"The eight Arctic nations pledged Thursday to create international protocols to prevent and clean up offshore oil spills in areas of the region that are becoming increasingly accessible to exploration because of a changing climate."

"MRSA, a bacteria resistant to common antibiotics, has been discovered in supermarket meats, and the germ is apparently being introduced by human food handlers, a new study reports."

"In a last attempt to deep-six a controversial project to mine uranium near two Navajo communities in northwestern New Mexico, a Navajo environmental group is taking its fight to the global stage."

"The nation’s scientific establishment issued a stark warning to the American public on Thursday: Not only is global warming real, but the effects are already becoming serious and the need has become 'pressing' for a strong national policy to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases."

"A commission created to help resolve the impasse over the disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste will propose establishing one or more sites where used reactor fuel could be stored in steel and concrete structures on the earth’s surface for decades, members of the commission said this week."

"Despite repeated assurances that American nuclear plants are better equipped to deal with natural disasters than their counterparts in Japan, regulators said Thursday that recent inspections had found serious problems with some emergency equipment that would have made it unusable in an accident."

"In a development that is likely to delay efforts to bring the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station under control, the plant’s operator said Thursday that one reactor, No. 1, had sustained much more damage than originally thought and was leaking water."