"The largest solar storm in five years was due to arrive on Earth early Thursday, promising to shake the globe’s magnetic field while expanding the Northern Lights."

"Snow seems to be missing in action this winter for much of the United States."

"The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption."

"Across the Midwest and northeast this weekend, ski resort towns are celebrating the arrival of winter for the first time this season. Terry Hill has been renting out cabins near Baxter State Park in Maine in 30 years, where she says they only received about four to five inches of snow on Saturday. She usually rents her cabins to those who like to snowmobile, but those cabins are empty right now. She says Maine needs a couple more big storms to make up lost ground for what's been a brown winter."

"Life's no circus for the Ringling Brothers these days. The USDA announced Monday that an agreement was reached where Feld Entertainment, Inc., doing business as Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus (Feld), will pay a $270,000 fine for allegedly violating the Animal Welfare Act (AWA)."

"In remote places like California's Death Valley, over-reliance on GPS navigation systems can be a matter of life and death."

"An unusual solar flare observed by a NASA space observatory on Tuesday could cause some disruptions to satellite communications and power on Earth over the next day or so, officials said."

"An especially large moon will appear to rise on Saturday in the most extreme example of a so-called super-moon phenomenon in nearly 20 years, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory."

"The International Dark-Sky Association has named the English Channel island of Sark its first 'dark-sky' island."

"Spurred by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Goldman and his wife, Rhoda, started the prize in 1989 to recognize grass-roots environmental activists and organizers with an annual award that has grown to $150,000." He died Monday in San Francisco.

"Federal forecasters on Thursday called for another winter of extremes, with the Pacific Northwest expecting a wetter and colder season than average and the South and Southeast yearning for rain."

Bedbugs, after almost vanishing from the U.S. for decades, have come back bigtime as The Bug That Ate New York. EPA and CDC have offered some advice on getting rid of them. But scientists know very little about them.

The death of Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator, marks the loss of a great influence over environmental and energy policy for the better part of a half century. Stevens devoted much of his time in the U.S. Senate from 1977 to 2009 to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) for petroleum development.

"A huge mass of magnetically charged material ejected from the sun is racing across space toward our planet, where it is expected to arrive on Tuesday. When it strikes the Earth's magnetic field, it could produce spectacular auroras."

"Robert Carlyle Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress in United States history, who spent much of his career as a conservative Democrat and ended it by fiercely opposing the war in Iraq and questioning the state's powerful coal industry, died Monday. He was 92."