National (U.S.)

Despite a 60-vote Democrat majority, climate change legislation faces an uphill fight in the Senate. Are more offshore drilling and subsidies for nuclear plants the key?

"Virginia banned smoking in most restaurants a month ago -- and not all of them mind. North Carolina follows suit."

"Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States -- from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners -- nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision."

"To quote a famous line from a famous movie, "It's the only thing that lasts" — land, that is. No wonder, then, that many see land as their legacy, something to pass down to future generations when they die. A landowner in Michigan wants to use death itself — her own — to leave a legacy that's unusually personal."

"To ensure that the most vulnerable Americans are better protected from exposure to lead, the U.S. EPA is proposing to revise the monitoring requirements for measuring airborne lead."

"The Obama administration announced Wednesday it might write rules to limit the manufacture, processing and use of C8 and related perfluorinated chemicals, but would not propose any such regulations until at least 2012."

Dust is everywhere, is likely to increase, and will cause unknown environmental impacts.

"The federal Environmental Protection Agency told New York State on Wednesday that it had major concerns about how proposed hydraulic drilling for natural gas would affect public health and the environment, and urged it to undertake a broader study of the potential impact."

"As much as 100 million bushels of U.S. corn could be lost after heavy snowstorms in recent days likely delayed until spring the final stages of an already historically slow harvest, analysts and meteorologists said on Monday."

"A controversial roundup of 2,500 wild horses from public and private lands in Nevada began on Monday amid protests from activists who call it needless and inhumane."