"Among air experts, it's an open secret: federal and state officials grossly undercount a crucial type of air pollution, often by an order of magnitude and particularly in areas like Houston with its major concentrations of petrochemical plants."

"Research to be released Thursday shows that West Coast refineries continued to produce gasoline even though Americans were told they were temporarily shut down, leading to price spikes in May and October, McClatchy Newspapers reports."

"BP and the U.S. government portrayed in public a united front as a runaway well spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But they privately sought to withhold potentially critical information from each other, possibly slowing efforts to solve the crisis, according to new testimony."

"WASHINGTON -- Terrorists could black out large segments of the United States for weeks or months by attacking the power grid and damaging hard-to-replace components that are crucial to making it work, the National Academy of Sciences said in a report released Wednesday."

"Barack Obama claimed climate change as a personal mission of his second term on Wednesday, offering for the first time to take charge of the effort to find a bipartisan solution to the existential crisis."

Various news organizations are reporting that Thursday may see announcement of a plea deal between BP and the Justice Department in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill. They say BP will plead guilty to criminal misconduct and pay a record criminal fine.

"Climate change is suddenly a hot topic again. The issue is resurfacing in talks about a once radical idea: a possible carbon tax."

"Seville, with a population of about 300, is one of dozens of predominantly Latino unincorporated communities in the Central Valley plagued for decades by contaminated drinking water."

"The federal government's flood insurance program, which fell $18 billion into debt after Hurricane Katrina, is once again at risk of running out of money as the daunting reconstruction from Hurricane Sandy gets under way."

"The presidential and congressional elections of last week brought good news for those who value sensible land conservation policies. But there was more good news on the state and local levels as well."