DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The U.S. Department of Agriculture is releasing its final crop report for 2012, providing a glimpse of what last year's drought cost the nation's farmers and others. The report covers a number of crops, but attention will likely focus on corn production.

The USDA predicted the nation's biggest harvest ever in the spring, when farmers planted 96.4 million acres of corn. But it began scaling back its estimates as the drought spread across two-thirds of the nation. Analysts said Friday morning that they expect the final report to reflect an even smaller crop than the USDA's December estimate. Analysts on average expect a final estimate of 10.6 billion bushels, down from December's 10.7 billion bushel figure. That would still be the eighth largest corn crop in the nation's history.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - A woman who spent a decade as a fugitive from the largest ecoterrorism investigation in U.S. history is due in federal court in Oregon on conspiracy and arson charges. Court records show 39-year-old Rebecca Rubin, a Canadian citizen, was to be arraigned Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Eugene.

Rubin turned herself in at the Canadian border with Washington last November. A federal indictment accuses her of being a member of an ecoterrorism group known as The Family based in Eugene, which investigators blame for 20 fires across the West from 1996 to 2001 that did $40 million damage. Among the group's targets were a ski resort in Colorado, wild horse corrals in Oregon and Northern California, and lumber mills and U.S. Forest Service offices in Oregon.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he's launching an "expedited, high-level assessment" of the 2012 Arctic Ocean offshore drilling program. Salazar says the 60-day review will focus in part on problems experienced by Royal Dutch Shell PLC with its drilling vessels and spill containment vessel.

One of Shell's drilling vessels, the Kulluk, ran aground New Year's Eve on a remote Alaska island. It was pulled off Sunday night and towed Monday to shelter in a Kodiak Island bay. The Kulluk drilled last year in the Beaufort Sea. Shell's other Arctic drill ship, the Noble Discoverer, was temporarily ordered to remain in port in Seward last month after experiencing problems with crew safety and pollution control equipment. The vessel drilled last year in the Chukchi Sea.

DEKALB, Mississippi (AP) - Each day, as 2,600 construction workers toil away at Plant Ratcliffe in central Mississippi, the big bet becomes more expensive. The project's cost is at least $2.8 billion, almost half a billion dollars above original expectations, and some estimates say it will go higher.

Legal challenges brought by the Sierra Club have led regulators to block Mississippi Power Co. from billing customers for the costs so far, although the Southern Co. subsidiary got closer to that goal with a favorable lower court ruling earlier this month.

Southern CEO Thomas Fanning stands by the plant. He says Southern's own technology will mitigate its environmental impact and the need to exploit coal as a hedge against uncertainties in the future cost of natural gas, which is currently cheap and abundant.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Scott Harrison's organization called Charity: Water has funded nearly 7,000 clean water projects in some of the poorest areas of the world.

Harrison wanted to add sensors to the wells to give donors more assurances about the projects. But raising millions of dollars for the innovation was a problem.

Google stepped in with major funding to create and install sensors on 4,000 wells across Africa that will send back real-time data on the water flow. The $5 million grant is part of the first class of Google's Global Impact Awards totaling $23 million to spur innovation among nonprofits.

Experts say the new annual grants are a part of a growing trend in venture philanthropy from donors who see technology as an instrument for social change.