"A Washington County judge [Wednesday] morning ordered unsealed a court-approved settlement between Marcellus Shale development companies and a family that claimed the drilling operations damaged their health."
"A paltry 1.2 percent of headlines in prominent media outlets focus on environment. That's the depressing finding from a study out today that surveyed headlines from 43 news and related organizations between January 2011 and May of 2012. Interestingly, Fox News devoted significantly more time to covering the environment, including healthy doses of climate change-denial, than did MSNBC and CNN ...."
Do electoral politics and industry lobbying sometimes trump science when it comes to protecting people's health? In an unusual admission, a federal appeals court rules "Yes." And EPA agrees.
"An appeals court is siding with environmental groups that had challenged Environmental Protection Agency regulations on soot as too weak.
The three-judge panel ruled Friday that the EPA regulated soot of a certain size under weaker cleanup requirements than it should have.
"Forget fluffy pandas and doe-eyed forest creatures. This TV presenter is all about the ugly, the freakish, the unloved."
Despite Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, some global oil prices fell. It turns out Iran's influence on the international oil market may be weak, and its threats more an effort to head off international sanctions that will harm its own weakened petroleum economy. Shipping lanes are just one of many major strategic factors affecting the global oil market. Iran has, however, offered spurious ammunition to U.S. politicians crowing for US acts of war against it. Right now, the news media are taking Iran's threats more seriously than the oil market is.
"President Obama’s visit to the Solyndra solar panel factory in California last year was choreographed down to the last detail — the 20-by-30-foot American flags, the corporate banners hung just so, the special lighting, even coffee and doughnuts for the Secret Service detail."
"Call them Trump’s stumps. Last spring and summer, workers at Trump National Golf Club in Loudoun County (VA) chopped down more than 400 trees along the Potomac River so their golfers could have a better view of the water."
"The failure of climate legislation in the Senate last week is a blunt reminder of a basic truth, experts say: The nation's energy policies are historically driven by state and regional interests that will trump national agendas in all but the most compelling circumstances.
"Diplomacy and energy are never far apart in the Persian Gulf. So, as American officials seek new international sanctions against Iran this week, it’s probably wise for them to remember how much the world’s global energy map has changed over the past decade."
"Istanbul is one of a host of quake-threatened cities in the developing world where populations have swelled far faster than the capacity to house them safely, setting them up for disaster of a scope that could, in some cases, surpass the devastation in Haiti from last month’s earthquake."
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