"The Interior Department is considering more than a dozen areas for Congress to designate as wilderness, the highest level of protection for public lands, according to interviews with several state Bureau of Land Management offices."

"MONUMENT VALLEY, Utah (AP) — The stretch of high desert on the Arizona-Utah border gives way to towering rock formations that resemble huge mittens, chimney spires and castles. But to the west of Monument Valley lies a reminder of what has been blamed for much heartache and tragedy in Elsie Mae Begay's family: A mesa stained with a gray streak where uranium was mined decades ago."

"As Miami prepares to dredge its port to accommodate supersize freighters, environmentalists are making a last-ditch effort to protect threatened coral reefs and acres of sea grass that they say would be destroyed by the expansion."

"At the rim of the Arctic Circle in Canada, gold mining firm Agnico-Eagle is learning how tough it is to operate in a remote region with temptingly large, but frustratingly inaccessible, reserves of oil, gas and minerals. Commentators rarely mention nightmarish logistics, polar bears and steel-snapping cold when they confidently predict that as the Arctic warms up, melting sea ice and shorter winters will open up the expanse to exploration."

"The State Department gave a crucial green light on Friday to a proposed 1,711-mile pipeline that would carry heavy oil from oil sands in Canada across the Great Plains to terminals in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast."

"STOCKHOLM — Population growth and water stress are driving Earth to a food and environmental crunch that only better farming techniques and smarter use of the ecosystem will avert, a UN report issued on Monday said."

"In December, the Interior Department will hold the first oil and natural-gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico since last year’s massive oil spill that devastated the region."

"Seattle is the home of the U.S. Coast Guard's entire fleet of polar-class icebreakers.

Both of them.

Capt. George Pellissier commands both the Polar Sea and the Polar Star. He has spent much of his career on these ships, which were built in Seattle in the 1970s.