"It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been 25 years since a cattle rancher ordered his son to shoot Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper and unionist who had become an effective international campaigner for sustainable use of the Amazon rain forest."

"ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Russian investigators have dropped charges against all but one of the 30 crew of a Greenpeace ship, who were accused of hooliganism following a protest outside a Russian oil rig in the Arctic, the group said Wednesday."

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will 'soon' pardon one of his sharpest critics — jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky — and said that a newly enacted amnesty law would free imprisoned Greenpeace activists and two members of the punk band Pussy Riot."

"How hot was November? NOAA says average global temperature, for water and land surfaces combined, was 56.6 degrees F (13.7 Celsius). It was the 37th consecutive November with above-average temperatures."

"When highly radioactive material that can be used in a 'dirty bomb' is moved to or from a hospital in New York City, it is done in the dead of night on cordoned streets with high security."

"LONDON — European food regulators said on Tuesday that a class of pesticides linked to the deaths of large numbers of honey bees might also harm human health, and they recommended that the European Commission further restrict their use."

"If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the ongoing noise about global warming, then you’ve heard of the so-called 'pause'. This is the idea that the planet hasn’t actually been warming for the past 15 years or so."

"For more than a decade, the question of how global warming is affecting the scariest storms on the planet—hurricanes—has been shot through with uncertainty. The chief reason is technological: In many parts of the world, storm strengths are estimated solely based on satellite images. Technologies and techniques for doing this have improved over time, meaning that there is always a problem with claiming that today's storms are stronger than yesterday's. After all, they might just be better observed."

"The hole in the ozone layer is stabilizing but will take until about 2070 to fully recover, according to new research by NASA scientists."

"Japan is planning to earmark 100 billion yen ($970 million) for a storage facility for tens of thousands of tonnes of soil contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima disaster, a report said Wednesday."