Behind the News

Amy Adams, North Carolina campaign coordinator with Appalachian Voices, shows her hand covered with wet coal ash from the Dan River swirling in the background as state and federal environmental officials continued their investigations of a spill of coal ash into the river in Danville, Va., Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014. Duke Energy estimates that up to 82,000 tons of ash has been released from a break in a 48-inch storm water pipe at the Dan River Power Plant in Eden N.C. on Sunday. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

AP National Security journalist Kimberly Dozier, left, leads a discussion of Vietnam War photography and news coverage at New York's 92nd Street Y, with Pulitzer Prize-winning AP Saigon journalist Peter Arnett, center, and author Pete Hamill, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014. Hamill wrote the foreword for AP's photo book "Vietnam: The Real War." (AP Photo)

Ellen DeGeneres takes a photo with, from left, Kevin Spacey, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jared Leto during the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday, March 2, 2014, in Los Angeles. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP)

In this photo taken Monday Aug. 5, 2013 Associated Press Newsman Steve Peoples is seen in Wolfeboro, N.H.(AP Photo/Jim Cole)

The west branch of the Susquehanna River flows past Jersey Shore, Pa. on Sunday March 23, 2014. About a third of the borough (population 4,300) is in a flood hazard zone and nearly 470 homes in town are expected to see flood insurance premium hikes because of changes to the National Flood Insurance Program. (AP Photo/Ralph Wilson)

x near Wilmington, Del., Thursday, June 5, 2014. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In this June 9, 2014 photo, a petroleum industry worker stands on an oil and gas rig on a well pad, in New Castle, a small farming and ranching settlement on the Western Slope of the Rockies, in Colo. Four in 10 new oil and gas wells near national forests and fragile watersheds or otherwise identified as higher pollution risks escape federal inspection, unchecked by an agency struggling to keep pace with America's drilling boom, according to an Associated Press review that shows wide state-by-state disparities in safety checks. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)