Public

GOP efforts to stop EPA regulation of greenhouse gases by tacking a rider onto an appropriations bill in committee may have been thwarted for now.
 

The invasive and harmful quagga mussel is showing up in Western states, and the Western states are fighting back.

"Dispensing antibiotics to healthy animals is routine on the large, concentrated farms that now dominate American agriculture. ... Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet."

"A biotech company plans to announce Tuesday that it has won a patent on a genetically altered bacterium that converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into ingredients of diesel fuel, a step that could provide a new pathway for making ethanol or a diesel replacement that skips several cumbersome and expensive steps in existing methods."

"Italy Tuesday seized Mafia-linked assets worth $1.9 billion -- the biggest mob haul ever -- in an operation revealing that the crime group was trying to 'go green' by laundering money through alternative energy companies."

"A trio of potentially dangerous storms swirled over the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday, as Tropical Storm Karl formed in the Caribbean on a path that could take it over oil-production facilities in Mexico's Bay of Campeche."

"From foxes to whales to walruses to plankton, Arctic species are being pushed toward extinction by rapid climate change, finds a new report by two conservation groups."

"Most levees in the city of Sacramento have technically failed a maintenance inspection by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers because they are bristling with trees and other structural intrusions. But the city won't be penalized — for now — while long-term solutions are being developed."

"The tragic explosion of a gas pipeline  in a San Francisco suburb has shed light on a problem usually kept underground: Communities have expanded over pipes built decades earlier when no one lived there. Utilities have been under pressure for years to better inspect and replace aging gas pipes — many of them laid years before sprawling communities were erected around them — that now are at risk of leaking or erupting."