"Federal regulators said on Thursday that they would impose hard limits on energy futures contracts held by commodity traders, part of a move to curb excessive speculation and possibly avoid a repeat of the 2008 run-up in oil prices."

"Consumers who thought they were buying antibiotic-free chicken could receive $5 million in cash and coupons under a proposed settlement to a lawsuit contending that the nation's largest poultry producer falsely promoted its birds as being raised without drugs."

"UNITED NATIONS -- U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern today urged nations that signed the Copenhagen Accord to submit their greenhouse gas emissions-reduction targets and to hammer out details critical to implementing the broad agreement."

"Doctors and aid workers worry that a wave of infectious disease may soon spread through Haiti, with masses of the newly homeless clustering in public spaces without clean water or sanitation."

Top former Bush administration officials -- now lobbyists -- are directing members of Congress from both parties, and their staff, on exactly how to legislate a repeal of EPA's legal authority to control greenhouse gas emissions. Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, is planning to offer the ban as an amendment on the Senate floor. Environmentalists are calling for an ethics investigation.

"More than a year after 1 billion or so gallons of water polluted by ash spilled from a coal-burning power plant in Tennessee, the Obama administration is struggling to decide whether to declare such waste 'hazardous.'"

"Four of the world's largest and fastest-growing carbon emitters will meet in New Delhi this month ahead of a Jan 31 deadline for countries to submit their actions to fight climate change."

"As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq, the Pentagon is wrestling with questions about environmental cleanup on the bases it plans to transfer to the Iraqi Army by December 2011."