"Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia's Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come."

"INSTITUTE, W.Va. -- Bayer CropScience will stop making, using and storing the deadly chemical methyl isocyanate at its Institute plant as part of a corporate restructuring that will cost the Kanawha Valley 220 jobs over the next several years, company officials announced Tuesday."

"Under pressure from some members of Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is easing up on regulating global warming pollution from facilities that burn biomass for energy."

"In industrialized nations, people expect their drinking water to be pathogen free, thanks to treatment facilities that filter and disinfect the water. However, after reviewing 26 studies from 18 countries, two scientists conclude that some amoeba species called free-living amoebas (FLA) consistently survive these treatments and quickly multiply in drinking-water distribution and storage systems. Given their potential to spread disease, these microbes are a human health risk that demands further study, the researchers say."

"The giant merger between the utilities Duke Energy Corp. and Progress Energy Inc. may have a telling impact on the congressional debate over U.S. energy policy during the new session."

"A federal appeals board yesterday ordered that Teresa Chambers be reinstated as chief of the U.S. Park Police, seven years after she was fired for telling reporters that her department was understaffed and in need of more funding."

The mysterious "sudden aspen decline" that is decimating many western forests also seems responsible for a spike in deer mouse populations that is hastening spread of the sin nombre virus, a still-rare hantavirus that kills some 40 % of the humans it infects.

"Grand Bois residents called for more testing of the air, water and soil around an oil-waste storage and treatment site Tuesday night as they gathered to protest the company’s latest permit applications."