Public

'The cap-and-trade program, which would force industries to cut greenhouse gases by the end of the decade, continues to be challenged in court.'

"A federal judge [Thursday] upheld the George W. Bush administration's decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act."

"It's been a busy week for anyone following the national debates over hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' the controversial method used to cut into shale rock to extract natural gas. In New Jersey, a strong bipartisan majority in both chambers of the legislature approved a bill banning fracking in the state as its neighbor to the north, New York, appeared ready to end its moratorium on the practice."

"A study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that the bottom-line cost of all the meteorological craziness is a staggering $485 billion per year in the U.S. alone, as much as 3.4% of the country's GDP."

"A federal appeals court handed Georgia an enormous victory in long-running, tri-state water litigation yesterday, overturning a decision by a federal judge that could have sharply curtailed the availability of water in Atlanta beginning next summer."

"In 2004, a flamboyant Oklahoma City multimillionaire took out his hefty checkbook for what you could call the political equivalent of a wildcat well - and he struck a gusher, right here in Pennsylvania. The $450,000 in campaign checks that energy mogul Aubrey McClendon wrote that fall helped elect a man he said he'd never even met - a relatively obscure GOP candidate for Pennsylvania attorney general, Tom Corbett."

"The owner of the West Virginia coal mine where an explosion killed 29 men last year kept two sets of books on safety conditions -- an accurate one for itself and a sanitized one for the government, federal regulators said Wednesday."

"After months of delays, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board plans next week to release its report on safety problems -- including a January 2010 phosgene leak that killed a worker -- at the DuPont Co. plant in Belle [WV]."

"Odors are part of life in Mecca, a small farming community in the Southern California desert 140 miles east of Los Angeles."

"Before you head to the beach this Fourth of July weekend, no doubt you will check the forecast for any impending bad weather. But to avoid some potentially worse spoilers -- such as a bout of diarrhea or a nasty skin rash -- you might also want to consider consulting another report."