"Two years after a blowout on BP’s Macondo well killed 11 men and triggered the largest oil spill in U.S. history, oil companies are again plying the waters of the Gulf of Mexico."

"The estimated multibillion-dollar settlement between BP and lawyers representing individual and business plaintiffs in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill was fleshed out on Wednesday in hundreds of pages of motions and exhibits."

Fishermen -- and LSU Prof. Jim Cowan -- say that eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common in the Gulf of Mexico, with the 2010 BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.

"In a worrisome development for citrus growers in California, or anybody there who has a beloved lemon or orange tree in the yard, the citrus disease huanglongbing, or citrus greening, has been found in southeastern Los Angeles County, the California Department of Food and Agriculture reports. It's the first time the disease, one of the most serious scourges of citrus, has been reported in the state."

"Wading into a decade-old controversy, former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman has urged current EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to close loopholes in a 2006 chemical security law 'before a tragedy of historic proportions occurs.'"

"Dramatic warming at the end of the last ice age produced an intense rise in sea level and a massive ice sheet collapse in the Antarctic.

The sea level rise is known as Melt-Water Pulse 1A, and new research indicates it increased sea level by about 45 feet (14 meters) sometime between 14,650 and 14,310 years ago, during the same time as a period of rapid climate change known as the Bølling warming.

Understanding the impacts of earlier warming and sea-level rise is important for predicting the effects of future warming."

"The USA hasn't been this dry in almost five years."

"Still reeling from last year's devastating drought that led to at least $10 billion in agricultural losses across Texas and the South, the nation is enduring another unusually parched year.

"GENEVA -- United Nations officials are urging the international community to extend immediate help to millions of hungry and thirsty people in the Sahel region of West Africa, warning that a humanitarian disaster is near."