"KOMODO ISLAND, Indonesia — Coral gardens that were among Asia’s most spectacular, teeming with colorful sea life just a few months ago, have been transformed into desolate gray moonscapes by illegal fishermen who use explosives or cyanide to kill or stun their prey."
"New research shows that killer whales are inhaling bacteria, fungi and viruses once believed to be found only on land. Some of the pathogens are highly virulent. And some are even antibiotic-resistant."
"Federal Fish and Wildlife Service officials say that a drought-induced bird die-off in the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge along the California-Oregon border has ended. But they warn that unless proposals to reconfigure water distribution along the Klamath River are enacted, the problem could recur."
"In 2006, developers, mining companies and agribusinesses convinced the George W. Bush administration to scale back a proposal that would have widened federal protections for wetlands and waterways in the wake of a muddled Supreme Court ruling on Clean Water Act enforcement."
"The estimated multibillion-dollar settlement between BP and lawyers representing individual and business plaintiffs in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill was fleshed out on Wednesday in hundreds of pages of motions and exhibits."
After complaints from BP, the US government agreed to give the company evidence of the basis for its calculation of the flow rate from the stricken Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. The government will hand over to BP some 100 documents about the size of the 2010 oil spill that have not yet been made public.
If you have a fracking story in your beat, getting information about what's in the controversial fracking fluids may be like pulling teeth. But there are a few resources that can help, such as the "FracFocus" chemical disclosure registry.
"An oil sheen in the Gulf of Mexico last week came from a natural sea floor seep and not from Royal Dutch Shell offshore production platforms, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said on Monday."
"'A modest amount of oil is being released from a natural sea floor seep previously suspected as the source of an oil sheen reported last week in the Gulf of Mexico,' BSEE said in an emailed news release."
Bruce Nichols reports for Reuters April 17, 2012.
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