"Wal-Mart is banning a controversial flame retardant found in hundreds of consumer goods, from couches to cameras to child car seats, telling its suppliers to come up with safer alternatives."

The Wall Street Journal has declined to correct a factually false claim made in one of its editorials -- which is being used as a talking point by GOP lawmakers trying to keep EPA from enforcing environmental laws. EPA announced last year that it was not going to regulate spilt milk, though the conservative newspaper claimed the opposite.

"The Lone Star state is several years ahead of Pennsylvania when it comes to deep natural gas drilling." So the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette went to Texas to see what might be in store, especially as densely settled suburban areas are drilled. For some, such as homeowners, it has meant economic loss; but for drillers, it has meant fortunes.

"With Congress in friendlier hands, oil and gas lobbyists are shifting more of their attention away from Capitol Hill and to a new arena: the federal agencies developing aggressive regulations that will affect how the industry does business."

"Insiders predict that GOP leaders may compromise on the environmental front to avoid the government shutdowns that sullied the party's image in the 1990s."

As a kids' plaything, it's called oobleck -- a cornstarch suspension that flows at slow speeds but freezes into a solid when you try to move it fast. Washington University scientist Jonathan Katz has just published an article saying it might have succeeded in a "top kill" of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf well where ordinary drilling mud failed.

"In a New York courtroom today, oil giant Chevron Corp. won a halt to enforcement of an $18 billion judgment for oil pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon imposed by a court in Ecuador."

Henry Waxman (D-CA), ranking member of the House Energy Committee, speaking Monday at the Center for American Progress, said "The Republicans in Congress have become the party of science deniers, and that is profoundly dangerous."

"Facing a deadline that could mean the difference between doing business as usual or cutting pressure on hundreds of miles of natural-gas pipeline, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has recruited employees to the Cow Palace grounds for a round-the-clock search through tens of thousands of boxes of paperwork."