"WASHINGTON — Nearly seven years after a government auditor charged that an oil company had cheated the government out of millions of dollars in royalties, a federal judge has ordered the company to pay nearly $23 million in penalties — including $5.7 million to the auditor who uncovered the problem."
FBI agents during the Bush administration "investigated members of the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace over their protest activities 'with little or no basis,' [a Justice Department Inspector General's] report said. Agents kept the case open for more than three years, even though no charges were filed, and put the activists on a terrorist watch list, it said."
"A federal judge has ordered 99¢ Only Stores to pay $409,490 in penalties for the sale of illegal unregistered and misbranded pesticides contained in household products."
"The tragic explosion of a gas pipeline in a San Francisco suburb has shed light on a problem usually kept underground: Communities have expanded over pipes built decades earlier when no one lived there. Utilities have been under pressure for years to better inspect and replace aging gas pipes — many of them laid years before sprawling communities were erected around them — that now are at risk of leaking or erupting."
"U.S. Department of Agriculture experts found growing sanitary problems including bugs and overflowing trash earlier this year on the Iowa farm at the center of the national egg recall, but didn't notify health authorities, according to government documents and officials."
"Challenging the appropriateness of using the courts to address climate change, Indiana and 11 other states are urging the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision that would allow greenhouse gas emitters to be sued for their contribution to global warming."
"Regulators who are supposed to police offshore oil and gas drilling are spread too thinly, poorly trained and hampered by outdated technology, according to a study by an Interior Department review board appointed after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico."
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will roll out more regulations on greenhouse gases and other pollution to help fight climate change, but they will not be as strong as action by Congress, a senior administration official said."
"Another BP employee is refusing to testify in the investigation into the cause of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, invoking his Fifth Amendment right to not produce testimony that could incriminate him."
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