National (U.S.)

"Swing state voters in Virginia and Ohio last fall were bombarded with television advertisements encouraging them to 'stand with coal' and 'vote no on Obama's failing energy policy.' But the sponsor of these ads — a pro-business nonprofit advocacy group called the American Energy Alliance — says the messages weren’t designed to aid Republican Mitt Romney in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama."

"Green groups might be the biggest winners from Senate Democrats’ decision to gut the minority party’s filibuster rights on nominations."

After New York Times editors dismantled the paper's environmental desk and killed its Green blog this year, they said they were doing it to improve environmental coverage. But the Times' Public Editor says the results don't live up to Times editors' claims.

A new California rule may herald the end of toxic flame-retardant chemicals in furniture.

"Only about half of the prescription drugs and other newly emerging contaminants in sewage are removed by treatment plants."

"National standards should be set for building construction, storm shelters and emergency communications to reduce death and damage from tornados, a federal agency that studied the deadly 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri, recommended on Thursday."

"WASHINGTON -- Last year the hacker group Anonymous broke into computer systems of oil companies including Shell, Exxon Mobil and BP as a protest against Arctic drilling. The next month, a different set of hackers infected the computers of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company with a damaging virus that knocked 30,000 workstations offline."

"Most Americans have heard little or nothing of the oil and gas production process called hydraulic fracturing, and many don’t know if they support or oppose it, according to a new paper by researchers from Oregon State, George Mason and Yale universities."

"In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Robert Martin, co-author of a recent study on industrial farm animal production, explains how a powerful and intransigent agriculture lobby has successfully fought off attempts to reduce the harmful environmental and health impacts of mass livestock production."

"The growing fracking industry is 'yielding gushers' of campaign donations for congressional candidates—particularly Republicans from districts with fracking activity—according to a new report from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington."