"With the FBI tightening its ring around them, the last four holdouts in the armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon surrendered Thursday, ending a 41-day standoff that left one man dead and exposed simmering anger over the government's control of vast expanses of Western land."

"President Barack Obama told supporters 'don't despair' and overreact to the Supreme Court's decision this week that temporarily blocks the administration's rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants."

"After a runaway oil train killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, just miles from the Maine border in 2013, Mainers demanded to know more about the state’s railways."

"The James River Association says they will challenge a permit issued by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to Dominion Virginia Power last month, which will allow the discharge of 350 million gallons of coal ash pond water into the James River."

"The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday easily passed a bill requiring federal environmental regulators to act faster when lead contamination is found in drinking water."

"The Supreme Court’s surprise decision Tuesday to halt the carrying out of President Obama’s climate change regulation could weaken or even imperil the international global warming accord reached with great ceremony in Paris less than two months ago, climate diplomats say."

"The last four armed occupiers of a national wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon said they would turn themselves in Thursday morning after law officers surrounded them in a tense standoff."

"A maverick hedge fund manager thinks Wall Street is the answer to the water crisis in the West."

"In hopes of saving one owl species, scientists are killing another."

"More than two years after federal researchers found high levels of lead in homes where water mains had been replaced or new meters installed, city officials still do little to caution Chicagoans about potential health risks posed by work that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is speeding up across the city."