"Mining company Samarco and its owners, BHP Billiton and Vale SA, reached a deal with the Brazilian government on Wednesday to pay an estimated 20 billion reais ($5.1 billion) in damages over 15 years for a deadly dam spill in November."

"Marilyn and Jack Whitcher have been regular visitors to the glacier-carved valley of Yosemite National Park since they were dating more than five decades ago. This trip was different."

"A Senate panel voted Tuesday to advance legislation that would block states from imposing labeling requirements for genetically modified foods."

"Former Chesapeake Energy chief executive Aubrey McClendon, the embattled co-founder of one of America’s largest natural gas producers, died Wednesday morning in a fiery car crash one day after he was charged in an Oklahoma bid-rigging conspiracy."

"A 187,000 square-mile swath of land and sea in Alaska was restored by a federal appeals court as a “critical habitat” for polar bears, a boon for the endangered species and yet another blow to Alaska’s tumbling petroleum industry."

"Chances are, you've never heard of flubendiamide. It's not among the most toxic insecticides, and it's not among the widely used chemicals, either. In recent years, it has been used on about a quarter of the nation's tobacco and 14 percent of almonds, peppers and watermelons. But flubendiamide is now at the center of a public dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency and the company that sells it, Bayer CropScience."

"Federal officials have rejected a complaint by an entomologist who charged that the government has tried to suppress negative research findings about a widely used pesticide, in a complex case involving monarch butterflies, scientific freedom and the safety of the nation’s food supply."

"The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ended a five-year legal challenge to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan, rejecting without comment the American Farm Bureau Federation’s request that the court hear its argument that the federal government is effectively seizing land use authority from state and local governments. The decision removes any legal cloud from the pursuit of the Bay pollution reduction strategy imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.