A federal judge has reinstated a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands that was imposed under former President Barack Obama and then scuttled under former President Donald Trump. Friday’s ruling from U.S. District Judge Brian Morris requires government officials to complete a new environmental review of the leasing program before they can resume coal sales. It marks a major setback for the already struggling coal industry. Few leases were sold in recent years as coal demand shrank drastically. But coal from existing leases remains a major contributor of planet-warming emissions. The industry’s opponents had urged Morris to revive the moratorium to ensure coal can’t make a comeback as climate change worsens.

A judge has declared a mistrial in a dispute over partial liability for Flint, Michigan's lead-contaminated water. The jury couldn't reach a verdict after hearing months of evidence against two engineering firms, Veolia North America and Lockwood, Andrews & Newman. The firms were accused of not doing enough to get Flint to treat the highly corrosive water or to urge a return to a regional water supplier. After hearing months of evidence, the jury began deliberations last month. Flint’s water became contaminated in 2014-15 because water pulled from the Flint River wasn’t treated to reduce the corrosive effect on lead pipes. Veolia and LAN said bad decisions by state and local officials caused the crisis in the majority-Black city.

Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, stoking international fears of a catastrophe. The Zaporizhzhia plant is in southern Ukraine, on the banks of the Dnieper River. Russian troops overran it early in the war but have left the Ukrainian staff in place to keep operating the plant. The chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has warned that the situation surrounding the plant “is completely out of control," and he has urgently pleaded with both sides to allow experts to visit the complex to help stabilize it. The fighting around has fueled fears of a disaster like the one in 1986 at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant, where a reactor exploded and spewed deadly radiation, contaminating a vast area in the world’s worst nuclear accident.

New aerial surveys show that massive amounts of methane are venting into the atmosphere from oil and gas operations across the Permian Basin. The emissions endanger U.S. targets for curbing climate change. Methane’s earth-warming power is some 83 times stronger than the carbon dioxide that comes from car tailpipes and power plant smokestacks. Congress and the EPA have largely failed to regulate the invisible gas. That leaves it up to oil and gas producers to cut methane emissions on their own, but in some cases they are the very companies who have been fighting regulations. An Associated Press investigation shows hundreds of sites spewing the gas over and over again.