Public

"House appropriators [Thursday] cleared a $30.6 billion spending bill for the Energy Department and Army Corps of Engineers that could see a floor vote before August."

"Earthquake-hit Japan and many other rich nations are reaffirming pledges to give $30 billion from 2010-12 to help poor nations fight climate change despite budget cuts, a Reuters survey showed on Wednesday."

"Floodwaters around the South Dakota capital of Pierre are rising and they're about to get much higher. The dams along the Missouri River can't hold back a massive surge of water spurred by record rains in Montana."

"The bacterium that has killed more than a dozen Europeans, sickened nearly 2,000 more and raised international alarms would be legal if it were found on meat or poultry in the United States."

The rehabilitation of San Francisco's Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is bringing pressure on the minority population of the area.

"Union Pacific and the Environmental Protection Agency are ending their decade-long dispute over lead contamination in Omaha with a settlement that reduces the railroad's share of the cost to $25 million instead of the more than $200 million originally sought."

"First came lumber certified as environmentally friendly, then seafood. Now a move is afoot to give gravel -- blasted out of open-pit mines, then hauled out using diesel-belching trucks -- the green seal of approval."

"Philadelphia got the green light Wednesday for a $2 billion storm-water plan that will transform the way the city deals with rain. The 25-year plan, which has been hailed as a national model, envisions green roofs on office buildings, porous pavement on city streets and parking lots, and plants and trees with tubs of gravel below ground to hold water and stall runoff in a storm."

"Danish navy commandos have ended the occupation of an Arctic drilling rig by Greenpeace by breaking into the protesters' survival pod hanging off the drilling platform."

"Colorado State University forecasters predicted the Atlantic hurricane season that began on Wednesday would be a busy one with 16 tropical storms and nine of those growing into hurricanes."