"U.S. agricultural regulators on Friday said despite a court ban, they would allow commercial planting of genetically modified sugar beets under closely controlled conditions while they complete a full environmental impact statement."
"The Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces rules that affect the U.S. economy from factories to farms, is the No. 1 target of complaints from business groups collected by House Republican leaders." The rules also protect public health.
"The billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch no longer sit outside Washington's political establishment, isolated by their uncompromising conservatism. Instead, they are now at the center of Republican power, a change most evident in the new makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee."
"Federal regulators have declined to release emergency response details and worst-case spill estimates for a pipeline system that carries Canadian oil-sands crude to the United States, drawing charges of excessive secrecy from the advocacy group that sought the data."
An Associated Press investigation explains how federal regulators leave safety up to gas pipelines and utilities, whose profit-seeking decisions on safety cause fatal disasters like the one in San Bruno, Calif., that killed eight and destroyed 55 homes.
"A coalition of public health organizations in the coming weeks plans to step up efforts to oppose legislation that would block or delay Environmental Protection Agency climate rules." Budget-cutting Republicans on Capitol Hill will be encouraged to reduce the healthcare costs borne by taxpayers and ratepayers as a result of air pollution.
"A federal judge said Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer paying victims of BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, can’t identify himself as an independent administrator of a $20 billion settlement fund."
President Obama's vision of a green-jobs economy includes a new agency, ARPA-Energy, like the one that invented the Internet. It already includes 16 projects applicable to electric cars.
"The future pace of drilling approvals in the Gulf of Mexico might be slowed less by new laws or regulations stemming from last year's massive spill but by a decades-old law that opens the door to longer environmental reviews and litigation."
"A Department of Interior study of potential new restrictions on surface coal mining outlines projected production shifts and job losses as well as estimated environmental benefits of tougher regulations, according to a draft report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."
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