"The Senate on Wednesday voted in favor of a one-year extension of the ethanol tax credit and the ethanol import tariff at existing rates, despite complaints the subsidies were wasteful."
"Independent federal experts investigating the blowout aboard the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig are finding major parallels between this year's disaster and a 2005 blast that killed 15 workers at a BP PLC refinery in Texas -- indicating the industry has failed to overhaul safety rules, they said [Wednesday]."
"In an unprecedented move, the environmental agencies of New Jersey and New York have begun forcing scores of their largest water users to either retrofit their plants with modern cooling systems which won't kill billions of fish annually or cease operating."
"Cutting through rhetoric that so often dominates debate over Canada's oil sands, a new report by a prominent academic group is a comprehensive snapshot of the failings and successes of all the industry's stakeholders and raises hope for a new era of oversight."
"The Obama administration supports a full study of the effects of gas drilling in the watershed that provides drinking water for Philadelphia and New York City, but it doesn't want to wait until it's finished for drilling to begin."
"For several weeks, nine Kansas state employees have been voluntarily working weekends and late into the night to finish a review of a permit for a power plant. ... And that worries the coal plant’s opponents, who said the extra hours were a clear signal that the state was pushing the permit process too fast."
"Regulators charged with protecting the watershed for New York City and the Philadelphia region today backed off from their toughest restrictions on Marcellus Shale drilling, but still proposed measures stricter than existing rules in nearby areas."
"A Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland was released from prison following threats to British business interests, US State Department documents released by WikiLeaks reveal."
The House late Wednesday passed a stopgap omnibus appropriations measure that included $7 billion in new loan guarantee authority for commercial nuclear power plants -- as well as the food safety bill.
"An extension of the major U.S. ethanol subsidy 'is part of the deal at the moment' in negotiations for an omnibus tax bill, but the size and lifespan of the subsidy are not set yet, a trade group said on Wednesday."
Advertisement 
