"Devastating floods in Pakistan and Russia's heatwave match predictions of extremes caused by global warming even though it is impossible to blame mankind for single severe weather events, scientists say."

"The daily mortality rate in Moscow has doubled and morgues are overflowing amid an acrid smog caused by the worst heatwave in Russia's thousand-year history, officials said Monday."

"Almost 1,000 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, BP PLC is pressing ahead with a $3.8 billion expansion of the largest refinery in the Midwest -- and facing off with environmental groups over controls aimed at preventing a gusher-style release of chemicals into the air."

"U.N. climate talks have moved backward rather than forward toward a hoped-for deal later this year as nations make slow progress on pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions and add more proposals to the working document."

"Marine services and shipbuilding companies that benefit from deepwater oil drilling will face off against the federal government in court again Wednesday over the government's ban on offshore drilling."

"Dozens of environmental and conservation groups were pleased Thursday as Solicitor General Elena Kagan won confirmation as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice on a Senate vote of 63-37, largely along party lines."

"Union workers at the nation’s only uranium conversion plant, in Metropolis, Ill., have erected 42 crosses nearby in memory of workers who died of cancer. Twenty-seven smaller crosses symbolize workers who have survived the disease."

The Minerals Management Service -- now reorganized into three separate agencies -- began in 1997 nearly giving away public resources to oil companies as favors in a party that lasted until the BP gulf oil spill.

"An ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off from one of Greenland's two main glaciers, scientists said on Friday, in the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years."

"President Obama could invoke strong climate policies, like gasoline carbon limits, without congressional input before world leaders convene this fall to negotiate an international global warming treaty, a research group says in a plan provided to the administration."