National (U.S.)

"Lawmakers grilled the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over officials' reportedly illegal use of "covert propaganda" to promote a controversial water rule."

Gasoline refiners would blend ethanol into fuel even if the Congressionally-passed law and EPA rules didn't require it. The reason: it's needed to boost the octane rating that makes cars perform properly.

"It took Sen. Ted Cruz to finally persuade me to answer a riddle that's bothered me for years. Suppose somebody yanked away the law that currently props up the nation's ethanol industry, as Cruz has proposed. What would actually happen?

"An environmental group is formally questioning Peabody Energy's ability to fully bond its coal mines in Wyoming and elsewhere in the Rocky Mountain region, saying the St. Louis-based company has insufficient funding to qualify for self-bonding."

"With the FBI tightening its ring around them, the last four holdouts in the armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon surrendered Thursday, ending a 41-day standoff that left one man dead and exposed simmering anger over the government's control of vast expanses of Western land."

"President Barack Obama told supporters 'don't despair' and overreact to the Supreme Court's decision this week that temporarily blocks the administration's rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants."

"The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday easily passed a bill requiring federal environmental regulators to act faster when lead contamination is found in drinking water."

"The Supreme Court’s surprise decision Tuesday to halt the carrying out of President Obama’s climate change regulation could weaken or even imperil the international global warming accord reached with great ceremony in Paris less than two months ago, climate diplomats say."

"The last four armed occupiers of a national wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon said they would turn themselves in Thursday morning after law officers surrounded them in a tense standoff."

"A maverick hedge fund manager thinks Wall Street is the answer to the water crisis in the West."

At first, Ted Turner, the billionaire who invented cable news, thought of his bison as pets.