"In 2015, the fracking outfits that dot America’s oil-rich plains threw everything they had at $50-a-barrel crude. To cope with the 50 percent price plunge, they laid off thousands of roughnecks, focused their rigs on the biggest gushers only and used cutting-edge technology to squeeze all the oil they could out of every well."

"Alaska Inuit hunter John Goodwin for decades has hunted oogruk, the bearded seal, a marine mammal prized for its meat, oil and hide.

The largest of Alaska's ice seals uses sea ice to rest and birth pups, and after the long winter, when ice breaks into floes, there's a window of opportunity for Goodwin to leave his home in Kotzebue and motor his boat between ice panels, shoot seals and butcher them before they migrate north through the Bering Strait.

"Nevada should accept a federal plan to add an abandoned copper mine near Yerington to the Superfund National Priority List — a move that would designate it as one of the nation's most polluted sites and bring federal funds to cover 90 percent of the cleanup, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid said."

A spate of fires has been sweeping northern Spain for over a week now, an unusual phenomenon in regions that skirt the rough seas of the Bay of Biscay and are normally rainy, especially in winter."