"The Senate seems likely to confirm Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency in July despite warnings that President Barack Obama’s new climate agenda could torpedo her nomination."

"Koch Industries, one of the largest privately held corporations in the world and principally owned by billionaires Charles and David Koch, has developed what may be the best funded, multifaceted, public policy, political and educational presence in the nation today."

"A New Mexico meat plant received federal approval on Friday to slaughter horses for meat, a move that drew immediate opposition from animal rights group and will likely be opposed by the White House."

"Bad news for American gourmets: the commercial oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest has been failing for several years, and may go on failing as increasingly acid oceans put the larvae of the bivalve Crassostrea gigas seriously at risk."

"President Obama’s ambitious goals to curb the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, unveiled last week, will get a fortuitous assist from an incipient shift in American behavior: recent studies suggest that Americans are buying fewer cars, driving less and getting fewer licenses as each year goes by."

"Tiffany Mellers jogs behind her two daughters as they pedal their bikes along a ribbon of packed sand along Long Island Sound. “They are good girls,” Mellers said. “They deserve a healthy life.” Behind them, a 500-foot tall candy-stripe smokestack, a fixture of Bridgeport’s waterfront for nearly five decades, rises in the distance. A third generation of residents is now growing up in its shadow. But today this old giant is merely a vestige of this region’s coal-fired past. New England is virtually coal-free."

"FURNACE CREEK--Blame it on dueling thermometers. The National Weather Service thermometer recorded a peak temperature at 4 p.m. Sunday of 128 degrees in Death Valley National Park, which ties the record for the hottest June day anywhere in the U.S."

"YARNELL, Ariz. -- Gusty, hot winds blew an Arizona blaze out of control Sunday in a forest northwest of Phoenix, overtaking and killing 19 members of an elite fire crew in the deadliest wildfire involving firefighters in the U.S. for at least 30 years."

"Today marks the 160th anniversary of a seminal, but largely forgotten moment in the history of the conservation movement. On Monday, 27 June, 1853, a giant sequoia – one of the natural world's most awe-inspiring sights - was brought to the ground by a band of gold-rush speculators in Calaveras county, California."

"WASHINGTON — As more nuclear reactors across the country are closed, the problem of what to do with their waste is becoming more urgent, government officials and private experts said at a conference here this week."