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"SHAFTER -- One afternoon last fall, Tom Frantz cradled a video camera in his hand and pointed it at an oil well on the edge of this San Joaquin Valley farm town."

"Tiffany Mellers jogs behind her two daughters as they pedal their bikes along a ribbon of packed sand along Long Island Sound. “They are good girls,” Mellers said. “They deserve a healthy life.” Behind them, a 500-foot tall candy-stripe smokestack, a fixture of Bridgeport’s waterfront for nearly five decades, rises in the distance. A third generation of residents is now growing up in its shadow. But today this old giant is merely a vestige of this region’s coal-fired past. New England is virtually coal-free."

"FURNACE CREEK--Blame it on dueling thermometers. The National Weather Service thermometer recorded a peak temperature at 4 p.m. Sunday of 128 degrees in Death Valley National Park, which ties the record for the hottest June day anywhere in the U.S."

"YARNELL, Ariz. -- Gusty, hot winds blew an Arizona blaze out of control Sunday in a forest northwest of Phoenix, overtaking and killing 19 members of an elite fire crew in the deadliest wildfire involving firefighters in the U.S. for at least 30 years."

"Shortly after prodding India in a New Delhi speech to find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Secretary of State John Kerry sent a 'Your Dot' piece emphasizing that he sees this as a partnership between two dynamic, innovative democracies."

"Today marks the 160th anniversary of a seminal, but largely forgotten moment in the history of the conservation movement. On Monday, 27 June, 1853, a giant sequoia – one of the natural world's most awe-inspiring sights - was brought to the ground by a band of gold-rush speculators in Calaveras county, California."

"WASHINGTON — As more nuclear reactors across the country are closed, the problem of what to do with their waste is becoming more urgent, government officials and private experts said at a conference here this week."

"In response to a massive bumblebee die-off blamed on pesticides, the Oregon Department of Agriculture issued a temporary restriction Thursday on 18 insecticides with the active ingredient dinotefuran."

"From California to the Great Lakes, persistent water pollution shows that no beach is an island when it comes to public health threats like hepatitis, dysentery and stomach flu."

"President Barack Obama's plan to curb climate change could transform American energy, potentially dealing a blow to the coal-fired power plants that supply much of the nation's electricity but also pump planet-warming gases into the atmosphere."