A coal-carrying ship that strayed outside a shipping lane and ran aground in protected waters was leaking oil on Australia's Great Barrier Reef and was in danger of breaking apart, officials said Sunday.

A White House budget proposal for NASA includes billions of dollars to pay for tools to study Earth-bound problems, such as climate change. At the top of the space agency's list: replacing aging and damaged satellites that monitor ocean temperatures and atmospheric chemicals.

Beekeepers who once kept their urban hives shrouded in secrecy can work openly in New York, now that a beekeeping ban has been overturned. Honeybees, which had been classified as wild and dangerous animals, are being kept by a growing number of New Yorkers.

A federal survey suggests some states may face a grasshopper infestation this year. Slade Franklin, weed and pest coordinator for the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, says numbers could get as high as 50 hoppers per square yard. Franklin describes how his state is preparing.

Detouring from his schedule, the president visited with emergency workers struggling against disastrous flooding in the Northeast on Thursday. Record-breaking rains have forced hundreds of people from their homes, flooded sewage treatment plants and caused a stretch of an interstate highway to close temporarily.

Apa, a 49-year-old Nepalese Sherpa guide who holds the record for the most conquests of the Himalayan peak, will make his 20th climb this spring. He and his fellow climbers also plan to collect 15,400 pounds of garbage from the mountain.

The new fuel economy standards raise current standards by nearly 10 mpg by the 2016 model year. The Obama administration also finalized the nation's first rules on greenhouse gas emissions.

President Obama's decision to open vast areas of America's coastlines to oil and gas drilling has drawn criticism from environmentalists and drilling backers alike. Florida is heavily reliant on tourism and drilling opponents are upset by the decision — despite the possibility of new jobs and lower gas prices.

California's Department of Fish and Game is proposing changes to expand where and how black bears can be hunted. But not everyone agrees that this is a good idea.

A British parliamentary committee has released the first official report into the theft of e-mails from a leading climate research center last year. The panel said the unit had a culture of withholding information from global warming skeptics, but did not deliberately manipulate data to support its case.

The president announces policy changes that would allow drilling on tracts as close as 50 miles to the Virginia shore, and end a longstanding moratorium on drilling from Delaware to Florida. Exploration in the Gulf of Mexico would be expanded eastward, and swaths north of Alaska would be opened up.

The fungus that killed tomato plants on the Northeast last year probably died during the winter, says Mike McGrath, the host of the weekly public radio show You Bet Your Garden. He says that late blight typically blows up from the South, where spores grow year round.

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided it's time to scrutinize bisphenol A, a plastic additive. The agency now has an official action plan and will evaluate whether to put the chemical on its list of "chemicals of concern."

Scientists blame a strong El Nino tropical weather pattern, which is forcing the sea lions' natural food sources — squid, hake, herring and anchovies — to seek out cooler waters.

About an hour east of Washington, D.C., there's a forest where trees are suddenly growing much faster than ever before –- some of them even twice as fast. Could climate change be the reason?

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied the state of Michigan's request for an injunction that would have closed two boat locks leading to Lake Michigan. The request was aimed at blocking invasive carp from entering the Great Lakes. Environmental lawyer Nicholas Schroeck explains why the state of Illinois, city of Chicago and local shipping interests were against the proposed closure.

Negotiators met this week at the CITES talks in Doha, Qatar to debate rules for trade in endangered species. Kaiser's Spotted Newt got international protection, but red coral and bluefin tuna did not. Crawford Allan of the trade-monitoring group TRAFFIC gives a scorecard.

A Maryland entrepreneur is setting up places where city dwellers can plug in their electric cars. Mahi Reddy's company, Sema Connect, wants to sell hookups to hotels, apartment complexes, office buildings and other businesses.

There's always been more skepticism about global warming among Republicans than Democrats, but there have also been many bipartisan efforts to address the issue. That may no longer be the case.

When the Chevy Volt launches in California this year, GM hopes its buyers will include people who leased its first all-electric car in the mid-1990s. That may happen — if those people have gotten over the disappointment of seeing GM kill the EV1.