"U.S. EPA unveiled plans today to improve the quality of drinking water in schools and small communities by targeting the most serious violations and assisting rural systems that struggle to meet federal standards."

"The Obama administration has decided not to support a global monitoring system for biological weapons, a move that affirms an earlier determination by the Bush administration but that will disappoint some nonproliferation experts."

"Negotiators on Wednesday worked to bridge the chasm between rich and poor countries over how to share the burden of fighting climate change, and a top U.S. envoy was to highlight the Obama administration's efforts to curb greenhouse emissions."

"The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed spending more than $3 billion to settle claims dating back more than a century that American Indian tribes were swindled out of royalties for oil, gas, grazing and other leases."

"Federal stimulus funding has provided $242 million to Illinois to weatherize more than 25,000 homes, but poor oversight of that work puts the funding at risk and in some cases puts the residents of poorly weatherized homes in danger, an audit report warns."

"More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data."

"The current decade has been by far the warmest decade on instrumental record, the U.K.'s Meteorological Office said Tuesday as it released new figures at the climate change talks in Copenhagen."

"A federal program that began as a safety net for Pacific Northwest logging communities hard-hit by battles over the spotted owl in the 1990s has morphed into a sprawling entitlement - one that ships vast amounts of money to states with little or no historic connection to timber, an analysis by The Associated Press shows."

"After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed a law instructing the federal government to help states build bigger stocks of a simple, cheap drug to protect people near nuclear power plants in the event of an accident or terrorist attack."