"The House of Representatives on Friday approved the toughest reforms ever to offshore energy drilling practices, as Democrats narrowly pushed through an election-year response to BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."
"FORT WORTH, Texas -- For nearly a year Christine and Tim Ruggiero have battled the powerful Texas oil and gas industry and the inertia of regulators responsible for protecting air quality and public health."
"The worst floods in memory in Pakistan have devastated the lives of more than 3 million people, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday, while outrage over the unpopular government's response to the suffering spreads."
"Environmentalists are suing U.S. EPA over a rule that aims to regulate greenhouse gases from only the largest industrial sources, arguing that the agency exempts too many big polluters."
"Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill asked Russians to pray for rain on Sunday as wildfires raged across the European parts of the vast country, sweltering since June in an unprecedented heat wave."
"The EPA says that the brew of oil and dispersants still swirling in the Gulf of Mexico can be highly to moderately toxic to marine organisms at certain concentrations determined in a lab setting. The agency did not say whether those acute toxic levels are present in the open waters of the Gulf."
"Scientists say this year that the 'dead zone' area that forms every summer in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest ever measured."
"The BP spill is by far the world's largest accidental release of oil into marine waters, according to the most precise estimates yet of the well's flow rate, announced by federal scientists on Monday."
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"Locals clamored for information Saturday, asking state and local authorities what sort of chemicals spilled into the North Oconee River, which turned greenish-blue and began to give off fumes that irritated eyes and throats."
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