Laws & Regulations

"SALEKHARD, Russia -- Russia announced on Tuesday that it had opened a piracy investigation against the crew of a Greenpeace ship after its activists scaled an offshore oil platform in the Arctic last week. The step signaled that the authorities intended to act decisively to thwart more protests against Russia’s ambitious plans to expand energy exploration in the region."

"At its heart, a major new U.S. EPA report that synthesizes more than 1,000 studies about connections among streams, wetlands, rivers and lakes comes down to what elementary school students are taught about the water cycle. Streams flow into creeks that flow into rivers."

"New regulations to oversee hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells in Alaska could be issued later this year by state regulators, officials said at a public hearing on Monday."

"SAN JOSE -- Anticipating a cleanup cost estimated as high as $1.6 billion, local governments from across California made their final legal pitch Monday to hold the paint industry accountable for allegedly threatening children's health by spreading toxic lead paint through tens of thousands of homes."

"Environmental inspections of oil and gas facilities on public lands have jumped nearly twofold since 2007, but federal investigators said Monday that the government is doing a poor job of targeting the riskiest sites."

"The Environmental Protection Agency will move Friday to strictly limit the amount of carbon that future coal- and gas-fired power plants can pour into the atmosphere, the first such restrictions on greenhouse gases imposed by the agency."

"The death threat itself didn’t bother Mike Ehlebracht. He’d been threatened plenty of times before."

"In the reality TV series 'Prospectors,' gem hunters on a peak in central Colorado face the dangers of high-altitude lightning, rock falls, cave-ins and whiteouts while digging for valuable rocks 'just like their predecessors 150 years ago.'"