"Opponents of a pipeline that would nearly double U.S. imports of Canadian oil-sands crude sued the State Department today in a bid to force speedy disclosure of any contacts it made with a lobbyist for the pipeline's sponsor."

"The disputed share swap and oil exploration agreement between BP and the Russian state-owned company Rosneft has collapsed, leaving some BP investors questioning the company’s future strategy and freeing Rosneft to look for a new partner in Russia."

"Five years before the crucial emergency vents at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were disabled by an accident they were supposed to help handle, engineers at a reactor in Minnesota warned American regulators about that very problem."

"A projected spate of extinctions of animals and plants this century may be less drastic than feared because the most widely used scientific method can exaggerate losses by more than 160 percent, a study said on Wednesday."

"Heavy rains, deep snowfalls, monster floods and killing droughts are signs of a 'new normal' of extreme U.S. weather events fueled by climate change, scientists and government planners said on Wednesday."

"The Senate on Wednesday rejected a Republican bid to accelerate offshore drilling by requiring regulators to speed up decisions on permits and forcing the government to reschedule canceled lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico."