"The Supreme Court on Tuesday forcefully struck down a federal law aimed at banning depictions of dog fighting and other violence against animals, saying it violated constitutional guarantees of free speech and created a 'criminal prohibition of alarming breadth.'"

"The only part of the [nuclear] summit, other than a post-meeting news conference, that was visible to the public was Obama's eight-minute opening statement, which ended with the words: 'I'm going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session.'"

The Mine Safety and Health Administration's investigation of the Massey mine disaster in West Virginia will be held in secret -- despite efforts by news media to open such investigations to the public.

A Tennessee-based chemical company, cited and fined by New Mexico authorities for environmental violations there, won $75,000 in punitive damages in its SLAPP suit against a community activist for what it claimed were defamatory public presentations.

"In a story Feb. 17 about contaminated water at the Camp Lejeune Marine base, The Associated Press made several errors. First, the AP reported erroneously that an environmental contractor omitted the cancer-causing chemical benzene from a final report on pollutants in a base well, part of a long-running review of contamination in the base's water supply. The contractor's 1994 report does list benzene as one of the contaminants in the well, although it does not say how much benzene was found."

"'The Cove,' an American film documenting the annual killing of dolphins in a cove near the Japanese village of Taiji, was awarded an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Sunday night."

"Mass media have been a key vehicle by which climate change contrarianism has traveled, according to Maxwell Boykoff, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor."

"Audi's Super Bowl ad has been controversial for its portrayal of environmental issues and echoes of Nazi-era police." And what about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue set in the Maldives?

The current cold snap in some parts of the globe is making news -- but not generating many science stories about what is going on.

"At least somebody gets it. The University of Montana in Missoula announced on Monday that it is accepting applications for a new, two-year graduate program in environmental science and natural resource journalism."

An interesting new experiment in journalism "surfaced today in a Science Times article by  Lindsey Hoshaw, known on Twitter as  @thegarbagegirl. The feature is an up-close examination of the  Pacific Ocean's vast patch of plastic flotsam, reported with travel funds provided by readers of Spot.us."

"Columbia University’s dual masters program in environmental journalism has been suspended, according to the school’s Web site ...." The reason: "the current weakness in the job market for environmental journalists,"

"Fox Cable Networks and the National Geographic Channel announced Thursday that they would start a new program service that would focus on natural history and wildlife."

"A new documentary film sets out to show how mining for coal affects the people who live in Coal Country."

The Supreme court will hear a major free speech case today that could restrict how environmental journalists do their jobs.