"Volunteering in state parks has long been a staple of the Boy Scouts experience. But in Georgia this year, as the Boy Scouts celebrate their 100th anniversary by building bridges and park benches, maintaining trails and cleaning up waterways, the ongoing event is unusual in one respect: It’s sponsored by Verizon Wireless."

"Congress has 'left state regulators in the lurch' by failing to set new national climate policy that could guide regulators' decisions on the fate of coal-fired electric power generators in their states, the new chairman of a task force on climate policy says."

"The Navajo Nation's proposed coal plant always rested on shaky ground. Now, it may collapse entirely."

"Twenty-five years after the worst known outbreak of pesticide poisoning in U.S. history, an agreement is announced that phases out all uses of aldicarb. Manufacturer Bayer CropScience agreed to stop producing the highly toxic insecticide, used to kill pests on cotton and several food crops, by 2015 in all world markets."

"Researchers describe 'a constellation' of oil droplets mixed with sediment. Phytoplankton, the base of the marine food web, is found to be in poor health nearby."

"Fires across Russia, record floods in Pakistan, a huge Greenland iceberg -- this current unprecedented sequence of extreme weather events 'matches' scientific projections of more frequent and intense extreme weather events due to global warming, says an organization of meteorologists from 189 countries."

"Teenagers may carry the highest levels of bisphenol A -- about 30 per cent more than the rest of the population, according to the first national survey about the compound conducted by Statistics Canada, but exposure to the estrogen-mimicking chemical is widespread, with detectible levels in 91 per cent of Canadians."