"Climate scientist Michael Mann can proceed with defamation claims against two writers who accused him of fraud and misconduct related to his iconic 'hockey stick' graph of global warming trends, a panel of three judges on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled today."

"It seems increasingly likely that the Trump administration would either alter, or attempt to stop using entirely, an Obama-era metric known as the 'social cost of carbon' in its federal rule-making processes. And that could have have major effects on the way environmental policies are written (or unwritten) in the coming years."

"More than three years after an official prompt from the President, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a long-awaited rule aimed at preventing disasters like the 2010 refinery explosion that killed seven workers in Anacortes, Washington."

"Federal inspections of cattle and hog feedlots, turkey houses, and other animal feeding operations dropped for a fourth consecutive year, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data. The number of fines and orders to change management practices for those same facilities fell for a fifth consecutive year."

"The city of Clovis won its more than three-month-long civil trial against chemical manufacturing giant Shell Oil Co. over the cleanup of a toxic chemical found in drinking-water wells around the city of 108,000 people."

"A federal jury in Columbus, Ohio, has ordered DuPont to pay $2 million to Kenneth Vigneron, concluding exposure to a toxic chemical from the company's Parkersburg, West Virginia, plant caused his testicular cancer."

"The Food and Drug Administration released draft guidelines Wednesday aimed at regulating lead levels in lipstick and other cosmetic products."

"Oklahoma regulators released for the first time guidelines aimed to reduce the risk of major earthquakes being generated from fracking operations, including a mandate to immediately shut down operations in the event of a quake measuring 3.5 or higher on the Richter scale."

"U.S. pipeline regulators on Wednesday ordered Belle Fourche Pipeline Co to improve leak detection, along with other actions, after a Dec. 5 incident that spilled about 4,200 barrels of oil in North Dakota."

"Roughly 288,000 Iowans rely on private water supplies but may not know what is in their water because their wells’ water quality is unregulated."