National (U.S.)

"For anyone anxious about toxic chemicals in the environment, Sunday marked a dubious milestone."

"Saying she hopes Republicans on the panel will attend, Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer announced plans for a second attempt to vote on the 'important nomination' of Gina McCarthy to head U.S. EPA."

"In the wake of a massive US Department of Agriculture report highlighting the continuing large-scale death of honeybees, environmental groups are left wondering why the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to approve a 'highly toxic' new pesticide."

"Researchers at Johns Hopkins University said they found levels of arsenic in chicken that exceeded amounts that occur naturally, and warned that they could lead to a small increase in the risk of cancer for consumers over a lifetime."

Many Americans still lack clean tap water -- but federal and state governments can't provide it, for a number of reasons.

"Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) on Thursday released her draft 2013 farm bill."

"NEW BRAUNFELS, TX — Off a dirt road connected to ever-flowing Interstate 35, a little metal sign on a wooden fence is the only indication of what lies ahead. Nearby, Buckley Powder, a mining and construction supply company, stores large quantities of ammonium nitrate, the source of the explosion at a fertilizer depot that killed at least 14 people and injured hundreds more last month in West."

"Exposure to air pollution raises the risk of resistance to insulin, a typical warning sign of diabetes, according to a study of almost 400 German children."

"At about 300 colleges across the country, young activists worried about climate change are borrowing a strategy that students successfully used in decades past. In the 1980s, students enraged about South Africa's racist Apartheid regime got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with that government. In the 1990s students pressured their schools to divest in Big Tobacco."

"Two residents of Mayflower, Arkansas, the site of the March 29 pipeline spill, traveled to Washington on Thursday to ask Secretary of State John Kerry to reject the Keystone XL pipeline."