It took awhile, but the U.S. Midwest finally has recognized that the industries that once powered its economy will never return. Now leaders in the region are looking to renewable energy manufacturing and technologies as key to the heartland’s renaissance.

"A new burst of coal-fired power plant construction now underway -- the largest in decades -- will put 43 new coal plants on American soil in the next five years, and all of them will escape the performance standards written into the climate bill now moving through Congress."

"Thirty years ago today, an earthen tailings dam near the United Nuclear Corp. Church Rock Uranium mine collapsed, spilling ninety million gallons of liquid radioactive waste and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes into the Rio Puerco. The spill contaminated water, land and air at least 50 miles downstream on Navajo Nation land in New Mexico and Arizona."

"A type of fuel once used in Japanese aircraft during World War II is slowly making its way again toward the market, and its backers say that it will work better in automobiles than ethanol."

"The British Bee Keepers' Association ... is receiving money from one of the main manufacturers of [an] allegedly bee-killing brew, Bayer Crop Sciences, and endorsing some of its products as 'bee-friendly'."

"A controversial alternative to the ozone-depleting pesticide methyl bromide could be in use in Pajaro Valley strawberry fields next year."

"The U.S. Forest Service agreed Monday to sell timber to a Ketchikan mill in a roadless area of the Tongass National Forest after the Obama administration's approved the sale."

"Should the federal government store 17,000 tons of mercury at the Idaho National Laboratory? 'The answer is no,' said Gov. Butch Otter."

Florida is holding a regulated hunt to eliminate Burmese pythons that have invaded the Everglades.

"The Obama administration is withdrawing a controversial Bush-era logging plan for millions of acres of federal forests in western Oregon."