"A city commissioner race in Florida provides a window into how the sugar industry cultivates political allies, who help protect its interests."

"The province of Alberta will toughen its greenhouse gas emissions standards for oil sands mines, closing a loophole that rewarded some of Canada’s highest-emitting facilities with millions of dollars’ worth of tradeable credits, its environment ministry told Reuters."

"If a scientific opinion recently proposed by European officials is upheld, the recommended daily dose of bisphenol-A, or BPA, in Europe will be more than a million-fold lower than what U.S. regulators say is safe."

"Corn-based ethanol, which for years has been mixed in huge quantities into gasoline sold at U.S. pumps, is likely a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline, according to a study published Monday."

"A judge on Monday said he will dismiss Sarah Palin’s libel case against the New York Times, saying she had not met the legal standard showing that the newspaper acted with “actual malice” in publishing a 2017 editorial that included an inaccurate claim about her."

"A British company has fallen foul of Greta Thunberg, Unesco, Sweden’s national church, and the indigenous people in the north of the country over plans for an open-pit mine on historical Sami reindeer-herding lands."

"Georgia has no national park, but with a deal finalized this week to purchase and protect an expansive tract of forest, swamp and sacred Native American tribal land, that could soon change."

"The success of New Jersey’s biggest city at replacing nearly 24,000 lead drinking water pipes can serve as a national model and shows why infrastructure spending is vital, Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday in Newark."

"Health-care workers and others who are exposed on the job to formaldehyde, even in low amounts, face a 17 percent increased likelihood of developing memory and thinking problems later on, according to research published in the journal Neurology."

"The influential rightwing lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) is driving a surge in new state laws to block boycotts of the oil industry. The group’s strategy, which aims to protect large oil firms and other conservative-friendly industries, is modelled on legislation to punish divestment from Israel."