NEW ORLEANS The Coast Guard reopened the Mississippi River to limited ship traffic Friday, but port officials say it will take days to clear up to 200 ships idled by a massive oil spill near New Orleans.

GLENDALE, Wis. Tapping the sun's rays for electricity has remained a small niche in the alternative energy arena.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska A 21-year-old woman working at a lodge for the summer was attacked by a grizzly bear about 25 yards outside a building.

WASHINGTON Voluntary pollution-reduction programs touted by the Bush administration as part of the solution to global warming have "limited potential" to reduce greenhouse gases, according to an internal government watchdog.

WASHINGTON Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson has declined to explain before Congress how a conclusion he made last year that global warming put the public in danger could lead to a decision not to regulate greenhouse gases.

WASHINGTON The Environmental Protection Agency moved Thursday to stop the use of the pesticide carbofuran on all food crops, including those that are imported.

WASHINGTON The National Park Service wanted to close a section of Yellowstone Park in the wintertime because of the risk of avalanche. No way, protested businesses in Cody, Wyo., that wanted to promote more tourism.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. California air regulators on Thursday approved the nation's toughest rules to reduce harmful emissions from ocean-going ships headed into the state's ports.

SALEM, Ore. Seven Western states are joining four Canadian provinces to propose a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions through use of a "cap and trade" system.

SAN FRANCISCO An appeals court Wednesday upheld a ruling ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the water discharged from ships as a way to protect local ecosystems from invasive species.

PARIS The French electric company EDF says that 100 employees have been "slightly contaminated" by a leak at a reactor site in southern France.

HOUSTON A "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas-Louisiana coast this year is likely to be the biggest ever and last longer than ever before, with marine life affected for hundreds of miles, a scientist warned.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska Americans are losing touch with the land, and The Economist magazine now contends a significant part of the problem rests with today's environmental community.

WASHINGTON Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens asked Congress on Tuesday to "clear the path" for his plan to boost use of wind and natural gas for U.S. energy needs.

TOOLIK LAKE, Alaska Scientist Anne Hershey paddled a small inflatable raft across an arctic lake, pausing in her stroke to consider how the melting permafrost caused a landslide of mud and sediment spilling down the bank into the water.

BOISE, Idaho Pete Skenandore has a new perspective on grocery shopping.

WASHINGTON The Bush administration wants to set the stage before leaving office for developing oil shale, rocky deposits in the western U.S. that could eventually yield 800 billion barrels of oil, according to government estimates.

LONDON After traveling around the Arctic Circle alone, walking across South America, venturing through African war zones and hiking deep into the Amazon, Borneo and Sumatra jungles, Mike Horn is ready to embark on his most ambitious project yet.

Dear EarthTalk: What is "cogeneration" as a means of providing heat and power?

BEIJING Half of Beijing's drivers left their cars at home and took public transportation instead on Monday, the first workday under new restrictions meant to clear this city's notoriously polluted skies before next month's Olympics.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

AUSTIN, Texas Last year it was about the candidates. This year it's the climate.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska For years, visitors wanting to see Denali National Park's grizzly bears, moose, sheep and caribou have had to ride school buses that polluted the air and spoiled the tranquillity with their noisy, carbon dioxide-spewing diesel engines.

SYDNEY, Australia Pope Benedict XVI on Friday urged religious leaders of all kinds to unite against those who use faith to divide communities - an apparent reference to terrorism in the name of religion.

WASHINGTON Former Vice President Al Gore called Thursday for a "man on the moon" effort to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels.

WASHINGTON With climate change increasingly threatening the survival of plants and animals, scientists say it may become necessary to move some species to save them. Dubbed assisted colonization or assisted migration, the idea is to decide how severe the threat is to various species, and if they need help to deal with it.

MEXICO CITY The government of notoriously polluted Mexico City is promising to cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions 12 percent by 2012.

AUSTIN, Texas Texas, headquarters of America's oil industry, is about to stake a fortune on wind power.

WASHINGTON House Republicans on Thursday killed a Democratic plan designed to spur drilling on already available federal lands in Alaska, the West and the western Gulf of Mexico.