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By Arshad Mohammed and Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will study a new route for the Keystone XL Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline, U.S. officials said on Thursday, delaying any final approval beyond the 2012 election and sparing President Barack Obama a politically risky decision for now. [More]

By Steve Olafson OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Fourteen homes were damaged late on Saturday in the largest earthquake to hit Oklahoma on record, emergency management officials said on Sunday. [More]

By Yoko Kubota TOKYO (Reuters) - A radiation hotspot has been detected in Tokyo seven months into Japan's nuclear crisis, but local officials said on Thursday high readings appeared to be coming from mystery bottles stored under a house, not the tsunami-crippled Fukushima atomic plant. [More]

By Laura Zuckerman SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - A federal judge has approved a far-reaching settlement giving Montana until 2014 to clean up polluted streams and lakes in 28 watersheds across the state, capping nearly 15 years of legal battles, officials said on Monday. [More]

By Yuko Takeo TOKYO (Reuters) - More than a dozen regional governments in Japan will conduct tests to determine whether locally grown rice contains too much radioactive cesium, farm ministry officials said on Monday, as food safety worries spill into the country's traditional staple.

The devastating string of tornadoes, droughts, wildfires and floods that hit the United States this spring marks 2011 as one of the most extreme years on record, according to a new federal analysis. Just shy of the halfway mark, 2011 has seen eight $1-billion-plus disasters, with total damages from wild weather at more than $32 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Agency officials said that total could grow significantly, since they expect this year's North Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1, will be an active one.

A massive burst of solar wind that erupted from the sun Tuesday is expected to deliver only a "glancing blow" to the Earth's vulnerable magnetic field, NASA officials said yesterday. But it will preview what some experts call a potentially existential threat to the power grids of the United States and other nations, and the populations that depend on them.

Spanish vegetables suspected of contamination with a potentially deadly bacteria are being recalled from stores in Austria and the Czech Republic to prevent the spread of an outbreak that has killed at least 10 people and sickened hundreds across Europe, officials said Sunday.

By Pascal Fletcher MIAMI (Reuters) - Wildlife experts and volunteers in the Florida Keys have rescued seven of a group of pilot whales stranded in shallow waters and are using boats and a helicopter to locate more of the animals, officials said on Friday. [More]

By Verna Gates TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) - Tornadoes and violent storms ripped through seven southern states, killing more than 220 people as they flattened neighborhoods, flipped cars and toppled trees and power lines, officials said on Thursday. [More]

By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE (Reuters) - The mounted head of an endangered white rhinoceros and the stuffed remains of a highly endangered snow leopard, remnants of the fortune amassed and lost by an Alaska real-estate titan, have been auctioned off to pay some of his debts, officials said on Monday.

By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE (Reuters) - The mounted head of an endangered white rhinoceros and the stuffed remains of a highly endangered snow leopard, remnants of the fortune amassed and lost by an Alaska real-estate titan, have been auctioned off to pay some of his debts, officials said on Monday. [More]