"The Japanese government is considering whether to impose legal controls on access to an evacuated area around a damaged nuclear power plant, a senior official said on Wednesday."
Today is the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout that caused a catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The consequences to people, natural resources, and industries are still happening, and just beginning to be understood. BP is making profits, paying dividends, and having protestors from the Gulf hustled out of its shareholder meetings by police. The tarballs? Security guards patrolling Louisiana public beaches still prevent journalists from filming them. The $20 billion in compensation set aside by BP has not prevented many people from feeling that their lives have been ruined by the event. Elected officials have resumed the chant: "Drill, baby, drill." Now Freedom-of-Information requests have brought to light documentation that the UK government refused to go to war in Iraq without guarantees that BP and other British firms would get a share of the conquered nation's oil.
Part of Interdisciplinary Themes Conferences, The City: 2nd International Conference will focus on culture, society and technology in the urban environment.
"Hundreds of activists protesting fossil fuels marched to the Department of the Interior's headquarters [Monday] and swarmed inside, calling for the abolition of offshore oil drilling, coal mining and tar sands extraction."
If Robert Lustig is right, in a lecture that has gone viral on YouTube, "then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them."
Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control are trying to develop a new product that both repels and kills insects. Called nootkatone, it is found in Alaska yellow cedar trees and citrus fruit. Consumers may prefer it to DEET, and that may mean a chance to lower the chances of insect-borne disease.
"A battle over whether states can use nuisance laws to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants will come to the Supreme Court Tuesday in a case that puts a twist on the debate over climate policy."
"Congress [April 14] approved a budget bill that includes a rider removing wolves in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah from the federal endangered species list and sets the stage for near-term delisting in Wyoming. The measure returns control of wolf management to the states."
"The U.S. EPA is considering a ban or restriction on consumer insulation and sealant products containing a family of chemicals known as diisocyantes."
Taxpayers can't escape paying what they owe the U.S. Treasury. But for big oil companies who owe royalties, it's another matter.
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