In The News / Jan 29

• N.Y. school to review environmental tests in medical mystery.

  A school system in upstate New York, where more than a dozen female high school students are suffering from uncontrolled verbal outbursts and twitching, said it has hired a company to review environmental testing within the school and community. CNN

• Pesticides blamed for bee decline.

  Compelling new evidence from the US government's top bee expert that modern pesticides called neonicotinoids may be a major cause of collapsing bee populations led to calls yesterday for the chemicals to be banned. London Independent, United Kingdom

• Small planes still pour lead into America's air.

  Across the nation, hundreds of thousands of engines still run on leaded gasoline. Why is anyone still burning fuel with such a brain–damaging substance in it? Puget Sound KUOW Public Radio, Washington

• New report by agency lowers estimates of natural gas in US.

  The uncertainty in predicting natural gas resources was underscored last week when the Energy Information Administration released a report containing sharply lower estimates — a drop of more than 40 percent. New York Times

• EPA will test Susquehanna County water supplies for fracking contamination.

  The federal government was to begin testing water supplies for 61 homes in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County, as soon as Jan. 20 in a dramatic expansion of the EPA's current investigation into potential contamination by natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing. McClatchy Newspapers

• Judge: Parker County not the place for couple's lawsuit against Range Resources.

  A state district judge has ruled that a Parker County couple lacks legal jurisdiction to sue Fort Worth-based Range Resources in a high-profile case involving methane contamination of the couple's water well at their home in the upscale Silverado subdivision in far south Parker County. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

• Future of New York fracking seems to be faltering.

  What once seemed inevitable — hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in New York state in general and Sullivan County in particular — now seems much less certain. Middletown Times Herald-Record, New York

• Obama's backing of shale gas aimed at voters in Marcellus region.

  President Barack Obama's early valentine to the natural gas industry in his State of the Union address Tuesday spurred activist anxiety and industry infatuation, but it was also an appeal to the millions of voters living above the Marcellus Shale formation. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pennsylvania

• It’s no Beijing, but Hong Kong is choking, too.

  Faced with an Internet-led brush fire of criticism for failing to track the levels of extra-fine particles in the air, the Chinese government decreed earlier this month that there would be more monitoring and, ahem, transparency on the issue. Perhaps not coincidentally, Hong Kong quickly announced it would update its own air-quality objectives by 2014. International Herald Tribune

• High pollution makes life hit the lows here.

  Effluents and toxic fumes from factories and refineries and high concentration of vehicles on roads, besides the Deonar dumping grounds (now partially closed) contribute to pollution in Chembur, one of the most polluted suburbs in the commercial capital of the country. Bombay Express, India

• A toxic delay.

  After about a decade of daily poisoning from the millions of litres of acid mine drainage – the toxic and radioactive water seeping from the abandoned mines on the West Rand – there is no life in the Tweelopiespruit. Johannesburg Star, South Africa

• Smoking leading killer in Japan, accounting for 129,000 deaths in 2007.

  An estimated 129,000 adult Japanese died in 2007 of health complications caused by smoking, the nation's biggest lifestyle killer, according to studies by the University of Tokyo and other research organizations. Asahi Shimbun, Japan

• Louisiana scientists working on plan to save coastline, fight global warming.

  A team of Louisiana scientists is laying the groundwork for creating a new carbon storage industry that could both reduce the effects of global warming and rebuild wetlands along the state’s coastline. New Orleans Times-Picayune, Louisiana

• Anti-nuclear movement growing in Asia.

  Though nuclear power still has a strong foothold in Asia, anti-nuclear sentiment and protest are growing from Mongolia to South Korea to Taiwan and even - in modest ways - in China. Christian Science Monitor