Public

"Three U.S. consumer groups petitioned the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to subject a new genetically engineered salmon to a more rigorous review process than is now in place before the fish can be approved as safe to eat."

"Silent in flannel shirts and ponytails, farmers from Saskatchewan and South Dakota, Mississippi and Massachusetts lined the walls of a packed federal courtroom in Manhattan last week, as their lawyers told a judge that they were no longer able to keep genetically modified crops from their fields."

"The president of the Maldives resigned yesterday in what one aide described as a coup d'etat."

"NEW ORLEANS -- A scientific report issued by Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration predicts that the Louisiana coast could see about 3 feet of sea level rise along the already low and vulnerable Louisiana coast by 2100 -- a prediction that leaves this Cajun coast drowning and under siege from storm surge for decades to come."

"PLACERVILLE, Calif. - California's Gold Rush was more than a century-and-a-half ago, but its Wild West spirit lives on in a dispute between government agencies and a landowner in the Sierra Nevada foothills that some officials describe as one of the most egregious cases of illegal mining they have ever encountered."

"When biologist Tyrone Hayes discovered that a top-selling herbicide [atrazine] messes with sex hormones, its manufacturer went into battle mode. Thus began one of the weirdest feuds in the history of science."

"In the confusion following the earthquake and tsunami that damaged Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex last March, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was standing by to help. But a trove of e-mails posted on the NRC's Web site shows an agency struggling to figure out how to respond and how to deal with the American public while cutting through what one official called "the fog of information" coming out of Japan."

"In the village of Pithauli, surrounded by ripening mustard fields, a woman hauls a cow carcass on a trolley, drops it in an open field, then runs and hides in a nearby hut as dozens of vultures swoop down."

"An obstacle to greening L.A.'s energy portfolio is the Department of Water & Power's contract with a Utah plant, which requires the city to buy coal power until 2027. The gritty fuel is now stoking controversy over energy policy, environmental damage and how much consumers should pay to kick the habit."