"MELBOURNE, Fla. — The first hint that something was amiss here, in the shallow lagoons and brackish streams that buffer inland Florida from the Atlantic’s salt water, came last summer in the Banana River, just south of Kennedy Space Center. Three manatees — the languid, plant-munching, over-upholstered mammals known as sea cows — died suddenly and inexplicably, one after another, in a spot where deaths were rare."

Research biologists are studying the elusive Cascades frog, which lives in alpine meltwater ponds in Washington's Olympic Mountains, to understand how warming climate might affect the ecosystems they depend on.

"California billionaire Thomas Steyer is taking his fight against climate change to Virginia, helping to buy TV ads criticizing Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli."

"Developers of the proposed Pebble mine don't deserve special protections for buying insider documents about the financial workings of project opponents and then using the records to pursue a case against those opponents with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, a California appeals court panel ruled [July 30]."

"The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to let oil companies continue to dump polluted wastewater on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. This includes chemicals that companies add to the wells during hydraulic fracturing, an engineering practice that makes wells produce more oil."

"BANNING, Calif. — A wildfire that broke out in the inland mountains of Southern California has expanded exponentially, burning homes, forcing the evacuation of several small mountain communities and leaving three people injured.

About 1,500 people had evacuated as the wildfire of more than 9 square miles raged out of control Thursday in the San Jacinto Mountains near Banning, said Lucas Spelman, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

"TOKYO — First, a rat gnawed through exposed wiring, setting off a scramble to end yet another blackout of vital cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Then, hastily built pits for a flood of contaminated water sprang leaks themselves. Now, a new rush of radioactive water has breached a barrier built to stop it, allowing heavily contaminated water to spill daily into the Pacific."

"NEW YORK -- All of the notices U.S. regulators received to vouch for the safety of common food additives between 1997 and 2012 were submitted by people who had a vested interest in the outcome of those assessments, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Wednesday."

"BP Plc said Monday it has discovered new evidence of fraud and conflicts of interest in the program that is paying billions of dollars to businesses and residents who claimed they were harmed by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill."

"Last week's much-touted White House meeting between Obama administration environmental leaders and West Virginia Democrats on coal was part of what advocates are calling an increasing dialogue between both sides of the contentious debate."