Updated at 4:40 p.m. ET

Despite opposition from the oil and gas industry it aims to help, the Trump administration is rolling back an Obama-era rule designed to reduce climate-warming methane emissions.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and other major tech companies met with U.S. government officials on Wednesday to discuss their plans to counter disinformation on social media in the run-up to the November election.

After George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis in late May, waves of anguished and outraged Americans took to the streets, to livestreamed city council meetings and to social media to denounce racism.

Protesters called for police reform, defunding or outright abolition; for an end to qualified immunity for officers; for reinvestment in underfunded communities; for schools, companies and communities to address their own complicity in racial inequity.

And they called for Confederate monuments to come down.

Updated at 6:56 p.m. ET

The Big 12 Conference is moving ahead with its football season, announcing that fall sports will continue – with teams following safety precautions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference hopes to hold its title game in December, as it normally would.

A federal judge in New York struck down a Trump administration decision to scale back U.S. government protections for migratory birds. The change by the administration would have allowed companies that accidentally kill migratory birds during the course of their work no longer to face the possibility of criminal prosecution.

In a 31-page document, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni cited the novel To Kill a Mockingbird to support her decision.

One of golf's most iconic tourneys, the Masters Tournament, will be played without spectators when the sport's best players tee up in Augusta, Ga., in the fall. The competition was already postponed from its usual slot in April because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tournament, now scheduled for Nov. 12-15, will be "conducted without patrons or guests," officials said.

The sheriff in a central Florida COVID-19 hot spot has issued a directive prohibiting deputies, staff and visitors to department offices from wearing protective face masks, an order that came as a local mayor and city council squared off over a mask ordinance for businesses.

After more than 100 days without any community spread of COVID-19, New Zealand moved to an elevated alert level Wednesday with news of four new cases and another four probable ones.