The USDA found a case of mad cow disease in California.

Federal prosecutors charged a former BP engineer with deleting text messages in order to keep information about the true size of the Deepwater Horizon spill from investigators.

The three cities with the most air pollution in the country are all in California, but L.A. only comes in third. A couple of inland metro areas come in first and second.

It used to be that oil came from a hole drilled in the ground. But as oil has become more scarce, the ways of getting at it have become more numerous -- so much so that it's getting hard to keep track. Oil sands, shale oil, oil shale: These are all different sources of oil. And if you can't keep them straight, well, rest assured the oil industry will.

The Council on Foreign Relations' Michael Levi argues that it's oil shale that might be the extraction point to watch in the coming years:

“Oil shale” is basically rock that contains kerogen. You melt it (loosely speaking) to produce oil. It was a hot prospect in the late 1970s, but when the price of oil crashed, so did development.

Developing oil shale requires huge investments and hasn't made economic sense yet. But at a hearing last week, a former Bush administration official was hitting the Obama administration for limiting oil shale development options.

Town and Country Pest Control is a father-son business in upstate New York that takes a holy-shit approach to its work. For instance, in the video below, they remove a bee colony with their bare hands and a box:

But as any bee-savvy keeper will tell you, this isn't as crazy as it looks. Swarms of honey bees like this one are likely searching for a new place to establish a hive. Since they've broken off from an established colony and aren't sure when they'll have a new home, they'll have fattened up on a bunch of honey, which makes stinging difficult. In general, though, honey bees just aren't that dangerous [PDF], beekeepers associations say:

A honey bee sting is rare indeed -- even when bees are swarming. If a honey bee stings, it is usually to defend the hive that contains its young and its food supply -- the honey bee dies as its stinger is ripped from its body.

There's even a long tradition of "bee bearding" -- attracting bees to you and letting them hang out on your body in the shape of a beard.

Ah, America. The country where you're allowed to buy products containing hazardous chemicals that other countries have banned. The Environmental Working Group, the people who brought you the Dirty Dozen list of foods to buy organic, are taking an extensive look at the chemicals in more than 2,000 cleaning products. The group's researchers are months away from being done, but they have already found a slew of products that contain chemicals that are banned abroad, emit toxic fumes that can burns your lungs or eyes, or can cause asthma.

Amnesty International found documents showing that a 2008 Shell oil spill in Nigeria was 60 times bigger than the company claimed.

And in Russia, 2,000 tons of oil spilled from a well over two days. But, really, who knows how much oil it was?

The thawing Arctic Ocean is releasing gobs of methane into the atmosphere.

Figuring out how climate change is going to affect Himalayan glaciers: actually really tricky!

Car-centric Houston tends to be one of our go-to examples for everything that can go wrong with a city, ever. But we may not be able to use the city as a whipping boy much longer. According to a new survey, Houstonians are seeing the light on walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods. More than half of the people surveyed said they would settle for a smaller home if it meant living near offices, restaurants, and stores.

Yes, this is in Texas! To be fair, Stephen Klineberg, who created this survey in 1982, sounded as surprised as we are. He told the Houston Chronicle that Houston residents' desire for "a less car-centered, more urban lifestyle" was "the most dramatic change" in this year's survey. In 2010, only 39 percent of people surveyed opted for the smaller house over a single-family home with a big yard that required total car-dependency. This time around, 51 percent chose the smaller, better located house. 

It's hard sometimes to ignore climate deniers: They're so wrong! About everything! But the biggest impact they seem to be having is just that: annoying environmentalists. Denialist campaigns have had little influence on the 30 percent of people who are skeptical about climate science, ABC News reports. The one thing that does change those people's opinions? The weather.

Photo by Choo Yut Shing.

Singapore is in the middle of a project that looks like a Miyazaki movie come to life. The city's 18 "supertrees" do everything that normal trees do, only better. They will stretch up to 164 feet tall, grow 200 species of flowers, ferns, and epiphytes, collect solar energy, harvest rainwater, and work as a natural cooling system. Oh, and one of them has a bistro at its summit.

In urban America, getting money out of the bank means walking a block to the ATM. In rural India, the nearest bank branch might be a day's journey away. But now a company called Vortex Engineering is using solar power to bring convenient banking to out-of-the-way villages.

The key: The company's ATMs are energy efficient. Vortex calls them the "world's lowest power consuming ATMs," and they use just 10 percent of the energy of other banking machines, according to Yale e360. It adds up to about the same amount of energy as a lightbulb. That low energy overheads means that solar panels can provide back-up power and keeping on running even in areas where electricity service is spotty. 

New York and Pennsylvania are getting hit with an April blizzard.

The United States and Britain are going to collaborate on offshore wind development.

Lithium air batteries could extend an electric vehicle's battery life by a factor of 10 ... if anyone could figure out how to make one.