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NPR's Richard Gonzales reports that California Governor Gray Davis today signs emergency legislation that will allow the state to buy power to keep electricity flowing to residents for the short term. The Clinton administration has also ordered out-of-state natural gas suppliers to continue selling to one of the state's biggest, but nearly bankrupt, utilities.

It was another miserable day for power grid operators in California. Even though they narrowly averted another series of rolling blackouts, California's power system grows more fragile by the day. The Bush administration has extended and emergency order requiring electricity wholesalers and natural gas suppliers to sell to California. Scott Horsley reports from member station KPBS.

Part of the cause of California's energy crisis has been the rising cost of natural gas. In its place, NPR's Jack Speer reports that now coal -- once written off as an energy source of last-resort -- is again becoming one of the nation's most important sources of electrical power.

Research appearing in the journal Nature says the Indian Ocean earthquake that caused the devastating December tsunami was more intense than first thought, making it the second-largest quake in recorded history.

Tom Manoff has a review of the CD Reflections of Spain, featuring Spanish music for guitar, played by David Russell. Manoff thinks Russell — who is Scottish, not Spanish — plays with a natural elegance, and is passionate but never over the top.

Five decades ago, "Songs of the Humpback Whale" was released and would become the most popular nature recording in history.

Years of drought have drastically lowered the level of water in Lake Powell. That worries Western cities downstream that use the water, but it also presents an upside: Some of Glen Canyon's natural treasures were exposed for the first time in decades.

A tiny insect called the froghopper, or spittle bug, leapt over the flea as nature's most powerful jumper. A new study says that the spittle bug can leap more than two feet in the air. That's more than twice as high as the flea, and the equivalent of a man jumping over the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports.

Even minor cases of negligence many years in the past could be enough to cut short a parent’s path to naturalization, and end with them being kicked out of the country.

Physician and social scientist Nicholas Christakis explains how face-to-face social networks and their structures influence behaviors and phenomena in human society and the natural living world.