Millions breathing hazardous air as smoke from Canadian wildfires streams south over US

Richard Snyder, a visionary and imperious executive at Simon & Schuster who presided over the publisher’s exponential rise during the second half of the 20th century and helped define an era of growing corporate power, has died. He was 90. During Snyder’s reign, bestsellers included Mary Higgins Clark’s crime thrillers and Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove.” Snyder was also an early advocate for electronic publishing and vastly expanded Simon & Schuster’s scope by spending more than $1 billion on acquisitions. The company's revenues multiplied from around $40 million annually in the 1970s to more than $2 billion by the mid-1990s.

Ukraine rushes drinking water to flooded areas as environmental damage mounts from dam break

Smoke from Canadian wildfires is pouring into the U.S. East Coast and Midwest and covering the capitals of both nations in an unhealthy haze. It delayed some flights Wednesday, sent school recesses indoors, forced the cancellation of events and prompted people to fish out pandemic-era face masks. Canadian officials have expanded evacuation orders and asked other countries for help fighting more than 400 fires nationwide. Meanwhile, air with hazardous levels of pollution have extended at points into the New York metropolitan area, central New York and parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Massive tongues of unhealthy air are extending as far as North Carolina and Indiana and affecting millions of people.

Italy's coast guard says it has rescued more than 1,400 migrants from overcrowded fishing boats and other vessels including a sailboat that were trying to reach the country's southern coast. A coast guard statement released Wednesday said that the separate rescue operations in the Ionian Sea off the east coast of the Calabria region began late Monday and ended in the early hours of Wednesday. A coast guard vessel took on around 590 migrants from aboard a fishing boat. The same rescue ship later brought onboard around 650 migrants from another fishing boat. There were 47 people aboard the sailboat in distress. A fourth vessel had 130 migrants aboard.

Kilauea Volcano on Hawaii's Big Island is erupting again. U.S. Geological Survey officials say a glow was detected in webcam images from the summit caldera early Wednesday. The images show fissures at the base of the crater generating lava flows on the crater floor's surface. Before issuing the eruption notice, the observatory said increased earthquake activity and changes in the patterns of ground deformation at the summit started Tuesday night, indicating the movement of magma in the subsurface. All activity is within a closed area of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and not threatening any communities.

Against all odds, the remaining handful of Mexico’s endangered vaquita porpoises are holding on in their only habitat in the Gulf of California. That's according to a new research expedition report released Wednesday. Experts on the expedition estimate they saw from 10 to 13 of the tiny, shy, elusive porpoises during nearly two weeks of sailing in the gulf last month. That is a similar number to those seen in the last such expedition in 2021. The sightings this year included at least one and probably two calves, as immature vaquitas are known, raising hopes for the survival of the world's most endangered marine mammal.