"Gulf oil spill claims czar Kenneth Feinberg introduced a new option Monday to the 170,000 claimants who have already received an emergency payment, offering 'quick' payments of $5,000 to individuals and $25,000 to businesses who are willing to sign away their rights to sue."

"A federal appeals court has decided to move ahead with lawsuits challenging the Department of Energy's authority to scrap plans to make Yucca Mountain, Nev., a national repository for nuclear waste."

"In many places around Western Pennsylvania residents see clusters of death and clusters of people sickened by cancer or heart and lung diseases. And, like Lee Lasich, a Clairton resident, they're frustrated that government health and environmental agencies don't see them too, don't do something about the problems and don't take a tougher stance on enforcement of air pollution regulations."

"Rare minerals. Food and water. Arable soil. Air-cleansing forests. In the intellectual heart of the American military and policy-making world, these are emerging not just as environmental issues, but as the potential stuff of conflict in the 21st century."

"Owls are dying under gruesome circumstances, bleeding to death from stomach hemorrhages in an agonizing and days-long decline. The culprit: An extra-potent class of rodenticides that has flooded the market in recent decades."

"A month before the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, a Massey Energy worker admitted that he had used what turned out to be a forged foreman's card when he conducted hundreds of mine safety checks at the Raleigh County operation, the Sunday Gazette-Mail has learned."

"Greens and public health advocates fear the White House is losing its backbone when it comes to defending its environmental policies — at the worst possible time."

"The latest research on the District's decade-long effort to reduce lead in its drinking water is likely to reverberate well beyond the city's borders and add a chapter to one of the more tortuous public health chronicles of the past century."

"Republican senators blocked Democratic legislation on Thursday that sought to provide medical care to rescue workers and residents of New York City who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke from ground zero."

"Despite landmark bipartisan legislation in 1990 amending the Clean Air Act to control nearly 200 toxic air pollutants, EPA has yet to achieve controls on most of them. The reasons have as much to do with politics and public relations as with science and health."