National (U.S.)

"Some leading analysts and legal observers believe the highly anticipated 'trial of the century' over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, set to begin in three weeks, will end before it starts. BP and negotiators for federal and state governments are frantically working to confect a settlement so they won't have to leave the fate of billions of dollars in potential pollution fines and spill damage payments in the hands of U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier."

Both President Obama and the GOP-controlled House are pushing infrastructure investment as a job-producing way of maintaining and upgrading U.S. roads, bridges, dams, waterways, airports, and quality of life. The big questions include how to do it -- a set of choices with huge environmental consequences.

"TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

"Enthusiasm for offshore wind projects may have cooled among developers in the United States these days, but the Obama administration is still trying to make a ribbon of wind farms off the Atlantic Coast a reality."

Do environmental triggers play a role in causing the growing epidemic of obesity in the United States over the past 150 years?

"The millions of gallons of chemical-laced wastewater that fracking produces must flow somewhere, and Ohio is trying not to be that place."

"LOS ANGELES — Unusual wear has been found on hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water at Southern California’s San Onofre Unit 2 nuclear plant, raising questions about the integrity of equipment the company installed in a multimillion-dollar makeover in 2009.

The disclosure came two days after a tube leak at the plant’s other unit prompted operators to shut down the reactor as a precaution. A tiny amount of radiation could have escaped, but officials say workers and the public were not endangered.

"The Environmental Protection Agency missed a deadline to release federal guidelines on the dangers of excess dioxin chemicals in the food supply and environment, giving ammunition to critics that hope the agency will change course."

"The two chairmen of a study group established after the Obama administration killed a plan for a nuclear waste repository in Nevada appeared before a House subcommittee on Wednesday to explain a proposed solution to the enduring waste dilemma. They found their idea tough to sell. Last week the so-called Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future released a report calling for a new approach to finding a site, based on local consent rather than Congressional dictate."

"Insurance commissioners in California, New York and Washington State will require that companies disclose how they intend to respond to the risks their businesses and customers face from increasingly severe storms and wildfires, rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change, California’s commissioner said Wednesday."