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Pollution rates rise as rulings hamper EPA

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Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising. Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years. The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, accor...

Al Gore takes aim at climate change skeptics

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Former Vice President Al Gore took aim at skeptics who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change, saying he wished it were an illusion but that the problem is real and urgent. Gore, who has made the fight against climate change his signature issue since leaving the White House in 2001, specifically addressed challenges to the accuracy of findings by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion," Gore wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. "But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes" in reports by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate change skeptics have pointed to errors in the panel's landmark 2007 report -- an overestimate of how fast Himalayan glaciers would melt in a warming world and incorrect information on how much of the Netherlands is below sea level -- as signs...

Weekend boox office

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Weekend Top Five: #1 Shutter Island ($22.2M) #2 Cop Out ($18.6M) #3 The Crazies ($16.5M) #4 Avatar ($14M) #5 Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief ($9.8M)

Pick Me Up of the Day

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Gregory Verdoes as featured on We Love Guys .

Carly Simon whispers name of 'You're So Vain' mystery man

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Has one of music's biggest mysteries finally been solved? The identity of the man who walked into the party like he was walking on to a yacht in Carly Simon's 1972 hit You're So Vain has long been speculated to be Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson or Cat Stevens. But we've never known for sure. Now, after guarding the secret for 38 years, the singer is whispering the first name of the man - "David" - about two and a half minutes into a new version of the song, if you listen to it backwards. Simon, 64, confirmed in an interview with Uncut magazine that the whisper alluded to her former lover. "I'm just going to tell you this," she said. "The answer is on the new version of You're So Vain. There's a little whisper — and it's the answer to the puzzle." The New York Post notes that David Cassidy and David Bowie have already been guessed - and dismissed. Britain's The Sun today says it's David Geffen, who was...

Passion Pit
"Little Secrets"

Olympians Evan Lysacek & Johnny Weir for OK! Mag

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Via Queerty .