"SEATTLE — A Coast Guard investigation into the 2012 grounding of the Kulluk, an offshore drilling rig operated by Royal Dutch Shell in the harsh Arctic, blasted the oil company for legal violations, poor management and taking undue risks, according to the final report released Thursday."
"HOUSTON — A giant Texas oil company, Anadarko Petroleum, has agreed to pay $5.1 billion for a vast environmental cleanup, a sum the Justice Department said was the largest it had ever won in such a case."
"Even when pollution discharges from shale gas well pads and impoundments contaminate private water supplies, those violations often go unrecorded or publicly reported by state environmental regulators, according to documents filed in the Pennsylvania Superior Court case challenging the constitutionality of the state's oil and gas law, Act 13."
"Across the northern plains, native grassland is being turned into farmland at a rate not seen since the 1920s. The environmental consequences could be disastrous."
The U.N.'s climate chief called on the oil and gas industry on Thursday to make a drastic shift to a clean, low-carbon future or risk having to leave three-quarters of fossil fuel reserves in the ground."
"Almost a quarter of Europe's bumblebees are at risk of extinction due to loss of habitats and climate change, threatening pollination of crops worth billions of dollars, a study showed on Wednesday."
"Research involving hundreds of Maine children might represent a breakthrough about whether exposure to arsenic in drinking water — even at very low levels — could lead to reduced intelligence, scientists who conducted the study said Wednesday."
"The Senate Finance Committee’s abrupt move to take up “tax extenders” legislation is testing the lobbying clout of the renewable energy sector and other special interests in Washington."
"When disease strikes in the developing world, like the current Ebola outbreak in Guinea, doctors, nurses and epidemiologists from international organizations fly in to help. So do anthropologists."
"Inspection teams were set to venture into an underground nuclear waste disposal vault in New Mexico on Wednesday to look for the source of a radiation leak nearly seven weeks ago that exposed 21 workers and forced a shutdown of the facility."
