National (U.S.)

"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."

"An elderly nun and two other peace activists will be sentenced in September on their convictions for damaging a Tennessee defense facility where enriched uranium for nuclear bombs is stored, a federal judge said on Thursday."

"Senate Republicans continued a campaign to delay confirmation of President Obama’s second-term cabinet nominees on Thursday, blocking a committee vote on Gina McCarthy, the president’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency."

"How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism"

"Terminal developer Kinder Morgan will not go forward with a proposal to export coal to Asia from the Port Westward industrial park on the Columbia River, a company spokesman said [Wednesday] morning."

"Assistant U.S. Attorney General Ignacia Moreno, the point person at the Justice Department for prosecuting environmental crimes, says she will leave government service next month."