"At a glance, U.S. EPA's plan to cut an $11.5 million grant program in an effort to meet the sequestration mandate doesn't look like much given the agency's $8.5 billion budget. But that's a lot of money to state and local air regulators who have been counting on it."

"While mainstream environmental organizations lick their wounds over the failure of climate-change legislation and their startling lack of diversity, people of color and those living on low incomes continue to bear the brunt of climate-change impacts."

"In the months before last week's deadly fertilizer plant explosion in Texas, U.S. government watchdogs criticized federal oversight of facilities that make or store dangerous chemicals."

"KALAMAZOO, MI -- Members of the Kalamazoo community gathered at a public forum Monday to learn more about the Allied Paper landfill site and to voice concerns with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to consolidate and cap the site in Kalamazoo's Edison neighborhood."

"When Texas promised to protect a threatened lizard in the oil-rich Permian Basin, state officials entrusted the day-to-day oversight to a nonprofit that sounds like an environmental group: the Texas Habitat Conservation Foundation."

"The Environmental Protection Agency issued a sharply critical assessment of the State Department's recent environmental impact review of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, certain to complicate efforts to win approval for the $7-billion project."

"As the Obama administration launches a broad investigation of flame retardants used in furniture and other household goods, the nation's top environmental regulators are running into the limitations of a federal law that makes it practically impossible to ban hazardous chemicals."

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Scientists backed by a $15 million industry-funded research project are picking apart -- and trying to disprove -- a series of studies that found coalfield residents near mountaintop-removal mining operations face greater risks of serious illness and premature death."

"Rob Gillies and his team gather data on Nepal’s changing climate for a research project. They log temperatures, raindrops and snow. They pump the numbers into powerful computers and read the trend lines the computers spit out. Gillies sees the numbers in human terms, too. Global warming is likely to mean less water, putting crops and livestock in peril, along with nourishment for children who already don’t get enough to eat. That leaves the climate scientist with questions instruments can’t answer. About fairness. Justice. And life and death."

"WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Nigerian plaintiffs who said foreign oil companies had been complicit in violating their human rights may not sue in American courts. The decision limited the sweep of a 1789 law that had been used to address human rights abuses abroad."

"The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee today confirmed the nomination of Ernest Moniz to become the next secretary of Energy on a 21-1 vote."

"U.S. construction workers, environmentalists and company executives squared off on Thursday at a raucous meeting on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but it was unclear the gathering changed any minds on the controversial project."

"WASHINGTON -- A dozen states and cities and three major environmental groups have notified the Environmental Protection Agency that they plan to sue the regulator unless it issues final rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants."

"BILLINGS, Mont. -- Internal investigators faulted the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for years of delays in completing health studies needed to guide the cleanup of a Montana mining town where hundreds of people have died from asbestos exposure."

With a tiny budget, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board is coming under fire for slowness in completing investigations on a large number of major accidents involving chemical hazards.