"HOUSTON -- Over the past two years, environmentalists have chained themselves to the White House fence and otherwise coalesced around stopping the Keystone XL pipeline as their top priority in the fight against global warming. But even if President Obama rejects the pipeline, it might not matter much. Oil companies are already building rail terminals to deliver oil from western Canada to the United States, and even to Asia."

"Scientists have discovered three new species of animals in a rainforest 'lost world' in Australia, protected for millions of years by almost impenetrable stacks of granite boulders."

"The Italian Senate is investigating a cluster of cancers near Naples which may have been caused by the mafia's dumping of toxic waste. It's a question that has long been on the conscience of one former mafia boss, who says it was not the violence but pollution that made him turn police informer."

"Nearly 1 million chickens and turkeys are unintentionally boiled alive each year in U.S. slaughterhouses, often because fast-moving lines fail to kill the birds before they are dropped into scalding water, Agriculture Department records show."