Despite a 60-vote Democrat majority, climate change legislation faces an uphill fight in the Senate. Are more offshore drilling and subsidies for nuclear plants the key?

"Virginia banned smoking in most restaurants a month ago -- and not all of them mind. North Carolina follows suit."

"A Canadian firm says U.S. use of defoliants in Vietnam has left perilous dioxin levels, but that the issue is solvable."

"Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States -- from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners -- nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision."

"The Harper government is quietly reviewing the $1.9-billion investment by a state-owned Chinese oil company in two oilsands projects, more than a month after the deal was originally supposed to close."

"To quote a famous line from a famous movie, "It's the only thing that lasts" — land, that is. No wonder, then, that many see land as their legacy, something to pass down to future generations when they die. A landowner in Michigan wants to use death itself — her own — to leave a legacy that's unusually personal."

"Anywhere that people can go online they can trace the proposals and plans of countries to combat climate change through an online climate pledge tracker website newly established by the United Nations Environment Programme."

"To ensure that the most vulnerable Americans are better protected from exposure to lead, the U.S. EPA is proposing to revise the monitoring requirements for measuring airborne lead."

"The Obama administration announced Wednesday it might write rules to limit the manufacture, processing and use of C8 and related perfluorinated chemicals, but would not propose any such regulations until at least 2012."

"Environmental groups gathered along the Delaware River Wednesday to call on the Delaware River Basin Commission to protect the Delaware from toxic chemical contamination related to natural gas drilling."