"SeaWorld Entertainment Inc announced plans on Monday to phase out the signature 'Shamu' killer whale show at its San Diego park next year, after long-running criticism of its treatment of the captive marine mammals."
"Lax enforcement, outdated rules and numerous substances — natural and manmade — threaten drinking water for hundreds of thousands of state residents".
"After a ruptured oil pipeline went undiscovered for 17 hours, spilling 800,000 gallons of heavy oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River in 2010, Congress ordered an audit that laid bare the industry's lackluster record of spotting leaks. But after five years of work, the Obama administration has proposed a regulatory overhaul that fails to patch that hole in the nation’s pipeline safety net — a revelation that has been largely ignored amid Washington's obsession with the Keystone XL pipeline."
"Recent scientific discoveries show that the Amazon rainforest might control the climate for much of South America. The theory could mean even more disastrous ramifications for the fragile ecosystem if deforestation continues unabated." Besides being an engine for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the rainforest seems to pump a "river" of moisture through the atmosphere that is larger than the Amazon itself.
"The American Farm Bureau Federation and other industry groups today asked the Supreme Court to review U.S. EPA's landmark approach for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay."
"Without the right policies to keep the poor safe from extreme weather and rising seas, climate change could drive over 100 million more people into poverty by 2030, the World Bank said on Sunday."
"Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest private coal company, has agreed to make more robust disclosures to its investors about the financial risks it faces from future government policies and regulations related to climate change and other environmental issues that could reduce demand for its product."
"Of 32 BNSF train cars that hurtled off the tracks near Alma, Wis., on Saturday, five of them broke open and spilled at least 18,000 gallons of ethanol into the Mississippi River, the railroad company said."
"The last great epidemic of Vibrio cholerae to hit Africa and the Middle East occurred from 1997 to 1998. Over 200,000 people were afflicted and some 8,000 killed as the disease spread from southern Mozambique all the way up to the Horn of Africa and into the Middle East. Now cholera is back. And this time it could be much worse."
"MARIANA, Brazil -- "Three days after a massive mudflow and flood caused by ruptured dams at an iron ore mine, Brazilian authorities are still struggling to determine a cause or even recover the bodies of as many as 28 people possibly swept away in the torrent."
