"In a letter submitted Friday afternoon to internal investigators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a whistleblower engineer within the agency accused regulators of deliberately covering up information relating to the vulnerability of U.S. nuclear power facilities that sit downstream from large dams and reservoirs."

"The letter also accuses the agency of failing to act to correct these vulnerabilities despite being aware of the risks for years.

"The current poster child for global warming is a polar bear, sitting on a melting iceberg. Some health officials argue the symbol should, instead, be a child."

"Organizers of the Kansas State Fair can restrict the display of an animal rights group's video that shows animal slaughter at its annual agricultural event, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday."

"The numbers released quietly by the federal government this year were alarming. A ferocious germ resistant to many types of antibiotics had increased tenfold on chicken breasts, the most commonly eaten meat on the nation’s dinner tables. But instead of a learning from a broad national inquiry into a troubling trend, scientists said they were stymied by a lack of the most basic element of research: solid data."

"Two newspapers produced excellent series in August that scrutinized climate crises related to having too little water, and too much, in their respective regions. The Kansas City Star took on the toll of the severe drought afflicting the Great Plains, while The News Journal in Wilmington, DE, examined impacts of sea-level rise in the Mid-Atlantic. The series share many admirable characteristics. In fact, both opened with the same characterization of a creeping but inexorable dilemma."

"U.S. regulators have rejected claims by oil and gas companies that a requirement to disclose payments to foreign governments is so big of a burden that it outweighs a broader goal of choking off corruption in countries where they operate."