"THE blackouts that left hundreds of millions of Indians sweltering in the dark last month underscored the status of air-conditioning as one of the world’s most vexing environmental quandaries."

"MANTON, Calif. — Aided by a shift in wind direction, firefighters made a stand against a huge lightning-sparked wildfire burning on the edge of three small Northern California towns."

"Royal Dutch Shell is spending billions of dollars to drill the first oil wells in U.S. Arctic waters in 20 years, backed by an Obama administration eager to show it wasn't opposed to offshore exploration. But the closely watched project isn't going the way the company or the government hoped—illustrating the continuing challenge of plumbing for natural riches in one of the world's most unforgiving locations."

"While Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the fate of Enbridge’s proposed pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to tankers on the British Columbia coast will be based on science and not politics, documents show some of that science isn’t forthcoming. And critics say there is no time for the science to be completed before a federal deadline for the environmental assessment currently underway."

"Radioactive contamination at the Treasure Island Naval Station, where San Francisco plans to build a high-rise community for 20,000 residents, is more widespread than previously disclosed, according to a new U.S. Navy report and other documents obtained by The Bay Citizen."

"A floating robot has been deployed to track great white sharks in the Pacific as part of efforts to understand the giant predators."

"Inch by inch along parts of the Atlantic Coast, global climate change is running in what scientists warn is geology’s version of fast-forward — swamping and eroding beaches, wetlands and farm fields."

"OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — High temperatures and an ongoing drought are having an impact on more than just crops and livestock. State health officials say they are also creating ideal conditions for the growth of a tiny, single-cell organism that lives in Oklahoma's rivers, lakes and ponds and can cause a disease that is almost always fatal."

"AZTEC, N.M. — The land is parched, the fields are withering and thousands of the nation’s horses are being left to fend for themselves on the dried range, abandoned by people who can no longer afford to feed them."

"ABOARD THE DREDGE POTTER, on the Mississippi River — This ship is making sure that the Big River, shrinking under one of the worst droughts in modern history, stays deep enough."