"RALEIGH, N.C. — Last June, state employees in charge of stopping water pollution were given updated marching orders on behalf of North Carolina’s new Republican governor and conservative lawmakers."

"WASHINGTON -- As the years-long fight over the Keystone XL pipeline grinds toward resolution, green groups are broadening their focus to include the possibility that the Obama administration will loosen curbs on how much oil and gas the United States exports."

"Faith Spotted Eagle figures that building a crude oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast would bring little to Indian Country besides more crime and dirty water, but she doubts that Native Americans will ever be able to get the U.S. government to block the $7 billion project."

"The Obama administration on Monday announced new fuel and automobile rules to cut soot, smog and toxic emissions, which it says will reduce asthma and heart attacks in the United States."

"North Carolina regulators have cited five more Duke Energy power plants for lacking required storm water permits after a massive spill at one of the company’s coal ash dumps coated 70 miles of the Dan River in toxic sludge."

"The state department of environment and natural resources announced Monday that Charlotte-based Duke had been issued formal notices of violation for not having the needed permits, which are required to legally discharge rainwater draining from its plants into public waterways.

"TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A freshwater channel that separates Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas is a premier Midwestern tourist attraction and a photographer's delight, offering spectacular vistas of two Great Lakes, several islands and one of the world's longest suspension bridges. But nowadays the Straits of Mackinac is drawing attention for something that is out of sight and usually out of mind, and which some consider a symbol of the dangers lurking in the nation's sprawling web of buried oil and natural gas pipelines."

"The Energy Department today rolled out new energy efficiency standards to make commercial refrigeration equipment in grocery and convenience stores about 30 percent more efficient -- providing another bump for President Obama's Climate Action Plan."

"A slowdown in the pace of global warming so far this century is likely to be only a pause in a longer-term trend of rising temperatures, the science academies of the United States and Britain said on Thursday."

"Wild bison from Yellowstone National Park that are deemed free of cattle disease could be safely used to establish new herds elsewhere across the American West without posing a risk to livestock, a U.S. Department of Agriculture study concluded."