Public

"Relief agencies were sending aid to Tonga on Monday amid reports of extensive damage to low-lying islands in the South Pacific archipelago after they were battered by a strong cyclone at the weekend."

"One of BP's attempts to curb payouts for what it says are 'fictitious' and 'absurd' claims related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill has failed after a legal appeal was rejected by a U.S. court."

"A permit to hunt a black rhino in Namibia sold for $350,000 at an auction in Dallas on Saturday with proceeds going to protect the endangered animals despite protests from animal rights groups that saw the sale as immoral conservation."

"The California Coastal Commission has approved development of the first shellfish ranch in federal waters, a 100-acre underwater plot for cultivating and harvesting about 2.6 million pounds of Mediterranean mussels a year."

"The New Jersey agency charged with protecting the Pinelands, a vast and fragile expanse of sand pines, gnarled oaks and river deltas, narrowly defeated a proposal on Friday to run a 22-mile natural gas pipeline through it."

"Four days after a coal-processing chemical leaked into the Elk River, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's administration and West Virginia American Water Company were once again unable to give a firm timeline for when water service would be restored to 300,000 residents in the Kanawha Valley."

"Medical screenings have found high arsenic levels in at least two of the more than 50 residents tested near Louisville’s contaminated Black Leaf industrial site, the scene of Kentucky’s largest residential environmental cleanup ever."

"Sens. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are pressuring administration officials to act quickly on railway transports of crude oil in the wake of multiple explosive derailments."