National (U.S.)

"By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin."

"Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives made manifest yesterday how much they dislike President Barack Obama's clean-energy agenda as a House spending panel voted for massive cuts in clean-energy research."

"Several wildfires raged unchecked across drought-parched Colorado on Thursday, one threatening oil and gas wells close to the Utah border and another about 300 miles to the southeast chased a group of Boy Scouts from their camp near New Mexico."

"A federal environmental regulator will not finish and review a draft report tentatively linking hydraulic fracturing to Wyoming groundwater contamination and will instead allow state agencies to further investigate the issue."

"Foes of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada to Texas, said on Thursday that an expected White House package of proposals to combat climate change was not an adequate trade-off for approval of the controversial project."

"The surprise defeat of the farm bill in the House on Thursday underscored the ideological divide between the more conservative, antispending Republican lawmakers and their leadership, who failed to garner sufficient votes from their caucus as well as from Democrats."

"A U.S. EPA draft report criticizes Washington state for lax oversight of the Hanford nuclear site, citing too few inspections and ignored violations."

PETA and other animal-welfare groups go undercover to document animal abuse in various agricultural and scientific facilities. Now, as state legislatures pass "Ag-Gag" laws at the urging of industry, the crime may be exposing it.

"Federal prosecutors unveiled new criminal indictments on Wednesday against a former BP Plc executive and a former BP engineer charged with obstructing investigations into the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill."