President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he reversed bans on offshore drilling in vast parts of the Arctic Ocean and dozens of canyons in the Atlantic Ocean, a U.S. judge said in a ruling that restored the Obama-era restrictions. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in a decision late Friday threw out Trump's executive order that overturned the bans that comprised a key part of Obama's environmental legacy.

A bill that would make it easier to kill sea lions that feast on imperiled salmon in the Columbia River has cleared the U.S. Senate. State wildlife managers say rebounding numbers of sea lions are eating more salmon than ever and their appetites are undermining billions of dollars of investments to restore endangered fish runs.

Officials began to clean up a massive oil spill Friday that dumped nearly 800,000 gallons of oil and water into a California canyon, making it larger — if less devastating — than the state's last two major oil spills. The newly revealed spill has been flowing off and on since May and has again stopped, Chevron spokeswoman Veronica Flores-Paniagua said. She and California officials said the spill is not near any waterway and has not significantly affected wildlife. The last flow was Tuesday.

Poland Spring announced Monday a plan to use 100% recycled plastic for all its noncarbonated water containers, a move that comes amid growing concern about plastic pollution. The Maine-based company said the effort kicks off this month with 1-liter bottles. By 2022, the company plans to use 100% recycled plastic for bottles in all of its still water lines. A niche product called Poland Spring Origin also uses 100% recycled plastic bottles.

Flying into the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Midway Atoll appears out of the vast blue Pacific as a tiny oasis of coral-fringed land with pristine white sand beaches that are teeming with life. But on the ground, there's a different scene: plastic, pollution and death. Here's a look at the island.

Unspoiled rivers in the Balkans are facing new dangers from small hydropower plants that have sprouted up across the region in recent years, environmental experts warned Thursday. In a declaration issued after a meeting in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, they urged Balkan governments to halt any further construction of hydro dams. "We want everybody to see that it is bad, and it is wrong and that we are devastating our natural beauties," said Irma Popovic Dujmovic, from World Wide Fund for Nature Adria group.

The sightlines at Wrigley Field, the panorama from Navy Pier, the vantage points at the Adler Planetarium observatory — all structures built more than 100 years ago — are at least 4 inches lower now. In the northern United States and Canada, areas that once were depressed under the tremendous weight of a massive ice sheet are springing back up while others are sinking. The Chicago area and parts of southern Lake Michigan, where glaciers disappeared 10,000 years ago, are sinking about 4 to 8 inches each century.

Climate change issues — and, more specifically, demands by Democratic activists for policies grouped under the label of a Green New Deal — are fast becoming a marquee issue in the 2020 presidential race. Increased voter anxiety over the warming planet and a deft marketing campaign by progressive activists have pushed candidates to take positions substantially bolder and louder than those of past elections. A recent poll found the idea of a Green New Deal has the support of 81 percent of registered voters, including nearly two-thirds of Republicans; and the Brookings Institution recently produced data showing that some of the regions at most risk of suffering economically from climate change are also the places most fiercely resistant to addressing it.

Opponents of oil drilling in America's largest wildlife refuge have a message for oil drillers and the people who finance them: Don't become the company known for the demise of America's polar bears. The Department of the Interior hopes to conduct a lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by the end of the year but environmental groups say they will challenge those plans in federal court and the court of public opinion.

The Seychelles president is warning there's no time for a "blame game" in the fight against climate change and he urges major nations to do more. President Danny Faure in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press says small island nations like his are the least responsible for the problem but among the most vulnerable as sea levels rise.