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"After a public reckoning and the departure of its executive director, the nation’s largest environmental organization has tapped Ben Jealous as its new leader."
"Scientists advising the National Institutes of Health on Friday released a draft report urging intensified government oversight of experiments on dangerous pathogens, including broadening the definition of the kinds of pathogens that could trigger a pandemic."
"With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the specter of nuclear weapon use, Earth crept its closest to Armageddon, a science-oriented advocacy group said, moving its famous “Doomsday Clock” up to just 90 seconds before midnight."
"Growing numbers of people in Asia lack enough to eat as food insecurity rises with higher prices and worsening poverty, according to a report released Tuesday by the Food and Agricultural Organization and other United Nations agencies."
"The gene bank can hold as many as 120,000 varieties of plants. Many of the seeds come from crops as old as agriculture itself. They're sown by farmers in the Fertile Crescent region, where cultivation began some 11,000 years ago. Other seeds were deposited by researchers who've hiked in the past four decades through forests and mountains in the Middle East, Asia and North Africa, searching for wild relatives of wheat, legumes and other crops that are important to the human diet."
"Fire departments face liability risks and potentially huge costs and uncertainties as they switch from PFAS-enabled firefighting foam, according to lawyers and groups working with them."
"Environmental groups asked the Fourth Circuit during oral arguments Tuesday to toss a key water permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would lead to even more delays for the $6.2 billion project that developers aim to resume constructing this summer."
"The ant oncologist will see you now." "A study published this week points to the potential of someday using sharp-nosed animals to detect tumors quickly and cheaply".
"Despite an injection of funding, the agency still has not recovered from an exodus of scientists and policy experts, both insiders and critics say."
"WASHINGTON — The nation’s top environmental agency is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration. The chemicals chief said her staff can’t keep up with a mounting workload. The enforcement unit is prosecuting fewer polluters than at any time in the past two decades.
"Fossil-fuel companies’ climate messaging may have changed to fit the new century, but the goal is the same the industry has had for decades: to delay action and protect profits for as long as possible. Even in the face of an increasingly obvious climate emergency, this message still resonates with many people. Maybe that’s because the biggest social media companies help amplify it."
"Brazil's federal police said on Monday they had a "strong conviction" a gang leader known as "Colombia" ordered the brutal murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, killed in the Amazon rainforest last June."
"It’s one of President Biden’s most important and ambitious climate goals: eliminating carbon pollution from America’s power sector by 2035.... However, a detailed new analysis finds that the Biden administration can still keep this central climate goal within reach if the Environmental Protection Agency enacts strong carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants."
"New outlines of a hotly debated carbon credit initiative involving the U.S. government and two major philanthropies are raising questions about its ability to generate money while lowering emissions. Those come as the program’s organizers seem to disagree about whether it is, in fact, a carbon offsets program."
"Diversified Energy’s liabilities exceed its assets, according to a new report, sparking concerns about whether taxpayers will wind up paying to plug its 70,000 wells."
"After years of sending leachate from the Coventry landfill downstream to a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Vermont, Casella Waste Systems is building an on-site facility to treat its runoff. Amid rising public concern over PFAS and new or forthcoming regulations, an increasing number of landfill operators across the country are considering similar moves."
