"This year's federal budget resolution stripped money for a controversial conservation program. The move put millions of acres of Western lands back on the table for oil and gas drilling. One of those areas is a place called South Shale Ridge, a remote stretch of rugged canyons in western Colorado. The area is prized for its scenery and its natural gas. It's not considered wilderness, but the area has become a battleground over the new Interior Department term 'Wild Land.'"

"Already-underfunded clean air bureaus are set to lose millions, according to figures from the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. Can they cope?"

"The U.S. has 31 reactors just like Japan’s — but regulators are ignoring the risks and boosting industry profits."

"One day after deadly tornadoes knocked out power to nuclear reactors in Alabama, the head of the U.S. nuclear safety regulator expressed concern whether backup batteries at sites across the United States have the staying power in a prolonged emergency."

"In an effort to encourage nuclear power, Congress voted in 2005 to authorize $17.5 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors. Now, six years later, with the industry stalled by poor market conditions and the Fukushima disaster, nearly half of the fund remains unclaimed. And yet Congress, at the request of the Obama administration, is preparing to add $36 billion in nuclear loan guarantees to next year’s budget."

"The death toll soared to near 300 Thursday as rescuers dug through rubble from Mississippi to Virginia in the nation’s deadliest natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina."

"Bolstered by soaring crude oil prices, BP reported a 17 percent increase in first quarter profit to $7.1 billion and sought to convince investors that it was coping with the costs of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year."

As ominous as a floating hearse, twin barges creep up the Mississippi River carrying a payload of explosives bound for southeast Missouri and a levee facing the prospect of being sacrificed to spare a flood-threatened Illinois town just upriver."

"Big coal is hardly in retrenchment mode. Four of the nation’s five biggest coal companies saw sales rise in 2010, even as the Obama administration blocks expansion of coal mines and focuses on greener energy."