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"NEW YORK -- Environmental activists spent the weekend here trying to push their issues to the forefront of the Occupy Wall Street movement, staging mini-protests in the shadow of the World Trade Center on everything from relicensing the Indian Point nuclear power plant to hydraulic fracturing to global water scarcity.

The protests were the result of three weeks of planning by an Occupy splinter group that wants to use the broader movement's momentum to bring attention to energy-sector profits and what the activists view as widespread greed within associated industries."

"IRVINE, Calif. -- A non-radioactive ammonia leak at a Southern California nuclear plant prompted an emergency alert and precautionary evacuation of nearby workers before it was contained Tuesday, authorities said.

Workers stopped the leak by 5 p.m., about two hours after it was detected in a storage tank in the water purification system of Unit 3 at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, said Todd Adler, the plant's engineering manager.

Front-running Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain revealed that he was unaware that China had nuclear weapons. The revelation came in an October 31, 2011, interview with Judy Woodruff on PBS Newshour.

"President Obama said Tuesday that he will decide whether to approve or deny a permit for a controversial 1,700-mile Canadian oil pipeline, rather than delegating the decision to the State Department.

"The Supreme Court [Monday] decided -- for now -- not to get involved in ongoing litigation over California's endangered delta smelt."

"A federal judge [Monday] upheld new rules designed to protect West Coast salmon and steelhead from three widely used farm pesticides."

"ELDORADO -- Gold prospectors chasing $1,600-an-ounce flecks in river bottoms east of Charlotte also might be sucking life out of the streams, experts say."

"The Obama administration announced Monday that it has extended nearly 1,400 deep-water oil and gas drilling leases to make up for delays caused by last year's Gulf spill and a subsequent moratorium on some offshore exploration."

"Back in February, the Parnell administration told a judge that Cook Inlet beluga whales didn't need the protection of the federal Endangered Species Act because the state was perfectly capable of protecting them itself, in part because of the Alaska Coastal Management Program. But in a notice belatedly filed in the case Friday, the Alaska attorney general's office acknowledged the state had lost that conservation and enforcement tool four months ago."

"Belgium's political parties have reached a conditional agreement to shut down the country's two remaining nuclear power stations, owned by GDF Suez unit Electrabel, a government spokeswoman said Monday."