"In a letter sent Wednesday, a pair of nuclear engineers -- one of them an employee at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- implored outgoing Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) to use his remaining days as chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs to investigate potential threats at two nuclear power facilities."
"With fishery regulators poised to impose devastating cuts Thursday on the New England fleet, blame for the disappearance of once-abundant cod and flounder populations is shifting from fishermen to a new culprit: the changing ocean."
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release new pollution caps for industrial boilers and cement plants, as it bows to industry pressure to delay their effective date and ease some standards, according to environmental and business groups."
"Ruling in a bitterly contested case with national ramifications, a federal judge found Thursday that the Waterkeeper Alliance failed to prove that an Eastern Shore farm's chicken houses were polluting a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay."
"In late November, the city council of South Jordan, Utah, approved construction of a large indoor shooting range despite appeals from local residents and physicians worried about increases in lead exposures and gun violence."
"WASHINGTON — Coal took another serious hit Wednesday — in the heart of coal country. American Electric Power, or A.E.P., the nation’s biggest consumer of coal, announced that it would shut its coal-burning boilers at the Big Sandy electric power plant near Louisa, Ky., a 1,100-megawatt facility that since the early 1960s has been burning coal that was mined locally."
A memo from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration illustrates "the burden faced by some of America’s 2.5 million temporary, or contingent, workers — a growing but mostly invisible group of laborers who often toil in the least desirable, most dangerous jobs. Such workers are hurt more frequently than permanent employees and their injuries often go unrecorded, new research shows."
"U.S. manufacturers have agreed to stop making the dangerous chemical; other industries and the Pentagon are urging EPA to delay proposed ban."
"The then-thirtysomething environmental lawyer watched Al Gore's climate change documentary while eight months pregnant with her second child. By her own admission, she 'cried through the whole film' and spent several sleepless nights plotting a way to increase public awareness of climate change."
"Cigarette smoking among American teenagers dropped to a record low in 2012, a decline that may have been partly driven by a sharp hike in the federal tobacco tax, researchers said on Wednesday."
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