The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) recently adopted a “model” bill from an oil-industry lobby group, that would limit the ability of states to negotiate regional “low-carbon fuel standards” (LCFS), a mechanism designed to reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels. If agreed by states, LCFS could have a significant impact on the sale of fuels derived from Canadian tar sands in the United States, regardless of any decision the Obama administration makes over the …

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You gotta feel for ExxonMobil.

Mere months after the oil giant was mildly stung by a $1.7 million fine for its 2011 spill in Yellowstone River, federal and Arkansas prosecutors have filed a lawsuit against the company seeking compensation and cleanup costs related to this year’s tar-sands oil pipeline rupture in Mayflower, Ark.

From the L.A. Times:

The Justice Department and the state of Arkansas filed suit against the oil giant ExxonMobil over a …

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The fight over public education in Philadelphia escalated Monday, when two local parents and two school district employees initiated a hunger strike to protest the closure of 23 schools and firing of 3,783 education professionals.

The four hunger strikers camped out on the steps in front of Gov. Tom Corbett’s Philadelphia office, where they say they will remain without food until the city and state governments do something to reduce layoffs and improve student safety.

“I care …

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There are a few dictums that have enjoyed pride of place in black American families alongside “Honor your parents” and “Do unto others” since at least Emancipation. One of them is this: The road to freedom passes through the schoolhouse doors.

After all, it was illegal even to teach an enslaved person to read in many states; under Jim Crow, literacy tests were used for decades to deny black voters their rights. So no surprise that …

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LONDON – Just as rich nations have passed the responsibility for carbon dioxide emissions to the developing nations, so the rich provinces of China have exported the problem to the poorest regions, according to new research.

The world’s biggest single emitter of the greenhouse gas – 10 billion tons in 2011 – has undertaken to reduce the “carbon intensity” of its economy. But, according to Klaus Hubacek of the University of Maryland and colleagues, the …

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A cutting-edge biological terror alert system detected a potential threat in the air one morning back in 2008, threatening to derail then-Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver for his party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Initial results from a pricey national air sampling system suggested that bacteria that could cause tularemia had been detected. The microbe, Francisella tularensis, might have been weaponized to cause the infectious disease.

Public health officials sprang into …

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Hundreds of garment workers fell ill on Sunday after drinking water of questionable quality at their workplace in Gazipur at the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.

The incident occurred less than two weeks after about 800 workers fell ill and were hospitalized after drinking water at Starlight Sweaters Ltd., which produced clothes for European buyers Carrefour and Otto.

The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research in Bangladesh, which tested samples of the water after the incident …

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has chosen a high-powered Washington lawyer with extensive experience in all three branches of the government to be the State Department’s special envoy for closing down the military-run prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Clifford Sloan is the pick to reopen the State Department’s Office of Guantanamo Closure, shuttered since January and folded into the department’s legal adviser’s office when the administration, in the face of congressional obstacles, …

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Amnesty International has called for several African nations to arrest and detain former President George W. Bush for authorizing the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture.

Mr. Bush is visiting Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia this week to raise awareness about cervical and breast cancer and HIV/AIDS.

The international human rights group’s written statement recognizes the value those goals, but says it “cannot lessen the damage to the fight against torture caused by allowing someone who …

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• Listen to this segment

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

HARTMANN: Syria. President Obama had said, and I think it was probably not a wise thing to say, but nonetheless, he had said some time back if there was evidence that Syria was using poison gas on its people then that would be a red line. And if they stepped across that line he would react. And now, our own Government has basically …

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