"BRUSSELS -- The European Food Safety Authority said Thursday it cannot accept an 'inadequate' report by a French scientist on a link between cancer and genetically modified corn."

"The EFSA said an initial review showed that the 'design, reporting and analysis of the study ... are inadequate,' meaning it could not 'regard the authors' conclusions as scientifically sound.'

"ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The group aiming to develop a giant copper and gold mine in the Bristol Bay area is vetting the scientific studies that underlay its work, turning to a Colorado-based non-profit with expertise in environmental conflict resolution. But critics of the proposed Pebble mine are having little of it."

Nancy Rabalais, a marine ecologist dedicated to studying the "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, has won one of this year's MacArthur "genius" grants. Rabelais directs the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium in Chauvin, La., and, since the mid-1980s, she has conducted the major monitoring program collecting basic data on seasonal oxygen levels and nutrients in Gulf waters.

"Barry Commoner, a founder of modern ecology and one of its most provocative thinkers and mobilizers in making environmentalism a people’s political cause, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 95 and lived in Brooklyn Heights."

"The Obama administration has wound up its controversial investigation of a government polar bear researcher without finding any evidence of scientific wrongdoing, campaign groups said late Friday."

"The Obama administration has wound up its controversial investigation of a government polar bear researcher without finding any evidence of scientific wrongdoing, campaign groups said late Friday."

"Rachel Carson wasn't someone you'd expect to spark a movement. She was a quiet, petite woman who grew up poor, lived most of her life with her mother and relished solitary walks along the beach, watching birds and fish. Yet 50 years ago Thursday, this marine biologist published Silent Spring, widely credited with spurring the modern environmental movement."

"Pregnant rats exposed to an industrial pollutant passed on a variety of diseases to their unexposed great-grandkids, according to a study published Wednesday."

"On June 4, 1963, less than a year after the controversial environmental classic 'Silent Spring' was published, its author, Rachel Carson, testified before a Senate subcommittee on pesticides. She was 56 and dying of breast cancer. She told almost no one. She'd already survived a radical mastectomy. Her pelvis was so riddled with fractures that it was nearly impossible for her to walk to her seat at the wooden table before the Congressional panel. To hide her baldness, she wore a dark brown wig."

"Brace yourself for some shocking news: a new study on Friday found that the two major publications of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation greatly mislead their audiences about climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists combed six months of Fox News broadcasting and a year's worth of Wall Street Journal editorial pages for mentions of the science of 'climate change' and 'global warming,' then compared each claim to 'mainstream scientific understanding' of the topic at hand." They found 93% of the statements on Fox News were misleading and 81% of the statements on the Wall St. Journal's opionion pages were misleading.

"A recent report from 'PBS NewsHour' on climate change has drawn sharp criticism from climate groups that feel it provides a false sense of debate around the facts of climate change."

"The segment, which aired on September 16, features interviews with 'converted skeptic' and University of California, Berkeley professor Richard Muller, along with climate skeptic Anthony Watts, a retired meteorologist.

Federal and state health officials say that pesticide spraying for adult mosquitoes has reduced risk of West Nile virus by killing specific percentages of mosquitoes. When confronted with Freedom of Information Act requests for the data to back up those claims, they do not seem to be able to find any.

"OTTAWA -- Atmospheric scientists from around the world are asking Environment Canada to back down from a plan that they believe would compromise ozone and radiation monitoring by putting it into the hands of an Information Technology computer expert."

After a study by Stanford researchers, published September 4, concluded that organic foods had negligible health benefits, controversy occurred. Now critics, mostly from the environmental health and organic food communities, are challenging the study's methods, its accuracy and completeness, its framing questions, potential conflict of interest stemming from funding support, and the competence of the news media in reporting it.

"The harassment faced by U.S.-based climate scientists has been well documented in the media -- but not the harassment of scientists in Europe, Canada or the rest of the world. That's because there hasn't been much to report."