The order gives agencies 120 days to review their existing secrecy designations and to come up with standardized ones "in a timely manner." When there is doubt, Obama's order states, agencies are to err on the side of disclosure.
"The panel named by President Obama to investigate the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout on Tuesday rejected a call by a consumer activist group for the resignation of its chief counsel, Fred H. Bartlit Jr. The group, Consumer Watchdog, said that the panel should dismiss Mr. Bartlit because his law firm, Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, once represented Halliburton, one of the companies involved in drilling the BP well."
"They wind underground beneath homes, across plains and through the state's most populous cities. And, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation, more than half of the major natural gas transmission lines in Texas were laid more than 40 years ago and now are vulnerable to failure."
"An environmental group has filed a formal notice that it will sue the Environmental Protection Agency and the Coast Guard for authorizing oil dispersants without studying how they'll affect Alaska's polar bears, Cook Inlet beluga whales, Steller sea lions and other imperiled species."
The Pew Environmental Group Thursday released a detailed report concluding that the risks of a blowout in Alaska's Beaufort Sea could be even worse than the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf.
"A national environmental group is threatening to sue over the federal government's oil spill emergency response plan for Alaska, saying regulators violated the law by not studying whether using chemicals to disperse oil spills would harm the state's endangered and threatened marine species."
"The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report."
"Drilling experts and corporate rivals testifying before a presidential oil spill commission blasted BP Tuesday for decisions about the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that might have removed obstacles to the April 20 blowout that led to the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill."
Critics of a presidential commission's preliminary findings that largely supported BP's internal probe of the Gulf oil spill questioned Monday how anyone could suggest money wasn't put ahead of safety in the days before the disaster.
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