California Coastal Commission decision-making process appears stable and consistent, Stanford research shows

U.S.-Mexico border walls expand further into remote and sensitive areas; federal judge favors salmon over ag interests; the ongoing sewer crisis on the Tijuana River; solar power over California agricultural fields? And more environmental stories from around the West.

University Libraries has digitized the papers of Kazuyuki Takahashi, who was a Stanford PhD student when President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized what was to become the mass internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Records of Takahashi's incarceration shed more light on the history of racial discrimination in the American West.

Widely distributed but hard to disentangle, exotic elements are vital to green energy and military applications. For decades, China has dominated the dirty business of mining and processing rare earth ores. Two Mojave desert mines, one operating and one planned, may change that picture.