Public

"The Justice Department investigation centers on a 2006 decision to award oil shale leases in Colorado to a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary. Months later, the oil giant hired Norton as a legal counsel."

In recent years, the media has paid a great deal of attention to the loss of European honeybees, the so-called Colony Collapse Disorder. Less well known, but equally troublesome, is the disappearance of bumblebees. As Adam Federman reports in the Autumn edition of Earth Island Journal, bumblebees pollinate about 15 percent of our food crops (valued at $3 billion) and occupy a critical role as native pollinators. Many species are in sharp decline or appear to have gone extinct.

On September 18th, thousands of people around the world will spend the day sitting in parking spaces - without their cars - as part of an annual event called "Parking Day." The idea is to spark a conversation about how we're using our public spaces. The Environment Report's Nora Flaherty attended last year's Parking Day, and here's what she found.

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency is being sued again over accusations that it violated the Endangered Species Act by issuing flood insurance without determining whether development would impact imperiled plants and animals."

"AUSTIN, Texas -- A cancer-causing sealant that covers thousands of parking lots, school playgrounds and driveways in Austin and Travis County has officials debating over its effect on human health."

"Some 60,000 metric tons of radioactive waste is stored at nuclear power plants across the country, awaiting federal action that’s already a decade late."

"Many urban streams have become salty enough to harm aquatic life, largely because of salt used for deicing roads in the winter, according to a new government study released Wednesday."

"About 50 medical waste incinerators nationwide will have to reduce their air pollution under new regulations announced Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency."

Worldwide sea-surface temperatures for this August and this summer were the warmest in at least 180 years, the National Climatic Data Center said. The sea-ice minimum was well behind the extraordinary retreat of 2007.