"Japan shuts down its last working nuclear power reactor this weekend just over a year after a tsunami scarred the nation and if it survives the summer without major electricity shortages, producers fear the plants will stay offline for good."

"Climate change and oil dependence are issues of national security, and the Pentagon will take a lead role in shifting the way the country uses energy, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said [Wednesday] night."

"Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted in response to climate change, research in the United States showed on Wednesday, which could have devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems. Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some breeding, migration and feeding patterns, scientists say."

"The results, showing an engineered flu strain can spread easily between ferrets, derive from a controversial study that stirred debate over fears of a bioterrorism threat."

"WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy has successfully completed an unprecedented test of harvesting the vast storehouse on Alaska’s North Slope of methane hydrate, essentially natural gas locked in ice crystals under the permafrost.

"WASHINGTON, DC -- Forty-five areas across the country are not meeting the latest government standards for ground-level ozone or smog, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday."

"If the Potomac River has gotten more attention than the Anacostia in the past 50 years, it’s partly because the Potomac supplies 90 percent of the region’s drinking water. That amounts to an average of 486 million gallons a day, according to the Potomac Conservancy. The Potomac watershed, which includes 14,670 miles of land that drains to the river, covers parts of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District, Maryland and Virginia. In the 1950s, reports of stench and dangerous levels of pollution clouded the Potomac’s reputation. But the 383-mile river wasn’t always in such bad shape."

"With Asia's energy demands pulling more U.S. coal to West Coast ports, rail-line communities across Montana fear the effects: More train traffic, health problems, noise and congestion."

"Edison International announced Wednesday that Midwest Generation will shutter Chicago's Fisk and Crawford coal plants in September, ahead of schedule and years before a state-imposed deadline to clean up or shut down the plants.

"A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted."