, we should take heed. By Jerry Brown.

Don Huckstep thought he’d found love in his hometown of Fowler, Indiana. But when Teresa Jarding vanished, it foreshadowed a series of bizarre discoveries. By Mary Milz.

Ninety-nine percent of the planet’s freshwater ice is locked up in the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps. Now, a growing number of studies are raising the possibility that as those ice sheets melt, sea levels could rise by six feet this century, and far higher in the next, flooding many of the world’s populated coastal areas. By Nicola Jones. (May 6, 2016)

Scientists agree that bear attacks will continue to increase in frequency. By Wesley Yiin.

Harper Simon

Be thankful you have a job. Be thankful you’re alive.​ By Luke O’Neil. (May 9, 2016)

In recent years, some of the most beautiful moths have either died out here or are now only rare summer visitors. By John Burnside. (May 4, 2016)

At the end of the 1800s, one St. Louis company marketed their signature pain-relieving product with a series of macabre calendars. By Bess Lovejoy.

Young Indians are paying for complex, painful procedures despite the absence of medical oversight in the race to improve career and marriage prospects. By Vidhi Doshi. (May 8, ’16)

These lawyers specialize in arboreal arbitration. By Natasha Geiling.

Space agency declares the astronomy satellite a loss. By Alexandra Witze. (Apr. 29)

The interaction of global climate change, poverty, affluence, and overpopulation. By Marcia Angell.

In this episode of Symptomatic, Motherboard visits [ecological nightmare factory] Plum Island.

Short URLs Considered Harmful for Cloud Services By Vitaly Shmatikov.

Kennedy Space Center and other NASA facilities near coastlines are facing the prospect of continually rising waters. By John Schwartz.

Our nation's water crisis requires radical solutions. By Laura Orlando.

Bus ferried students to and from school this week, but officials say explosive materials posed no risk. By Clarence Williams and Moriah Balingit.