"The Senate on Thursday approved big budget increases for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency as it passed a $32 billion spending measure for the budget year that starts next week."

"REDD -- A plan to save the world's rainforests looks like it could carry the day at the international climate talks in Copenhagen in December."

"The Group of 20 will agree to phase out subsidies on oil and other fossil fuels in the 'medium term,' but will not set a firm timetable for the move aimed at combating global warming, a draft statement said."

"Water managers, environmental agencies and conservation groups have been talking about cleaning up Lake Okeechobee for decades. The water quality has only gotten worse. Much worse."

"In the end, the two most important world leaders at the first-ever U.N. Summit on Climate Change didn't say enough to satisfy supporters or quell critics."

"Recent research has the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concerned that the huge quantities of metal, plastic, paint chips and other man-made debris floating at sea, hundreds and even thousands of miles from land, may be working their way into the American diet."

"U.S. EPA has found 104 chemicals that might require regulations to keep them out of tap water -- the longest list of potential contaminants ever compiled by the agency."

"An oil field review starting with a state inspector questioning the size of spill containment facilities on Alaska's North Slope has resulted in a hefty civil payment for a subsidiary of BP PLC."

"The World Health Organisation (WHO) has drastically cut the maximum amount of radon -- a naturally occurring gas -- that should be permitted in homes because of strong evidence it causes lung cancer."

"The United States needs to lead a global effort to protect people from new outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases that originate in animals, such as swine flu, AIDS and SARS, health experts said on Tuesday."

"The record rains of the past few days flooded out sewage treatment plants in Fulton, Cobb and Gwinnett counties [GA], dumping millions of gallons of untreated sewage into local waterways."

"Texas' new plan to improve the Houston area's famously dirty air may not meet federal limits for smog."

"The oil industry has been on a hot streak this year, thanks to a series of major discoveries that have rekindled a sense of excitement across the petroleum sector, despite falling prices and a tough economy."

"Pacific Gas & Electric, the big California utility, has pulled out of the United States Chamber of Commerce over what its chairman, Peter Darbee, termed 'fundamental differences' over the climate change issue."

"A possible amendment from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has the potential to handcuff U.S. EPA from exercising its full regulatory power [over greenhouse gases], a scenario that has sent shockwaves through the environmental community."