"The federal government announced the first national emissions and fuel economy standards for heavy vehicles on Monday, one of a series of regulatory steps that the Obama administration is taking to increase energy efficiency and reduce atmospheric pollution in the absence of Congressional action on climate change."

"Pregnant women living in Texas neighborhoods with higher air levels of benzene – a pollutant often released from oil refineries and traffic exhaust – are more likely to have babies with neural tube defects. Women living in the areas with the highest benzene levels had a two times greater risk for their children to be born with spina bifida."

Hydraulic fracturing of underground shale to produce natural gas also releases uranium that is part of the rock, say researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The uranium may pollute groundwater.

"Health and environmental concerns have become a factor in next Tuesday’s Navajo Nation presidential election."

"Criminal enforcement of federal water-pollution laws has continued a more than decadelong slide under the Obama administration, despite pledged improvements, according to U.S. EPA data."

"Prosecutors in Naples are investigating whether members of the local mafia are involved in protests against a new rubbish dump near Italy's third biggest city, a judicial source said on Monday."

"The U.S. Interior Department on Monday approved a permit for the world's biggest solar power project that will provide electricity to up to 750,000 homes."

"In the months after the BP oil spill, the company announced that its gaffe-prone CEO, Tony Hayward, would be replaced by Bob Dudley, an American who served as the point person in the US on the spill. Since taking over on October 1, Dudley has been too busy to talk to members of Congress about the disaster the company unleashed on the Gulf. But he wasn't too busy today to accuse the media and other oil companies of making too much of a big deal about that 4.9 million barrels of oil they dumped."

"Scientists searching the Amazon have discovered new species -- creatures such as a baldheaded parrot, a blue-fanged tarantula and a bright red catfish -- at the rate of about one every three days for the past 10 years, the World Wildlife Fund reported Monday."

"It took years for Illinois officials to discover that southwest suburban Crestwood was pumping contaminated water to its residents, in part because the state took village officials at their word that nothing was wrong. Such lax oversight is a problem in scores of communities throughout the nation, according to a new report from the U.S. Environmental Agency's inspector general that urged federal and state officials to conduct more rigorous inspections and adopt tighter reporting guidelines."