Public

"The Senate moved forward Wednesday on long-awaited legislation that would overhaul the nation's food safety system, grant new powers to the Food and Drug Administration and make farmers and processors responsible for preventing food-borne illness."

"A bipartisan Senate deal to limit the use of controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) was scuttled hours ago amid opposition from the industry's main trade group, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said [Wednesday]."

"Federal Conservative senators have defeated a private-member's bill on climate change that was passed by the majority of MPs in the House of Commons, marking the first time Prime Minister Stephen Harper has used the clout he has built in the Upper Chamber to kill a law his minority government does not support."

A House Energy subcommittee held one last hearing on climate science before GOP deniers take over the gavels. It was quite a show.

"Failure to manage the risks of a complex well and to learn from an earlier narrowly missed disaster contributed significantly to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a panel investigating the BP oil spill said Wednesday."

"The devastating effects of climate change and conflicts fought over ever-scarcer resources such as water could cause a surge in migration that experts fear the world is totally unprepared for."

"Stand before the pond known here in southwestern Pennsylvania as Little Blue Run, and you’ll see nothing that resembles its bucolic-sounding name. The one-time stream is now an industrial pond, filled with arsenic-laced waste from a coal-fired power plant."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified a list of 134 chemicals that will be screened for their potential to disrupt the endocrine system."

"Exxon Mobil Corp. agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit over a decades-old oil spill and related environmental contamination in Brooklyn, New York, state Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said."