Alaska and Hawaii

"State and federal courts handed down three decisions against a proposed copper and gold mine in Alaska that environmentalists are staging a nationwide fight against."

"Royal Dutch Shell can drill oil exploration wells this summer in the Chukchi Sea, if Shell shows it can prevent and clean up a potential spill. Environmentalists are skeptical; Shell says it's ready."

"Paddle-powered activists hit the waters of Elliott Bay in kayaks Thursday to throw an 'unwelcome party' for a massive Shell drilling rig as it reached the Port of Seattle."

"The Port of Seattle’s board voted Tuesday to ask that the arrival of Shell’s Arctic drilling rigs be delayed, bowing to a wave of public pressure by protesters and city officials over the company’s plans to drill this summer off the coast of Alaska and use Puget Sound as a home port."

"A drill ship at the heart of Shell's hunt for Arctic oil flunked a Coast Guard inspection last month when a piece of anti-pollution gear that already cost its owner millions in fines failed again."

"An iconic Alaska tree may warrant protection as a threatened or endangered species due to climate warming, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday."

"HONOLULU — Police on the Big Island arrested 12 people Thursday who were trying to block workers from getting to a telescope construction site on a mountain considered sacred to Native Hawaiians."

"In the frozen far north, in Arctic Quebec, the Inuit have relied on the same nutritious foods culled from the oceans for centuries: beluga whale, fish, seal, and walrus. But some of these traditional foods have become so contaminated with brain-damaging mercury that the IQs of schoolchildren in remote Arctic villages are abnormally low."

"The number of seabirds, including gulls, puffins and auklets, has dropped significantly in the Gulf of Alaska and northeast Bering Sea, a possible consequence of warmer waters, according to a preliminary federal analysis of nearly 40 years of surveys."

"At a time when Alaska state officials are eager to provide low-cost fuel to the energy-hungry Fairbanks region, the Alaska Railroad Corp. is seeking to become the first U.S. company to ship liquefied natural gas by rail."