"Lawmakers intensified their shootout over oil yesterday, with House Republicans passing a bill to enhance drilling while Democrats launched a plan to rescind tax breaks for major oil companies and invest in cleaner transportation."

"MRSA, a bacteria resistant to common antibiotics, has been discovered in supermarket meats, and the germ is apparently being introduced by human food handlers, a new study reports."

"In a last attempt to deep-six a controversial project to mine uranium near two Navajo communities in northwestern New Mexico, a Navajo environmental group is taking its fight to the global stage."

"The nation’s scientific establishment issued a stark warning to the American public on Thursday: Not only is global warming real, but the effects are already becoming serious and the need has become 'pressing' for a strong national policy to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases."

"A commission created to help resolve the impasse over the disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste will propose establishing one or more sites where used reactor fuel could be stored in steel and concrete structures on the earth’s surface for decades, members of the commission said this week."

"Despite repeated assurances that American nuclear plants are better equipped to deal with natural disasters than their counterparts in Japan, regulators said Thursday that recent inspections had found serious problems with some emergency equipment that would have made it unusable in an accident."

"The Obama administration will seek to allow the unlimited sale of a corn variety genetically engineered by Monsanto Co. to resist drought, the Department of Agriculture announced [Wednesday]."

"Republicans running for the White House in 2012 are put on the defensive for expressing belief in global warming."

"Senate Democrats are calling top executives from the five biggest oil companies before a congressional hearing to flog them verbally for high gasoline prices, big profits and generous tax breaks that Democrats would like to end but don't have the votes to stop."

"A federal judge has given the Obama administration 30 days to act on six permits for deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico."