"NEW ORLEANS — An $18.7 billion settlement announced Thursday of all federal, state and local claims against the oil giant BP arising from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill would be the largest environmental settlement — and the largest civil settlement with any single entity — in the nation’s history, officials said Thursday.

"Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Wednesday signed a bill into law that bans the manufacturing and sale of personal care products containing tiny plastic beads that are known to pollute waterways."

"The U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals from BP Plc and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and left intact a ruling that opens the companies to potentially billions of dollars in fines for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill."

"The Supreme Court ruled [Monday] that the Obama administration unlawfully failed to consider compliance costs before it issued its landmark power plant emission limits for mercury and other hazardous pollutants."

"At the vast BNSF rail yard in Kansas City, Kan., dozens of trains stretch into the distance. You can feel them rumble. You can hear the roar of 4,400-horsepower diesel locomotives. And you can smell their exhaust."

"Trains heaped with coal pass through Richmond every week on their way to the city’s port. In Parchester Village, a largely black and Latino neighborhood in northwestern Richmond, residents say coal dust blows off the open mounds, covering the grass and coating their screen doors."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has announced a $168 million settlement to help remedy pollution from a coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Nation."

"The Obama administration's long-awaited hydraulic fracturing rule will not take effect as scheduled today [Wednesday, June 24, 2015], thanks to a federal judge's eleventh-hour decision to stay the rule until August."

"Duke Energy’s plan to dig up 12 more coal ash ponds, announced Tuesday, means the company now aims to excavate 24 of its 36 ponds in the Carolinas."