"Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo rejected a proposal on Thursday to build the first port for liquefied natural gas in New York State, saying it would pose a threat to the environment and make an inviting target for terrorists."
"The EU has warned the Obama administration that a global climate deal at the Paris summit must be legally binding, after the US secretary of state John Kerry said that it 'definitively' would not be a treaty."
Reporters trying to get information from federal agencies find press offices stonewalling and running out the clock on their interview requests. "The public information model," one agency flak said, "is dead." The result: the public is uninformed, the government is unaccountable, and people's health is endangered.
"Mexican copper miner, smelter, and refiner ASARCO must pay more than $163 million to settle U.S. government charges that the company broken the law by releasing hazardous air pollutants, including lead and arsenic, from its primary copper smelter in Hayden, Arizona."
"PARIS -- Any global climate change deal reached in Paris next month will be legally binding and have a concrete impact, France's foreign minister said on Thursday, reacting to U.S. comments that questioned the status of the accord."
"Smoking would be prohibited in public housing homes nationwide under a proposed federal rule to be announced on Thursday, a move that would affect nearly one million households and open the latest front in the long-running campaign to curb unwanted exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke."
"Large chemical companies and their major trade association and lobbying arm, the American Chemistry Council, say they can maintain high safety standards through self-regulation and voluntary actions. Our report finds this isn't the case. Voluntary standards don’t work, and existing regulations are not effectively enforced."
An important, but little-known, transparency law requires that FAC meetings be open to the public. But a new study shows that more than two-thirds of the time, they are not. On those committees, industry "experts" who have a financial stake may be telling agencies to ignore scientific findings in their regulation of things like environmental health and toxic chemicals.
"The recent finding by an international panel that eating processed meat increases the risk of cancer could trigger warning labels under California law and a legal battle by meat producers and their trade groups to avoid the requirement."
"After a ruptured oil pipeline went undiscovered for 17 hours, spilling 800,000 gallons of heavy oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River in 2010, Congress ordered an audit that laid bare the industry's lackluster record of spotting leaks. But after five years of work, the Obama administration has proposed a regulatory overhaul that fails to patch that hole in the nation’s pipeline safety net — a revelation that has been largely ignored amid Washington's obsession with the Keystone XL pipeline."
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