"A Department of Energy investigation into the contentious firing of a Hanford nuclear waste site official met initial resistance from some of the government's biggest contractors."
There is still hope (and perhaps time) for this Congress to pass a bill strengthening the Freedom of Information Act. The Senate Judiciary seems likely to mark up a revised FOIA reform bill Thursday, November 20, 2014. After that will come a push to bring it to the Senate floor and eventually reconcile with a FOIA bill already passed by the House.
On a 229-191 party-line vote, the GOP-controlled House passed a bill reining in EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) — authorizing conflicts of interest for its members and gagging them in communications about subjects they are expert on. Science integrity and environmental groups had opposed the bill, which the House passed on November 18, 2014.
"The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved a regulation that seeks to strengthen federal standards for recycling hazardous waste."
"Japan on Tuesday unveiled plans to resume whale hunting in the Southern Ocean despite an international court ruling that previous hunts were illegal, but said it would slash the quota for the so-called scientific whaling program."
"The nonprofit group Global Witness makes some valuable points in a new report offering Peru a path to cut the violence on its poorly governed resource frontier in the Amazon. The report, 'Peru’s Deadly Environment,' is being released today at a Manhattan event organized with the Alexander Soros Foundation."
"Kentucky environmental advocates accused state regulators today of lax enforcement of water quality rules while putting a mining company on notice that they intend to sue over claims of thousands of false pollution reports during the last year."
"Illicit fishing goes on every day at an industrial scale. But large commercial fishers are about to get a new set of overseers: conservationists — and soon the general public—armed with space-based reconnaissance of the global fleet."
"Don Blankenship, the longtime chief executive officer of Massey Energy, was indicted Thursday on charges that he orchestrated the routine violation of key federal mine safety rules at the company’s Upper Big Branch Mine prior to an April 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners."
"BP Plc has failed to persuade a federal judge to oust the administrator overseeing payouts to businesses and individuals claiming damages arising from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill."
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