WASHINGTON — A day after a South Carolina senator dropped his opposition to a top State Department nominee, Florida's new senator has put the brakes back on.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. Sean Bigley knows bamboo can be scary, the stuff of backyard nightmares.

CHICAGO Growing up in the southwest suburbs, Sara Beardsley had a view of the Chicago skyline from her house. Today, she is transforming that skyline, but you won't find her work glorified on a $6 mug or gracing postcards.

WASHINGTON In a move that stoked optimism for global climate negotiations, but raised tempers on Capitol Hill, Democrats on a key Senate committee swept aside a Republican boycott on Thursday to pass a far-reaching plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

BALTIMORE Twelve states and the District of Columbia urged the Environmental Protection Agency Thursday to adopt more rigorous national policies so they can meet federal air pollution reduction requirements for the region.

Shell, the giant oil company that hopes to open a new petroleum frontier for Alaska, says it will decide within months whether to risk sending a large fleet of vessels to drill for oil and gas in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas next summer. Shell spent more than $2 billion to obtain leases in the two seas and mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of equipment to Alaska. However, environmentalists and North Slope governments sounded the alarm about potential impacts on bowhead whales and the possibility of oil spills. Both sued successfully to block the drilling during the past two summers and more litigation to block next summer's drilling is likely.

On the street, he's Jay. At Urban Prep, he's Mr. Harvey.

Today, many of our planet's natural areas are seriously threatened by human incursion, overexploitation and global warming: Less than a fifth of the world's original forest cover remains in unfragmented tracts, while just one-third of coastal mangroves survive to protect coastlines from storms and erosion. But none of these are declining as rapidly as coral reefs. By revealing what could be in store for other natural systems, reefs resemble the proverbial canary in a coal mine.

Thanks for killing the planet, dog owners.

California's energy officials are nearing a decision on a ban on new energy-hogging televisions. The first-in-the-nation regulations would phase in starting in 2011 and would set a cap on the amount of power a TV can draw.