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An endangered female leopard put in a cage to breed was killed by her potential mate, who a day later remained on public display at the Erie Zoo, wildlife officials said on Tuesday. _0"> The two Amur leopards, 5-year-old Edgar and 7-year-old Lina, were placed together in an enclosure at the western Pennsylvania zoo on Monday, said Erie Zoo president and CEO Scott Mitchell. Edgar attacked Lina, biting her throat. The leopards were separated and veterinarians were brought in, but Lina died of injuries to her trachea. Violence during mating is not unheard of, Mitchell said, but in his 30-year career he has never lost another zoo animal in a breeding attack. "Many of these animals live their lives relatively solo, and they come together only to breed or mate, so it can be a kind of aggressive process," Mitchell said. Lina, who was on loan from the Minnesota Zoo, had been placed together with Edgar in the past without incident, Mitchell said. Edgar remains on displ

West Virginia's top law enforcement officer on Wednesday vowed a full investigation of a chemical spill that contaminated tap water for hundreds of thousands of people. Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said there was a lot of speculation surrounding the spill into the Elk River at Charleston, the state capital, on Thursday that shut off water to more than 300,000 people. "We had an absolute unmitigated disaster here for six days now where people are without water. This is not only utterly unacceptable. It's outrageous on every level," Morrisey told CNN. He said that his investigation would be designed to ensure that another such spill never happened again, and local, state and federal officials all shared responsibility. "We're going to look under the hood, we're going to uncover all the rocks and we're going to let the sunlight in," Morrisey said. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virg

A year after agreeing to a multi-billion dollar settlement with victims of the 2010 Gulf oil spill, BP is aggressively challenging terms of the deal in a legal strategy that could backfire with the judge who will rule on the company's potentially hefty federal fines. The British oil giant has pushed for multiple reviews by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, complaining the claims system approved by the U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is overpaying for damages from the country's worst offshore disaster. BP's challenges directly question decisions by Barbier, who presided over the settlement and then himself approved claim terms. Barbier is also handling a separate government case against BP and has wide latitude to assess fines for violations of the Clean Water Act. BP expects the settlement with Gulf residents to cost about $9.6 billion, well above the $7.8 billion it initially estimated. Altogether the oil producer has provisioned some $42 billion to pay for cleanup

Institutional investors managing trillions of dollars should shift their portfolios away from fossil fuel investments toward cleaner energy sources to put a stop to the dangerous rise in global temperatures causing climate change, the United Nations' climate chief said on Wednesday. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told an investors conference at the United Nations that their investment decisions should reflect the latest scientific evidence of dangerous climate change to protect the health and financial savings of ordinary citizens well into the future. "The pensions, life insurances and nest eggs of billions of ordinary people depend on the long-term security and stability of institutional investment funds," she said in prepared remarks. "Climate change increasingly poses one of the biggest long-term threats to those investments and the wealth of the global economy," Figueres added. She said the p

Large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed poses serious risks to salmon and native cultures in this pristine corner of southwest Alaska, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a report released on Wednesday. The EPA said a mine could destroy up to 94 miles of salmon-supporting streams and thousands of acres of wetlands, ponds and lakes. The report focused on the impact of mining in an area where a Canadian-based company wants to build a large copper and gold mine. Polluted water from the mine site could enter streams, causing widespread damage in a region that produces nearly 50 percent of the world's wild sockeye salmon, the EPA said. The Bristol Bay region supports all five species of Pacific salmon found in North America, which include sockeye, Chinook, chum, coho and pink salmon. It is also home to bears, moose and caribou. There is also the risk of accidents and pipeline failures that could release toxic copper concentrate or diesel fuel into salmon strea

An American oceanographer who helped write an international report on climate change has condensed several of its key findings - such as how choices made today may shape the future world - into a collection of succinct poems in the Haiku style. The poems came to Gregory Johnson, a 20-year veteran of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as he pored over an executive summary of "Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis," while holed up in his Seattle home on a recent weekend with the flu, he said. "I thought that if I tried distilling these ideas into haiku, maybe that would help fix them in my mind," said Johnson, a lead author on the chapter of the report dealing with the effects of global warming on oceans. "This was not intended for anything but my own personal consumption." After penning the poems and painting watercolors accompanying each of them, Johnson, heartened by feedback from friends and family, agreed to publish them

An ambitious trade pact being negotiated among Pacific Rim nations so far fails to properly protect endangered species and could undermine existing safeguards for the environment, environmental groups said on Wednesday. Documents released by the whistle-blowing group WikiLeaks show countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) did not plan to sanction trading partners who break environmental promises - an issue that has caused a rift between the United States and others in the bloc and is an obstacle to finalizing the deal. The TPP would cover almost 40 percent of the global economy and create a free trade zone reaching from North America to Japan and New Zealand, and the United States is keen to wrap up talks in the coming months. But the World Wildlife Fund said a November draft of the environment chapter text, which was among the documents released by WikiLeaks, lacked teeth and showed countries were backsliding on past promises and their responsibility to stamp ou