** The Biden administration is approving a major electric power transmission project as well as a solar project in Nevada, it announced Monday. The Greenlink West Transmission Project will create a system of new power lines from North Las Vegas to Reno. When completed, the project could transmit enough energy for 4.8 million homes.
** U.S. House representatives from Southern California on Monday called for a federal state of emergency declaration, with hopes of bringing urgent relief to a region coping with toxic, transboundary air pollution.
** Lawmakers in the most populous U.S. state approved a proposal that requires automakers selling internet-connected cars to do more to protect domestic abuse survivors, in what appears to be the first measure in the nation addressing the issue to pass a legislature.
** Very few people who live near the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment opted out of a $600 million class action settlement despite residents’ reservations about whether the deal offers enough, so lawyers argue the agreement should be approved later this month.
** More than 100,000 electric vehicles have now been registered in Georgia, although EVs make up only about 1.5% of all registered passenger vehicles.
World
** An extendable robot began on Tuesday a two-week mission to retrieve the first sample of melted fuel debris from inside one of three damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Highly radioactive fuel and other materials in the reactors melted when a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 damaged the plant’s cooling systems.
** The amount and proportion of the powerful heat-trapping gas methane that humans spew into the atmosphere is rising, helping to turbocharge climate change, a new study finds. Tuesday’s study finds that in 2020, the last year complete data is available, the world put 670 million tons (608 million metric tons) of methane in the air, up nearly 12% from 2000.
** China’s planned expansion of coal mining threatens the country’s climate goals and risks vastly increasing its methane emissions, a study warned on Tuesday. The warning comes as research shows concentrations of the powerful greenhouse gas are rising at an accelerating pace.