"The ultra-conservative group's climate conference showed how far it has fallen after an internet sting and a disastrous ad."

"It was an odd choice of icon for the ultra-conservative Heartland Institute. But there he was in round glasses, beard, and halo of curls staring out from T-shirts and coffee mugs at their gathering of climate change contrarians this week, the scientist whose internet sting set Heartland on its current course of collapse.

"At Wally’s Party Factory, a 32-store chain based in the North Texas town of Ennis, balloons no longer contain 100 percent helium — the total is down to 60 percent — and an additive is pumped in to help certain types float better."

"May is the month we see strawberries explode in the market. There are strawberry festivals in every corner of the nation celebrating the juicy ruby beauties, and Strawberry Queens crowned galore. Those traditional harvest time festivals make us think our strawberries are mostly grown on the farm just down the road. But in fact, one state — California — supplies 80 percent of America's strawberries, and the percentage is growing."

"Melinda Olson has given her 12-year-old son raw milk for years. When he walked away virtually unscathed from a serious bike accident last year, she credited his healthy diet of raw milk dairy products. Matthew Caldwell fed his 2-year-old son, Owen, raw milk in the spring of 2010. The boy was hospitalized for 13 days, victim of an E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak traced to raw milk producer Mike Hartmann."

"Like evolution, climate science has opened rifts in classrooms across the United States. Educators are lifting climate out of its narrow unit in middle school science – an effort, they hope, that will improve science literacy overall."

"Exposed to poisoned water at Camp Lejeune, these vets may hold the key to a scourge that kills some 40,000 American women -- and a few hundred men -- per year."

"It all started with Mike Partain, a.k.a. Number One. A barrel-chested father of four with a goatee and a predilection for aviator sunglasses, Partain was born at Camp Lejeune, the North Carolina base where his father, a first lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, was stationed in the late 1960s. Now he lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he makes his living as an insurance claims adjuster.

"WASHINGTON — Gregory B. Jaczko, whose three-year tenure as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been marked by bitter battles with colleagues and with Congress, announced Monday that he would step down as soon as a successor was confirmed."

"With "Golden Holocaust," historian Robert Proctor deconstructs an industry that still kills more than 400,000 Americans a year."

"Environmentalists battling Canadian oil companies over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to the Gulf Coast and another link west to Asia are now girding for what they see as industry's Plan C: Move heavy crude to the East.

At issue is a plan announced this week by Enbridge Pipelines Inc. to reverse the flow of a pipeline that now carries 240,000 daily barrels of imported oil west from Canada's East Coast.

"Free-market thinktank's conference opens in Chicago with president admitting defections are hurting group's finances."