"The lead federal agency investigating the West Virginia chemical leak is one that most Americans have probably never heard of. The Chemical Safety Board is an independent body, modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates plane crashes and the like. But critics say that the Chemical Safety Board is understaffed, underfunded and takes too long to finish its investigations, and that its non-binding recommendations are often ignored anyway."

"Long-delayed farm legislation easily cleared a procedural hurdle on Monday in the U.S. Senate, with final passage of the nearly $1 trillion bill expected as early as Tuesday."

"Naturally occurring radionuclides are widely distributed in the earth’s crust, so it’s no surprise that mineral and hydrocarbon extraction processes, conventional and unconventional alike, often produce some radioactive waste."

"The White House yesterday left the door open to revisiting the nearly four-decade-old limits on crude exports, saying after a landmark Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the ban that it is "closely monitoring the implications" of surging U.S. oil production."

"In 2001, seven years after joining the biology faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, Tyrone Hayes stopped talking about his research with people he didn’t trust."

"President Barack Obama will nominate former federal prosecutor Norman Bay, now the head of enforcement at the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to be the agency’s chairman."

"ALBANY — After four rounds of hearings, hundreds of thousands of public comments, two governors and a pair of voluminous draft reports, New York’s review of hydraulic fracturing is now taking place entirely behind closed doors."

"WASHINGTON — The White House says a new environmental assessment from the State Department isn't the last step in deciding whether the Keystone XL pipeline can be built."

"The question of whether to export crude oil stands to be the next major debate in U.S. energy policy."

"A coalition of business, energy and farm groups are spending millions of dollars to fight the Obama administration’s effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other sources."