"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has finalized a set of groundbreaking food safety rules for produce farms and importable goods to strengthen its food safety system."
"The New York Department of State has refused to give Indian Point a certificate required for future use of the Hudson River — part of the Cuomo administration's ongoing attempt to block the plant's license renewal and force its closure."
"Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo rejected a proposal on Thursday to build the first port for liquefied natural gas in New York State, saying it would pose a threat to the environment and make an inviting target for terrorists."
"The EU has warned the Obama administration that a global climate deal at the Paris summit must be legally binding, after the US secretary of state John Kerry said that it 'definitively' would not be a treaty."
Reporters trying to get information from federal agencies find press offices stonewalling and running out the clock on their interview requests. "The public information model," one agency flak said, "is dead." The result: the public is uninformed, the government is unaccountable, and people's health is endangered.
"Mexican copper miner, smelter, and refiner ASARCO must pay more than $163 million to settle U.S. government charges that the company broken the law by releasing hazardous air pollutants, including lead and arsenic, from its primary copper smelter in Hayden, Arizona."
"PARIS -- Any global climate change deal reached in Paris next month will be legally binding and have a concrete impact, France's foreign minister said on Thursday, reacting to U.S. comments that questioned the status of the accord."
"Smoking would be prohibited in public housing homes nationwide under a proposed federal rule to be announced on Thursday, a move that would affect nearly one million households and open the latest front in the long-running campaign to curb unwanted exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke."
"Large chemical companies and their major trade association and lobbying arm, the American Chemistry Council, say they can maintain high safety standards through self-regulation and voluntary actions. Our report finds this isn't the case. Voluntary standards don’t work, and existing regulations are not effectively enforced."
An important, but little-known, transparency law requires that FAC meetings be open to the public. But a new study shows that more than two-thirds of the time, they are not. On those committees, industry "experts" who have a financial stake may be telling agencies to ignore scientific findings in their regulation of things like environmental health and toxic chemicals.
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