"A coalition of oil companies, car and engine manufacturers and fuel sellers told the Obama administration on Thursday not to increase the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline based on inadequate test data."

"An offline Florida power plant is providing a warm-water refuge for several hundred manatees who like the Sunshine State's human residents are shivering in record low cold temperatures."

"Nearly half of global money managers are making investment decisions without factoring in risks or opportunities associated with climate change, according to a survey released on Wednesday by a coalition of environmentalists and investors."

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

"West Virginia regulators are going to stop processing surface mining permits that propose to dump waste rock and dirt into streams while they develop new guidelines that force coal operators to reduce water quality impacts downstream from valley fills."

"A dark legacy of the Vietnam War is creating a whole new set of problems. ...Why hundreds of thousands of Vietnam vets with Agent Orange–related diseases have been made to suffer without VA health care."

"The U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Apache Nitrogen Products, Inc. entered into a $5 million consent decree to remove toxic nitrates and perchlorates from groundwater and to monitor the progress. at the Apache Powder Superfund Site, near David [Arizona]."

A Japanese whaling vessel hit and sunk a stealth-technology trimaran speedboat used by the Sea Shepherd Society to harass that nation's "research" whaling, which supplies the nation's appetite for otherwise-illegal whale meat. All the activists were rescued and none were seriously injured, according to early reports. Two videos show the incident from two perspectives, as each side blamed the other.

"An environmental group today announced plans to flood Senate offices with calls urging action on climate legislation."

"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar [announced] new drilling policies to protect the environment on western federal lands."

"Scientists have uncovered what appears to be a further dramatic increase in the leakage of methane gas that is seeping from the Arctic seabed."

A regulatory application for a major mid-Atlantic electric transmission line may be withdrawn because of flagging demand projections -- a result not only of the economic slump, but also of energy conservation.

"A spill of around 150,000 litres of diesel oil from a broken pipeline in northwestern China into a river has started reaching the Yellow River, but drinking water is safe for now, state media said on Monday."

"In a new setback for a controversial wind farm proposed off Cape Cod, the National Park Service announced Monday that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, guaranteeing further delays for the project."

"Patriot Coal will cut in half the length of streams buried by its Hobet 45 mountaintop-removal mine, but still produce nearly the same amount of coal as the company originally hoped, under a deal announced Tuesday by the Obama administration."