National (U.S.)

"Consumers of California wine easily can tell a red cabernet from a white chardonnay, and soon they will have a tool to determine whether it's green."
 

"Richard Besser led the United States' top public-health agency as swine flu broke out on its doorstep. And his communication shaped the early days of a pandemic, finds Brendan Maher."

"More questions than answers persist in early efforts to bring climate change into all decisions at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency that manages the nation's wildlife refuges and many of its protected species."

"Federal regulators said on Thursday that they would impose hard limits on energy futures contracts held by commodity traders, part of a move to curb excessive speculation and possibly avoid a repeat of the 2008 run-up in oil prices."

"Consumers who thought they were buying antibiotic-free chicken could receive $5 million in cash and coupons under a proposed settlement to a lawsuit contending that the nation's largest poultry producer falsely promoted its birds as being raised without drugs."

Top former Bush administration officials -- now lobbyists -- are directing members of Congress from both parties, and their staff, on exactly how to legislate a repeal of EPA's legal authority to control greenhouse gas emissions. Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, is planning to offer the ban as an amendment on the Senate floor. Environmentalists are calling for an ethics investigation.

"More than a year after 1 billion or so gallons of water polluted by ash spilled from a coal-burning power plant in Tennessee, the Obama administration is struggling to decide whether to declare such waste 'hazardous.'"

"As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq, the Pentagon is wrestling with questions about environmental cleanup on the bases it plans to transfer to the Iraqi Army by December 2011."

As Congress moves ahead with legislation to beef up federal regulation of food safety, the Obama administration has appointed Michael Taylor to head the food safety effort at the Food and Drug Administration.