"The House of Representatives approved a bill as expected on Wednesday declaring that a presidential permit was not needed to approve the Canada-to-Nebraska leg of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a move that would take a decision on the project away from the Obama administration."
An EPA initiative to protect American consumers from toxic chemicals, especially endocrine disruptors, has run into a brick wall put up by the Obama White House three years ago due to secret urging of the chemical industry — even though the law requires information and arguments on which federal regulations are based to be open and on the record.
In the wake of the Justice Department's chilling seizure of AP phone records, the Department asserted that a Fox reporter violated the law by reporting the news. The unprecedented assertion was made by FBI agent Reginald B. Reyes in a search warrant application that was ultimately approved by a judge, allowing Reyes to snoop through the phone records of Fox News correspondent James Rosen.
"The Forest Service would be allowed to forgo environmental reviews for forest thinning projects smaller than 10,000 acres under a provision in the House farm bill."
"The White House [Tuesday] threatened to veto the latest version of House legislation designed to fast-track the controversial Keystone XL pipeline between Canada's oil sands and Gulf Coast refineries."
"For the fourth time since 1956, Portlanders on Tuesday night rejected a plan to fluoridate city water, 60 percent to 40 percent."
"The federal government might have enough money in its emergency coffers to help tornado-ravaged Oklahoma without Congress having to pass another contentious disaster response bill, the Senate's top Democrat said yesterday."
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters he wasn't immediately considering legislation to help finance cleanup and recovery from the massive tornado that hit Oklahoma City and its suburbs earlier this week, killing at least 24 people.
"Right now, we don't need the money," the Nevada Democrat said.
"WACO, Texas — Federal agents and the state fire marshal have effectively barred a federal safety panel from the site of a Texas fertilizer plant blast that killed 15 people and injured about 200 others, hampering its investigation, the panel's chairman said."
"LONDON — More than a decade ago, British parents refused to give measles shots to at least a million children because of now discredited research that linked the vaccine to autism. Now, health officials are scrambling to catch up and stop a growing epidemic of the contagious disease."
"You might think that everything would have changed for the chemicals industry on April 16, 1947. That was the day of the Texas City Disaster, the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. A ship loaded with ammonium nitrate — the same chemical that appears to have caused the disaster last month in West, Texas — exploded. The ship sparked a chain reaction of blasts at chemical facilities onshore, creating what a newsreel at the time called "a holocaust that baffles description."
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