Public

"Executives from Wal-Mart, Walgreens, SuperValu and other stores joined Michelle Obama at the White House on Wednesday to announce a pledge to open or expand a combined 1,500 stores in communities that have limited access to nutritious food and are designated as 'food deserts.'"

"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed one of her simplest but potentially most transformative diplomatic priorities in India on Wednesday: clean cooking stoves."

"In pens off Baja, an Icelandic company is raising the fish, a delicacy whose numbers have plummeted in recent years. It hopes to please consumers and environmentalists too."

"With the government declaring formaldehyde a carcinogen, these might be boom times for alternative embalming fluids — if it weren't for the so-called everlasting effect funeral directors stake their reputations on."

"A federal magistrate refused Wednesday to order the White House to provide BP PLC with emails by a former top adviser to President Barack Obama about the administration's response to last summer's massive Gulf oil spill."

Fish bones are full of calcium phosphate. Now clean-up engineers are finding that fish bone meal is a good way to remedy lead contamination in soil, because they can bind lead in a form that the human body can not absorb.

"The persistent inability of the United Nations to forge international consensus on climate change issues was on display Wednesday, as Security Council members disagreed over whether they should address possible instability provoked by problems like rising sea levels or competition over water resources."

"People living in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida are most at risk in the United States from toxic emissions spewing from coal and oil-fired power plants, two leading American environmental groups said in a report on Wednesday."

"Famine in parts of southern Somalia has killed tens of thousands of people, mostly children, the United Nations said Wednesday in an official declaration of what aid officials describe as the worst humanitarian crisis in the troubled country in two decades."

"A lengthy, blistering heat wave that is blanketing the eastern half of the United States is putting significant stress on the nation's power grid as homeowners and businesses crank up their air conditioners."