National (U.S.)

"NEW YORK -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay $410 million to settle allegations it manipulated energy markets in California and the Midwest."

"WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barbara Boxer will seize control of efforts to regulate industrial chemicals during what lobbyists are calling a 'mega-hearing' Wednesday that will test her ability to navigate a major environmental law through a divided Congress."

"How far a person lives from a manufacturing plant that releases the chemical benzene into the environment may determine their risk of developing immune system cancer, a new study suggests."

Some chemicals can cause cancer. But the chemical industry, unable to get the results it wants from toxicologists at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, is now trying to get them by using lawyers, lobbyists, and legislators.

"BOSTON -- The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency told an audience at Harvard Law School on Tuesday that cutting carbon pollution will 'feed the economic agenda of this country' and vowed to work with industry leaders on shaping policies aimed at curbing global warming."

"'Climate change will not be resolved overnight,' EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told the 310-member audience. 'But it will be engaged over the next three years. That I can promise you.'

"Measurements tell us that global average sea level is currently rising by about 1 inch per decade. But in an invisible shadow process, our long-term sea level rise commitment or 'lock-in' -- the sea level rise we don't see now, but which carbon emissions and warming have locked in for later years -- is growing 10 times faster, and this growth rate is accelerating."

"The Dead Zone, an area of oxygen so low that Gulf-bottom organisms are killed and fish and crabs swim away, covered 5,840 square miles of Gulf of Mexico seafloor along Louisiana's coastline this summer, according to a survey by scientists based at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium."

"Republican strategists have laid out an aggressive game plan for seizing the high ground on energy during the August recess: talk about gas prices and jobs, jobs, jobs."

"At Margaret O'Keefe's farm in East Texas, they grow high-quality Bermuda grass. The fields are flat and vibrant green, surrounded by woods of a darker, richer green. The family loves this land. O'Keefe inherited it from her mother, who divided it among eight children."

"The largest solar power plant of its kind is about to turn on in California's Mojave Desert."