Gale force winds and drought spawned raging wildfires across five states of the parched Southwest on Sunday, damaging dozens of homes and businesses and forcing a Kansas town to evacuate, authorities said. Wildfires were reported in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Kansas. In some cases, firefighters were struggling to bring them under control amid…

The Obama administration has restored U.S. land managers’ powers to curb development on vast tracts of America’s back country, undoing what conservation groups called a “no more wilderness” policy put in place under President George W. Bush. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced on Thursday that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will again…