"At least 800,000 people across the United States live near hundreds of sites that store large amounts of potentially explosive ammonium nitrate, which investigators are blaming as the source of last month's deadly blast at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, a Reuters analysis shows."
While a Tennessee governor vetoed "ag-gag" legislation in that state, bills criminalizing the collection of information about abuses in livestock operations are still being pushed in other states — and the mechanism may be extended to stifle reporting on other environmental abuses.
Canada's Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault will be investigating the muzzling of Canadian scientists — a perennial complaint of SEJ's Canadian members who can not freely interview tax-funded scientists about subjects like climate. SEJ has twice urged Environment Canada to end such media policies, receiving no answer.
An EPA initiative to protect American consumers from toxic chemicals, especially endocrine disruptors, has run into a brick wall put up by the Obama White House three years ago due to secret urging of the chemical industry — even though the law requires information and arguments on which federal regulations are based to be open and on the record.
In the wake of the Justice Department's chilling seizure of AP phone records, the Department asserted that a Fox reporter violated the law by reporting the news. The unprecedented assertion was made by FBI agent Reginald B. Reyes in a search warrant application that was ultimately approved by a judge, allowing Reyes to snoop through the phone records of Fox News correspondent James Rosen.
"The Forest Service would be allowed to forgo environmental reviews for forest thinning projects smaller than 10,000 acres under a provision in the House farm bill."
"For the public officials who safeguard Milwaukee's water, Cryptosporidium changed everything."
"With smoke and tar from faulty light fixtures leaking into New York City public school classrooms at alarming rates, the Bloomberg administration said on Tuesday that it would cut in half the time it needed to replace them."
"The owners of power plants that burn coal are playing high-stakes poker as they decide whether to install expensive pollution controls or shut down."
"The White House [Tuesday] threatened to veto the latest version of House legislation designed to fast-track the controversial Keystone XL pipeline between Canada's oil sands and Gulf Coast refineries."
