"Under pressure from some members of Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is easing up on regulating global warming pollution from facilities that burn biomass for energy."
"A federal appeals board yesterday ordered that Teresa Chambers be reinstated as chief of the U.S. Park Police, seven years after she was fired for telling reporters that her department was understaffed and in need of more funding."
The mysterious "sudden aspen decline" that is decimating many western forests also seems responsible for a spike in deer mouse populations that is hastening spread of the sin nombre virus, a still-rare hantavirus that kills some 40 % of the humans it infects.
"The presidential panel investigating the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico recommended on Tuesday that Congress approve substantial new spending and sweeping new regulations for offshore oil operations at a time when the appetite for both is low."
"U.S. EPA [Tuesday] proposed to start gradually banning a pesticide often used on cocoa beans and dried fruits that degrades to fluoride, a move closely linked to the Obama administration's decision last week to curb the maximum levels of fluoride in drinking water out of concern for children's health."
"Snow and ice carpeted much of the Deep South on Monday, leaving four people dead, cutting off power to thousands and closing countless roads, authorities said."
"A projected shortfall in the production of an important green energy alternative could hurt U.S. efforts to move away from fossil fuels, a ClimateWire analysis has found."
"Republicans in Congress are introducing legislation to curtail the role of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and to prevent and roll back regulations intended to reduce air pollution such as mercury emissions from cement plants. These efforts amount to attacks on the nation's health, the advocacy coalition Health Care Without Harm said [Tuesday]."
"A Russian company that took control of uranium mines in Wyoming is barred from exporting produced material and executives at U.S.-based subsidiaries will remain in charge, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report."
"Now numbering in the millions, these shockingly destructive and invasive wild hogs wreak havoc across the southern United States."
