"The Kentucky coal industry's compliance with U.S. surface mining regulations dropped sharply from 2008 to 2010, while the environmental impact of the violations has worsened, federal records show."

Shark fins do not have any taste of their own. Yet the status associated in Chinese society with earing shark fin soup is causing consumption to rise as the Chinese economy expands. Conservationists call it the single largest threat to sharks worldwide.

"A volcano dormant for decades erupted in south-central Chile on Saturday, belching an ash cloud more than 6 miles high that blew over the Andes and carpeted a popular ski resort in neighboring Argentina."

Radiation in the No. 1 reactor building at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan has been measured at the highest levels ever, making it virtually impossible for human workers to do much work there.

"The Ruby Mountains, a major Great Basin range, appears to harbor only half as many small animals as were found there in the 1920s, according to a new study by Utah Museum of Natural History researchers."

"With the rising Missouri River threatening to encroach a South Omaha sewage treatment plant, the City of Omaha will dump 6 million gallons of raw sewage a day into the river as it takes part of the plant off-line."

"The terrifying E. coli outbreak in Europe appears to have been caused by vegetable sprouts grown on an organic farm in Germany, an agriculture official said Sunday as the toll climbed to at least 22 dead and more than 2,200 sickened."

"'I watch them die, young and old,' [Spokane tribal gravedigger Harold] Campbell said. 'I think it’s caused by the radiation.' The radiation is from the Northwest’s only open-pit uranium mines -- an all-but-forgotten chapter of Washington’s Cold War history."