National (U.S.)

"A high-priority Obama administration push to unclog a backlog of contested mine safety citations is backfiring. After a West Virginia coal mine explosion in April exposed a weak link in a system designed to identify safety violations, the government has spent $23 million to reform the system. ... Instead, the list of unresolved safety appeals has grown to 18,100 cases, from 16,600 at the time of the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine."

"In a newly unveiled campaign ad, the Democratic Senate candidate and current West Virginia governor, Joe Manchin, picks up a rifle and fires a bullet into a target labeled 'Cap and Trade Bill.'"

A New York Times article on research implicating a fungus-virus combination as a cause of bee colony collapse failed to mention that the lead author received funding from a company making a pesticide that is also a leading suspect.

"The Chevy Volt  has been hailed as General Motors' electric savior. Now, as GM officially rolls out the Volt this week for public consumption, we're told the much-touted fuel economy was misstated and GM 'lied' about the car being all-electric."

"The China National Offshore Oil Corp. will pay Chesapeake Energy $2.2 billion for a one-third interest in a South Texas oil and natural gas shale project and will pay billions of dollars more for its share of development costs over the next several years."

When the Gulf oil spill came to Grand Isle State Park, Louisiana ranger Leanne Sarco knew her job running a summer program for children would be cancelled. So she used Facebook to recruit and organize volunteers in a project to clean oiled hermit crabs.

"Five ethanol facilities in Minnesota have been cited in the past 12 months for widespread air and water quality violations. They have paid more than $2.8 million in penalties and corrective actions."

"A South Carolina utility company that drew fire for allegedly tainting a local water supply with coal ash residue, a by-product of burning coal that is known to cause serious illness, recently purchased 987 acres in Colleton County to build a new landfill for the waste."

"Surprise inspections of deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico dwindled to about three a year over the past decade, even as exploratory drilling far from shore increased, according to federal data analyzed by The Wall Street Journal."