National (U.S.)

"WASHINGTON -- Oil and gas companies will have to capture toxic and climate-altering gases from wells, storage sites and pipelines under new air quality standards issued on Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The rule is the first federal effort to address serious air pollution associated with the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which releases toxic and cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and hexane, as well as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas."

Fishermen -- and LSU Prof. Jim Cowan -- say that eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common in the Gulf of Mexico, with the 2010 BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.

"Greenpeace released its latest report today asking, 'How clean is your cloud?' The annual report examines the server farms built by the largest Internet companies -- including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo -- and ranks them according to how efficient their cloud facilities are, and where they get their electricity."

"SEATTLE -- Polar bears are skating on thin ice in Alaska these days: Warming temperatures have resulted in dramatic shrinkage of sea ice, leaving the bears with fewer ice floes on which to rest and hunt seals. But at least for the moment, the Endangered Species Act won't be used to control the greenhouse gas emissions that conservationists say are contributing to climate change and posing one of the biggest threats to the bears' survival."

The New York Times' Felicity Barringer interviews Sierra Club head Michael Brune about environmental politics, money, and President Obama.

"Cheniere Energy Inc. has cleared a major regulatory hurdle to building a $5 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana."

"In a study published last year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers put five San Francisco families on a three-day diet of food that hadn't been in contact with plastic. When they compared urine samples before and after the diet, the scientists were stunned to see what a difference a few days could make: The participants' levels of bisphenol A (BPA), which is used to harden polycarbonate plastic, plunged — by two-thirds, on average — while those of the phthalate DEHP, which imparts flexibility to plastics, dropped by more than half."

"President Barack Obama pushed Congress Tuesday to give oil market regulators more muscle to deter price manipulation by speculators, the latest White House response to determined Republican attacks on administration energy policies amid high gas prices at the pump."