U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in August banned the planting and sales of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" biotech sugar beets after determining that their approval in 2005 by the USDA was illegal. He said the government must conduct a thorough environmental review before approving the crop to comply with the law.
Earthjustice, a consumer group that brought the case against the USDA and had asked the judge to order the young plants be destroyed, said the action was the first court-ordered destruction of a GMO crop.
California regulators approved a pesticide Wednesday for use by fruit and vegetable growers despite heavy opposition from environmental and farmworker groups that cited its links to cancer.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his powerful brother are among a number of senior Afghan figures to be accused of ordering the release of high-ranking Taliban fighters so often that the insurgents now run a commission to secure their freedom.
It's official. The drug industry's chief lobbyists — the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America — raised and spent at least $101.2 million in 2009 on advocacy efforts during the contentious health care overhaul debate, according to tax documents the group filed last month.
The Federal Reserve offers details on the loans it gave to banks and others at the height of the financial crisis. One program alone doled out nearly $9 trillion. The Federal Reserve has lifted its veil of secrecy regarding special lending programs during the financial crisis, responding to a mandate from Congress by revealing the specifics of transactions with firms like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
It's a cosmic embarrassment of riches – the universe appears to hold three times the number of stars many astronomers might have estimated only a year ago. That's the implication a pair of scientists has drawn after measuring eight huge elliptical galaxies that they selected from two vast galaxy clusters located between 53 million to 321 million light-years from Earth.
The US State Department has directed its staff around the world not to surf the WikiLeaks website, according to employees. The ban is in response to WikiLeaks' decision to published classified material, including US diplomatic cables. It’s not clear when the policy first began but it joins a similar order by the US Department of Defense put in place since the leaking of Iraq and Afghanistan war documents earlier this year.
NASA has sent the internet into a frenzy after it announced an "The discovery could prove the theory of "shadow" creatures which exist in tandem with our own and in hostile environments previously thought uninhabitable.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Wednesday afternoon that the Obama administration will not allow offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as part of the next five-year drilling plan, reversing two key policy changes President Obama announced in late March.
