"RICHMOND -- After two years and more than half a million dollars in legal fees, the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday rejected Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II's assertion that the state's flagship university had to turn over documents related to global warming. The decision was a defeat for Cuccinelli (R), a global-warming skeptic who has garnered national attention for a string of high-profile lawsuits, just as he kicks off his campaign for governor next year. ..."

Tornado warnings mean life or death -- as recent storms in the Midwest showed. Minutes count, and better staffing and technology can help the National Weather Service save lives with earlier tornado warnings. But the political drive to cut federal agency budgets are hurting the NWS's ability to improve forcasts, a federal employee union says.

Budget pressures -- at least politically perceived ones -- are threatening basic science about the nation's water resources. In recent years the US Geologican Survey has cut back its programs for measuring streamflow and water quality -- which help protect people from flood disasters and drinking unhealthful water.

"MONTREAL -- The Canadian asbestos sector wants Ottawa's help to challenge a death-toll estimate from the World Health Organization that says asbestos-related diseases kill more than 100,000 people every year."

"An associate of the Heartland Institute, the thinktank devoted to discrediting climate change, taught a course at a top Canadian university that contained more than 140 false, biased and misleading claims about climate science, an expert audit has found."

"Exposure to certain pollutants early in a rat’s pregnancy can foster disease in her offspring during their adulthood as well as in subsequent generations, a new study shows. A wide range of pollutants elicited such lasting effects, despite future generations never encountering the triggering pollutant."

"Earth's clouds got a little lower - about one percent on average - during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate."

"A European experiment that in September showed particles moving faster than the speed of light has been exposed as a mistake due to a faulty wire connection, the US journal Science said Wednesday.

'A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may be to blame,' said the report on the magazine’s website section Science Insider, citing 'sources familiar with the experiment.'

"One revelation from the recent Heartland Institute document leak is that the group is crafting a K-12 curriculum to teach kids that global warming is 'controversial.' Heartland officials have confirmed this. So is climate change set to join evolution as the next big classroom controversy?"