Environment

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**FILE** A container for birth-control pills designed to look like a woman's compact is displayed. (Associated Press)

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Firefighters try to extinguish burning cars near to the Hadrian's Arch seen in the background, in Athens, Wednesday, May 5, 2010. Greek fire officials say three people have died in a blaze at an Athens bank during rioting over government austerity measures. An estimated 100,000 people took to the streets Wednesday during a nationwide wave of strikes against spending cuts aimed at saving the country from bankruptcy. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

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A man looks at a broken section of Iceland's main coastal ring road near Reykjavik on after a volcanic eruption caused ice to melt and river levels to rise by up to 10 feet. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

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** FILE ** European Union flags fly at half-mast in front of the European Commission headquarters in Brussels on Monday, April 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

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An image of the annular solar eclipse is seen on a shadow falling on the ground formed by a bifocal spectacle in Bangalore, India, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi) ** FILE **

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China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, was jubilant after the capsule door was opened after his 21-hour space flight in October 2003. China could put someone on the moon within a decade.

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This artist rendering shows NASA's next generation of moon rockets being developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Preliminary work on two Ares spacecraft has already cost NASA $7 billion.

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A Bureau of Land Management helicopter rounds up wild horses near Cold Creek, Nev., in June 2002. A similar operation is under way to capture about 2,500 wild horses in the next two months. (Associated Press)

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The green economy means the transformation of the nation's energy infrastructure from today's heavy reliance on carbon-intensive fossil fuels to a much stronger embrace of clean, renewable forms of energy. (Mark Fenton/Bread for the World)

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associated press Snow-covered traffic lights caused a fatal accident during a snowstorm in Oswego, Ill., in April. The problem stemmed from replacing incandescent lights with energy-efficient ones, which aren't hot enough to melt the snow.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS Bo Burns (above and below) works at K&B Timberworks Inc., a recently reopened mill in Reserve, N.M., which was without one after 1990. The owner says the mill's future depends on federal contracts to thin forestland for wildfire prevention, funded in part by a federal timber law that has been extended beyond its original intent of helping communities hard hit by environmental restrictions on logging.

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Lab technician Heather Bickley tests samples for H1N1 flu at the Arizona State Health Laboratory in Phoenix. With Arizona among at least 11 states where swine flu is already widespread, state health officials are working harder to detect cases of illness. (Associated Press)

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A program to return the Mexican gray wolf, endangered in the U.S., back into the wild along the Arizona-New Mexico border has produced a decade of frustration and little resolution. (Associated Press)

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Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth Systems Science Center (Greg Grieco/Special to The Washington Times)

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** File ** Shoppers flood into Victoria's Secret as it opens on Black Friday, 2012. (Peter Lockley / The Washington Times)

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ASSOCIATED PRESS **FILE** Job seekers line up in front of a Dollar General booth at a Little Rock, Ark., job fair in October. Some economists and business executives warn that health care and climate-change costs on corporations would stifle the ability of employers to hire workers.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS Valero Energy Corp.'s Delaware City, Del., refinery lost about $1 million every day this year. Falling fuel demand has forced refineries across the country to shut down and put hundreds of employees out of work.

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The Chevy Cobalt is on the assembly line at the Lordstown Assembly Plant in Lordstown, Ohio. (Associated Press)

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Construction employees work on an overpass over Highway 71 near the southwestern Missouri city of Lamar in 2009. The project was part of President Obama's stimulus package. (Associated Press File)

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President Obama's address to a crowd in Prague included his go-to phrase, "Let me be clear." Mr. Obama has relied on the four-word introduction to pitch everything from health care, climate change and auto bailouts to his reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize. (Associated Press)