"TIOGA - Brenda and Richard Jorgenson have a long list of reasons why they dislike and fear the reserve pit from an oil well buried on their land, located a half-mile from their house. They say it reeked of chemicals when it was being filled with diesel-saturated mud, rock cuttings and fluids left over from drilling last year."
"The Housing Authority of Baltimore City often cites a lack of funds to explain its refusal to pay nearly $12 million in court-ordered judgments to former public housing residents who suffered permanent lead-paint poisoning as children. But the city's public housing agency has paid private lawyers about $4 million since 2005 to defend against those lead-paint claims. In May and June alone it spent $228,000 on legal fees, a total that works out to more than $5,000 per day, including expenses."
"As an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News has shown , oil refining is one of the country’s most dangerous industries, where even seemingly small recurring events such as equipment breakdowns and fires can have fatal consequences. Yet an easily manipulated regulatory system allows companies to delay or avoid improvements. While the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration occasionally appears to take a tough stance, identifying perils and proposing fines, the fines are often small and can be appealed for long periods of time, delaying fixes."
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Republicans like Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) have pounced on solar panel-maker Solyndra's bankruptcy as proof that most renewable energy projects are wasteful. Yet Vitter and others energetically worked to bring federal dollars for renewables to their own districts.
In Whiting, Indiana, and across the Midwest, old refineries are being expanded to process the crude oil expected from Canada's tar sands. Citizens near BP's century-old refinery in Whiting are concerned that it will harm their health.
California has found the tropical Asian tiger mosquito in the San Gabriel Valley, where it is not normally found. The species spreads various tropical diseases, and may be a symptom of climate change.
"A ruling on Thursday by the World Trade Organization could imperil 'dolphin safe' labeling on tuna in the United States."
"Excess exports from China's rare earth industry kept prices artificially low for years, and it was now 'unrealistic' to expect them to fall back to previous levels as Beijing reins in the sector, a senior industry official said on Thursday."
"In a class action lawsuit filed Thursday, Kennedy Krieger Institute is accused of exposing poor black children to 'dangerous levels' of lead as part of a housing experiment in the 1990s."
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