Greenwire

After a months-long legal review, the Interior Department announced it will return roughly $110 million in withheld mineral royalties to dozens of states, bringing relief to Western lawmakers whose constituents depend on the money for roads and schools.

California's Legislature is reigniting the debate over whether to douse beach bonfires for health reasons.

Hundreds of dead dolphins washing up on the East Coast this summer appear to have been infected by a deadly virus, officials with the National Marine Fisheries Service said today.

The U.S. insurance industry could be overwhelmed by simultaneous disasters capable of inflicting twice the damage of Superstorm Sandy or more, according to a recent report that weighs the benefits of shifting catastrophe risks to the federal government.

Congressional backers of Keystone XL have long pointed to its allowance for light oil from the Bakken Shale play -- a U.S. on-ramp that the pipeline's Canadian sponsor initially resisted -- as proof that the oil sands crude link would be vital to domestic fuel production.

The lawyer whose firm helped workers exposed to asbestos receive hundreds of millions of dollars in damages has died at 68.

The British government yesterday started a controversial badger cull, inviting fierce criticism from animal rights groups whose members camped out in southern England to protest the killings.

Japan's nuclear regulator yesterday raised the severity rating of the most recent radioactive water leak from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to Level 3 on the international scale for radiological releases.

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection tried to suppress a study on the climate change impacts of shale gas drilling, according to a new report.

A coalition of environmentalists and other activists wants the California Legislature to force businesses to use less plastic.

California officials have ordered a battery recycler to test the soil near its Los Angeles plant for dangerous metals.

Dow Chemical Co. plans to invest $1.06 billion to build two new chemical plants in Louisiana plants and will move forward with capital improvements on a third, according to a joint announcement with Gov. Bobby Jindal (R).

Farmers in the Lower Mississippi River Basin have been able to fight back against sediment and nutrient loss through voluntary conservation work, according to a new Department of Agriculture report.

Janet Napolitano yesterday warned that a large-scale cyberattack is coming and her successor in leading the Department of Homeland Security must act quickly to prepare for it.

The Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy yesterday announced the appointment of Julio Friedmann to lead clean coal research and Paula Gant to lead similar efforts in oil and natural gas.

Following the fatal crash of a helicopter late last week off the coast of the Shetland Islands, more than half the helicopter fleet used to supply oil and gas platforms in British North Sea waters remained grounded yesterday.

A fight over how to dismantle the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is already brewing one day after Entergy Corp. announced plans to close the facility.

Environmental groups are intensifying their campaign to pressure utilities serving Virginia and Montana to turn away from fossil fuels -- particularly coal, but also natural gas.