"The fish are hard to look at. One whitefish has a golfball-sized tumour bulging from its side. Another is simply missing part of its spine, its tail growing from a stumpy rear end."
"The new UN humanitarian chief has warned that after the Asian tsunami, the Haiti earthquake and the Pakistan floods, the world must brace for a growing number of disasters that will need a new battle campaign."
"The ozone layer that shields life from the sun's harmful rays is projected to recover from harmful chemicals by mid-century, but it will take longer over the polar regions, a United Nations study said on Thursday."
"BP engineers today succeeded in intercepting the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil well with a relief well they have been drilling since May 2."
"Australian scientists Thursday said they had made a breakthrough in the fight to save the cancer-hit Tasmanian devil by mapping the species' genome for the first time."
"A powerful lobbying coalition is campaigning to require more electricity to come from renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal. But the effort hasn't gotten any traction in the Senate this year, despite the push by environmental groups, renewable energy providers, more than half the nation's governors and even some utilities."
"The world's largest solar power plant cleared an important hurdle on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a dramatic expansion in solar energy generation in the United States and around the world. The proposed $6 billion-plus Blythe, California plant, originally proposed by Chevron Corp. and Solar Millennium AG, won clearance to build from the California Energy Commission."
"The Interior Department said Wednesday that oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico need to do more to permanently plug nearly 3,000 inactive wells and dismantle about 650 production platforms that are no longer in use."
Republicans and some coal-state Democrats have not given up on efforts to stop EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. But a divisive Senate vote is unlikely until after the November election, and any bill to block EPA couldn't be enacted in this Congress anyway, given House and White House opposition. The real question is what might happen next year.
