"In the wake of a massive US Department of Agriculture report highlighting the continuing large-scale death of honeybees, environmental groups are left wondering why the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to approve a 'highly toxic' new pesticide."

"Saying she hopes Republicans on the panel will attend, Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer announced plans for a second attempt to vote on the 'important nomination' of Gina McCarthy to head U.S. EPA."

"For anyone anxious about toxic chemicals in the environment, Sunday marked a dubious milestone."

"HELENA, Mont. -- The world’s worrisome decline in biodiversity is well known. Some experts say we are well on our way toward the sixth great extinction and that by 2100 half of all the world’s plant and animal species may disappear. Yet one of the most important threats to biodiversity has received little attention — though it lies under our feet."

"WARM SPRINGS, Ore. — The sky was not exactly dark in a blotting-out-the-sun sense, but the salmon flies were certainly thick above central Oregon’s Lower Deschutes River. Thousands of female specimens circled 30 feet above the water’s surface, preparing to descend and drop their eggs. Occasionally, a bug would spiral slowly down to the river, flutter awkwardly on the surface, then disappear in a sudden splash."

"Senate Republicans continued a campaign to delay confirmation of President Obama’s second-term cabinet nominees on Thursday, blocking a committee vote on Gina McCarthy, the president’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency."

"An elderly nun and two other peace activists will be sentenced in September on their convictions for damaging a Tennessee defense facility where enriched uranium for nuclear bombs is stored, a federal judge said on Thursday."

"Two residents of Mayflower, Arkansas, the site of the March 29 pipeline spill, traveled to Washington on Thursday to ask Secretary of State John Kerry to reject the Keystone XL pipeline."

"At about 300 colleges across the country, young activists worried about climate change are borrowing a strategy that students successfully used in decades past. In the 1980s, students enraged about South Africa's racist Apartheid regime got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with that government. In the 1990s students pressured their schools to divest in Big Tobacco."

"OTTAWA — Some federal scientists working at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans may soon gain new freedom to control their research and speak in public, under a tentative deal announced Thursday to transfer management of a world-renowned freshwater research facility that opened in 1968."

"Exposure to air pollution raises the risk of resistance to insulin, a typical warning sign of diabetes, according to a study of almost 400 German children."

"Senator Tom Libous, a champion of fracking in the New York Legislature, is blocking a bill that would delay drilling for natural gas for at least two more years. Passage of the measure would harm the prospects of a real-estate company founded by Libous’s wife and run by a business partner and campaign donor."

"Conor Jackson had a big bat and a bright future. But after he contracted a rare illness in 2009 while playing with the Arizona Diamondbacks he was never quite the same."

"Several hundred people have been evacuated from a section of Lubbock, Texas, after a leaking tank released a chemical that could turn into highly corrosive hydrochloric acid, the city's Fire Department said on Thursday."

"Prince Charles has attacked corporate lobbyists and climate change sceptics for turning the Earth into a 'dying patient', making his most outspoken criticism yet of the world's failure to tackle global warming just when the heir to the throne is assuming a growing number of the duties of what is supposed to be an apolitical monarchy."