"OTTAWA -- Late [Monday] night, Canada's House of Commons passed Bill C-38, the budget of the majority Conservative government, ignoring thousands of Canadians who spoke up for nature and democracy."

"KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Cattle farmers complained on Wednesday that a federal agency is 'spying' on their operations by flying airplanes over Midwest cattle feedlots to see if they are complying with clean water regulations."

An explosion of flammable metal dust burned Wiley Sherburne, 42, an electrician at the Gallatin, Tenn., plant of the Hoeganaes Corp. Dust was everywhere at the plant. Sherburne died two days after being burned over 95 percent of his body. Combustible dust has killed or injured at least 900 U.S. workers in the past three decades, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has bogged down on efforts to strengthen regulations.

"With efforts to revamp the nation's chemical safety law stalled in Congress, the Obama administration's top environmental regulator vowed three years ago to act on her own to beef up the oversight of toxic substances. But key parts of the initiative by Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are still bottled up in an obscure White House office under intense pressure from industry lobbyists to back off."

"An Aug. 30, 2011, e-mail exchange among Environmental Protection Agency officials, obtained by the Center for Progressive Reform under the Freedom of Information Act, provides a glimpse into how agency officials thought the White House failed to adequately capture their work on anti-pollution rules opposed by Republicans and industry officials."

"A report issued on Monday by the National Wildlife Federation asserts that federal laws regulating oil pipelines are inadequate in several crucial areas and that local regulations do not provide sufficient protection against safety and environmental risks."

The American Legislative Exchange Council -- ALEC -- has for decades worked to fight protection of public health from environmental threats. Funded with corporate money, the group has won non-profit tax status from the federal government even as it lobbies for industrial interests on an industrial scale. Now, because it backed the gun law that kept Trayvon Martin's killer from arrest, some large corporations are cashing out from ALEC.

"The estimated multibillion-dollar settlement between BP and lawyers representing individual and business plaintiffs in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill was fleshed out on Wednesday in hundreds of pages of motions and exhibits."

"President Barack Obama pushed Congress Tuesday to give oil market regulators more muscle to deter price manipulation by speculators, the latest White House response to determined Republican attacks on administration energy policies amid high gas prices at the pump."

"OTTAWA -- Conservation advocates across Canada are warning today that more environmentally-destructive development will be approved now that the Conservative Harper Government has slashed environmental reviews. In the next 10 years, more than 500 projects representing over C$500 billion in new investments are proposed across Canada."

"Myriad agencies have investigated BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but the owner of the rig that exploded and sank wants to draw the line at the one designated by Congress to probe disasters involving deadly chemical blasts and releases."

T"he U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which investigates chemical explosions in the same manner the National Transportation Safety Board investigates airplane crashes, launched its first offshore investigation shortly after the 2010 explosion killed 11 workers and allowed more than 4 million barrels of crude to foul the gulf.

"LYON, France -- For the first time, heads of environmental, biodiversity and natural resources agencies from across the world have met with heads of law enforcement agencies to craft a global compliance and enforcement strategy for environmental security."

"The search for the killer of America's bees is a little bit like an Agatha Christie novel. Suspicion has turned toward one shady character and then another: declining habitat; parasites; diseases; pesticides.

Or did they all conspire in the recent mass murder of the country's bees?

The nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court did not have all the facts before them when they decided the recent case of Sackett v. EPA, which limited EPA's authority over wetlands under the Clean Water Act.

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A federal judge has overturned the Obama administration's veto of the largest mountaintop-removal mining permit in West Virginia history, saying the agency greatly oversteps its authority in blocking the controversial project."