National (U.S.)

This week a blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste will hold two days of hearings on alternatives to the now-stalled Yucca Mountain disposal site.

A billion-dollar BP oil rig named Thunder Horse almost sunk in the Gulf after a 2005 hurricane. "The problems at Thunder Horse were not an anomaly, but a warning that BP was taking too many risks and cutting corners in pursuit of growth and profits, according to analysts, competitors and former employees. Despite a catalog of crises and near misses in recent years, BP has been chronically unable or unwilling to learn from its mistakes, an examination of its record shows."

"The latest skirmish in the decades-long scientific battle over the health risks of the most toxic form of dioxin is heating up."

The co-chairmen of a presidential commission probing the BP oil spill did not ask any probing questions of the one BP exec to testify at the panel's first hearing Monday.

"The Coast Guard has modified a policy on safety zones around boom deployed on oiled coastlines, a policy news organizations had said unnecessarily restricted coverage of the impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and efforts to clean it up."

"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar  issued revised rules on Monday for a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil  drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, replacing an earlier one that had been declared invalid by federal courts."

"For environmentalists, the BP oil spill may be disproving the maxim that great tragedies produce great change."

"The presidential commission appointed to study the causes of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to recommend improvements for offshore drilling has navigated tight spots as it prepares to begin work this week."

"A tiny insect is literally sucking the life out of hemlock trees in the Eastern United States. The hemlock wooly adelgid was first spotted in Virginia in the 1950s. Since then it's hit roughly half the hemlocks from Georgia to Massachusetts."