National (U.S.)

"U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is pushing to shrink a backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests left by the Obama administration."

"President Trump's abrupt U-turn on elephant trophy imports could undermine his own appointees, break standard practice and all but invite a legal challenge from his customary allies."

"The American Petroleum Institute, the nation's largest oil and gas trade organization, is dismissing the findings of a study on the risks facing African Americans who live near oil and gas facilities, saying that health disparities may be caused by other factors instead, including 'genetics.'"

"As firefighters fought to control deadly wildfires north of San Francisco last month, a small unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google had a more modest goal. It had employees driving cars around loaded with air-monitoring equipment to measure how badly the smoke was polluting the air."

The law and regulations make it hard for the U.S. EPA to regulate new chemicals in drinking water. A lot of testing is required to show the chemical is harmful and found widely in water. New analysis of existing data shows a family of chemicals that includes perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, may be doing much more harm than EPA admits.

"Medical experimentation on chimpanzees has ended, but moving all of them into retirement will be a difficult task."

"The Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday introduced an Interior Department and environment spending bill that would cut nearly $150 million in funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) next year."

"LINCOLN, Neb. — The nearly decade-long battle over Keystone XL has come to symbolize much more than what the disputed pipeline would actually be: a subterranean tube, 36 inches in diameter, carrying crude oil from Canada to Nebraska."