Federal agents from several agencies arrested 12 in a sweep targetting illegal imported pesticides in New York's Chinatown. The unlabelled or mislabelled pesticides were especially dangerous because they could be mistakenly consumed and were potent enough to kill a child.

"U.S. power plants can comply with new environmental rules without disrupting the supply of electricity if providers and local authorities have time to plan for the changes, energy regulators told congressional Republicans seeking to unwind the rules."

"Environmental groups and their critics are trading blows over the findings of a recent Government Accountability Office report on environmental litigation costs. In the face of Republican claims that environmentalists game the legal system to win attorneys' fees, GAO experts examined lawsuits filed against U.S. EPA and found 'no discernible trend' over the last 16 years."

"President Barack Obama says his administration is considering seven new government regulations that would cost the economy more than $1 billion each a year, a tally Republicans will pounce on to argue that Congress needs the power to approve costly government rules.

"Seven months after receiving an executive order to cut red tape, federal agencies today released their final plans for cutting burdensome regulations, unveiling hundreds of changes that are estimated to save billions of dollars and millions of hours of paperwork in the coming years."

"When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story -- insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century, an Associated Press investigation shows."

"The Supreme Court chose [Monday] not to take up the question of whether a woman could sue to force the relocation of a cell phone tower in order to protect migrating birds."

"Saying innovation is being stifled and research costs are being unnecessarily increased, S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. wants the Environmental Protection Agency to ease its rules on protecting human subjects in pesticide research."

"Japan's nuclear regulator has amassed power while growing closer to the industry it regulates, according to former regulators and industry critics who blame the trend for lapses that may have contributed to the Fukushima Daiichi accident."

"The Supreme Court declined today to take up the question of whether an environmental inspection of a private property can be viewed as an unconstitutional search and seizure."

After illegally high levels of antibiotics were routinely found in dairy cows headed for the slaughterhouse, the Food and Drug Administration decided to test milk from the farms those cows came from. Dairy farmers, worried more about profits than antibiotic resistance that could sicken their customers, have objected. Now the two sides may be looking for win-win solutions. Meanwhile, testing is on hold.

Georgia "collected more than $30 million in fees from Georgians last year for programs designed to clean up landfills, tire dumps and hazardous sites and to improve 911 services. The governor and state lawmakers put less than $2 million of the fee revenue toward those programs."

"President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he would order a government-wide review of regulations with the goal of eliminating those that hurt job creation and make the U.S. economy less competitive."

The Obama administration's efforts to toughen mine safety enforcement, following the Upper Big Branch disaster in April that killed 29, are encountering the same old evade-and-delay resistance from the mining industry. Those are the tactics that appear to have led to the disaster in the first place.

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will directly enforce new greenhouse-gas rules in parts of Arizona after the state refused to submit its own program for controlling the pollutants."