"The Senate bill aimed at reducing global warming pollution will initially grant billions of dollars of free emissions permits to utilities and industry but will require the bulk of the money be returned to consumers and taxpayers, according to newly released details."
 

"Decades of industrial pollution in the Portland Harbor Superfund site have left high levels of contaminants in river sediment, an exhaustive survey concludes, posing risks to wildlife, fish and humans who eat fish from the nine-mile stretch of the Willamette River."

On Saturday, campaigners against global warming tried "a synchronized burst of more than 4,300 demonstrations, from the Himalayas to the Great Barrier Reef, all centered on the number 350."

"The federal Energy Department will make good on a pledge for a bolder technology strategy on Monday, awarding research grants for ideas like bacteria that will make gasoline, enzymes that will capture carbon dioxide to counter global warming and batteries so cheap that they will allow the use of solar power all night long."

"Taking aim at business interests that have lobbied against an energy and climate bill moving through Congress, President Obama urged lawmakers on Friday to rally around the push toward using more renewable energy."

Hikers using GPS beacons are calling rescuers to get them out of situations they should never have gotten into -- and overtaxing rescuers with nuisance requests.

Gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation of Pennsylvania is bringing an economic boom there -- even as oil and gas drilling has fallen dramatically nationwide. But the gas is tax-exempt in Pennsylvania.

"Many experts think pig farming presents a serious and overlooked risk to public health. Proof of that assertion -- indirect but indisputable, in the opinion of virologists -- is the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza."

"New research suggests a link between women's exposure to household insecticides -- including roach and mosquito killers -- and the autoimmune disorders rheumatoid arthritis and lupus."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issues an Arctic report card Thursday that said global warming is changing wind patters and melting ice and glaciers -- with impacts on living things on both land and sea.

"The Environmental Protection proposed expanding requirements on how contractors must deal with lead-based paint to more, older homes, part of a broader effort by the agency to tighten environmental protections for consumers."

"Scientists writing in the current issue of Science magazine point out a huge error in existing biofuel laws that could actually make climate change worse. They say these rules inadvertently encourage deforestation, which in turn contributes to global warming."

"Advocates for coal miners said Thursday that they expect a new direction for the nation’s mine safety agency under its new chief, former miner and top union official Joseph Main. On a voice vote, the Senate confirmed Main on Wednesday night as the head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration."

"VIENNA -- A draft agreement on providing Iran with fuel for a civilian nuclear research facility that could defuse tension over Iran's nuclear program has emerged from nearly three days of talks supported by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA."

"The acclaimed documentary film 'Crude,' which details the 16-year struggle of indigenous peoples in Ecuador's Amazon to hold Chevron legally accountable for contamination of a huge rainforest area, opens in Washington, DC on Friday during intense scrutiny of a $27 billion liability lawsuit against the oil giant."