"TODOS SANTOS, Mexico -- Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation. "
"Safety regulators are increasingly focusing on how seemingly minor problems with a natural-gas pipeline can combine to magnify the risk of an explosion or serious leak, as some experts say was probably the case in a blast that shook a rural Ohio neighborhood last month."
In the Japanese community of Kashiwa, scanning your food and soil for radiation is the new normal.
"Kashiwa, about 30 km northeast of Tokyo, is known for its humble beginnings as a 1970s bedroom community for Tokyo workers.
The tranquil residential city of 406,000 in Chiba Prefecture rarely enters the national spotlight, except when Kashiwa Reysol, the local soccer team, is playing at home.
"McDONALD, Ohio - Officials said Saturday they believe the latest earthquake activity in northeast Ohio is related to the injection of wastewater into the ground near a fault line, creating enough pressure to cause seismic activity.
The brine wastewater comes from drilling operations that use the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale. But Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Jim Zehringer said during a news teleconference that fracking is not causing the quakes."
"A U.S. federal appeals court on Friday issued a last-minute order to delay the January 1 implementation of stricter federal limits on pollution from coal-fired plants, providing a temporary win for utilities worried about the cost of implementation. In a blow to environmental groups, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted a request to stay the Environmental Protection Agency's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, pending further court review."
"A new report by the American Society of Civil Engineers takes a dim view of the state of the country’s 54,000 community-based drinking-water systems and its 15,000 public wastewater treatment facilities. The systems are rusty, aging and seriously inadequate for meeting future needs, the study warns."
"US prosecutors are readying criminal charges against British oil giant BP employees over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that led to the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, The Wall Street Journal reported online.
"WASHINGTON -- Many of the Republican candidates vying for their party’s nod to take on President Barack Obama, dismiss science in favor of strong evangelical faith, playing to a hard-line conservative electorate.
"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has misled Congress about the effectiveness of a nearly five-year-old program that is meant to secure the nation’s chemical facilities against potential terrorist attacks, says Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine).
"Early last year, deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, workers for Apache Corp. performed what the company proclaimed was the biggest hydraulic fracturing operation ever."
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