National (U.S.)

A veterans group is warning that climate change could be a matter of life and death that literally puts U.S. troops in harm's way.

"A deal that secured Senate Republicans' support for a bill to clean up the Chesapeake Bay has undermined the legislation and could weaken water-pollution protections nationwide, according to four law professors who helped write the original measure."

"California's long-awaited boom in solar power plant construction took a major step forward Wednesday when state regulators approved the first in a string of projects that will soon blanket thousands of acres of desert with mirrors harnessing the energy of the sun."

The likely primary upset of Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski could signal big changes on the GOP side of the Senate Energy Committee -- and possibly a shift toward hard-line opposition to any Democrat legislation.

Billionaire Brothers David and Charles Koch, who own the petroleum-based Koch Industries, are among the top ten air polluters in the country and stout opponents of environmental regulation. Their empire has vastly outdone ExxonMobil in funding opposition to legislation to control climate change and has been dubbed by Greenpeace a "kingpin of climate science denial."

"Male rats exposed before birth to low doses of the weedkiller atrazine are more likely to develop prostate inflammation and to go through puberty later than non-exposed animals, finds a new study conducted by federal government scientists."

"The BP oil spill  was a massive 'failure' in government oversight and administrations should be forced to consult with experts in the field before making expansive drilling policy, top officials of the White House's oil spill commission said on Wednesday."

"Another BP employee is refusing to testify in the investigation into the cause of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, invoking his Fifth Amendment right to not produce testimony that could incriminate him."

"Two weeks after BP's Macondo well blew out in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government's Minerals Management Service finalized a regulation intended to control the undersea pressures that threaten deepwater drilling operations. MMS did not write the rule. As it had dozens of times before, the agency adopted language provided by the oil industry's trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, and incorporated it into the Federal Register."

"A Manhattan-sized plume of oil spewed deep into the Gulf of Mexico by BP's broken Macondo well has been consumed by a newly discovered fast-eating species of microbes, scientists reported on Tuesday."