"Wal-Mart Stores pleaded guilty Tuesday to improperly dumping hazardous waste in California and Missouri, agreeing to pay almost $82 million in fines."

"Denise Mauzerall arrived in Beijing this year at a time that was both horrifying and illuminating. The capital was facing some of its worst pollution in recent memory and Mauzerall, a Princeton environmental engineering professor, was passing through on her way to a university forum on the future of cities."

"German brewers have warned Chancellor Angela Merkel's government that any law allowing the controversial drilling technique known as fracking could damage the country's cherished beer industry."

"For the public officials who safeguard Milwaukee's water, Cryptosporidium changed everything."

"With smoke and tar from faulty light fixtures leaking into New York City public school classrooms at alarming rates, the Bloomberg administration said on Tuesday that it would cut in half the time it needed to replace them."

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has some fresh news from World War II: Thirteen Merchant Marine ships sunk by the German navy in the Battle of the Atlantic threaten to release oil from their watery graves."

"WATFORD CITY, North Dakota -- In towns across North Dakota, the wellhead of the North American energy boom, the locals have taken to quoting the adage: 'Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting.'"

"BATON ROUGE, La. -- Shirley Bowman noticed the smell after 8 a.m. on June 14, 2012, her 61st birthday. In Baton Rouge, where the petrochemical industry dominates the landscape, foul odors resembling burnt rubber or propane are perennial. But this odor, caustic and potent, seemed especially foul — 'like some sort of chemical,' she recalls."

"Experts say Wisconsin lakes’ chemical cocktail likely similar to Minnesota's"