"Federal authorities in charge of the nation's biggest bust of artifact looting and grave-robbing are targeting more suspects ranging from those who do the digging to wealthy buyers in the lucrative black market of ancient Southwest relics."

"Companies on three continents continue to make and sell consumer paints that contain dangerous levels of lead despite the availability of technology to produce high-quality, low lead paint. A tougher lead paint standard takes effect in the United States later this month, but imported consumer goods may still contain hazardous amounts of lead paint."

"In a matter of years or decades, researchers believe, animals and plants already are adapting to life in a warmer world. Some species will be unable to change quickly enough and will go extinct, but others will evolve, as natural selection enables them to carry on in an altered environment."

A new study finds that rural residents who drink water from private wells are much more likely to have Parkinson's disease, bolstering theories that farm pesticides may be partly to blame.

"A judge says Juan Dominguez conspired with Nicaraguan workers, allegedly left sterile by exposure to DBCP on banana plantations, to file claims against Dole Food and Dow Chemical."

Both environmentalists and the chemical industry say they want Congress to overhaul the key law aimed at protecting Americans from toxic chemicals in the products they use.

"With the fight over health care reform absorbing all the bandwidth on Capitol Hill, Democrats fear a major climate change bill may be left on the cutting-room floor this year."

"Mexico aims to put a detailed offer to cut the growth of its own greenhouse gas emissions on the negotiating table at global climate change talks in Copenhagen this year, a senior environmental policymaker said."

"A total of 12 forged letters -- all appearing to come from local groups unhappy with a climate-change bill -- were sent to three congressional offices this summer by a Washington lobbying firm, according to the pro-coal group for which the firm was working."

"The Nevada lawmaker has a long history of opposing attempts to reform an antiquated federal mining law."

"One of the world's most common insect repellents [DEET] acts on the central nervous system in the same way as some insecticides and nerve gases, according to a study released on Wednesday."

"The current recession has caused the price of oil to drop -- most think temporarily. James Woolsey was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency -- the CIA -- during the Clinton Administration. ... Woolsey has been arguing that, no matter what the price, dependence on oil is a national security problem that we need to solve."

Lobbyists for the real estate industry convinced House leaders to remove from the recently passed climate bill a provision that would have indicated how much energy older houses use.

"With a deadline looming for approval of a federal plan that would open the Gulf of Mexico to deepwater fish farming, House lawmakers and conservationists are plotting strategies to block such offshore ventures until Congress creates a system to regulate them."

"LOS ANGELES -- Marine scientists from California are venturing this week to the middle of the North Pacific for a study of plastic debris accumulating across hundreds of miles (km) of open sea dubbed the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch.'"