"DuPont Co. ’s chemical plant in La Porte, Texas, for many years has gained a strong reputation among industrial-safety experts for migrating to safer chemicals. ... So when a gas leak at the plant earlier this month caused four employees—two of them brothers—to be fatally overcome by an industrial chemical called methyl mercaptan, some in the chemical safety world were taken aback."

"Wineries and vineyards dot the landscape of Livermore with brand new homes and schools popping up right next to them. ... The beauty, however, soon became overshadowed by her family’s illnesses, and nobody knew why it was happening."

"It was a brisk February morning, and the governors of Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia and North Carolina were seated around a ring of tables draped with pleated beige fabric in the ornate Nest Room of Washington, D.C.’s Willard InterContinental Hotel. Sitting across the tables was Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, whom the governors had invited so they could make their case for expanding offshore energy production. It was a long-awaited meeting for the governors, and they’d armed themselves with specific 'asks' — that Jewell’s department open access to oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic, for instance, and improve 'regulatory certainty' for energy companies operating rigs off the coasts."

"Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s ascent to the top of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is likely to reignite the decades-old debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)."