"Night owls and stargazers, get ready for something spectacular on Thursday. The annual Perseid meteor shower, already one of the most reliably impressive celestial events, promises to be especially good this year."

"In latest legal briefs over Exxon's challenge to her investigation, Maura Healey says company continues to deny climate impacts on its business."

"North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory's administration on Tuesday again lashed out against a state toxicologist who said in sworn testimony he worried that state officials cleared well water near Duke Energy coal ash pits as safe to drink despite a chemical known to cause cancer."

"Australia's re-elected conservative government has announced a U-turn in its climate change policy, reinstating climate science as the bedrock of its peak science body [CSIRO] just months after slashing its funding and axing hundreds of jobs."

"Beneath the streets of Boston, two robots named Mario and Luigi inspect the flow of human waste, collecting data on city residents."

"Emails obtained through public-records requests by a conservation group show that State Toxicologist Ken Rudo forcefully resisted the McCrory administration last year as it moved to alter the do-not-drink letters sent to hundreds of well owners near coal-ash pits owned by Duke Energy."

"Times are tough for Chesapeake oysters. For one thing, they used to be bigger. "If you look at what people were saying back in the 1600s and 1700s about oysters, people had to cut them in half before they could even eat them," says Denise Breitburg, an ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center."

"Enough, already. That’s what 67 prominent scientists are telling Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, whose department is conducting a review of the U.S. program to lease federal lands for coal mining."

"The top state prosecutors in New York and Massachusetts said on Tuesday they will refuse to comply with a subpoena from U.S. congressmen for details on their investigations into whether Exxon Mobil misled investors on climate change risks."

"Organizations worried about climate change have long drawn comparisons between the petroleum and tobacco industries, arguing that each has minimized public health damages of its products to operate unchecked."