Public

"From its perch in a spacious brand-new headquarters blocks from the White House, the Cato Institute has built on its reputation as a venerable libertarian research center unafraid to cross party lines. Now, however, a rift with one of its founding members — the billionaire conservative Charles Koch — is threatening the institute's identity and independence, its leaders say, and is exposing fault lines over Mr. Koch's aggressive and well-financed brand of Republican politics."

"HAGERSTOWN, Md. -- A 2009 federal study that concluded groundwater contamination from Fort Detrick was unlikely to have harmful health effects was flawed, a national scientific panel said Monday, prompting two U.S. senators to demand a faster cleanup of the Superfund site in Frederick [MD]."

"President Barack Obama said Friday that his personal experiences with America's national parks - both as an 11-year-old with his mother and grandmother and later as a father - have made a conservationist out of him. The President was speaking at a conference hosted by the White House linking conservation with strong local economies through tourism, outdoor recreation, and healthy lands, waters and wildlife."

"On Friday, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad signed into law a bill designed to thwart activists who go undercover to report animal abuse. This makes Iowa the first state in the country to pass such a law; Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York and Utah are considering them. Undercover investigations, including videos and photographs, are a principal tool used by activists of all stripes to document abuse cases and have led to legislative reforms, prosecutions and even facility closures around the country."

Ice -- on both sea and land, near the poles and at high altitudes -- is connected in a number of ways with changing climate, as both a symptom and a cause. Several news stories about ice melt have come out recently. Charlie Petit at MIT's Knight Science Journalism Tracker has done a bang-up job of summarizing them. So we will save time and effort by linking directly to his work, which will richly reward the climate-curious.

Billionaire Aubrey McClendon CEO of Chesapeake Energy, the nation's second-largest natural gas producer, is an evangelist for "fracking." Is the boom in natural gas a bubble that will go bust as the price of gas itself continues a dizzying fall?

Coltan ore is valuable as a source of niobium and tantalum, metals key to many kinds of electronics. Coltan mining has helped finance war in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now new illegal coltan mining activity has sprung up in the remote Amazon jungles on the border between Venezuela and Columbia. It is controlled largely by armed militias and drug smugglers.

"When at least 80 tornadoes rampaged across the United States, from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, last Friday, it was more than is typically observed during the entire month of March, tracking firm AccuWeather.com reported on Monday. According to some climate scientists, such earlier-than-normal outbreaks of tornadoes, which typically peak in the spring, will become the norm as the planet warms."

"President Barack Obama on Sunday told a pro-Israel lobbying group that 'loose talk of war' was only serving to benefit Iran because it was driving up the price of oil."

"Campbell's Soup has agreed to stop using the chemical BPA in the lining of its cans, joining a host of other brands moving away from using the substance."