Public

"Oil fell to a seven-month low below $91 a barrel Wednesday after Iran agreed to allow the U.N. nuclear agency to restart an investigation into the country's nuclear program."

"At Wally’s Party Factory, a 32-store chain based in the North Texas town of Ennis, balloons no longer contain 100 percent helium — the total is down to 60 percent — and an additive is pumped in to help certain types float better."

"May is the month we see strawberries explode in the market. There are strawberry festivals in every corner of the nation celebrating the juicy ruby beauties, and Strawberry Queens crowned galore. Those traditional harvest time festivals make us think our strawberries are mostly grown on the farm just down the road. But in fact, one state — California — supplies 80 percent of America's strawberries, and the percentage is growing."

"Melinda Olson has given her 12-year-old son raw milk for years. When he walked away virtually unscathed from a serious bike accident last year, she credited his healthy diet of raw milk dairy products. Matthew Caldwell fed his 2-year-old son, Owen, raw milk in the spring of 2010. The boy was hospitalized for 13 days, victim of an E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak traced to raw milk producer Mike Hartmann."

"RAYNHAM -- A new study on Eastern equine encephalitis shows the number of people in Massachusetts who have contracted the mosquito-borne virus has grown in recent years."

"In 2009 and 2010, the Delaware River near Wilmington got a little-noticed early taste of the waste left behind by the controversial natural gas drilling method called fracking. Some 1.4 million gallons of partially treated wastewater collected from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, wells outside the Delaware River basin were further processed and flushed into Delaware waters through the commercial side of DuPont Co.’s big wastewater plant in Deepwater, N.J., near the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge."

"One of Canada's top experts on Arctic issues is warning of the 'near-inevitability' of an Exxon Valdez-scale oil spill at a fragile choke point in Alaskan waters if Canada ends up shipping oilsands fuel to China via pipeline terminals on the British Columbia coast."

"Like evolution, climate science has opened rifts in classrooms across the United States. Educators are lifting climate out of its narrow unit in middle school science – an effort, they hope, that will improve science literacy overall."

"It seems to have gone virtually unnoticed, but the world leaders at the weekend's G8 summit look as if they have taken the biggest step in years in tackling climate change. And it's quite apart from anything to do with carbon dioxide."

"Exposed to poisoned water at Camp Lejeune, these vets may hold the key to a scourge that kills some 40,000 American women -- and a few hundred men -- per year."

"It all started with Mike Partain, a.k.a. Number One. A barrel-chested father of four with a goatee and a predilection for aviator sunglasses, Partain was born at Camp Lejeune, the North Carolina base where his father, a first lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, was stationed in the late 1960s. Now he lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he makes his living as an insurance claims adjuster.