"Yellowstone National Park managers have rejected a plan to use air rifles to shoot the nation's last herd of purebred bison with so-called biobullets containing a vaccine against a cattle disease, in a decision that has riled the U.S. livestock industry."
"There are more than a thousand species of sharks and rays in the world, and nearly a quarter of them are threatened with extinction, according to a new study. That means these ancient types of fish are among the most endangered animals in the world."
"The Arizona Supreme Court has greenlighted a lawsuit that the Hopi Tribe brought against the city of Flagstaff, Ariz. for selling wastewater to a local ski resort to make fake snow.
"The construction of the Keystone XL, a pipeline intended to bring hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of oil from Canada’s controversial oil sands to the United States, has been mired in delays as regulators assess its environmental impact, and activists and landowners protest what they see as one of the nation’s largest environmental threats."
"A rapidly mutating virus has leaped from plants to honeybees, where it is reproducing and contributing to the collapse of colonies vital to the multibillion-dollar agricultural industry, according to a new study."
"Governor Christie declined to sign a bill that would have required public notification whenever sewer-outfall pipes dump raw sewage into local rivers and bays, legislation that had received overwhelming support by both parties in the state legislature."
"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Federal and state investigators learned Tuesday that an additional chemical that wasn't previously identified was in the tank that leaked Jan. 9 at the Freedom Industries tank farm, just upstream from West Virginia American Water's regional drinking water intake."
Journalists had trouble overcoming EPA and CDC press office obstacles and getting access to agency experts and officials during this month's drinking water contamination crisis in Charleston, WV. SEJ and the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) have sent a letter of complaint to heads of both agencies and their press offices. We urge them to adopt specific practices to end press office stonewalling and increase transparency, especially in times of crisis.
[UPDATE: Reply of January 29, 2014, from EPA Assoc. Adm. for Ext. Affairs Tom Reynolds]
[UPDATE: Reply of January 22, 2014, from CDC Public Affairs Director Barbara Reynolds]
[UPDATE: "CDC: Pregnant Women Should Have Been Warned About Water Sooner," Charleston Gazette, January 22, 2014, by Ken Ward Jr.]
"An explosion and fire flattened part of an animal feed plant in Omaha, Nebraska, on Monday, killing at least two people and injuring at least 10 others, authorities said."
"Russian courts sentence Evgeny Vitishko, a critic of the Sochi Olympics construction developments, to three years."
