Another one bites the dust: Continuing a worrying trend among major daily newspapers, the New York Times has decided to close its environment desk. The paper of record says the "structural change" shouldn't affect its climate change coverage, but there will no longer be a team dedicated to say, water pollution, air pollution, deforestation, overfishing, toxic waste, ocean acidification, or the global extinction crisis. We'll try our best to keep the environmental coverage coming, but it's sure startin' to feel lonely 'round here. Inside Climate News

And they may even wash hands, too: The Food and Drug Administration has announced big changes for safety standards for fresh fruit and vegetables (see "The FDA Is Out to Lunch" for why such changes were needed). They include such revolutionary requirements as providing adequate restrooms for field workers. Shocking that things like that have to be mandated, but the overhaul at the agency is the biggest in 70 years. Washington Post

Extreme weather to the ... extreme?: Check out the photo of snow blanketing Jerusalem's palm trees on the front page of today's NYT (OK, so they're clearly still doing some enviro coverage). Meanwhile, China is having its coldest winter in 30 years, the Australian Open is about to be played in 100-degree-plus heat, the U.S. just had its warmest year since record-keeping began -- yeah, things are whacky out there. As the newspaper puts it, "Around the world, extreme has become the new commonplace." Too bad it takes until the fifth paragraph to mention climate change, but hey, considering how much the news media likes to avoid connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate, we're glad they mentioned it at all! New York Times

Drilling the Dutch: For centuries, the Amish have successfully eschewed many modern-day stresses by sticking to lives filled with farm-tending, family-raising, and buggy-riding. Now fracking has come to town. We expect a barrage of angry twitpics of flaming faucets soon. Oh, wait… OnEarth

When one door closes...: Another sad day for apocalypse lovers. As if living beyond the Mayan calendar wasn't hard enough, it looks like that very large and very destructive asteroid headed in our direction will almost definitely NOT shatter our little blue planet to smithereens come 2029. Scientists previously thought Asteroid Apophis had a 2.7-percent shot of making contact in 16 years, but new data shows that the chance is as slim as one in a million. So, since we're going to be here for a while, we might as well start straightening up the place? SPACE.com

Raw deal: The taste for sushi is growing worldwide, and with it, stocks of its main ingredient, fish, have grown ever smaller. See how that works? A report this week shows that the numbers for Pacific bluefin tuna, the ones that haven't been caught (yet), have declined by more than 96 percent. The research calls for fishing quotas, but with one Pacific tuna garnering almost $1.8 million at a Tokyo auction this week, the outlook doesn’t look good. New York Times

Down low? Too slow...: Though the common theory is that we’re hurtling toward a future of too many people and too little food (and no spicy tuna rolls), we may be failing to take one important point into account. While the global population surpassed 7 billion in 2012, it actually took longer to make this billion than the last billion -- which is a first. Could this suggest that the growth rate is actually slowing and paving a path all the way to human extinction? Apocalypse lovers, weep no more! Slate

Be your own hero: Perhaps they picked up on the fact that no one else was coming to their rescue ... the 12 killer whales that were trapped under ice in the Hudson Bay went ahead and found a way out. Luckily, the air and wind shifted enough to create a passageway that allowed the orcas to swim six miles to the open water. The only ones not celebrating this news? Local seals. ABC News

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Image: Jason Major