Public

"Federal mine safety regulators reached an 11th-hour settlement Wednesday with Massey Energy that ends what the Obama administration had touted as a landmark suit to shut down an underground coal mine that government inspectors said posed a continuing hazard to workers."

"Federal regulators on Wednesday outlined rules for the tobacco industry that for the first time require disclosure of any changes to their products, and that detail how to seek permission to market new products under the sweeping tobacco control law signed by President Obama in June 2009."

"New Jersey adopted the nation's toughest restrictions on fertilizer Wednesday as part of a package of bills signed into law by Gov. Chris Christie to protect the fragile Barnegat Bay from further pollution."

"Citing alleged health effects from electromagnetic waves, a county in the North San Francisco Bay Area has criminalized the installation of "smart" electric meters."

"It wasn't a secret government spraying program, Martians or gas seeping out of the New Madrid fault that killed the 5,000 or so blackbirds that died New Year's Eve in Beebe, Ark. It was someone shooting off professional grade fireworks in a residential district, scaring the night-blind birds out of their roost into a 25-mph flight that ran them into houses, signs and even the ground, says Karen Rowe, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ornithologist."

"A Texas commission Tuesday set in motion the importation of low-level radioactive-waste from 36 other states, a move long sought by the nuclear-energy industry and long opposed by environmentalists."

"After spiking upward in response to Copenhagen talks and the 'climategate' uproar, media coverage of climate change plummeted to levels last seen in 2005, according to DailyClimate.org's archives and other media databases."

"Scientists have found evidence of a 'drastic' shift since the 1970s in north Atlantic Ocean currents that usually influence weather in the northern hemisphere, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday."