"Democrats have attempted to get Republicans to confront the science on climate change, in an effort to halt moves to block regulation of greenhouse gas pollution. But it's not clear that the appeal to reason worked."

"Lead poisoning linked with illegal gold mining has killed a further 400 children in northern Nigeria since November, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said on Monday."
 

"The Interior Department will study the potential impacts of a 'very large oil spill' in the Arctic Ocean as part of a court-ordered supplemental review of oil and gas leasing off Alaska's northwest coast, the agency said."

"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."