National (U.S.)

"A House committee on Thursday voted to exempt some leases from the White House's moratorium on leasing federal land for coal mining."

"A Volkswagen engineer pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiring to defraud regulators and car owners, in the first criminal charges stemming from the American investigation into the German carmaker’s emissions deception."

"A reporter from Democracy Now! who documented security personnel with guard dogs working for Dakota Access Pipeline is facing criminal trespassing charges in Morton County."

"U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, the first black U.S. senator from the deep South since Reconstruction, is proposing that the site where the Civil War began be raised in status to that of a national park."

"Brushing aside a fresh court ruling, three federal agencies said they are withholding a permit on a portion of the project near Sioux Land."

"Environmentalists sued the Obama administration on Thursday seeking new federal water-quality standards designed to protect marine life against the corrosive effects of carbon emissions absorbed into the ocean from the burning of fossil fuels."

"The governor of North Dakota has activated the state's National Guard ahead of a U.S. District judge's decision Friday morning that could inflame protesters who have been gathered here for weeks in an effort to block a pipeline project."

"A North Dakota judge issued a warrant Wednesday for the arrest of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who is accused of spray-painting construction equipment during a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline."

"Thirteen months after an Environmental Protection Agency mistake sent millions of gallons of bright orange wastewater into a Colorado river, the agency has declared the Gold King Mine and 47 other locations in the region Superfund sites, Colorado Public Radio reports."

"A former top Bureau of Land Management official in New Mexico who later headed an oil and gas trade group accepted improper industry gifts while at the agency and 'attempted to obstruct' a federal investigation into his conduct, according to an inspector general's report that was kept from the public for more than three years."