"The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found."

"The sharp-tongued U.N. official who shepherded troubled climate talks for nearly four years announced his resignation Thursday, leaving an uncertain path to a new treaty on global warming."

"A landmark agreement to protect shark species threatened with extinction was reached Friday as 113 countries signed up to a United Nations-backed wildlife treaty to conserve migratory sharks."

"A range of health problems are linked to the pits on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Toxic substances have been found in the smoke."

"The U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer has resigned to join a consultancy group as an adviser, the U.N. climate secretariat said on Thursday, two months after a disappointing Copenhagen summit."

"A long-awaited study by the International Agency for Cancer Research -- an arm of the World Health Organization -- will attempt to give the world's billions of cellphone users a better informed perspective" on whether the phones cause brain tumors or present other health risks.

"Ex-weatherman Anthony Watts says many US weather stations produce unreliable data because they are located next to artificial heat -- but a scientific analysis suggests that, if anything, such stations underestimate warming."

Growing pollution in the Baltic Sea has been making it unswimmable and contaminating fish. Now Russia has sealed a deal to put a pipeline beneath the Baltic -- with big international repercussions.

"A new study says the seas are acidifying ten times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. And, the study concludes, current changes in ocean chemistry due to the burning of fossil fuels may portend a new wave of die-offs."