"Alaska health officials, concerned about amateur miners seeking riches in a modern-day mini gold rush, plan to test prospectors in the town of Nome for mercury exposure for fear that archaic mining techniques may be inadvertently harming their bodies."
"PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela -- A huge explosion rocked Venezuela's biggest oil refinery and unleashed a ferocious fire on Saturday, killing at least 39 people and injuring more than 80 others in one of the deadliest disasters ever to hit the country's key oil industry."
"The National Hurricane Center has placed the New Orleans area under a hurricane watch for Isaac, which is now forecast to make landfall at Gulfport on Wednesday at 7 a.m. as a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of 105 mph. The new forecast extends the hurricane watch area westward to Morgan City.
"Policymakers determined to maintain nuclear energy believed most people would still want it as part of the nation’s power generation despite the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Their calculations were way off."
"U.S. regulators have rejected claims by oil and gas companies that a requirement to disclose payments to foreign governments is so big of a burden that it outweighs a broader goal of choking off corruption in countries where they operate."
"WILDWOOD, Mo. -- The wells supplying people’s homes are running dry here at the heart of the nation’s drought, which the government announced on Thursday has spread to 63.2 percent of the country, centered in the parched earth of the southern Midwest."
"NEW YORK -- Two years before Hurricane Irene created the prospect of a flooding nightmare in New York City, 100 scientists and engineers met to sketch out a bold defense: massive, moveable barriers to shield the city from a storm-stirred sea."
"If you’re worried about picking up an infectious disease this summer, you may be fretting about catching West Nile disease from a mosquito, H3N2v influenza from a pig, or salmonella from a cantaloupe. But for those who like to dabble in pure medical horror, there’s little scarier to ponder than a brain-eating amoeba lurking in your tap water."
"The fate of billions of dollars of promised funding from rich countries to help the developing world adapt to climate change will be discussed on Thursday in Geneva, at the first meeting of the UN's Green Climate Fund."
"PARIS, Texas -- The developer of the disputed Keystone XL oil pipeline, planned to carry oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, may condemn land across a northeast Texas farm for the pipeline's right of way, a judge ruled Wednesday."
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