"At least some of the tar balls found littering one of southern California's most popular beaches last month were matched by lab tests to crude oil that spilled from a ruptured pipeline along the Santa Barbara coast about 100 miles away, state and pipeline company officials said on Monday."

"More people will be exposed to floods, droughts, heat waves and other extreme weather associated with climate change over the next century than previously thought, according to a new report in the British medical journal The Lancet."

"The network of corporate-funded right wing think tanks in America is massive. The money that flows to these organizations is even more massive than the networks themselves, and it flows in almost total secrecy thanks to Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund."

"Strife within the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) has burst into the open again with one board member seizing control and ordering immediate suspension of the agency’s entire executive staff."

"In the absence of global action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the United States by the end of the century may face up to $180 billion in economic losses because of drought and water shortages, according to a report released Monday by the White House and Environmental Protection Agency."

"Eastern cougars that once roamed North America from Canada to South Carolina are extinct and no longer warrant federal Endangered Species Act protections, US wildlife managers have said."

"Drinking water wells in Texas counties that are home to intensive hydraulic fracturing operations contain elevated levels of more than two dozen metals and chemicals, including carcinogens, according to a new study in Environmental Science & Technology."

Efforts to keep the invasive Asian Carp from migrating upstream caused Congress to shut down Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock & Dam. That will end end 52 years of barge traffic on the northernmost stretch of the Mississippi River.

"The southern pine beetle, which for generations has attacked forests throughout the southeastern United States, is methodically making its way into the Northeast, destroying thousands of trees in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere."

"Firefighters were working on Friday to contain several massive wildfires raging from Alaska to drought-hit California that have forced hundreds of people to evacuate from their homes and damaged dozens of structures."