FBI agents during the Bush administration "investigated members of the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace over their protest activities 'with little or no basis,' [a Justice Department Inspector General's] report said. Agents kept the case open for more than three years, even though no charges were filed, and put the activists on a terrorist watch list, it said."

"Children whose drinking water contains high concentrations of manganese appear to have lower IQ scores on average than children not exposed to the metallic element, researchers have found."

"Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has canceled a $125,000 contract with a consulting firm that sent a bulletin to the state's Office of Homeland Security in which it described opponents of natural gas drilling as 'environmental extremists' and suggested they were a threat to the state."

"COROLLA, N.C. -- On a stretch of barrier island without paved roads, some of the last wild horses in the eastern United States are seeing their world get smaller each year."

The new legal environment set by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision has prompted a deluge of secret money flowing into this election cycle. In some cases, it helps fossil-fuel corporations and billionaires masquerade as grass-roots groups while they try to change environmental, energy, and climate policy.

The Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, September 22, will hold a hearing on the National Flood Insurance Program, which is teetering under some $19 billion in debt. The NFIP is set to expire Sept. 30, just as the hurricane season reaches its height. Congress has allowed the NFIP to expire four times already this year.

"U.S. EPA is considering two former Halliburton Co. executives along with one of the most outspoken critics of hydraulic fracturing to provide independent expert advice on its study of the polarizing drilling practice."

"Americans are likely to be exposed at higher levels than previously thought to bisphenol A, a compound that mimics hormones important to human development and is found in more than 90 percent of people in the United States, according to new research."

"A Massachusetts Institute of Technology task force report called yesterday for the United States to create a few centralized storage sites for spent nuclear reactor fuel in the next decades, while researching new reactor designs that could reduce the challenges of permanent geological burial of nuclear wastes."

The U.S. is expected to announce today that it will contribute to a U.N. effort to address the problem of indoor wood cookstoves whose smoke kills an estimated 1.9 million people annually.